Top Quotes: ““All the Real Indians Died Off”: And 20 Other Myths About Native Americans” — Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

MYTH 1: ALL THE REAL INDIANS DIED OFF

“In 1900 the US census counted approximately a quarter of a million Indians, a small fraction of the Indigenous population in 1492 (even based on a modest population estimate of ten million).”

“In one study, Jeani O’Brien sought to understand how Indians were written out of New England history between 1820 and 1880, despite the fact that they continued to live in the region. Based on reading hundreds of local histories, she discovered a pattern in which Indians were not recognized as Indians (in part to justify the seizure of their lands) due to their intermarriage with non-Natives or because they lived as modern non-Native people did. O’Brien writes,

This penchant for Indian purity as authenticity also found essential expression in the idea of the ancient: non-Indians refused to regard culture change as normative for Indian peoples. Thus, while Indians adapted to the changes wrought by colonialism by selectively embracing new ways and ideas, such transformations stretched beyond the imaginations of New Englanders: Indians could only be ancients, and refusal to behave as such rendered Indians inauthentic in their minds.

O’Brien’s work — as that of numerous other scholars — is to challenge the myths that equate blood purity and cultural stasis with Native authenticity. The myth of the vanishing Indian is entirely untrue, if for no other reason than because there are currently 567 federally recognized Native nations in the United States today and because, according to the 2010 US census, 5.2 million people identified as Native American or Alaska Native, either alone or in combination with other races. About 2.9 million people identified as Native American or Alaska Native alone.”

МYTH 3: COLUMBUS DISCOVERED AMERICA

“Columbus is thought to have enslaved five thousand indigenous peoples throughout his voyaging career to the Americas, more than enslaved by any other individual ever.”

“Perhaps the earliest effort in the United States came with the formation of the Transform Columbus Day Alliance in Denver in 1989, which still exists as a coalition of over eighty organizations who oppose the city’s Columbus Day celebration and parade. Most visible of those organizations is the American Indian Movement (AIM). Every year some Denver residents and AIM members face off in heated confrontations when American Indians protest against the parade, with particularly vitriolic responses from those Italian Americans who view the protests as anti-Italian.

People in other cities and governments have had far more success in their campaigns to abolish Columbus Day.”

“In Johnson v. M’intosh (1823), Marshall argued that the superior genius of Europe” claimed an ascendancy over the Indigenous peoples and that the bestowal of civilization and Christianity was ample compensation to the inhabitants. “The law [governing] the right of acquisition,” he wrote, said that “discovery gave title to the government by whose subjects, or by whose authority, it was made, against all other European governments, which title might be consummated by possession.”

The doctrine of discovery is to this day one of the bedrock principles by which the United States administers its relationship with American Indians, Indigenous inferiority and European superiority is thus still affirmed as the predominant paradigm in federal Indian law. For legal scholar Robert A. Williams Jr., the doctrine of discovery is part of a language of racism that has guided the US Supreme Court since Johnson v. M’Intosh. It finds its way into modern court decisions, as if Plessy v. Ferguson were still being used as a basis for African American civil rights.”

МYTH 4: THANKSGIVING PROVES THE INDIANS WELCOMED THE PILGRIMS

“The Thanksgiving story as we know it is a story of unconditional welcome by the Indigenous peoples, a feel-good narrative that rationalizes and justifies the uninvited settlement of a foreign people by painting a picture of an organic friendship. A more accurate telling of the story, however, describes the forming of political alliances built on a mutual need for survival and an indigenous struggle for power in the vacuum left by a destructive century of foreign settlement.”

“The offenses of the Thanksgiving story stem from lack of historical context. For example, it often gives the impression that the Mayflower pilgrims were the first Europeans to settle on the land today known as the United States. But by the time the Mayflower arrived at Plymouth, Massachusetts, in December 1620, Europeans had been traveling to the North American continent, and founding colonies there, for well over a century. Armed with information about the region — made available by the knowledge and mapping of predecessors like Samuel de Champlain — the Eastern Seaboard was dotted with numerous European enclaves and towns. Jamestown, for example, was founded in 1607, while Florida had been populated by the Spanish since the founding of St. Augustine, in 1565. Some colonies, such as the one in Roanoke, Virginia, had failed. The Mayflower immigrants, who came to be known as the Pilgrims, were thus, in December 1620, only the latest newcomers to the land, all of which was known at the time to the English as Virginia. Exposure to European diseases had resulted in pandemics among the Natives up and down the coast from Florida to New England throughout the sixteenth century, exacerbated by the Indian slave trade started by Columbus. Between 1616 and 1619 the region that would soon become Plymouth Colony underwent an unknown epidemic that decimated the Indigenous population by at least one third to as much as 90 percent — a fact the Pilgrims knew and exploited.”

