Alcoholism Among Native Americans

                  Stereotypes, good and bad, exist for every ethnic group. The label placed on Native Americans as drunks has crossed my mind once or twice prior to this course, but was never a fixed perception. After reading The Long Ranger and Tonto Fistfight In Heaven, along with watching Reel Injun, Smoke Signals, and now The Business of Fancydancing, my perception of Native Americans as drunks is beginning to stick. In all of these cases, the native people who are still on the reservation are illustrated as sloppy drunks whose only desire is to drink.

                  What most impacted me are the scenes where the children are continuously forced to witness their parents’ foolish actions. In Smoke Signals, Victor commonly sees his parents at house parties where they continuously exceed their alcohol limit and act out. The Business of Fancydancing also recounts several memories that Seymour and Aristotle have of experiencing the impact alcohol had on their parents. The carelessness of the parents is an enormous burden on the children, and largely impacts them as they grow by influencing them, increasing their chances of following in their parents’ footsteps.

                  Curious, I researched alcoholism among Native Americans to see what I could find and came across this article online that illustrates the severity of the problem. According to a federal report, nearly twelve percent of deaths among Native Americans are related to alcohol. This is more than three times the percent of alcohol-related deaths in the general population, which I found shocking. On a positive note, the article does propose the idea of instituting “culturally appropriate clinical interventions” as an attempt to reduce the amount of alcohol consumption among Native Americans.