Alcoholism In Reservation Blues, By Sherman Alexie

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Native Americans had used alcohol, long before Europeans had colonized America. The use of alcohol was mainly spiritual, and the beverages had only a little concentration of alcohol, and it required lots of efforts to produce a small amount of alcohol. Native Americans used alcohol to communicate with spiritual forces and only highly ranked priest had access to it. Distillation a European process of making a more potent beverage was unknown to them, but when the Europeans started trading with the Native Americans they introduced them their method of making a more potent beverage that they were not use to. The abundance of a more potent beverage in such a short time did not permit the natives to develop morally and regulate the use of alcohol, which the Europeans had thousands of years of experience and had regulated centuries before. Due to the history and factors such as socioeconomics, cultural, and genetics has influenced modern Native Americans to abuse alcohol even more which had a destructive impact on their culture.
In his book Reservation Blues, Sherman Alexie a Native American himself describes the lives of Native Americans in Spokane reservation in Washington State. In the book, alcoholism is discussed and covered with deliberate details which haunt the reservation. So one of the reasons of such a high rate of alcohol abuse among the Spokane tribe is the socioeconomics of the reservation. Poverty, unemployment and low-schooling rates often encourage alcohol consumption. Simon, one of the characters of Alexie’s story, cannot afford to repair his truck, so he drives his pickup truck backwards putting him and the tribesmen in danger. Although done humorously, Alexie illustrates well the alarming levels of poverty in the r...

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...e European’s culture, and this was done with violence. The trauma caused by the violence and the cultural loss have induced Native Americans to use alcohol as a coping mechanism. Their genes were not on their side, but in fact, they strengthened their addiction. As a result, alcoholism was inevitable for Native Americans to escape.

Works Cited

Alexie, Sherman. "Author Sherman Alexie Talks 'Flight'" Interview by Rebecca Roberts. Talk of the Nation. NPR. Seattle, Washington, 11 Apr. 2007. Radio. Transcript.
Alexie, Sherman. Reservation Blues. New York: Grove, 1995. Print.
Beauvais, Fred. "Spotlight On Special Populations. American Indians and Alcohol." Alcohol Health & Research World 22.4 (1998): 253-259. CINAHL Plus with Full Text. Web. 23 July 2014.
Takaki, Ronald. A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1993. Print.

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