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Thursday, September 18, 2003

The biggest challenge facing Indian Country is alcoholism, former Bureau of Indian Affairs head Kevin Gover says.

Gover tells The Arizona Republic that alcohol and substance abuse are at the root of problems facing Indian communities. "Almost every wife beating, there is alcohol involved. Suicide, murder, accidents. Alcohol is intimately involved with all three of these," he says.

Gover says he knows the dangers of alcohol first hand, having been sober for 10 years. "I was a very functional alcoholic," he says of his years as a prominent Indian lawyer. He says his father, who died in 1981, "was an alcoholic [but] didn't make it."

Gover served three years as assistant secretary for Indian affairs during the Clinton administration. He says he turned down the job when first offered it in 1992. "I was really in the throes of alcoholism then, and I knew I couldn't handle it," he says.

Gover is now on the faculty at the Arizona State University College of Law.

Get the Story:
Booze Indians' bane, Pawnee lawyer says (The Arizona Republic 9/18)

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