Saturday, September 30, 2017

Alcohol vs Native Americans

Noticed on one of the more whacky right-side sites, an item about Nebraska Supreme Court thwarting a last-ditch effort to resume alcohol sales in a teeny-tiny town on the outskirts of an Indian reservation. Basically, the town exists for its four liquor stores to service the reservation where alcohol is illegal.

And that got me thinking, what is the deal with alcohol and native Americans? Are their bodies different such that they're rendered more susceptible to alcohol harm? Is it something like evolution has not prepared them, just like all the germs we brought over that killed so many of them? Are there inherent physical differences?

So I asked the internet and read Wikipedia and now I'm an expert. [alcohol and native americans]

Under the firewater myths paragraph:
Another important way that scientific literature has refuted these myths is by identifying that there are no current discovered genetic or other biological anomalies that render Native peoples particularly vulnerable to alcoholism.
There you go. So that's that. Question answered, end of story. Stop reading right here.

But, man, that little town must be crazy. Put yourself there in that position. You know alcohol is illegal on the reservation for their own reasons. Their own little empire says no to alcohol. Yet, you know the people in there still want it. You know there is a demand nonetheless. What do you do? You decide to profit by servicing the demand by subverting the foreign laws that you don't care about. Woot.

They created this situation. Not you.

You are the solution. Not the problem.

What does this place even look like?

Denver Post heads their article with this photo.


Good Lord that looks bleak. Whiteclay, NE. 

Is this the whole thing? It has four beer stores. Nine residents. They sell the equivalent of 3.5 million cans of beer each year. That's 389,000 cans of beer sold by each resident. Maths!
The Pine Ridge Indian Reservation is plagued by a litany of alcohol-related problems, including high rates of fetal alcohol syndrome, and activists complain that Whiteclay fuels those issues.
Pffft. And.
Whiteclay has also served for decades as a remote hangout for people to panhandle, loiter, fight and pass out on sidewalks. Its residents rely on a county sheriff’s office 23 miles (37 kilometers) away for law enforcement.
Pfffft. The Nebraska court's mind was made up. They're not having it.
The court rejected the retailers’ appeal on a technicality, arguing that they failed to include all “parties of record” when they asked a district court to review the Nebraska Liquor Control Commission’s decision. 
Let's go there. Let's see if we can look around a bit, without getting out of Google's car. That blue upside down turkey baster thing has me interested. Those nine residents seem to do interesting things. What is that blue thing, anyway? Water? Just when you think it's water it turns out to be beer. Or gasoline. How do nine people even get such a thing? Do they go, hey, we're a town, we need water, get a water tower up here. And they sell enough beer to Indians to justify the cost of a water tower.

The thing is, the demand for alcohol isn't going anywhere. This town that serviced the demand was kept close to the reservation. A problem was automobile accidents. And now the Indian people must go farther to satisfy their demand, and that's the only real change that this does. They exported the problem as they perceived it to neighboring towns while increasing the likelihood or automobile related accidents, and simply making alcohol more expensive so increasing panhandling.

Did it ever occur to the Supreme Court of Nebraska that life might be so miserable they'd rather stay blasted out of their minds?

Anecdote alert. When he was young, Dr. Fred killed an Indian by vehicle during his internship on an Indian reservation. The Indian drunkenly stumbled in front of his car one winter night. Fred never recovered from this event, the opposite of his aims as doctor, and of course, neither did the Indian fellow. Fred didn't like to talk about it. He had to get drunk himself before he would. Therefore I heard the story constantly.

Kidding. Lie. I head it only once.

None of the following pictures show the blue thing. That means it really is brand new. What a waste. Right when you finally get your brand spanking new blue thing the State Supreme Courts shuts down your whole town. Now, what are they going to do with it? Leave it there? Sell it? It's just strange to buy shiny new gorgeous blue water tower then have your whole town shut down. And there goes everything, the church, the grocery store, the automobile repair place, the car junk yard, the refreshing Pepsis, the little restaurant, not just the meandering panhandling drunken fighting accident having Indians, everything.

The dream was so beautiful. The rivers of flowing beer. Where the buffalo roam. The link between nations, the connection of distinct cultures.

It's saying, "We don't like you anymore."





Right up there on the border with South Dakota.



Someone has a lot of old cars.
America sure does have a lot of these things. 
I bet the Indians are glad to be rid of them, us putting our junk right next to them.


Right off, the same photo as Denver Post except no bright blue shiny new water tower.


This thing on the reservation has no information with it on Google Earth.
I turned on all the information tabs in the sidebar and nothing shows.
Weird, huh? 
If it was a casino, I'd expect Google Earth to show some information.
And there aren't many cars for such a large space. 


This is what they mean by loiterers. Dudes sitting in the shade. 
Oooooooh, what a horrible problem. 
White man must fix this. 


Just look at them. Just look. 
If you were to walk up to them they'd ask you for money.
And if you said, "No. Do you have a buck I can have?" They'd reach into their pocket and scratch around for one. Or offer you a saved cigarette to compensate their shortcoming. It's a give and take thing with these people. If you asked for a sip of their booze, they'd give you one. 




Oh man, I could really go for a Pepsi. 
Doesn't that sound refreshing? 



