Native American Analysis

Native Americans have historically had extreme difficulty with alcohol. Nearly 12% of Native American deaths are alcohol-related, with traffic accidents, liver disease, homicide and suicide being the most frequent causes of death. In his work, Native American author Sherman Alexie writes about both alcoholism and Native American life, within and outside of the reservation. In “Because My Father Always Said He Was the Only Indian Who Saw Jimi Hendrix Play ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ at Woodstock”, part of the larger collection of short stories entitled The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, the narrator maps his troubled relationship with his father and his father’s alcoholism, while Alexie explores the modern Native American search for

The narrator’s had father bought a motorcycle to get away from the arguing, leaving for hours and days at a time. He gets in a terrible wreck where he ends up in the hospital. However, even though the narrator’s mother had decided that she no longer wanted to be married to him, she still visited him daily. Despite everything, she still loved him but recognized that their limits had been reached. When his father got better, he left. From his father, the narrator learned that “[i]nstead of remembering the bad things, remember what happened immediately before” (Alexie 330). For the narrator, this served in protecting him from the pain his father caused when he left. When the narrator asked if it was Jimi Hendrix’s fault, his mother notes that “[p]art of it, yeah. This might be the only marriage broken up by a dead guitar player" (Alexie 330). She recognizes, however, that it was not entirely Jimi’s fault, as she and the narrator’s father were also

Just like the narrator, his father was caught between his culture and mainstream society. Right away, the narrator clarifies that “[d]uring the sixties, my father was the perfect hippie, since all the hippies were trying to be Indians” (Alexie 325). The irony here is that the hippies opposed the Vietnam war and advocated peace, while Native Americans were warriors. The narrator continues, begging the question, “[b]ecause of that, how could anyone recognize that my father was making a social statement?” (Ibid) To the rest of the world, the narrator’s father was just another hippie and were blind to the social statement he was trying to make on behalf of Native Americans. When the image of his father beating a National Guard private makes it to the headlines, he is remembered for “a peaceful gathering turn[ing] into a Native uprising” (Alexie 326). As a result, his father clings onto Jimi Hendrix’s rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” in a time of injustice and unrest. Instead of being inspired and changing for the better, the narrator’s father falls deeper into alcohol, stating that he “ain’t interested in what’s real. [He’s] interested in how things should be” (Alexie 330). When the narrator expresses his disappointment over not having a war to fight, his father scolds him, remarking “"why the hell would you want to fight a war for this country? It's been trying