Joe Napoleone

“I’m fourteen years old and I’ve been to forty-two funerals”, Junior says. That’s really the big difference between Indians and white people. In the community of Wellpinit, everyone is related, everyone is valued, everyone lives a hardscrabble life, and everyone is at risk for early death, and the loss of one person is a loss to the community. Compare Wellpinit to Reardan, whose residents have greater access to social services, health care, and wealth, and the people are socially distanced from each other. Junior uses a “matter- of- fact” statement to describe this great gap between a financially destroyed Indian community and a middle- class white town just a few miles away. He realizes that he doesn’t have to see himself as a person split in two. He sees that he is part of many different tribes (he is not only Indian, but a cartoonist, and a son, and a basketball player, and a bookworm, and so on…) Arnold knows that he’s not from Reardan or Wellpinit. He is multi-tribal.Junior’s parents, Rowdy’s father, and others in the Reardan community are addicted to alcohol, and Junior’s white “friend with potential”, Penelope has bulimia. “There are all kinds of addicts, I guess,” he says. We all have pain and we all look for ways to make pain go away. Junior understands there pains and he knows how to feel there pain. He doesn’t feel these exact pains but he still knows. A pain that Junior can relate to is the pain of being poor. It was Christmas and of course his father was going out to get drunk at a bar but that wasn’t surprising to Junior. Although, there was something surprising about the situation because his father came back not too long after but he had something for Junior. It was five dollars that Junior thought was going to be spent on alcohol by his father. Yea, it wasn’t a present or gift or a gift of some sort but it was special, special to Junior. This situation shows how poverty affects Junior’s lifestyle. We are so used to living the good life with a