“Not all historians agree as to what actually happened that day. It is clear that the colonists decided to have a harvest celebration (note that nowhere is the word “thanksgiving” used). As can be deduced from the account, one widely espoused interpretation holds that the Indians were not initially invited to share in the celebration. They came when they heard in the distance the discharge of guns, fired in the exuberance of the festivities. Wondering if there was trouble, the Wampanoags entered the English village with around ninety men. It was only after arriving well-intentioned but uninvited that an invitation to stay was extended. Since there wasn’t enough food to go around, the Indians went out and caught some deer, which they ceremonially presented to the English.”

MYTH 5: INDIANS WERE SAVAGE AND WARLIKE

“The Jamestown Wars on the Powhatans initiated in 1609, for example, began with threats from military leader John Smith that all the women and children would be killed if the Powhatans refused to feed, clothe, and provide land and labor to the settlers. The threats were carried out with the killing of all the Powhatan children, with the gruesome details bragged about in a report by the mercenary George Percy. In the Tidewater War (1644–46), the colonists conducted a campaign of continual village and crop raids designed to starve out the Indians, and, with the Powhatans largely gone, the settlers brought in enslaved Africans and indentured European servants to do the work. Best-selling author Nathaniel Philbrick contends that “with the Pequot War in 1637 New England was introduced to the horrors of European-style genocide.”

Arguably the biggest difference between Indian and European (and Euro-American) warfare was their rationale. As reflected by the example of the mourning wars, Indians fought essentially to maintain social or economic stability, not to control others or to expand their settlements. Europeans, on the other hand, fought full-spectrum hegemonic wars in order to acquire territory, expand economies, or impose religious domination, goals that were often indistinguishable, especially in the Americas.”

MYTH 8: THE UNITED STATES DID NOT HAVE A POLICY OF GENOCIDE

“The California gold rush had inspired a state-supported philosophy of extermination that only recently has acceptably begun to be referred to as genocide in the scholarship on California Indian history. Lindsay’s remarkable study, gathered from copious documentation of the era, argues that a full-scale genocidal campaign was waged against California Indians between 1846 and 1873. Carried out largely by citizen soldiers in “roving death squads known as volunteer companies,” the extermination of Native people was driven initially not only by the gold rush and the imperative of manifest destiny but increasingly by the changing values of gold and land. As the gold rush failed to live up to the expectations of immigrant miners, land came to be more important than gold. As Indians were pushed out of their traditional territories because of a flood of white settlement and encroachment into Native territories, they resisted and fought back in multiple ways to protect their lives, lands, cultures, and sovereignty. Self-defense was construed by settlers as aggression, and the deeply entrenched ideology of Indian inferiority meant that settlers considered California Indians as little more than animals. This dehumanization paved the way for the bloodbath that took place during the second half of the nineteenth century all over California.”

MYTH 9: US PRESIDENTS WERE BENEVOLENT OR AT LEAST FAIR-MINDED TOWARD INDIANS

“In Minnesota, which had become a nonslavery state in 1859, the Dakota people were on the verge of starvation by 1862. When they mounted an uprising to drive out the mostly German and Scandinavian settlers, Union army troops crushed the revolt, slaughtering Dakota civilians and rounding up several hundred men. Three hundred prisoners were sentenced to death, but upon Lincoln’s orders to reduce the numbers, thirty-eight were selected at random to die in the largest mass hanging in US history.”

“Since 1977, Native organizations and governments have been building institutional infrastructure and international human rights law within the United Nations. In 2007 this work produced the long-negotiated UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which calls for self-determination and a full range of specific and general human rights. There is a UN Special Rapporteur on Indigenous Peoples who monitors and reports on Indigenous complaints and government action in relation to the declaration. This has moved much Native American policy work from the Interior Department to the State Department and has led Native Americans to feel some optimism about future nation-building efforts.”

MYTH 10: THE ONLY REAL INDIANS ARE FULL-BLOODS, AND THEY ARE DYING OFF

“Unlike other ethnicities in the United States, American Indians are the only citizens who are subject to state-sanctioned legal definitions of identity, obligated to prove who they are as indigenous peoples.