Odd.
Outside a reservation. 
How contrary to immediate existence. 
Divided, we live separate places. 



11 comments:

AllenS said...

There is absolutely nothing to do on the rez. Nothing. There is no business. Nobody will spend any money to build a business because tribal land belongs to the tribe. When the tribe gets a case of the ass, and you are in their sights, they'll take everything that you have.

Let's go drink some fuckin' firewater! Maybe shoot some guns, man. When the buck gets drunk enough they can always beat their squaw up. Happens everyday more than anyone wants to admit.

Why do we still have Indian reservations? We got rid of slave plantations, but we still have Indian reservations. Big WTF?

edutcher said...

Indians in the old days lived in the moment (if they ever got past that), and whatever brakes were on their behavior came off when the firewater went in. Any impulse that him, he acted upon it.

There are some truly ghastly stories about liquored-up redskins, so it's understandable why white men passed the law.

And Allen, of course, is right, but you can make the same analogy to the ghetto and barrio on welfare.

Good thing we're all friends here (mostly) or I'd be voted off the island for being such a racist.

ricpic said...

There's an enzyme that breaks down the alcohol consumed. It's called alcoholdehydrogenase (ADH). Apparently Chinese and Japanese have a lot of it, European Whites have much less and Indians have practically none. This explains Indians' problem with alcohol according to an article I read on the issue of the different races different tolerance for alcohol. I don't know how much credence to give the article. Chick, you out there? I think the body has to break the alcohol down to ethanol and ADH does that. But maybe that's wrong too.

AllenS said...

On the rez, the %ages of drug over doses is astronomical, also the suicide rate. Spousal abuse is extremely high, violence is a way of life. Yet, there is an enormous back lash against anyone who would try to break this pattern up. It sets those still there to a life of misery. I find this shameful. I have relatives from this environment and when I say we need to break this pattern up, they'll call me a traitor. Well, go ahead, prolong the misery. That's all your good for.

rcocean said...

I grew up near an Indian reservation and later in College, knew other "pale faces" who did the same.

"Indians" don't exist. Each tribe had its own culture and language. Some Indian tribes have a problem with Booze, others don't.

I'm all in favor of helping "the Indians", but if a Native American living on a reservation wants to booze it up, why should i care? I don't care if random white guy in Big City USA does. Why are "Indians" different"? Native Americans are big boys, who take of themselves.

I've read the "Orish" and Swedes have a genetic disposition to be alcoholics. Is that true?

edutcher said...

Can we ditch the whole "Native American" schtick?

They're no more "native" than anybody else. The American Indian genome is 1/3 European and 2/3 Asian, so they're immigrants like everybody else.

The "Native American" nonsense was dreamed up in the early 70s to put the White Man on the same guilt trip as slavery was supposed to do for blacks.

rcocean said...

"Indians" don't exist. Each tribe had its own culture and language.

Exactly. Great insight.

If people knew how many tribes allied themselves with the white man during the various wars, they'd be stunned. Indians fought on both sides of the French and Indian Wars (2 companies of Rogers' Rangers were completely Indians, including the officers) and the American Revolution. A whole branch of the US Army was created for Indian scouts in the last part of the 19th century.

I've read the "Orish" and Swedes have a genetic disposition to be alcoholics.

Don't know about the squareheads, but the Micks and the Scots drink pretty hard (picture yourself in that cold, damp climate without central heating and what would you do?). Also, the Russkies; the Krauts like their bier. Then again, the Frawgs and the Eyeties hit the vino pretty hard, but they don't talk about it as much.

chickelit said...

Chick, you out there?

What you wrote about ADH is commonly accepted, even among the most highly-trained chemists who dealt with that enzyme's cofactor - vitamin B-12. But Chip's link to the Wiki (and especially the references at the Wiki page) are adamant that there is absolutely no genetic component to alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH) in humans. I looked at the main reference and it isn't a scientific paper but rather an anti-white screed replete with how-dare-the-white-man-and-white-man's-science-imply-such-a-thing.

YMMV

Evi L. Bloggerlady said...

Talking about Indians, I was listening to Radio Lab today (which I had sort of disavowed last week due to it pulling its capture the flag story with Shia and Trump supporters). But they did a story on the Carlyle school and football which was actually pretty fascinating. I had no idea Pop Warner was a coach at Carlyle. Carlyle was the Indian school where they said, kill the savage and save the man. But out of that loneliness and depression that is boarding school, the boys latched onto football. And they were a top school, competing with the Ivy Leagues.

Then injuries and deaths got so high they had to change the rules (or ban the game) and in stepped Teddy Roosevelt.

But I love Pop Warner coming up with lots of trick plays that the Ivy Leagues would then have to ban.

Evi L. Bloggerlady said...

Carlisle, my bad on spelling. And of course Jim Thorpe went to Carlisle.

As for Indians loitering, I see plenty of other races drunk and loitering now-a-days. And while chronic alcohol abuse by Native Americans bad, the current opioid epidemic is worse. Guess who the new Indians are?

edutcher said...

Of course, you know who increased the accessibility to this stuff.

ken in tx said...

In addition to ADH, there is ALDH which helps metabolize alcohol. Not only are American Indians low on those enzymes, but most European/American women are also low in them. That's why traditionally booze is for men.