Alcohol, Alcoholism, and the American Indians

aborigine Americans or American Indians had a particularly virile sense of identity. Their clothes were special, their languages irreplaceable. Besides, their tribal dances lots(prenominal) as Kachina traditional spirituality pock weapons strings or belts known as wampums sand trouble oneselfting and the habit of track down the bison were all parts of their roots imbedded cabalistic into their consciousness (Nichols, 1998).When the Europeans came to dislodge these roots by occupying the land that the Indians had believed to be theirs alone, the lives of the latter changed dramatically. This was a time of cultural demise for the Indians, in fact.To spread over out the pain of confusion felt due to their roots macrocosm pulled out the Indians found relief in alcohol. Thus, Sherman Alexie (1993), a Spokane/Coeur dAlene Indian, writes in The Lone commando and Tonto fistfight in Heaven Go ahead, Adrian said. Pull the trigger. I held a pistol to my temple. I was sober but wis hed I was drunk enough to pull the trigger. drink becomes a means of drowning out the confusion felt by the Indians. By attempting to drown out the pain of cultural demise, the Indians be also making an attempt at self-renewal. They clear been forced to move to the air jacket by the armed Europeans.The new regime wants to assimilate them, and destroy the Native American gardening in the process, see that the judicature is afraid of being overthrown by the natives. Alexie uses successs father as a metaphor for the Native American destination. He writes your father bequeath move want a salmon, leap over the couple He will rise, he will rise. The continuation of the American Indian agriculture is similar to the revolving life cycle.The author asserts that the Native American culture could keep on going like ashes flowing along the river. The culture may also rise one day like salmon rise in the river all of a sudden. The Native American culture could work from generat ion to generation continuously. However, many of the Indians keep keister no faith in the refurbishment of their culture. Countless Native American stack are, in that locationfore, hopelessly drinking their lives away because they witness no motivation to live a better life.The Native Americans do non see a way to remediate their lives despite the faint hope of cultural restoration. Alcohol to them is a painkiller. As the Indians have lost faith in convalescent the Native American culture, Alexie also shows that there is no way for the Indians to get back their tradition and culture. He writes With each drinking glass of beer, Samuel gained a few ounces of wisdom, courage.But after a while, he began to understand too much about fear and failure, too (Alexie 134). At first, the Indians believe that alcohol may attention them escape from the reality and condone the pain of losing their rich culture. But then, they realize that the expiry of their culture makes them afraid and worried. They feel doleful as a new culture takes over their spiritual traditions and dear customs, seeing that they have already failed in preventing their culture from being taken over by a new culture. Hence, Samuel neither forgets his commonwealths culture nor accepts the new customs.Though his commonwealths culture is being exterminated, he has no way to stop this from happening. each his life he has watched his brothers and sisters, and most of his tribe folks, fall into alcoholism and surrendered dreams. So, now, Samuel, the one who never drank, also wants some drink to relieve his pain of roots being pulled out. Moreover, he picks up the pieces of a story from the road and changes the world for a few moments in his mind to show how he truly can escape the world.