Reservations

            I wanted to take a closer look at reservation life after seeing the living conditions reflected in The Business of Fancydancing and The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. In both of these examples poverty and poor living conditions were prevalent throughout the reservation, something I had not known because I’ve been raised in metropolitan areas along the East Coast, not a common spot for reservations. Below is a map that shows locations of reservations throughout the states, illustrating the distribution of reservations and their widespread presence in the Midwest to west, along with the lack of reservations around highly urban areas.

            In the United States there are a total of 310 Indian reservations spread throughout, which are populated by America’s poorest 1%. Typically, poverty stricken areas are at a higher risk for alcoholism, corruption, and school dropout rates, and because these reservations are closed off from Americans, the Indians that inhabit the land are even more at jeopardy because they don’t commonly venture far from their homeland.

            In addition, this land that they occupy is not the best for producing sufficient crops to support themselves. The lack of quality among the land is due to European settlers designating specific land for them to live among, usually the worst and poorest of quality.

            The poverty found within Indian reservations is different than the hardship we find in our cities. Their isolation is the most harmful because it prevents them from having opportunities arise that would assist them in bettering their lives. In order for them to truly seek a better lifestyle, they would need to leave the reservation where they would be an alien among our society and struggle to not only find a mean of income, but be accepted among a different culture as well. 
           In The Business of Fancydancing, Seymour left the reservation and was faced with struggles from different directions, one that included being disowned by his tribe. Granted, Seymour was presented with the opportunity to attend a university, which assisted his transition, but this is not a common occurrence. His childhood friend, Aristotle, also attended a university off the reservation, but eventually retreated back to what he knew on the reservation because he could not handle the transition from a life on the reservation to a life among the white man.