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Native Americans In Sherman Alexie's Reservation Blues

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Native Americans In Sherman Alexie's Reservation Blues
Before the white man ever showed up, Native Americans were a happy and prosperous group of people. However, it would only be through the white man’s introduction that Native Americans would end up being killed, racially profiled, and put into reservations like animals. Through his book, Reservation Blues, Sherman Alexie is able to talk about not only the effects/origins of Native American hardship on the individual and collective level, but also how these origins affect the relationships of reservation communities with other internal and external institutions as well. I believe that this book talks about these concepts really well, while also being put into a context that helps paint a very clear picture of the effects that reservation life …show more content…
Sherman Alexie depicts the white men in book as very ignorant, making them think that all Native American tribes are the exact same. One example of this is in chapter 4 when some gentlemen believed that all the group’s main diet were buffalo even though they actually mainly salmon hunters. Sherman Alexie also really takes home the idea that white men have no understanding of the struggles that Native Americans have to fight for not only on a daily basis, but for their entire lives. This also shows a bit of irony in that they have no clue what Native American life is like on reservations and what it does to a community even though they are the ones who put them all there in the first place. Another aspect of this relationship is also the Native Americans relationship to the US federal government as well. The main opinion that Native Americans have toward the US govt. is that they don’t like how the govt. gets to control the way they live on a daily a basis. Many of them feel that because they are forced to live on land that they picked out for them, the least them they could do is at least have the right to run that land how they please. This idea is a very strong one that is shared specifically by Thomas, who feels that the reservation land that they live on is still way more government controlled than it should be. Another interesting relationship that Sherman Alexie is able to describe is the reservation’s relationship with the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). Most would think that the relationship between the would be solid, but Alexie definitely hints at the exact the opposite. Their relationship is pointed out to be very negative for a couple of reasons. One of these reasons is that comes off in the book like the BIA only cares about doing the minimal job and are almost doing it because they have
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