Philly.com: Can a Bud Boycott Help the Pine Ridge Reservation?

[OmahaBlueDog]

Whatever you might think of alcohol prohibition, tribal rules on the Pine Ridge Reservation explicitly forbid its sale with good reason—as many as two-thirds of reservation residents may be alcoholics and one-quarter of children born there have fetal-alcohol syndrome. More than 90 percent of its residents live in poverty. Life expectancy for those living on reservation land is among the lowest in the western hemisphere.

The Times reported in April on an attempt by the Nebraska legislature to create “alcohol impact zones” that would limit sales of alcohol products in areas impacted by alcohol related crimes (the crime rates on Pine Ridge are also very high). That effort is stalled in committee. According to the Times, seven of eight Nebraska Senate committee members have received more than $21,000 in contributions from Anheuser-Busch over the past five years.

And it certainly doesn’t call for assigning subtle blame to the victims here — those suffering from alcoholism on the Pine Ridge Reservation. According to that statement sent to me by Anheuser-Busch, the company wishes “problems like this could be easily solved by brash statements or assigning blame, even if it is misplaced.” “We care about the people of Pine Ridge and hope that together we can make a difference in addressing these problems, the statement added, “but these are, in fact, deeply complex, societal, cultural and sometimes physiological issues.”

Read that last sentence again, carefully. Yes, it is true that the issues at Pine Ridge are a historical legacy that are socially and culturally driven, and there certainly isn’t space here for a lecture on the ways in which the indigenous peoples of North America have been royally screwed by just about everybody for centuries.

Read more: http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/public_health/150544095.html#ixzz1uQaAYy00

I'd also direct you to a NYT op-ed piece I posted in the Native American Forum entitled "Poverty's Poster Child" : http://www.democraticunderground.com/1191143

[OmahaBlueDog]

1. I'm shamelessly kicking this, and ...

..providing a link to the NYT op-ed to which the philly.com article is responding.

I posted a link to the article entitled A Battle With the Brewers here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/1191144

[XemaSab]

2. I saw a very depressing documentary the other day called "Incident at Oglala."

It was about the Leonard Peltier case.

The thing that made it particularly depressing was that Pine Ridge was terribly poor 40 years ago and I know it's terribly poor today.

As far as alcoholism goes, I know that the store owners in Nebraska have the "right" to make money according to the laws of their state, but it is morally wrong to sell alcohol to people who can't handle it.