White People, White Lies & Whiteclay: Pine Ridge Finally Fights Back
Gyasi Ross
The violent impact of white settlement and Christianity manifests itself in weird and deep waysāsome people call these impacts ācolonialism.ā Fancy word. In any event, those impacts are so deep that we oftentimes think that those ways are oursābut theyāre not our ways. As Ruben Littlehead says, they are āOld Indian tricksā¦that a white guy taught us.ā One of those topics is the way Native people react to alcohol.
Both of my parents (really, all three of my parentsāI was also raised by a stepfather) struggled with alcohol and addiction.
Probably as a result of their struggles (and my grandparentsā struggles before them), they had a pretty protestant view of drinking alcohol. āDonāt do it.ā āItās bad for Indian people.ā āWeāre not meant to drink alcoholāit kills us.ā They treated alcohol like a sin, like something that stains you.
Now, I accepted these as true statements for many years. In fact, I still have never been a drinker of alcohol as a result of this training at an early age, combined with seeing the effects of alcohol on my family. My family had my best interests when they told me these things and these statements werenāt entirely untrueā¦alcohol can, in fact, kill.
Butā¦lots of things ākill.ā Sugar kills. Not wearing your seatbelt kills. Heck, life killsāafter all, life is a terminal condition right?
And true, alcohol doesnāt necessarily correspond to Native peopleās biochemistry. Native people have only been eating wheat products for a VERY short period of time; most tribes farmed corn, squash, etc. Very few (if any) farmed wheat. Therefore, many Indian people with a high percentage of Indigenous blood are prone to wheat/gluten intolerance (of course there are many enrolled Indians whose blood is primarily white, and Europeans have farmed wheat for many centuries increasing their tolerance to alcohol). That unfamiliarity with alcohol oftentimes leads Native people (and anybody else who is intolerant to wheat) to be allergic to alcohol. How can you tell if someoneās allergic to alcohol? Like most allergies, alcohol allergies causes swelling and redness-therefore, if you (or one of your loved ones) get a red nose or a swollen nose or your cheeks get red when you drink, chances are you (or your loved one) is allergic to alcohol.
No Beer Sold To Indians, 1938 photograph in Sisseton, South Dakota by John Vachon. Source: authentichistory.com.
Therefore, my dear mom and dadās claims that āWeāre not meant to drink alcoholā and that it is ābad for Indian peopleā are technically correct. But itās not the whole story. Theyāre little white lies.
See, Native people arenāt meant to drink alcohol in the same way weāre not meant to eat Twinkies (RIP), eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (even with bannock bread), or drink Cragmont pop. Our ancestors were extremely healthy, and the junk we eat now simply clashes with thousands of years of healthy living (the journal Current Anthropology says that Native civilizations lived on a diet very high in fiber, very low in fat and dominated by foods extremely low on the glycemic index). Our bodies donāt process any of these refined sugars easily. To read more about that, see the ScienceDaily story "Feces Fossils Show Connection Between Native-Americans, Diabetes: Did Fat-Hoarding Genes Develop from the Nature of Ancient Feasts?"
All of those things are bad for Indian people. But we donāt treat all of them like a sin as we do alcohol. To be sure, there is a spiritual component to alcohol abuseābut there is also a similar spiritual component to whenever we abuse ourselves by alcoholism, obesity, drug abuse, sex addiction, deadbeat daddy-ism, or any compulsive behavior!
Itās not just alcohol.
Mass-produced Souvenir Alcohol Flask: Cherokee Indian Reservation, NC, 1950s or 1960s. Source: authentichistory.com
Iāve been watching, with great interest and mixed feelings, the big decision that the Oglala Sioux Tribe is facing: whether or not to legalize liquor sales on the Pine Ridge Reservation. Itās a tough questionāon one hand, we know that Native communities have very, very serious issues with liquor. Why would we give more poison to a sick person? On the other hand, we have the dirty, filthy rednecks in Whiteclay, Nebraska who have been exploiting the Natives on Pine Ridge for a very long time, selling them poison and getting very rich in the process. Why would we want to make these evil exploiters any richer?
They decided to legalize alcohol sales. They effectively cut the legs out from under the bloodsuckers in Whiteclay.
That was the easy partāthey donāt want to make the Whiteclay gang any richer. Those vampires hate Indians and have done their little part to contribute to the extermination of Native people. The Oglala Sioux Tribe successfully took a lot of money out of these pieces of fecesā pockets by legalizing liquor sales.
Good job.
But the Oglala Sioux Tribe decision to allow alcohol sales didnāt stop there. The decision also challenged those violent impacts of white settlement and Christianity that have replaced our values; they challenged colonialism. The Oglala Sioux Tribe decided to get rid of the assumption that Native people arenāt smartenough or strong enough to make our own decisions about whether or not we will choose to indulge in alcohol or not. We are smart enough. We are strong enough. Some will continue to make bad decisionsāthat is unfortunate. But the Oglala Sioux Tribe showed that it champions tribal sovereignty as well as individual sovereigntyāthe ability of individual members to make their own decisions and be treated like an adult.
Almost as importantly, the Oglala Sioux Tribe stopped treating alcoholism like a sin and started treating it like a disease. That is important. Sins stain. Sins create guilt. Sins mean that Godās mad at you. Once Godās mad at you, who knows when heāll start being your friend again. God being mad at you canāt be good for someone trying to do better. On the other hand, diseases are treatable. Diseases need acknowledgment and get better the more honest discussions that you have about it and programs that you create to help those suffering from it. Diseases remove victimhoodāthere are no victims because the individual has the responsibility to seek treatment.
Diseases are not something to hideātheyāre something to acknowledge and work through.
Good job, Oglala Sioux Tribe. It wasnāt an easy decisionāitās a horribly difficult and painful decision with real consequences. This decision wonāt make things better overnightānot even close. In fact, things might look worse in the short-term, while the Tribe gets accustomed to easy access to liquor. But that is what leadership is aboutāmaking tough decisions for the LONG-TERM benefit of your people.