The author discusses the problem of alcoholism within Indigenous communities and its consequence on families, employment, health and the justice system. It’s a problem that has persisted since settlers arrived in Canada with firewater. Many use alcohol because they are children of victims, victims of residential schools and poverty.
The author has been a crown attorney and a judge and has seen many indigenous people before the courts. I found his approach a little simplistic and the narrative not particularly well written. He doesn’t offer too many solutions to the chronic alcoholism that ruins so many lives. Keeping reserves dry might work but bootlegging alcohol and drugs subverts most attempts. It’s a problem with a long history that seems to be unsolvable. ( )

A member of northern Saskatchewan’s Woodland Cree, Harold Johnson has a Bachelor of Laws degree from the University of Saskatchewan and a Master of Laws degree from Harvard University. His is a cry from the heart of his despair at the histories of cases he has adjudicated as a judge in northern Saskatchewan. The majority of rapes, assaults, murders, vehicular homicides, drownings, deaths from exposure, hunting accidents, and medical incidents are caused by Indians drinking too much alcohol. Lest anyone think “Indian” is too rude a term to be used, Harold Johnson states there is no problem in using the term to describe both himself and the people who appear before him in court. Johnson tells these stories as parables from figures in his own Indian mythology. Could a white writer have said such things? No, for they would be instantly labelled as racist, or a cultural expropriator. Johnson describes the insurmountable obstacles placed before efforts to remove alcohol from within the reach of Indian communities; how all participants in the court system have circumvented through the Chart of Rights and Freedoms, the expressly stated words in treaties that kept alcohol from reserves. Indian people must come up with a solution to the problem of alcohol on reserves for any solution proposed by whites would never be accepted. Perhaps this small book will be a step in that direction. ( )