So Says Robert Sundance

In 1975, when Robert Sundance, a Hunkpapa Sioux Indian, and three other public inebriates filed a class-action suit challenging California’s criminal law against public drunkenness, he was a Los Angeles Skid Row wino with no home or job. Today, he still lives downtown--but in a hotel room--and is the executive director of the Indian Alcoholism Commission of California.

Q: Because of court-ordered changes--a result of your suit--the number of arrests for public drunkenness in Los Angeles has dropped from some 50,000 in 1975 to about 1,000 last year. What more do you want?

A: Make the jailing of drunks unconstitutional. That’s what I’m after. Total decriminalization. You’d set up the alternative: detoxes, sobering-up stations, rehabilitation centers and after-care. I want to erase 647(f) (which defines public intoxication as a misdemeanor) from the Penal Code book in California. And I won’t settle for anything less.

Q: More than half the states have decriminalized public drunkenness. Why hasn’t California?

A: They’re afraid it’s going to cost so much. But in the Sundance case we’ve proved that decriminalization will be a more cost-effective way. They would save $7 million a year by decriminalizing, see, because in Los Angeles it costs about $600 to $1,000 for each drunk that they put in jail, because of all the police time they use. But they could take him to a diversion program, and it would cost about $28 or $60 at the most.

Q: Is there any other reason?

A: Unfortunately, when all these other homeless came, they started focusing on them. But who in the hell is more homeless than the indigent chronic Skid Row alcoholic? But a lot of hard-core Skid Row alcoholics are hard to deal with. Even the programs don’t like them. They figure he’s a lost cause.

Q: Is he?

A: I don’t think so. What I advocate is a comprehensive rehabilitation-recovery center. I’m talking about at least a year to 18 months. When you’re in that drinking world for years and years, you forget how to get a job. And if you don’t have a place to live, what the hell are you going to do but be lying in the alley. It’s a vicious circle back to the program, out in the street. It’s only a 90-day program--and you can’t get sober in 90 days. Not a hard-core alcoholic like me.

Q: How did you wind up in the Skid Row drinking world?

A: I grew up on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. That’s in South and North Dakota. When I was very young, drinking became a way of life, because it was so hard to make a living there. Drunks were all the heroes, and you wanted to be like them. I was drinking all through grade school--and never did go to high school. I thought drinking was really great because it made you feel powerful. It gave me false courage. It made me think that in order to be any kind of a man I had to drink alcohol.

I joined the Navy during World War II, when I was 15 years old. I lied about my age. I went overseas. Anything to get away from the reservation. And I had to live up to that image again. First a drunken Indian, then a drunken sailor.

I went back to the reservation after the Navy. I was about 20. There was nothing but unemployment. So I joined the Air Force, and got kicked out for chronic alcoholism. Then I just drifted. I ended up in Los Angeles when I was about 35--June, 1960. I came in on the freight train from Phoenix, and I had the damnedest hangover you’d ever seen. I went to Skid Row and got into the social order of the Los Angeles Skid Row and the criminal justice and jail system.

Q: How did you live?

A: In my 16 years on Skid Row, I never slept in a mission once. Because you’ve got to stop drinking from 7 o’clock in the evening till 7 o’clock in the morning. And what kind of an alcoholic can do that? I stayed out on the street. We never wasted wine money on rooms or food. No, you can’t do that--not in that world. You drink whatever is around. You drink “Rub-a-dub,” which is rubbing alcohol; you drink “Green Lizard,” which is Mennen after-shave lotion, “Pink Lady,” which is Canned Heat.

Q: What was the Los Angeles criminal justice system like then?

A: The system was brutal. The police used to be like the Gestapo down there. They would stop everybody in the street. And they used to give you a bad time in the back of those paddy wagons. They would just drive fast, and then slam on the brakes. All the drunks, with nothing to hang on to, would all fall frontward. And then they’d take off, and you’d all fall to the back. And it’s all steel in there. I got my leg broken in three places in a damn paddy wagon.

Q: How many times were you arrested for public drunkenness?

A: I think I was jailed in Los Angeles about 300 times.

Q: Were you sober when your case started back in 1975?

A: I was still drinking. I would be on the street, and Tim McFlynn, my lawyer, would come down and try to meet me somewhere.

Q: What got you out of the arrest-drunk-arrest cycle?

A: I got to stay in a program two years, because I was in the news--they were getting a lot of publicity for having me there. I was in the Harbor Light Rehabilitation Center right down on 5th near Gladys. I was in that program in 1976 to 1978. But that’s not the normal procedure. You get 90 days--and you’re out. I had a little job there, night supervisor. See, I only got $15 a week, but I got my board and room, which is really important. A place to stay. So I’d do my work. I’d make my AA meetings. And then I would go out into the world, and I could look around. That’s why I succeeded. Because I had all this time.

Q: But what was it about the program that helped you turn your life around?

A: Intervention is the most important thing. When somebody intervenes to get you, tricks you into a program. Because that damn booze is so deceiving. You always think that you can handle it. You’re “not like that bunch. Them guys are sick.” The guys running the program were hard-core alcoholics--and they were sober. I never dreamed I’d ever see them walking around sober. That makes you want to try.

Q: It must have been rough.

A: You’ve got to do it a little bit at a time. I couldn’t even look at three days without a drink. Finally, I made three days; and I toughed out the DTs (delirium tremens) for eight days. God, I wanted to go out and drink! I was dying. And pretty soon I made eight days. And I was sober 10 years Feb. 17, 1986.

Where I’m at now, I hate everything that booze stands for, because I can see all the destruction it did. I’m constantly attacking the booze merchants.

Q: How? What are you doing?

A: The Indian Alcoholism Commission of California promotes sobriety and the improvement of alcoholism services. But I don’t know how we can improve them, because we ain’t got a hell of a lot of them as it is. The commission brings awareness and the knowledge of the alcoholism problems of Indians not only to the public but also to other agencies. I do a lot of training on Indian differences, the different cultures.

Q: How big a problem is alcoholism for Indians in Southern California?

A: In L.A. County, there are more than 100,000 American Indians; the biggest population of American Indians in an urban area is here. And I would say almost all of them have problems with alcohol, because the alcoholic affects the whole family. I would say alcohol causes the major problems of American Indians in Los Angeles, or anywhere in this country.

Q: More than 10 years later, your case is still in the appeals process. That must be frustrating. A: Sure it is. When you’re an alcoholic, you’ve got no patience. But I’ve learned. And I’ll get what I want in the California Supreme Court. All I want to hear is “unconstitutional.”