Native studies scholars talk about the dominant society’s obsession with Indian authenticity as a fetishization of “blood,” where blood is metaphorical, a stand-in for culture. A calculus where blood equals culture presupposes that genetics alone determines identity, absent other conditions such as upbringing, language, or other culturally specific markers of belonging outside dominant Euro-American society.”

“In the 1937 base roll a one-eighth blood Quantum requirement was established, which by 1939 had been changed again to one-quarter blood degree, where it remains today.”

“By and large, blood quantum became the default way to count who was and who was not deserving, even when it contradicted customary norms of Indigenous inclusion and identity. And it was complicated by the conditioning of boarding schools, which instilled a sense of shame about being Indian in the context of a white supremacist dominant social structure. Many denied their Indianness at times to avoid discrimination, while at other times they affirmed it for the benefits of land and other resources, often leaving behind impossibly tangled genealogical webs of documentation for future generations to sort out.

A solid body of federal Indian case law has for decades affirmed the power of Native nations to decide their membership in whatever ways they choose, blood quantum or not. But an equally ample body of scholarship makes the case that if they continue to adhere to minimum blood quantum standards eventually there will be no Indians left, in what has been called “paper” or “statistical” genocide. This is because Indians marry outside their cultures more than any other ethnic group, resulting in multiracial and multiethnic children. What’s more, even when Indians have children with other Indians but from different tribes, it lowers the blood quantum necessary to enroll in one tribe (a requirement written into most tribal constitutions). It’s possible for a person to have one half or more Indian blood combined from two or more tribes but not be able to enroll in any one tribe. if they can’t prove the tribally specific minimum blood degree which is often one-quarter or one-half or if the minimum blood degree derives from the wrong parent. Some tribes, for instance, will only enroll children with maternal ancestry, while others will enroll only children with paternal ancestry, regardless of blood degree. Or a person can have a high degree of Indian blood from a tribe that has had federal recognition terminated (which happened to over one hundred tribes in the 1950s and 1960s. “While he or she may self-identify as American Indian, the person won’t be legally defined as such, resulting in ineligibility for federal benefits, whereas someone with much lower blood quantum could be eligible. Some Native nations are turning to genetic testing to assist them in their enrollment procedures. This is not the magic bullet it’s made out to be, however, because, for one thing, no test can determine the precise tribes from whom one has descended.

For these reasons and more, scholars increasingly call on tribes to rethink their enrollment criteria. Seen through the lens of settler colonialism, blood quantum is the ultimate tool of Native elimination, but when tribes themselves employ it, it is self-imposed erasure. Native nations are gradually changing their practices, however. Some tribes have moved to accept all Indian blood in their blood quantum calculations for enrollment (the Colvilles among them). Other tribes have lowered the blood quantum minimums. The Ojibwes at White Earth are a recent high-profile example: in 2013 the tribe adopted a new constitution that changed a requirement for one-quarter blood quantum to lineal descent from an enrolled ancestor, with no minimum blood quantum required. Overall, the move toward definition by lineal descent is increasing. One 2011 study found that 42 percent of tribes are now utilizing a lineal descent rule, which is up from 15 percent using a lineal descent rule prior to 1940.

Native scholars stress that the blood quantum system is foreign to ways Indigenous peoples historically determined community membership. In most tribal nations, individuals could be incorporated from outside through capture, adoption, or intermar-riage, where belonging was a function of cultural participation and competence. Identity from an Indigenous perspective, in other words, is less a product of quantifiable biology than it is a function of kinship and culture, directly invalidating the popular myth that “real” Indians are only full-bloods who are dying off.”

MYTH 11: THE UNITED STATES GAVE INDIANS THEIR RESERVATIONS

“56.2 million acres of land are held in trust on behalf of tribal nations and individuals, with approximately 326 Indian land areas in the United States administered as federal Indian reservations, known variously as reservations, pueblos, rancherias, missions, villages, and communities. 2 Other types of Indian lands include allotted lands (individual allotments held in trust by the government) and state reservations, in which lands are held in trust for Indians by a state, not the federal government. Reservations were also created by executive order and congressional acts, and even though there are now 567 federally recognized tribal nations, not all nations have reservations. There is only one Indian reservation in Alaska (the Metlakatla Indian Community of the Annette Island Reserve in southeastern Alaska). Alaska Native groups are organized as corporations under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971, so while there are many Indigenous people in Alaska, their legal status is slightly different than American Indians in the lower forty-eight states.”

