LITR 4332: American Minority Literature

Veronica Kreuder 

Surviving One Drop at a Time

As a German, the use of alcohol and its presence in my culture is nothing new to me. As a child, I witnessed my father drink beer occasionally and decorate the fireplace with his beer steins. As an adult, Oktoberfest is a popular cultural tradition marking a month of festivities involving alcohol. However, the role of alcohol in Native American Indian culture has a very different meaning associated with it. The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven made many a mention of the role of alcohol in the lives of many young children and the negative impact on the culture of the Indian. This began my focus of study on the severity of alcoholism among Indians, some of the causes of the disease and what is being done to educate and prevent the issue.

To find out more on this phenomenon, I reviewed articles from social science journals containing research studies on alcoholism and its relation to Indians and/or their youth. I also conducted a personal interview with a person who has lived on and visited many reservations and is a personal witness to the effects of alcohol on the reservations. While the hypothesis of the causes of alcoholism differs, they are all in agreement that rates of alcoholism among Indians and their youth in particular far exceed those of the general population in America.

All of the research concur that the rates of alcoholism among Indians is much higher than normal. But as we know, alcoholism is a multi-faceted complex disease for which the cause cannot be oversimplified or narrowly pinpointed. The findings and proposals for prevention are discussed as well as the causal hypotheses proposed by researchers and the interviewee. The results are so astounding that it poses the question, are Indians really in a loss and survival mode? Or is their method of survival, through the use of alcohol, only increasing and guaranteeing their rate of loss?

In the beginning of my quest for information I started with online resources to find out more about the link between alcohol and Indians. What I found first was an article published by Hal Kibbley, writer for the University of Indiana News Bureau. He published an article on Dr. Ting Kai Li who was researching alcoholism and its links to genetics and Native Americans. Dr. Li uncovered in his research that there are two protective genes, one of which protects against developing alcoholism but is not found in Native Americans. This gene determines how a person metabolizes alcohol and feels its effects and according to Dr. Li, the genetic mutation is not found in Native Americans which may provide proof that it is genetics and the environment that play a role in alcoholism. It seems that the genetic mutations found in Asians, specifically those from Japan and China cause adverse reactions when they consume alcohol. So the lack of adverse reactions in Native Americans destroys the barrier that protects them from alcoholism.

            The second search yielded a few results from the Academic Search Premiere with articles from Social Science Journals on research studies involving Native Americans. Most of what is published however focuses more on the youth so this became my narrowed focus. The first article discusses the link between alcohol and violence. Four researchers set out to uncover the link between the two and what they discovered was that there was a direct correlation between the incidence of traumatic effects and the abuse of alcohol. The traumatic effects could be direct or indirect. Direct meaning being a victim and indirect being a witness or close to the victim of a traumatic event. There were various types of traumatic events such as natural deaths, murder, sexual and physical abuse, rape and violence. What they found was that based on the severity of the traumatic event, the effect was a cumulative effect. The more the exposure to violence, the more likely alcohol was going to be abused in the future. They also found a commonality between the exposure to traumatic events and parental alcohol use. They also noted the limitations of their research. For instance, they research was only done on two reservations, the accuracy of the questionnaires depended on the honesty of those answering them and previous existing medical/mental conditions were not taken into account in linking alcohol use and violence.

The second journal article focused on alcohol prevention for Urban American Indian Youth. Dr. Moran and Dr. Bussey created an alcohol intervention program called The Seventh Generation Program. The creation of the program was culturally centered as they took into account that the program needed to be tailored to the cultural identity of the youth. They, like the researchers mentioned previously, found that those youths who abused alcohol had parents who also abused alcohol. Their program aimed to promote personal social learning skills. They had two control groups: one group took part in the program for one year while the other comparison group participated in the shortest version. Over the next year, they would discover that the effects of the program took a while to sink in and become effective. The children would benefit most from long term exposure to the program while those who were exposed for only a short time, the benefits soon wore off. They came to two conclusions. The first is that there is a “sleeper effect” (Moran) and it takes a certain level of maturity to put what is learned into action or that one year later, the best of the candidates were still around to be retested. It concluded that changes in beliefs about alcohol were positive in the prevention of its misuse later and that social support and treatments for depression were also key in the prevention.

