3. You drink and you can't function, he drinks and still holds a job down. The diet is also all wrong for you. High protein, low starch diets have been most tribes' staple foods for thousands of years. Look at photos from early colonization and look at us today for proof.
Western education without the extensive social networks that the privileged have will certainly exclude you from a lot of opportunities. Not that it can't or never works but it's a lot more cumbersome and patience exhaustive process. And if you dare complain, it will always be something you haven't done, no matter how much you have. Just the way people are socialized-to focus any personal failing on the individual without thinking that it may be possible that there are other factors. You'll hear everything but the truth, which is at least in part, there are millions with similar qualifications and stronger ties to their communities. Your tribal corporations are of no help, somewhat understandably, they have hired their share of ne'er do wells and also have self-loathing of their own to work through.
None of this is an excuse for laziness and lack of effort, that is unacceptable for you. Other people can have bad days, be incompetent, lazy and they will live great lives by American standards, that is not for you. It'll be easy to feel resentment at all the mediocrity and the results it yields while you have to fight for everything you get. Do not fall into that trap, it's a waste of time and the world has enough of that kind. Everyday give your best, your best and your worst days will not be close to equal, still, give the best you have everyday. It's an advantage that you have some control over so use it!
Also, abusing and mistreating those less powerful than (which is the true basis of any Euro-derived culture) you will only land you in jail and divide you from the ones who love you. We do what is done to us, Indians were buried in a pile of paperwork so they have a weird fetish with it, Indians were molested by white authority figures, so they started doing it to each other, Indians were abused so they learned to abuse the safest target; each other. Most people, Indian or not, are not very strong and in the pressurized stress of the modern world, it doesn't take much before people attack anyone nearby. Find another way to cope with the alienation and oppression you feel (excluding all deviant behaviors).
The following is an exception to this rule because it may be of use. Depending on the shade of your skin and your features, dressing like and speaking like the colonizer may help you abide by rule number one. To be seen by as white by those who know nothing about you is a useful technique to hide, however, it's no guarantee. Driving in this camouflage may help you slip past the police but when the chips fall, never forget what you really are and be prepared for like treatment. Being Indian is more about looks and physical bearing, it also effects your place in society and the resources or lack of thereof you will have access to. So, when things do go awry, you will have no power to contend with the full weight of a system which doesn't favor the powerless, Indian or not.
Gender also counts here, males tend to trigger the competitive (a threat to dominance) impulse in other males whereas females may be seen as non-threatening and potential mates (and sadly, also potential defenseless victims). Females can get into places where males cannot, largely because of male ego and chauvinism.
All of this can play on a person's head, make one feel useless, hopeless and that is about the most dangerous thing in the world for an Indian. It simply doesn't take much to completely and irrevocably break a lot of Natives because they really don't have a lot of inner strength and outward assistance to draw upon. A lot of that blame goes to present day Indians, they would much rather badmouth each other and keep one another on the same low position rather than see another prosper. Selfish, but that's what we've become. Try making a minor step up the social totem pole and watch how those around you react. It should tell you everything you need to know about what to do about the company you keep.
Above all, the biggest mistake the past indigenous have made is to become super-colonized. It doesn't work and leaves any one who tries it out of balance and inconsistent, miserable, schizophrenic in it's own way. As Vine Deloria has said, "the schizophrenia is in the white man and not in you", unless you allow it to happen. All things will be affected by your home culture,how you react to others and how they react to you, what you consume, what happens when you court (or are courted) mates and have children to what happens in the covert avarice in the school and workplace. Many of the behaviors you will be expected to exhibit may feel psychopathic, you may not even be able to articulate how wrong it feels but you will certainly feel it. (You might find yourself trying to bring harmony to dissonant situations, it can't work.)
You are free to try to adopt the things you see around you, but it most likely will not work for you like it does for the colonizer.
You are free to try to adopt the things you see around you, but it most likely will not work for you like it does for the colonizer.
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