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Perhaps no stereotype has been so long-lasting and so thoroughly ensconced in our social fabric as that of the "drunken Indian." Our federal government gave it official recognition by prohibiting the sale of beverage alcohol to Indian people for over a century. Until recently, many missionary groups required that Indian converts take a pledge of total abstinence. Many citizens - both Indian and non-Indian - have seen the "drunken Indian" as a hopeless, powerless figure who had no alternative to drunkenness with which to cope with poverty, the destruction of his culture, and the undermining of his family.
My purpose here is, first, to examine the misconceptions and associated political strategies that flow logically from the nonlogical stereotype of the "drunken Indian" and, second, to review the data on the alcohol usage and alcohol-related problems of Indian people.
COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS
1. Indians cannot hold their liquor. This stereotype presumes that Indian people who drink do so to excess and inevitably encounter problems as a result of their alcohol usage. Generally this presumed tendency is felt to be due to some inherent racial trait that results in alcohol's affecting Indians in a specific and unusual manner.
This notion has recently gained prominence as a result of studies showing differences in the vasomotor response to alcohol and in the rates at which Indians and whites metabolize alcohol. But the samples in such studies have been matched for only a few of the variables important to such investigation. In addition to marred method, the logic for such physiologic studies has been poorly worked out so far. For example, the observation that Orientals respond to alcohol in a physiologically different manner from whites has been used to explain why Orientals have less alcoholism, but the same argument for the same reasons has been used to explain why Indians (a group quite similar to Orientals in numerous hereditary characteristics) have presumably more alcoholism.1 And it is a long step from merely demonstrating physiological differences to explaining what role, ? any, they might play in the etiology of alcoholism.
2. Alcoholism rates are very high among Indians. First, we have the problem of what comprises a case of alcoholism. In the opinion of most people, simply imbibing alcohol or behaving in...