Children Living on the Reservation

             The program of “The Children of the Plains” is about Native American children living on a Lakota Sue tribal reservation. At first the program begins with a positive tone because it mentions how these young children are trying to overcome their obstacles and achieve what their parents were not able to do before them. All of the children mentioned are struggling and have families that are poor and suffer from alcoholism.  Obstacles such as teen pregnancy, unemployment, and hunger are more common on reservations than in more developed areas of America. However, all the young people mentioned on the show have goals of what they want to become in the future and a lot are earning school and dance trophies. These children want to do well in school and move on to college not only for themselves, but also to benefit their families and the reservation.

I was surprised at first at how positive the show started out and I was happy to know that there was still hope to be found on the reservation. I have read books about Native American life written by Sherman Alexie and beforehand knew that the reservation was a sort of dead end for Indians. It was inspiring, however, to hear that many young Indian children where dreaming of making the reservation a better place where more employment could be found. Some parts of the show where heartbreaking because I saw these young people going through a lot of negative events, some of which I was lucky enough not to have experienced when I was growing up. Seeing this show proved to me the importance of higher education in a powerful way, and made me feel grateful for being in college.