Addiction and Recovery in Native America:

Lost History, Enduring Lessons

By Don Coyhis and William L. White, MA

The persistence and revival of indigenous Amerindian healing is due, not to a lack of modern

treatment services, but to a need for culture-congenial and holistic therapeutic approaches. ... -

Dr. W. Jilek

Hear me, not for myself, but for my people. ... Hear me that they may once more go back into the

sacred hoop and find the good red road, the shielding tree! - Black Elk

The dawn of the 21st century marks a time of great cultural renewal and individual and collective

healing among the Native peoples of North America. The growing sobriety movement in Indian

Country represents just one dimension of this larger process of personal and tribal revitalization.

The authors have collaborated for some time on researching the history of addiction and recovery

among the indigenous peoples of North America. This history is being assembled from archival

records and from the oral testimony of tribal elders. In our first report of this research, we:

1) explored the historical roots of Native alcohol problems, 2) challenged the "firewater myths"

that have long permeated conceptions of the etiology of Native alcohol problems, 3) detailed the

role Native leaders played in organizing America's first sobriety-based, mutual aid societies, and

4) described the recent "Indianization" of Alcoholics Anonymous, the revival of Native cultural

revitalization and therapeutic movements, and the development of culturally meaningful

alcoholism treatment philosophies and techniques (Coyhis and White, In Press).

In this article, movements are identified that, for more than 250 years, have provided frameworks

of alcoholism recovery for Native peoples, and explore what can be learned from these historical

movements to enhance the quality of contemporary addiction counseling.

Five movements

Five overlapping movements have provided a framework for alcoholism recovery within and

across Native American tribal cultures. The first to emerge were the 18th and 19th century

recovery "circles" and abstinence-based cultural revitalization movements of the Delaware

Prophets (Papounhan, Wangomend, Neolin, Scattameck), the Shawnee Prophet (Tenskwatawa)

and the Kickapoo Prophet (Kennekuk). These prophetic leaders used their own recoveries from

alcoholism to launch abstinence-based, pan-Indian movements that called for the rejection of

alcohol and a return to ancestral traditions. Native preachers like Samson Occom, William Apess,

and George Copway used their own lives as living proof of the power of Christian conversion and

worship to cure alcoholism.

The development of new abstinence-based Native religions continued in the 19th century,

including the Longhouse Religion (Code of Handsome Lake), the Indian Shaker Church and the

Native American Church (White, 2000, 2001). These Native religions constitute the most

historically enduring frameworks for alcoholism recovery within Native communities. The fourth

movement, the "Indianization of Alcoholics Anonymous" (A.A.) (Womak, 1996), began in the

1960s, and represents the growing adaptation of A.A. steps (Coyhis, 1990) and meeting rituals

(Jilek-Aall, 1981) to enhance A.A. effectiveness within Native communities. The threads of these

earlier movements are being woven into the contemporary Wellbriety movement (Coyhis, 2000).