Phase 1: Prompt 3: Reservation Realism

Phase 1: Prompt 3: Reservation Realism

By analyzing what happens in the chapters “A Drug Called Tradition” and “Indian Education” compared to real life characteristics of drug use and Native American boarding schools from the mid-1900s, one could see how realistic or unrealistic Sherman Alexie’s portrayals really are.
First, before one analyzes the similarities and differences between real life characteristics for Native Americans and the characteristics shown in selected chapters in Alexie’s novel, one must understand the definition of “reservation realism”.
Reservation realism can be defined as the acceptance of how things really are on a reservation, which is a tract of public land set aside for an Indian tribe, such as the Spokane Indians in Washington.
In the chapter “A Drug Called Tradition”, Victor obtains “magic mushrooms”, and he decides to share these “magic mushrooms” with Thomas Builds-the-Fire and Junior Polatkin. Victor states to Thomas, “We’re going out to Benjamin Lake to do this new drug I got. It’ll be very fucking Indian. Spiritual shit, you know?” (Alexie, 14). In fact, it was “very fuking Indian” and some “spiritual shit” because soon after they take the drug, Thomas “looked around the world” as he sees Victor “stealing a horse and...riding by moonlight”, which stealing horses was considered an honorable thing to the boys. This drug produced different hallucinations for every boy. It caused them to dance and sing.
This “drug use” in Indian cultures and Native American cultures date back to the time of the Amerindians, such as the Aztecs, and it exists in multiple cultures, in Asia and Africa, as a “tradition”. According to Davis Wade, the author of the article “Hallucinogenic Plants and Their Use in Traditional Societies- An Overview”, although it is not the Spokane Indians as talked about in “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven”, “the Mazatec of Oaxaca discovered amongst a mushroom flora that contained many deadly species as many as 10 that were hallucinogenic...producing powerful synergistic effects - a biochemical version of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts” (Wade). At the end of his article,  Wade contributes, “Moreover the experience is explicitly sought for positive ends. It is not a means of escaping from an uncertain existence; rather it is perceived as a means of contributing to the welfare of all one's people” (Wade). This drug use sought as a tradition serves a purpose in bringing out the individual’s importance to “the welfare of all one’s people”. Thomas Builds-the-Fire’s hallucinogenic experience clearly represents the Indian tradition of a drug use, and the reservation realism of the drug is pretty accurate.
In the chapter titled “Indian Education”, Alexie depicts the grades separately through different stories, including themes with fighting, drinking, getting in trouble, freedom, love, and basketball. Each grade has a story of it’s own. For Victor, known as “Junior Falls Down” or “Cries-Like-a-White-Boy” in the first grade, education was like being “buried in the snow”, the snow representing White American assimilation as he wears “U.S. Government glasses” (Alexie, 171-172). At times, he “stood alone in the corner” (174) while being deprived of his “freedom of expression”. The sad part was that the “bright students...don’t know what comes next...as they look back towards tradition” (179-180). Victor was tormented by this assimilation, and every “indian, indian, indian” (173) was put through these circumstances. The overall theme of this education comes from Victor’s question when he asks, “Oh, do you remember those sweet, almost innocent choices that the Indian boys were forced to make?” (175) (Italics added). The “forced to make” expression refers to the assimilation and pain that Victor went through as a student.
According to an article written by the University of Minnesota titled “Brief History of American Indian Education”, during the mid-1900s, “The American Indian boarding school, as an institution of assimilation, was designed to suppress the culture, language, and spirituality of American Indian nations throughout the United States” (“Expanding the Circle Resources”). Assimilation means the act of bringing one group into conformity of another group’s ideas, beliefs, and attitudes, by means of force and adaptation. Also, stated in the article, “from the age of 5 through 18, American Indian children were removed from their families, for month or years at a time, and placed in the boarding school where a harsh indoctrination occurred”, and they were not banned from their spiritual practices and the use of their own language. This “harsh indoctrination” affected many students, proven by the alarming statistic that “ the statewide high school graduation rate for American Indians was 42.6% compared with 82.8% for Caucasian students” in Minnesota, a state that Indians were prominent like in Spokane, Washington. This assimilation affected the students, and without regards to their family problems, many students’ beliefs of freedom were “intercepted and confiscated” (Alexie, 173), like Victor.
Reservation realism is depicted in this novel with a few slight adjustments. Although different drugs were used and attitudes of the students were not all the same as Victor’s, the ideas and concepts still get to the reader, and it is shown in multiple chapters, such as “A Drug Called Tradition” and “Indian Education”.

Works Cited

"Brief History of American Indian Education." Expanding the Circle Resources. University of

Minnesota, 25/09/2012. Web. 28 Sep 2012. <http://etc.umn.edu/resources/briefhistory.htm>.

Wade, Davis. "Hallucinogenic Plants and Their Use in Traditional Societies - An Overview." Cultural

Survival. Cultural Survival, 19/02/2010. Web. 28 Sep 2012.