Alcohol, Alcoholism, and the American Indians

Native Americans or American Indians had a particularly strong sense of identity.  Their clothes were special, their languages irreplaceable.  Besides, their tribal dances such as Kachina; traditional spirituality; stone weapons; strings or belts known as wampums; sand painting; and the habit of hunting the bison were all parts of their roots imbedded deep into their consciousness (Nichols, 1998).

When the Europeans came to dislodge these roots by occupying the land that the Indians had believed to be theirs alone, the lives of the latter changed dramatically.  This was a time of cultural demise for the Indians, in fact.

To drown out the pain of humiliation felt due to their roots being pulled out – the Indians found relief in alcohol.  Thus, Sherman Alexie (1993), a Spokane/Coeur d’Alene Indian, writes in The Lone Ranger and Tonto fistfight in Heaven: “’Go ahead,’ Adrian said.  ‘Pull the trigger.’  I held a pistol to my temple.  I was sober but wished I was drunk enough to pull the trigger.”
Alcoholism becomes a means of drowning out the humiliation felt by the Indians.  By attempting to drown out the pain of cultural demise, the Indians are also making an attempt at self-renewal.  They have been forced to move to the West by the armed Europeans.
The new government wants to assimilate them, and destroy the Native American culture in the process, seeing that the government is afraid of being overthrown by the natives.  Alexie uses Victor’s father as a metaphor for the Native American culture.  He writes: “… your father will rise like a salmon, leap over the bridge… He will rise, he will rise.”  The continuation of the American Indian culture is similar to the revolving life cycle.
 The author asserts that the Native American culture could keep on going like ashes flowing along the river.  The culture may also rise one day like salmon rise in the river all of a sudden.  The Native American culture could pass from generation to generation continuously.  However, many of the Indians have no faith in the restoration of their culture. Countless Native American people are, therefore, hopelessly drinking their lives away because they feel no motivation to live a better life.
The Native Americans do not see a way to improve their lives despite the faint hope of cultural restoration.  Alcohol to them is a painkiller.  As the Indians have lost faith in recovering the Native American culture, Alexie also shows that there is no way for the Indians to get back their tradition and culture.  He writes: “With each glass of beer, Samuel gained a few ounces of wisdom, courage.
But after a while, he began to understand too much about fear and failure, too” (Alexie 134).  At first, the Indians believe that alcohol may help them escape from the reality and relieve the pain of losing their rich culture.  But then, they realize that the loss of their culture makes them afraid and worried.  They feel sad as a new culture takes over their spiritual traditions and dear customs, seeing that they have already failed in preventing their culture from being taken over by a new culture.  Hence, Samuel neither forgets his tribe’s culture nor accepts the new customs.
Though his tribe’s culture is being exterminated, he has no way to stop this from happening.  All his life he has watched his brothers and sisters, and most of his tribe folks, fall into alcoholism and surrendered dreams.  So, now, Samuel, the one who never drank, also wants some drink to relieve his pain of roots being pulled out.  Moreover, he picks up the pieces of a story from the street and changes the world for a few moments in his mind to show how he truly can escape the world.