Native Americans are indigenous people who have a violent passed with Europeans. The Europeans forced their way into the land that was inhabited by the Native Americans, who were already settled before the expedition of Christopher Columbus. Currently, there is 562 federal recognized Indian tribes, bands, nations, pueblos, rancherias, communities, and Native villages in the United States (National Congress of American Indians). Each Native Americans tribe have over 100,000 tribal members, the Navajo Nation is the second largest tribe in population followed by the Cherokee Nation. Navajo Nation claims to have over 300,00 tribal members and in the 2010 U.S. Census, a total of 332,129 individuals living in the U.S who claimed to have Navajo ancestry …show more content…
It is used to eliminate evil spirits, cure physical illness and to cleanse the soul of the Navajos. The Government did try to ban the usage of peyote due to the side effects of the hallucinogen. But the Navajos continued to use peyote for ritual and medicinal purposes. Another substance Navajos, in general, Native American, started to use in the 15th and 16th century was alcohol. The Europeans introduced the alcohol. Not only did the Europeans brought disease to the Native land but also alcohol, which as a high rate of usage about the Native youth. In a thirty days research, Native American youth had a twenty percent of illicit drug, higher than a twenty-five percent for binge drinking and smoking compared to white, black and Hispanic. Navajo Nation reported fourteen methamphetamine deaths since 2003. Also, the increase of methamphetamine has a lot to do with the growing on reservation land (Bureau for Substance Abuse Treatment and Prevention 2005). In 2005, the top two most frequent diagnose among the Native American children and adults were alcohol abuse and dependence and depressive disorder. The top substance abuse diagnoses in 2005 among Native American children and adolescents were alcohol and cannabis abuse (Bureau for Substance Abuse Treatment and Prevention 2005). Native Youth are at a high risk for inhalants usage compared to non-Indian youth (Young, 1987). The prevalence of alcohol dependence in the Navajo nation is relative high 70.4% for men and 29.6% for female. However, the alcohol dependence among the Navajos is low