What is Superjuice? —

The New Moonshine of Choice

for Native Bootleggers

Superjuice is a quickly fermented drink being made and abused by northern Canadian natives. It’s a toxic homebrew mixed up in a plastic pail of sugar water to which is added a high-potency brewer’s yeast called super yeast widely available in brewing stores across Canada. Superjuice only takes a few days to ferment. Then it is poured into two-litre bottles and sold for between $80 and $100 Canadian for each bottle. Not exactly a cheap high, Superjuice has several advantages for native youth. In First Nation communities that are dry, it’s difficult for even aboriginal cops to stop its abuse because superjuice takes such a short time to manufacture. The brew is usually ready to drink in two days.

Getting totally blotto on Superjuice produces hyperviolent behaviour, a high incidence of blackouts, poisoning, hospitalization, and is directly linked to increasing incidents of gang assaults, domestic violence and suicide.

Superjuice is a deleterious concoction and is now, for one example, a serious social problem in the Island Lake area of northeastern Manitoba. Some aboriginal leaders want to outlaw the sale of homebrew ingredients to natives. Rights advocates point out that ploy has never worked historically, right from the get-go or first sale of firewater by white settlers to Amerindians.

Early "before" and "after" engraving features pioneer stereotypes of First Nations people, racist reductionism that has endured to this day.

A Canadian Press story quotes Dianna Scarth, executive director of the Manitoba Human Rights Commission, saying that a law prohibiting the sale of brewer’s yeast to First Nations and not prohibiting it to any other Canadians would not endure long: “Under human rights legislation, any kind of public service that is denied on the basis of one of the protected characteristics, and that would include ethnic origin and ancestry, is likely to be found discriminatory” and hence illegal.

Origin of the Phrase

Aboriginal users took the name from a high-potency yeast brand pictured below.

The term is widely used in commercial brand names, as the composite image below makes clear. Superjuice as a brand name and the name of several rock groups has been around for awhile. There is a white wannabe hip-hop band named “Superjuice.” To read their extremely silly white imitation of black hip-hop language visit their website.

Australian use of the word Superjuice

Superjuice is Australian farmers’ remedy for almost everything, a saturated solution of superphosphate prepared by soaking enough of the fertilizer in a large drum of water to ensure that there is always a residue. A cupful per cow per day wards off a nutritional deficiency of phosphorus.

Hypocrisy Watch

The consternation among political officials over the misuse of superjuice is praiseworthy, especially if something is done to stop it. But it is well for Canadians to remember we have proven to be a country quite good at talking about helping First Nations, but we are even better at keeping natives poor, diseased and unemployed on reservations for most of Canadian history. Do you remember when the sniffing of gasoline to get high by northern young people became a frequent if briefly followed Canadian news story? All I remember being done about the abuse was a racist joke that make the rounds:

Question: What’s the most popular Eskimo love song this year?

Answer: “Just a Jerrycan of Esso and You.”

Superjuice is a disturbing new use of an established term and it is no honour to Canadians that it arose in our country among peoples we have abused since our ancestors first arrived.