Reservation Blues #2

     In the second section of Reservation Blues, religion becomes a major topic. At this point in time, Coyote Springs has picked up two new members, Chess and Checkers Warm Water,  sisters from the Flathead Indian Reservation. As children growing up, Chess and Checkers also attended the Catholic church on their reservation,  just like Junior, Victor, and Thomas. Chess and Checkers, however, had always used their religion as a rock, a piece of life that was always there for the. To the three men however, the Catholic religion had always been something worthless. They all had terrible experiences with the church. For example, when Victor goes to summer camp away from the reservation, he has an awful experience with a priest there when he is only nine years old. (148) Another example of some of the bad experiences the group has as children comes from one Sunday when Thomas went to church and the priest was ordering everyone to burn their books and records. Thomas is deeply bothered by this because those books meant a lot to him and he was sadden to see them go. (146) The most important thing that this section of the book shows, however, is just how much your life can be changed by one thing. For the Warm Water sisters, religion was all they had left after their brother died. For Victor, Thomas, and Junior, religion had always seemed like something that was meant to punish them; to destroy their Spokane identity. This is a very important lesson to remember in life because if you don't know something that's going to change your life, you are going to end up going through life a miserable person who is envious of happiness. While its always good to be aware of things that change your life, it's also important to know how to turn those changes into something positive, like the Warm Water sisters did with their church experiences. Being able to make changes in your life work for you will make life so much better in the long run.