A Tasty Slice of Buffalo

          I was lying on a table pretty relaxed when suddenly I heard the chief stumble in. Uh-oh. I knew it was about time for me to be cut up and eaten by all the members of the tribe. I was a tasty slice of buffalo and I was on the menu.

                 

          First, as always, the tribe leaders began playing one of their gambling games which meant they all needed their large amounts of alcohol. I decided to tune out their broken and slurred English because how could they possibly have anything important to say. After I became bored, I decided to start paying attention to their conversation. They were mentioning something about a pipeline and how the government was trying to build it across their lands and ruin the water supply. I thought about my poor buffalo brothers and sisters who would be displaced by this atrocity and I was so mad at the American government for doing this to us. How could I be proud of the country that I’ve been roaming since I was a baby bison, how could I be a patriot when the rights of my own people were being trampled upon. How could this country, the “land of the free, home of the brave” (Vowell) take away my most precious right? Wait. Imagine how the Native Americans feel about this. I’ve been brainwashed by this country into thinking that all Native Americans are drinkers, gamblers, and uneducated. These stereotypes have been so ingrained in my head that I didn’t stop to question whether or not they are true.  I didn’t even stop to consider their feelings about the pipeline and instead I only jumped to my own. The white man who oppresses the Indians is in a way exactly like me. He would never think about them and instead only think about himself. And if what they say is true,

            Are we all equal?