Gina Boudreau, a White Earth Nation member in Minnesota, says that tobacco is sacred to her people. It’s offered to the Creator during prayers and used in sweat lodges, pipe ceremonies, and as a gift. But she’s worried that customs that once encouraged growing and respecting the plant have been eroded over time, and Native communities are exposed primarily to commercial versions of it. That’s despite the fact that cigarette production is booming on and around reservations across the country, including at four cigarette manufacturing enterprises on the Seneca Nation in western New York. White placards advertising Buffalo, Gator and Senate cigarettes dot the roads around the tribe’s Cattaraugus territory.

But what if the images on those native smoke packs didn’t actually depict American Indian warriors, thunderbirds and peace pipes? That’s what a recent study published in BMJ Tobacco Control found. Researchers asked participants to look at a picture of a Natural American Spirit (NAS) pack, which featured an American Indian warrior, a thunderbird and a peace pipe. More than half of the American Indian/Alaska Native respondents shown those images misperceived that NAS was owned and grown by American Indians and on tribal lands.

Native Smokes in Canada: Where to Find Them

And that, the study suggests, may be a significant factor in why more American Indians use tobacco than do other Americans. Previous research has shown that higher poverty rates and less education are also linked to smoking patterns, but these factors have often been reported without adjusting for the fact that many tribes are largely surrounded by commercial tobacco.

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