Does Family and Culture Outweigh the Problems of Reservation Life?
The first Indian reservations were created by the United States government in 1851 as places where Indians can live and have their own tribes. For a lot of Native Americans, the Indian reservations hold a strong sense of community and culture and they feel like it is home. However, in many cases, such as in the case of Sherman Alexie in his personal narrative The Absolutely True Story of a Part Time Indian, Native Americans feel like the reservation system, even with strong family and community ties they have there, fails them. The reservation system often forces people to leave there home and community because it perpetuates a cycle of poverty and alcoholism.
The first major problem causing Native Americans to leave the reservation system is the poverty cycle that exists there. The rate of poverty in Native American reservations is twice as high as everywhere else in The United States (Krogstad, June 13 2014). Sherman Alexie says of his family's history with poverty in his personal narrative The Absolutely True Story of a Part Time Indian, “My parents came from poor people who came from poor people who came from poor people, all the way back to the very first poor people.” (Alexie, 11). Natives Americans on the reservations are trapped by poverty from generation to …show more content…
Community, culture and family is often extremely important to Native Americans, but when they stay on the reservations they often lose any chance they have at succeeding. When they stay on the reservation they are trapped in the cycles of poverty and alcoholism. The difficult dilemma for many Natives Americans is whether they want to have a chance of being successful and lose part of their culture and family, or stay on the reservation and lose any chance of being
The first Indian reservations were created by the United States government in 1851 as places where Indians can live and have their own tribes. For a lot of Native Americans, the Indian reservations hold a strong sense of community and culture and they feel like it is home. However, in many cases, such as in the case of Sherman Alexie in his personal narrative The Absolutely True Story of a Part Time Indian, Native Americans feel like the reservation system, even with strong family and community ties they have there, fails them. The reservation system often forces people to leave there home and community because it perpetuates a cycle of poverty and alcoholism.
The first major problem causing Native Americans to leave the reservation system is the poverty cycle that exists there. The rate of poverty in Native American reservations is twice as high as everywhere else in The United States (Krogstad, June 13 2014). Sherman Alexie says of his family's history with poverty in his personal narrative The Absolutely True Story of a Part Time Indian, “My parents came from poor people who came from poor people who came from poor people, all the way back to the very first poor people.” (Alexie, 11). Natives Americans on the reservations are trapped by poverty from generation to …show more content…
Community, culture and family is often extremely important to Native Americans, but when they stay on the reservations they often lose any chance they have at succeeding. When they stay on the reservation they are trapped in the cycles of poverty and alcoholism. The difficult dilemma for many Natives Americans is whether they want to have a chance of being successful and lose part of their culture and family, or stay on the reservation and lose any chance of being