“As people living in diaspora, the hub emphasizes urban Indians’ “strong rooted connection to tribe and homeland” and demonstrates the “potential for political power as Native men and women organize across tribal lines. “ The Red Power movement of the 1960s and 70s, for instance — born out of the Alcatraz Island occupation in San Francisco — and the formation of the American Indian Movement in the mean streets of Minneapolis displays the way urban political organizing had far-reaching positive effects for both city and reservation Indians. Finally, the idea of hubs also applies to Indigenous conceptions of transnationalism (as opposed to pan-tribalism), where Indigenous nationhood is underscored.”

MYTH 13: SPORTS MASCOTS HONOR NATIVE AMERICANS

“In Dallas, a gay pride parade annually features a float called “Kaliente” with a banner that reads “Honoring Native Americans.” The float and accompanying marchers are dressed in all manner of Halloweenstyle Indian garb, and the float is a mishmash of pseudo-Indian symbols ranging from totem poles to a life-size papier-mâché buffalo. At music festivals like Coachella, Sasquatch, and Bamboozle, where fashion matters as much as music, Native headdresses have become all the rage.”

“Sociologist James Young writes that cultural appropriation happens when people from outside a particular culture take elements of another culture in a way that is objectionable to that group. According to Young’s definition, it is the objection that constitutes appropriation, as distinguished from cultural borrowing or exchange where there is no “moral baggage” attached.”

“Some forms of appropriation have been outlawed, as is the case with the Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990 (LACA). Responding to the proliferation of faux Indian art (which undermines economic opportunities for actual Native American artists), the IACA is a truth-in-advertising law that regulates what can legitimately be sold as Indian art.”

“Her 2004 study revealed that when exposed to stereotypical “Indian” images, the self-esteem of Native youths is harmed, eroding their self-confidence and damaging their sense of identity. This is crucial given that the suicide rate among young American Indians is epidemic at 18 percent, more than twice the rate of non Hispanic white youth, and contextualized by the fact that Native Americans experience the highest rates of violent crimes at the hands of people from another race. Since the early 1970s thousands of public and postsecondary schools have dropped their Indian mascots, and hundreds more professional and governmental institutions have adopted resolutions and policies opposing the use of Native imagery and names, including the American Psychological Association, the American Sociological Association, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and the US Commission on Civil Rights. In 2015 California became the first state to ban “Redsk’ns” as a mascot name in public schools.

As the NCAI report indicates, the “Redsk’ns” name is particularly offensive to Native peoples. According to the report,

The term originates from a time when Native people were actively hunted and killed for bounties, and their skins were used as proof of Indian kill. Bounties were issued by European companies, colonies, and some states, most notably California. By the turn of the 20th century it had evolved to become a term meant to disparage and denote inferiority and savagery in American culture. By 1932, the word had been a term of commodification and the commentary on the color of a body part. It was not then and is not now an honorific. … The term has since evolved to take on further derogatory meanings. Specifically, in the 20th century [it] became a widely used derogatory term to negatively characterize Native characters in the media and popular culture, such as films and on television.”

MYTH 14: NATIVE AMERICAN CULTURE BELONGS TO ALL AMERICANS

“Among New Agers’ defenses against charges of appropriating American Indian spirituality, Aldred also found claims that spirituality and truth cannot be owned, and that “spiritual knowledge belongs to all humans equally.” Aside from the contradiction that the consumerist aspect of the New Age movement inevitably entails claims to ownership via products and copyrights, it also implies the universality of “truth.” In this case, it is a claim that all spiritual knowledge held by Indigenous peoples is universally true across the great divide of cultural difference.

Viewing the issue as based in a First Amendment right bespeaks the very different paradigms that frame dominant white society and that of American Indians. For US Americans the discourse about rights is undergirded by the rugged individualism enshrined in the Constitution and Bill of Rights and a fundamental belief in universalism. Religion is thought to be a matter of personal choice and is ultimately disconnected from culture. The freedom of religion, then, is a matter of the rights of individuals and part of the right to pursue happiness. For American Indians, however, spirituality is part of a broader cultural context where religion is not separate from culture. As part of the continuum of culture, an Indigenous nation’s spirituality is a reflection of the circumstances of life connected to specific places over vast expanses of time and in the context of particular worldviews and language.

The origin stories, language, and worldviews of a people — and thus their spirituality — are what Native people call their “original instructions.” Those original instructions are oriented toward the survival of the people and the perpetuation of their cultures more than they are toward any promises of personal happiness or individual enlightenment (although it could be said that these are natural effects of strong, healthy cultures), and they are certainly not thought to be meant for everybody universally. In short, the frame of reference non-Native people bring to their practice of American Indian spirituality is wholly different — and arguably inconsistent with — those of Indian people.”