My fourth and definitely most interesting source for information on Indian youth and their connection to alcohol abuse was my interview with W. Fulton Broemer. Mr. Broemer’s father worked on the reservation as an Indian agent for the state of Texas as an executive director for the Indian Commission. Mr. Broemer lived on the Alabama-Coushatta reservation in Livingston until he was six and after that time he continued to live on at the Tigua Indian Reservation in El Paso, Texas in the winter and summer months until he was 18 years old. According to him, alcohol is a daily staple of the Indian diet, just as much as food and water; it is a very rare occurrence for households not to contain alcohol. He states that the age of onset of experimenting with alcohol use is around 10 years of age and he credits that to children attempting to become adults and mimicking what they see on a daily basis, which is mom and dad drinking and smoking. He too participated in these delinquent activities and found himself not only a perpetrator to violent acts but a victim as well. He does not feel that witnessing traumatic events increases the use of alcohol but the other way around. He found that Indians were not only drunks but mean drunks as well. Their concept of violence is much different from that of Americans in that they do not have the social stigmatism attached to being violent. They accept it as part of their nature.

From his internal perspective, his theories as to why there is alcohol abuse among Indian youth are for three reasons. One, their parents drink and so does almost everyone else, giving the impression that they are to follow in those footsteps as well. Second, genetics is responsible for their addiction to alcohol. He firmly believes that their lack of generational exposure to alcohol has led to their inability to moderate drinking and has led to their craving for it. His proof is their high incidence for diabetes, which tells him that their bodies process alcohol in very different manners than that of Europeans. The final theory is environmental, there is a lack of stigma attached to being drunk, and alcohol is inculcated in their cultural identity. For those three reasons, he also feels that their situation is not going to change any time soon. Lastly, he also states that it is extremely rare to find an Indian who does not abuse alcohol and for those who come to the realization that alcohol is in contradiction with their quest for survival, a great many commit suicide and only a very small percentage pull themselves out of the vicious circle to sobriety.

 The greatest concept that has jumped out at me is that the very existence and severity of alcoholism is in direct opposition to their quest to survive (Obj 3b). Sherman Alexie points out hope and freedom (after death in the salmon) but what struck me most is what he said, “I know how all my dreams end anyway” (190). Is it possible that the spirit of survival only applies to a certain period of time and as Indians age, it is replaced by a sense of hopelessness? If I had to keep digging, I would like to know what researchers say about despair and its link to alcohol. Indians have the highest rates of debilitating diabetes, alcoholism and suicide. It seems to me that given these high rates of self-destructive events that their struggle for survival is a steep, long, winding road right in the middle of it is a 40 ton boulder to overcome called alcoholism.

Works Cited

Boyd-Ball, Alison J.; Manson, Spero M.; Noonan, Carolyn and Beals, Janette. "Traumatic Events and Alcohol Use Disorders Among American Indian Adolescents and Young Adults" Journal of Traumatic Stress Dec. 2006: 937-947. Academic Search Premier. UHCL Alfred Neumann Library, Clear Lake, TX. 01 May 2007. < http://libproxy.uhcl.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.asp?profile=web&defaultdb=aph>

Broemer, William Fulton. Personal Interview. 5 May 2007.

Kibbey, Hal. Genetic Influences on Alcohol Drinking and Alcoholism. 01 July 1999. Indiana University. 1 May 2007 <http://www.indiana.edu/~rcapub/v17n3/p18.html/>

Moran, James R. and Bussey, Marian. "Results of an Alcohol Prevention Program with Urban American Indian Youth” Child and Adolescent Social Work Journal Feb. 2007: Vol. 24 No.1. Academic Search Premier. UHCL Alfred Neumann Library, Clear Lake, TX. 01 May 2007. <http://libproxy.uhcl.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.asp?profile=web&defaultdb=aph>