As the title of Alexie's tale indicates this story is primarily about a Native tradition, in this case a Spokane tradition involving ritual drug use. While the story with its reference to "Washington Water Power" indicates that the Spokane tribe is located in the Northwestern United States, the traditional use of natural hallucinogenic plants for Native rituals extends far beyond a single tribe or region and includes more than one variety of plant. Weston La Barre, a James B. Duke Professor of Anthropology Emeritus in Duke University who researched peyote usage by Native Americans from the 1930's through the 1980's, covers the use of the peyote cactus for religious purposes across much of the United States Southwest and further south into Mexico in his book entitled The Peyote Cult. The exact drug used in Alexie's story is not labeled but is probably from a similar substance.
La Barre lists the symptoms of peyote intoxication as follows: First a sense of exhilaration often expressed by dancing which leads into a depression state in which dreams and visions occur. This secondary state may also include feelings of brotherhood and the desire to learn something new. The entire effect can take up to twelve hours to run its full course. (La Barre, 17-22). In "A Drug Called Tradition," the narrator, Victor, describes himself as dancing first in a vision, then around his companion, Junior, and Junior's car. (Brown & Ling 390-391) This reaction is in keeping with the use of a traditional hallucinogen. These images take on other, more cultural meanings. The images that Victor sees during his hallucination are images from his tribal past in which the past enfolds him as a participant. These images progress from powerful, in the theft of a horse, to depressing, in the images of a tribe wiped out by blankets deliberately tainted with smallpox, through a more modern day image of seeing his companion entertaining tourists with a guitar and singing a song in which the Indians have won against the whites.