MYTH 15: MOST INDIANS ARE ON GOVERNMENT WELFARE

“An IHS fact sheet goes on to refer to its mission as a legal obligation under federal law. It emphasizes the trust relationship, with its basis in the treaties the United States signed with hundreds of Native nations, which “frequently call for the provision of medical services, the services of physicians, or the provision of hospitals for the care of Indian people,” in partial exchange for the land they ceded to the United States. Because the treaties exist in perpetuity, so do the obligations contained in them. The Snyder Act of 1921 authorizes Congress to appropriate funds for the Indian Health Service, and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (so-called Obamacare) created permanent re-authorization of the Indian Health Care Improvement Act. While Native Americans can receive services at Indian hospitals and clinics throughout the United States, the Indian Health Service has been plagued by chronic underfunding, increasingly so in recent decades. For example, in 2014 IHS reported that it spent $2,849 per capita annually on its user population, compared to federal health-care spending on the whole population, which was $7,713 per person. The result is only the most basic of services where they do exist and an absence of services altogether in many places.

When it comes to higher education only a very few Native people have access to tuition-free four-year degrees. Tribal colleges and universities (TCUs) are schools that are established on or near Indian reservations and are run by tribes. There are thirty-four TCUs in the United States, and two other colleges — Haskell Indian Nations University and Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute — are run by the federal government under the Bureau of Indian Education (BIE). The TCUs are funded by scholarships students receive through the American Indian College Fund, which also provides scholarships to non-TCU achoole. In general, qualification for admission to the BIE schools requires membership in a federally recognized tribe or the ability to document one-quarter or more Indian blood degree, or both. To qualify for scholarships at the TCUs, one must be able to document membership in a federally recognized tribe or be a descendant of an enrolled member. While the TCU scholarship requirements are less restrictive, the scholarships are highly competitive and not guaranteed, and the same is true for other federal and private scholarship programs. Some tribes offer partial scholarships for their tribal members but they rarely if ever cover all tuition.”

“In 2003 Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected governor of California thanks to an aggressive and high-profile campaign in which he characterized Native nations with casinos as “special interests” that were “not paying their fair share.” The message was clear. Indians are being given a special ride, because they don’t pay taxes. It didn’t seem to matter that the allegations were patently false.

Federal law recognizes the governmental nature of Indian nations in the US Constitution, and as sovereign governments, tribal nations are not subject to certain forms of taxation since sovereign governments do not tax each other — a fact that led to the perpetuation of the myth that Indians don’t pay taxes. However, in the case of Indian gaming, revenue and taxes are indirectly generated at the federal, state, and local levels. According to a National Indian Gaming Association report,

In 2013, Indian gaming generated over $13.6 billion for federal, state and local government budgets through compact and service agreements, indirect payment of employment, income, sales and other state taxes, and reduced general welfare payments.

In addition, individual Indians pay federal income taxes, the people who work at casinos pay taxes, and those who do business with tribal casinos pay taxes.

Finally, tribal governments also made more than $100 million in charitable contributions to other tribes, nearby state and local governments, and non-profits and private organizations. Through these contributions, Indian gaming revenues saved thousands of jobs for American healthcare workers, firefighters, police officers, and many other local officials that provide essential services through the recession.

While Indian nations’ tribal gaming enterprises are not subject to federal income tax, income derived from gaming and distributed in per capita payments to individuals is taxed.”

“Of the $8.4 billion Native nations receive annually (based on 2012 figures), $8.1 billion ultimately leaves the communities to pay taxes at the local, state, and federal levels. The net effect, the study suggests, is that tribal governments are paying the United States to live up to its treaty obligations, and the shortfalls created by perpetual underfunding means that tribes must meet the deficits themselves by relying on profits generated from tribal businesses to provide services to their citizens.”

MYTH 16: INDIAN CASINOS MAKE THEM ALL RICH

“According to data gathered by the National Indian Gaming Commission in 2014, there were 459 gaming establishments in Indian country. (There are currently 567 federally recognized tribal nations, but because some tribes have more than one casino, this number does not mean that 459 tribes have casinos.) In 2014, these casinos generated $28 billion in total. A total of 295 casinos generated more than $10 million, with 96 generating between $10 million and $25 million. The other 164 casinos generated less than $10 million (and 88 of these generated less than $3 million). At the top end, twenty-six casinos earned more than $250 million each.”

