You took our land

A little glass half empty? Perhaps. A little contradictory? Maybe. It's okay though, he's a minority. I don't say that to sound sarcastic, because I do think there is a bit of naivety on the part of some residents of the midwest who aren't exposed to as many Native Americans as those who live in the eastern United States. I have family that lives in the East and have been there for extended stays several times, and I can say that I have seen first hand how some Indians are treated by whites, and it's not very well. Because of this visual evidence I've acquired, I trust the narrator when he says "he'd been robbed once too often." Some might think he is unreliable, which is fair, due to his constant contradictories such as, "she left me not long after that. No, I left her . . . that's how it happened." Let's examine this statement first before we call him a liar. How many times after being broken up with, heart left crumbled, has someone asked, "did s/he break up with you?" To which, at least I (most of the time) simply reply with, "No" or "it was mutual." It's a common thing to make a small fib about, because it's embarrassing.

Another large contradictory statement comes near the end of the short story when the narrator is heading to the gym to play basketball with other Indians and claims that "the most intense competition on any reservation is Indians vs. Indians." He then however goes against this statement when he plays a game against a team full of Indians and one white player and states that this "kid needed to be beaten by an Indian, any Indian." A little contradictory, but is this racist? I wouldn't say so. This narrator lived in Seattle. He was use to being on the white man's ground and he paid dearly for it by being robbed and looked at as a threat to anyone with pale skin. This white man is now on Indian ground and if I was him I would do the same thing. Stick it to the white in any way possible. Is it so bad that he wanted to beat him in a basketball game? Sure, he might be a pessimistic and to us even racist towards white people, but after all that he's been through do you blame him? We took their land damnit, and we've been keeping them down ever since. We gave them alcohol, gambling, and a couple of acres of land that the U.S. could repossess at any time if it really wanted to. Cool.