Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Dry Alaska Villages, or why they should be

Well then all hope is lost!

Don't worry. There are no dry villages in Alaska.

Sure there are some which the state thinks are dry, and they'll gladly turn otherwise fine people into felons for the simple act of bringing home a couple of bottles for their own consumption.

Of course, since it has such a high cost in terms of one's life, the price of that which comes in is jacked well up there....$250 (or more) for a 750 ml bottle of the cheapest stuff is quite ordinary). And because the price that can be gotten is so high, people are willing to take the chance, figure out a way to avoid getting caught, and bring it in. So there is a thriving black market.

I have gone back and forth on this, but I'd like to see AST enforce DUI and DV laws. Forget the idea that any place is actually dry. They aren't. Let people be responsible or not. It ain't just an alcohol problem. Make people realize that and accept the consequences and responsibility. Villages could operate the legal importation hub, perhaps even sell "softer" alcohol like beer and wine. They could charge a modest tax/processing fee for private importation. I know there would be problems; it sure isn't like there aren't already plenty as it is.


(Oh, and Eskimos are quite distinct from Indians, though they are both human with Asian continent roots.)

The late 50�s was the era when I lived in a couple of dry counties in the South.

Where I drank my first �shine.

I am a former tribal cop and I can tell you that dry reservations or villages are non existent. The bootleggers make so much money off of it that it won't go away.

I would rather have them drunk alcohol then the huffing, drinking mouth wash and OTC meds, making home brew, watching folks go blind and organ failure from bad stills.

Amazes me the ATF runs all over appalachia enforcing alcohol laws but won't even think of touching it in Indian country.

Just go to Whiteclay NE once to see how it affects folks, or about any res.

If there is violence in most cases there is alcohol.

I reckon you can probably drive into and out of most counties in the South - or other places where areas are "dry". Here in Alaska people can lose airplanes when they are involved in "alcohol trafficking."

Five pounds of sugar, some yeast, a few cans of juice, 24-72 hours and you can sell the result for $75/gallon or more. Show me one place that is actually dry. And Natives in Alaska have been fermenting stuff for longer, perhaps, than Europeans. They have had mild alcohol since forever (as well as mind-altering foods/substances). Tobacco was being imported long before Native people saw westerners. It was a big-time trade item when some of the first westerners came on the scene.

A friend has a cousin who is a policeman in AK. Huge guy, built like an NFL linebacker. Nice guy, too, with a lovely wife. At one party, he got to talking about whiskey...and talked, and talked, and talked about it for a couple hours. Never have seen anyone talk so much about whiskey

.

You are spot on. I lived in O'Neill NE and have been through Whiteclay a number of times. A sad state of a town.

You don't know misery until you have lived on a Res or a Bush community.

Are you suggesting that they are equivalent? Having lived 29 years in mostly two Alaska villages, I'd agree that there are challenges, sure, but misery? Not so much. Some of the least well-to-do (poor) folks are the most content.

Not when you are living with a drunk.

And the choir says, "What difference does it make where you live when you're living with a drunk?"

Do not assume I wouldn't understand...

Editted..... My failure to take umbrage does not mean it didn't occur to me that you might be trying to use a very broad brush with that comment.

Rich & Rare is good tradin' stock buy it by the case at Freddies.

Point taken

This is why some villages think it's necessary to outlaw alcohol.

No one has made them stay on the Res. The Government would have done them the biggest favor of their life it they had made them get off the tit fifty years ago.

The reservation system in the U.S. is the worst situation of discrimination and segregation that I'm aware of. The older generation wants to maintain the status quo by keeping alive the traditional culture. That culture is a romantic luxury that along with the reservation system is killing people. The combination of those two elements prepare people to fail and when they fail they lose self respect, spiral down into alcoholism and drug abuse.

The best thing that could happen to our native American citizens is for the reservations to be closed immediately so that they would have to integrate into the larger society. Sure some wouldn't make it. About the same that now die drunk in the gutters of Gallop NM and other similar places. But most will make it and be better off for it. Maybe they can keep their culture alive but the reservations must be abolished. Sure everyone will scream that the government is breaking another promise to the Indians. But it's a promise that never should have been made in the first place because it's intended to keep them permanently subordinate.

KC

http://townhall.com/columnists/terr...ng-the-wealth-of-indian-nations-n1709688

Fortunately the Fed Gov did things better in Alaska, hardly a reservation here at all, and those only by the people's choice.

There is only one legal reservation in AK, at Metlakatla...

Sadly there is much confusion about what was ceded by the Natives when signing on to ANILCA and ANCSA. Asking to get back what they gave away while keeping what they got is too often what they demand. Sea Alaska as the most recent major example.

Prohibition did not work for the nation, how can it work in the bush?
Well, lack of access makes it work, for a bit.
But "civilization" soon makes everyone felons.

It's true , the native population has a higher percentage of alcoholics, but that is "our fault"
Paying folks just because they live in the state.
Soon makes the state: drunk!

The native corporations lands might be better than the reservations in the lower 48 simply because they are so much bigger and more remote. But they are still reservations. Just because we don't call them reservations doesn't mean they aren't reservations. In those places people are trying to live in two cultures, maintaining the best of the traditional ways while incorporating the best of the industrialized world. It works for some but for many it doesn't work. Suicide rates among young people living in native villages is the highest in the nation and so is the rate of STDs. The rate of alcoholism, drug abuse and domestic abuse is as high in native villages as it is in the major urban sewers in the lower 48. Literacy rate is dismal so when young people leave the native villages and migrate to larger cities they run into the same problems as do native Americans in the lower 48. They aren't prepared to compete so they fail, they lose self respect and spiral into drug abuse and alcoholism. The system there is still preparing them to fail just like in the lower 48.

KC