Lakota Woman Analysis

Nothing to do but Drink Life for American Indians on reservations was very difficult to live. Not only were there few jobs on the reservation for the Indians but it was very difficult for them to get jobs outside of the reservation. With this seclusion, many Indians turned to drinking alcohol since there was not much else they could do. This was also a way to forget the pain and misery that they faced on the reservations. This way of dealing with their reservation lives then led to violence amongst themselves and caused many people serious injuries. However, getting drunk with friends and driving around in old beat up cars was fun to some Indians because there was nothing else to do inside the reservations. In both my town and family, drinking is not what we do to deal with our
She said that she had been drinking before she was twelve years old and by the time she was twelve she could drink a quart of hard alcohol and not show it. She stated that, “I started drinking because it was the natural way of life,” . Since so many people she knew and lived with drank, it was natural for her to do the same. On the reservations, when people drank they would sometimes get very violent towards each other. Mary Crow Dog said that it was common for eyes to get gouged out and skulls to be cracked open on the weekends when people got drunk. Many cities where white people would drink a lot were put within the Indian reservations so that Indians could access alcohol much easier. White people could then get into fights with the Indians which would normally always lead to the white people getting off without punishment and the Indians getting arrested, even if they were defending themselves from a drunk white person. Many Indians would get stuck in a cycle of drinking and fighting because they had nothing else to do and needed a way to deal with the issues in their