A once Proud People broken.

  

    Sherman Alexie's stories Every Little Hurricane, This is what It Means to say Phoenix, Arizona , The Only Traffic Light on the Reservation doesn't flash Red Anymore, and Indian Education are painful deep-seeded racist stories, but deeper than that the show of a people so broken and beaten down they live only day to day.  Not caring about the consequences of their actions and truly believing that there is nothing they can do to better their situation. Instead of taking action they dream of being great warriors, and their once great sense of community.

    Throughout the majority of Every Little Hurricane Victor's uncles Adolf and Arnold are in a brawl almost to the death, according to Victor because they love and hate one another. They obviously love each other due to the fact that they are brothers, but they also love the Indian in each other.  I believe what they hate in each other is the white washing of their once proud and fierce civilization, their names being actual representations of that. Victor says that while his two uncles are slugging it out the other family members are just standing by watching out the glass window.  He calls them "Witnesses," the opposite of the warriors they dream of being.

     In This is what It Means to say Phoenix, Arizona Victor has to deal with the death of his father while away from his people.  While the Native American's should have a good sense of community and should have funds to help Victor with the burial of his father, however they only are able to give Victor one hundred dollars. Although his father is one of the stereotypical drunken Native Americans, Thomas Builds-a-fire has a vision. In his vision he is to go to a very ancient spiritual location to see a sign.  He waited and waited and when he was about to give up Victor's father showed up, fed Thomas, told him he would get mugged there and drove him back home. This contributes to their ancient sense of community.

      In The Only Traffic Light on the Reservation doesn't flash Red Anymore, Victor and his friend talk about a young boy named Julius, who is a rising basketball star.  Throughout the entire story they talk about all the different boys over the years that have had promise as basketball players, but sadly never amount to more than another drunken Native American.  This story also adds to the aspect of Native Americans on reservations feeling like they are just existing without a purpose.  In the second part of the story Victory says "A year later, Adrian and I sat on the same on the same porch in the same chairs. We'd done things in between, like ate and slept and read the newspaper." That to me says they are just going through the motions of life, not actually live.

   Finally in Indian Education we are presented with a Victor who does well in school, in the beginning of the story he jokes with his friends drawing a stick figure of an Indian peeing.  This is his way of wanting to connect to the community. Later, starting as soon as second grade, he starts to realize that if he wants to make it in this life he has to live by white societies misconstrued standards. Resulting with him towards the end of college despising the Native American community. At the end of the story he says "Why should we organize a reservation high school reunion? MY graduating class has a reunion every weekend at the Powwow tavern."