Oglala Sioux President Bryan Brewer confronts Nebraska Law Enforcement just prior to being arrested at a protest over the sale of liquor in Whiteclay in June 2013. Photo from Native Sun News
Starchy foods plus alcohol are killing the Lakotah
By Regina Brave Before proceeding with the Party Platform for Change, it seems appropriate we stop and examine in depth another of the more virulent by-products of the ubiquitous sense of powerlessness and despair induced by U.S. colonialism among the Lakotah. Alcoholism is a devastating disease unknown to our ancestors. Alcohol now pervades every nook, cranny and dimension of our society. We will look at alcoholism because of all the maladies we are afflicted with, it demonstrates how two aspects of colonization, mental and physical, interact in their impact upon many of the colonized as individuals and how this serves to destroy our families, our communities and, ultimately, our tribe as a whole. It is a bitter fact that alcoholism is rampant on Pine Ridge. There are no communities and very few homes in which alcohol is not a problem. More deaths on highways, from exposure, more cases of child abuse, domestic violence and more cases of dereliction of basic human decency are caused by alcohol than all other reasons combined. Money which is desperately needed to offset malnutrition and other horrible conditions, especially among children, goes to drinking alcohol day in and day out. Psychologically, this is in large part and understandable situation. People who feel powerless to affect their lives and living conditions, who find such feelings reinforced at every turn lose hope, resulting in ways to escape the realities. Alcohol, which is always available in off-reservation towns like Scenic, South Dakota and White Clay, Nebraska offers a way to escape through sheer oblivion. It works so well that it has become a potential moneymaker on the reservation and there are those who advocate the Pine Ridge be opened up to liquor sales. In any event, the psychological motivation to drink alcohol created by colonial domination is more than sufficient to provide the basis for chronic alcoholism on the reservation. That in itself would warrant serious concern and action on the part of elders, groups and communities committed to the well-being of the Lakotah people. There is more to the problem than just psychology. With the Lakotah, there is also a problem feeding the mental compulsion to drink with a more tangible physical craving. This has nothing to do with genetics, a supposedly innate “Indian” disposition towards alcoholism, but with day-to-day reality of another sort: The very food we are forced to eat. The typical Lakotah diet today consists of starches: potatoes, white flour, rice, pasta, sugar, grits, etc. Such foods are both relatively cheap when bought “on the market” and also constitutes the greater bulk of what the federal government gives in commodity provisions, which comprise our basic affordable staples. Obviously, a high starch diet is not balanced as it should be and when consumed over a sustained period has significant consequences. The first thing any competent dietician will tell that a diet unbalanced with starches will cause abnormal blood sugar content in the body and critical vitamin and mineral deficiencies as well. This means a person subsisting on a high starch diet is suffering from malnutrition even though he/she is likely to be overweight. The blood sugar problem caused by the typical Lakotah high starch diet is even trickier, in simplest terms, it means the body chemistry is “tuned” in such a way that when a person takes a drink of alcohol, very likely for the psychological reasons mentioned above, the alcohol reacts in the person’s imbalanced blood to create a physical craving. In other words, if you subsisted on a high starch for a long while and then drink alcohol, you will experience addiction to alcohol. The longer you’ve been on such a diet the more you drink; the more you drink, the stronger your addiction. After decades of this high starch diet, infants are born with the predisposition to become diabetics and/or alcoholics. Lakotah who drink not only “need” alcohol for psychological reasons because they feel beaten and depressed and wish to mentally escape these feelings but once they’ve begun drinking it becomes a very real physical addiction as well. The mental and the physical go hand in hand. The problem must be dealt with on both levels when one considers that a major by-product of the combination of poor diet and alcohol consumption we are discussing is diabetes. Diabetes is a leading killer of adult Lakotah and perhaps the single most prominent disease which leads to dialysis in most cases. Plainly, there is reason for concern based simply in the fact many of our people now suffer from alcoholism. Worse yet, it is equally plain that his problem not only affects our present generation but our future generations as well. An unborn child in the womb is totally dependent on the diet of the Mother for the nutrients she ingests. If the mother is subsisting on a high starch diet and is drinking alcohol as well, the child will be born with a chemical predisposition to become an alcoholic and/or diabetic. If the child is born with its body already addicted to alcohol, the baby will go through withdrawals or DTs from the instant of birth. If a child is born with a predisposition toward alcoholism, he/she will retain this predisposition, if he/she is forced to remain on a high starch diet. When pregnant women engage in heavy and/or extended drinking the unborn are impacted through Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS). The quantity of alcohol toxicity transmitted through the mother’s blood to her unborn child is sufficient to cause mental retardation, physical deformity or both. These effects are irreversible and are evident in increasing numbers amongst our own people. In our Traditional Lakotah way, we have the responsibility to protect the unborn, our future generations, as a matter of highest priority. The only way of providing such protection is by getting rid of the condition of colonialism which has produced both physical and psychological circumstances underlying the diseases. There is no question that colonialism is the root of the alcoholism and diabetes, plagues affecting and killing our people today. After all, we never had alcohol before United States extended its “trust authority” over us. When we gained knowledge, and understanding our situation and what is necessary to change the system and eliminate the problem, the Party Platform for Change came into being. It’s that simple. We the Oglala, all of the Oglala, will work to re-establish our own form of government based on existing truths. Ake, Khoskalaka wan heyin na iyaye, (Regina Brave can be reached at P. O. Box 512, Oglala, S. D. 57764) Copyright permission Native Sun News
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