Purpose: Research indicates that substance use among American Indian youth is a serious problem (Mail, 1995; Schinke, Tepavak, & Cole, 2000). The purpose of this exploratory study was to examine the social contexts of American Indian youths' encounters with drug offers and their relationship to the youths' use of substances. This study attempted to identify the characteristics of the environment that exerted the most influence on the substance using behavior of these youth.

Method: Using an inventory of drug use related problem situations developed specifically for American Indian youth (Okamoto, LeCroy, Dustman, Hohmann-Marriott, & Kulis, 2004), questionnaires were completed by 71 American Indian youth at public middle schools in a Southwest metropolitan area. The youth came from many different tribes and included both those who lived on and off of tribal reservations. Reacting to 62 scenarios where substances might be made available to them, respondents indicated the frequency of their encounters with drug offers from different categories of family and non-family members, as well as the perceived difficulty of resisting drug use offers in each particular situation. The scenarios had been developed in earlier research where focus groups of American Indian youth described actual situations where they encountered opportunities for use substances. The key dependent variables in this study were self-reports of substance use in the last four weeks. Descriptive, bivariate, multivariate, and regression analyses were conducted.

Results: Results reveal the profound impact that social and familial relationships have on the substance use behaviors of American Indian youth, relationships that may either foster or discourage decisions to use substances. Decisions by American Indian youth to use substances appear to be influenced strongly by situational opportunities to obtain drugs and by who is offering them, and through the intervening role of risk behaviors other than substance use. Interpretations of the findings focus on the close connections between family and peer networks for American Indian youth, degree of parental monitoring, the elevated influence of cousins, and how these relationships are implicated in the youths' developmentally and culturally driven needs to achieve a sense of belonging.

Implications for Practice: Findings from this study have implications for understanding the risk and protective factors for American Indian youth and the development of culturally grounded prevention programs in the schools, reservation, and non-reservation communities. Specifically, this study suggests culturally specific pathways toward changing the drug use behaviors of American Indian youth.