My Grass is Greener Than Yours

            The human race has a tendency to view itself as the object of misfortune. As the famous saying goes, “The grass is always greener on the other side.” People always think others lead better, easier lives. Reading Sherman Alexie’s stories enlightened me to the cruelties and harsh treatment Native Americans face.

            Native Americans have been bullied and pushed around to other peoples’ wills ever since Christopher Columbus arrived in 1492 and “discovered America,” claiming it as Europe’s New World. Soon after, more and more Europeans settled in the Americas, spreading their diseases, infecting and killing Native Americans off in masses. As European nations began warring for the New World, Native Americans were tangled in these foreign affairs and forced to choose sides over and over again. Once colonists won the revolution and continued their westward expansion with Manifest Destiny, Native Americans were continually forced from their homelands and thrown in small reservations far away from tradition. They suffered through the Trail of Tears, the Indian Removal Act of 1830, and the suppressing of their culture. Today, with a miniscule population making up only 1.7% of the United States, Native Americans are largely forgotten, remembered only once a year on camping trips to Yellowstone and in the cowboy vs. Indian battles of innocent children.

            Sherman Alexie portrays the Native Americans and their alcohol-soaked, long-haired, danger-filled stereotype with a personal passion. He shows how hurtful the stereotype can be and also just how insignificant Native Americans are in the mind of Americans. Alexie describes his father wasting away in alcohol and his mother’s suffering, their constant lack of food, the racist comments and marginalization by whites, and the uncertainty of the future he and other Indians constantly faced. These experiences mark his life with sorrow and loneliness. He is unable to fit into modern culture and mocked for his long braid. Most of his cohort merely “looks back toward tradition” and reunites over alcohol each week in order to escape the difficulties of life. Even the night shift manager of 7-11 looks down upon Alexie and stereotypes him as different and dangerous.

Alexie describes the plight of the Native Americans with an intensely intimate understanding. However, despite all of this, Alexie shows that each culture has its own difficulties; while he starved, white girls starved, too, forced by the expectations of their own culture. Each culture faces its own stereotypes and demons. Though the grass might seem greener on the other side, it is most likely not.