Methamphetamine has slowly become more and more prominent in the United States. The drug is highly addictive which makes it easy to be abused. One of the most prominent users of meth have become the Native Americans. Their struggle, that started thousands of years ago, has consumed their population and has caused them to live in hardship. This then is translated into drug abuse. Indians on many reservations are resorting to drugs to escape the harsh reality that they face everyday. One of the most popular examples of this would be the Hoopa Valley Indian Reservation located in northern California. One of the most notorious arrests made on the Hoopa Valley reservation was the Holster family. According to the Humboldt Sentinel, on January 29th,
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Many parents on reservations tend to neglect or abandon their children due to poverty. Vine Deloria talks about the struggle that Native Americans have in boarding schools in his book Custer Died for Your Sins. Native Americans are treated very poorly within these boarding schools and many of them are taken from their families and transported across the nation to these schools. Vine Deloria says, “some children wouldn’t be able to recognize who their family because of being separated for such a great amount of time.” The children that aren’t transported to these boarding schools will stay on the reservations and attempt to live a stable life. Many teens struggle with going to …show more content…
The only source of the problem is in their history. Columbus came to the “New World” and terrorized their land and people until today it has become socially accepted but behind the curtain there is poverty, malnutrition, murder, rape, kidnapping, etc. occurring to the very people who would be considered the “true fathers of North America,” says Vine Deloria. I think that one of the main ways that we could help change the hardships that Indians go through, and more specifically meth abuse, is by providing more efficient and accurate knowledge to the citizens of the United States. I think that many Americans feel don’t give Indians the chance and immediately label them as “inferior.” There have been many civilizations destroyed and Native Americans are a culture that continues to survive under the same traditions for thousands of years. Native Americans can teach the United States a lot more then they think. Their survival skills are expert but meth is something that will destroy ANY population. If we are able to solve the meth abuse problem for Indians, I think that we would be able to solve the nationwide meth problem. The source of the drug addiction is definitely poverty. It is U.S. citizens job to take a stand for one another (“all men created equal…..”) and inform the government of this poor treatment of its own
Many parents on reservations tend to neglect or abandon their children due to poverty. Vine Deloria talks about the struggle that Native Americans have in boarding schools in his book Custer Died for Your Sins. Native Americans are treated very poorly within these boarding schools and many of them are taken from their families and transported across the nation to these schools. Vine Deloria says, “some children wouldn’t be able to recognize who their family because of being separated for such a great amount of time.” The children that aren’t transported to these boarding schools will stay on the reservations and attempt to live a stable life. Many teens struggle with going to …show more content…
The only source of the problem is in their history. Columbus came to the “New World” and terrorized their land and people until today it has become socially accepted but behind the curtain there is poverty, malnutrition, murder, rape, kidnapping, etc. occurring to the very people who would be considered the “true fathers of North America,” says Vine Deloria. I think that one of the main ways that we could help change the hardships that Indians go through, and more specifically meth abuse, is by providing more efficient and accurate knowledge to the citizens of the United States. I think that many Americans feel don’t give Indians the chance and immediately label them as “inferior.” There have been many civilizations destroyed and Native Americans are a culture that continues to survive under the same traditions for thousands of years. Native Americans can teach the United States a lot more then they think. Their survival skills are expert but meth is something that will destroy ANY population. If we are able to solve the meth abuse problem for Indians, I think that we would be able to solve the nationwide meth problem. The source of the drug addiction is definitely poverty. It is U.S. citizens job to take a stand for one another (“all men created equal…..”) and inform the government of this poor treatment of its own