Alcohol, Alcoholism, and the American Indians

native Australian Americans or American Indians had a particularly strong esthesis of identity. Their clothes were special, their languages irreplaceable. Besides, their tribal dances such as Kachina traditional spirituality precious st unrivalled weapons strings or belts known as wampums sand painting and the costume of hunting the bison were all parts of their roots imbedded deep into their consciousness (Nichols, 1998).When the Europeans came to give up 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 sequence of cultural demise for the Indians, in fact.To drown out the pain of humiliation felt due to their roots being pulled out the Indians found reserve in alcoholic drink. Thus, Sherman Alexie (1993), a Spokane/Coeur dAlene Indian, writes in The Lone Ranger and Tonto fistfight in Heaven Go ahead, Adrian said. Pull the trigger. I held a pistol to my temple. I was sober but wished I was drunk enough to pull the trigger. inebriety becomes a means of drowning out the humiliation felt by the Indians. By attempting to drown out the pain of cultural demise, the Indians are also devising an attempt at self-renewal. They have been forced to move to the West by the armed Europeans.The new government wants to assimilate them, and destroy the congenital American culture in the process, seeing that the government is afraid of being overthrown by the natives. Alexie uses Victors father as a metaphor for the Native American culture. He writes your father pass on rise similar a salmon, leap over the bridge He will rise, he will rise. The continuation of the American Indian culture is similar to the revolving life cycle.The precedent 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 pass from generation to g eneration continuously. However, numerous of the Indians have no creed in the restoration of their culture. Countless Native American people are, therefore, consentlessly drinking their lives away because they feel no motivation to live a better life.The Native Americans do not see a way to improve their lives despite the faint hope of cultural restoration. Alcohol to them is a painkiller. As the Indians have lost faith in recovering 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 shabu of beer, Samuel gained a few ounces of wisdom, courage.But after a while, he began to understand as well much about fear and failure, too (Alexie 134). At first, the Indians believe that alcohol may help them escape from the reality and relieve the pain of losing their bountiful culture. But then, they realize that the loss of their culture makes them afraid and worried. They feel heavyhearted as a new culture takes over their spiritual traditions and high-priced customs, seeing that they have already failed in preventing their culture from being interpreted over by a new culture. Hence, Samuel neither forgets his tribes culture nor accepts the new customs.Though his tribes culture is being exterminated, he has no way to stop this from happening. All his life he has watched his brothers and sisters, and well-nigh of his tribe folks, fall into alcoholism and surrendered dreams. So, now, Samuel, the one who never drank, also wants round drink to relieve his pain of roots being pulled out. Moreover, he picks up the pieces of a story from the street and changes the world for a few moments in his mind to show how he truly can escape the world.