“Even if gaming revenues were distributed equally to all indigenous peoples in the United States, the amount distributed, $3,000 per person, would not be enough to raise the indigenous per capita income of $4,500 to the current U.S. average of $14,400.”

MYTH 17: INDIANS ARE ANTI-SCIENCE

“Archaeological evidence from the Hohokam culture (ancestors of the Tohono O’odham people in today’s Arizona) and Peruvians in pre-Incan and Incan times suggests irrigation technology that includes canals, pipelines, aqueducts, dams, reservoirs, and check valves dating back to 300 BC, far earlier than European technological advances.”

“In Mexico, the Mayans built a network of roads centered in the Yucatán city of Cobá around AD 623. These roads were remarkable for their rubble-filled raised construction that ranged from two to eight feet above ground and were lined with limestone concrete. Roads were as long as sixty-two miles, and archaeologists have found a five-ton cylindrical roller for packing the ground, similar to steamroller equipment used today.

In South America, the Incas constructed a twenty-four-thousand-mile complex of roads centered around the city of Cuzco, roads that extended as far away as the Amazon and Argentina. These included suspension bridges, solid bridges with stone piers and wooden decking, and even tunnels cut through solid granite. Bridges crossed gorges, marshes, and other seasonally wet areas and incorporated culverts to prevent water from flooding them.”

“The Chumash and Tongva peoples of coastal Southern California were known for their tomol, a sewn-plank canoe that is considered one of the oldest forms of seafaring craft in North America.It is believed by some scholars to be influenced by ancient Polynesians. Recent discoveries on Santa Rosa Island off the coast of Southern California confirm the ancient ocean-navigating abilities of the Chumash people dating back at least eleven thousand years, far predating the seafaring cultures of ancient Egypt, Europe, and Asia.”

MYTH 18: INDIANS ARE NATURALLY PREDISPOSED TO ALCOHOLISM

“As May writes, “Major reviews of alcohol metabolism among all ethnic groups usually conclude that alcohol metabolism and alcohol genetics are traits of individuals and that there is more variation within an ethnic group than there is between ethnic groups. Further, when bio-physiologic investigators attempt to explain major alcohol-related behaviors, they generally point to sociocultural variables as the major factors.””

“Indian deaths in alcohol-related car and other accidents were found to be three to four times higher than non-Natives; Indian suicide was found to be one and a half to two times higher; Indian deaths due to homicide were found to be roughly two times higher; and Indian deaths due to alcoholism were found to be five and a half to seven and a half times higher. These realities can be explained, May says, in three ways. First, the differences can be accounted for by demographic, social, and political differences experienced by American Indians. Demographically, the American Indian population is relatively young (in 1988 the median age was 32.3), and younger populations overall tend to have much higher rates of alcohol-related death. Sociopolitical considerations such as low socioeconomic status also exacerbate alcohol-related problems. Second, American Indian drinking styles tend to be more flamboyant, characterized by abusive drinking (such as binge drinking) and high blood alcohol levels. Third, the mixing of alcohol impairment with risky behaviors and risky environments further contributes to higher mortality rates. Most Indian people still live in rural Western states where higher death rates can also be expected due to higher-risk environments, greater distances from care facilities, and lack of availability of services.

It should be emphasized that while we can think of many of these factors as behavioral, none of them automatically indicate defined patterns of addictive drinking. As May argues, there is a distinction to be made between alcohol abuse and alcoholism. Furthermore, even in light of the alarming statistics on alcohol-related death in Indian country, it would be inaccurate to say that alcoholism is the leading cause of death among American Indians.”

“May clarified that there were few extant prevalence studies, but certain facts stand out from the few that do exist. First of all, prevalence varies widely from tribe to tribe. In some groups prevalence is lower than the US general averages, while in others it is about the same or higher. The studies also indicate that these averages can and do change over time, either becoming higher or lower.”

MYTH 20: NATIVE AMERICANS CAN’T AGREE ON WHAT TO BE CALLED

“”Mohawk” is a Narraganset name, meaning “flesh eaters.” “Sioux” is a French corruption of an Anishinabe word for “enemy.” Similarly, “Apache” is a Spanish corruption of a Zuni word for “enemy,” while Navajo is from the Spanish version of a Tewa word. If we want to be fully authentic in every instance, we will have to inquire into the language of each People to find the name they call themselves. It may not be surprising to find that the deepest real names are often a word for “people” or for the homeland or for some differentiating characteristic of the people as seen through their own eyes.”