All Junior has ever known is poverty, but he is able to recognize that his situation is bad. Junior analyzes his situation saying “it sucks to be poor, and it sucks even more to feel that you somehow deserve to be poor (13)”. Junior is aware of the fact that he…
At the beginning, Sawyer says that the Lakota Sioux is “one of the poorest populations in America” (ABC 2011). Each individual highlighted throughout the video experiences poverty. Robert Looks Twice, a 12 year old, walked Sawyer through his house, pointing out the broken floor and leaking roof. He also showed his messy bedroom that was crowded with other kids and freezing cold. The schools on the reservation are also in poor conditions. Principal Whitewolf showed Sawyer the areas of her school that contained asbestos, which was not her biggest concern. “When kids come on Monday their really hungry because they haven't had anything to eat through the weekend,” she said (ABC 2011). Each sociological perspective offers a different explanation for poverty. The functional perspective says that poverty serves a social function and inequality is inevitable. Whereas the interactionist perspective says that poverty is a learned phenomenon (Leon-Guerrero, 47).…
However, the Lakota tribe lived on much more tight budget with scarce food and there homes took place in disastrous slums. Aaron Huey is well acquainted with the tribe and is treated like family and known as their “brother.” “I will always be what is called "wasichu," and "wasichu" is a Lakota word that means "non-Indian," but another version of this word means "the one who takes the best meat for himself" (Huey). This exemplifies how the whites are greedy and always take the best part of everything for themselves, and save the lousy scraps for the minorities of America, the Lakota tribe included. The Lakota tribe is constantly being forced to give up the little that they have to Americans even though they had been promised their share in the past. The reservation the Lakota’s live on is deeper in poverty than Detroit or Flint, Michigan. Alexie makes sure to address this, “Unemployment on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation fluctuates between 85 and 90 percent…. 39 percent of homes on Pine Ridge have no electricity. At least 60 percent of the homes on the reservation are infested with black mold. More than 90 percent of the population lives below the federal poverty line… School dropout rate is up to 70 percent” (Huey). These statistics obviously show how hazardous the Lakota’s housing is. The houses are minuet and discombobulated with their possessions…
Though adolescence and all cultures face many trials and tribulations as they grow from a child to an adult those faced by the Native Americans that live on the reservation are even more challenging. The young people on the reservation must deal with alcoholism, drug use, as well as inadequate supplies in their schools. Sherman Alexie does an excellent job in bringing these trials the reservation youth to…
In the book, “Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian” Junior, the main character, writes: “Poverty doesn’t give you strength or teach you lessons about perseverance. No, poverty only teaches you how to be poor.” When it comes to being poor, Junior does nothing to justify poverty that is he doesn’t say that it makes him a stronger or better person. Instead, Junior views poverty as something incredible difficult to overcome, a condition that simply reinforces itself. To Junior, poverty is generational, it is an inherited condition, and it is not a choice. Poverty is something that he is born into.…
Junior exhibited a different form of wealth when Reardan became an environment that began to lack the constant discrimination and prejudice he felt when he first started attending school there. This moment of self-awareness allowed him to see the inequality at the Reardan v. Wellpinit basketball game rematch after he won. Junior describes “I mean, jeez, all of the seniors on our team were going to college” and “I knew that none of them was going to college. Not one of them” (195). The image Junior narrates for the reader, depicts the systemic problem of poverty is a result of inequality. For a second, Junior was comfortable enough that he almost forgot the oppression but reality soon sets. In order for Junior to attain hope, he had to assimialte to the culture that benefitted off of the reservation’s…
Leaving the reservation can affect individual love ones and can impact the future. In the story The Absolute True diary of a Part-time Indian by Sherman Alexie, a boy named Junior is born with cerebral spinal fluid inside his skull. As a result of being born with cerebral, “I ended up with forty-two teeth. The typical human has thirty-two right? But i had forty-two… My brain left me nearsighted in one eye and farsighted in the other… My hands and feet were huge… And my skull was enormous” (3). Also, Junior was smarter than every kid in his school. After throwing a book and accidentally hitting Mr.P, he says, “You have to leave this reservation… Forever… The only thing you kids are being taught is how to give up… all these kids have given up……
“We were poor by most standards, but one of my parents usually managed to find some minimum-wage job or another, which made us middle-class by reservation standards. I had a brother and three sisters. We lived on a combination of irregular paychecks, hope, fear and government surplus food.” (p356) Telling us this part of his life means allows us to realize that he’s had a rough childhood. By using the word “managed” it made it seemed like it was always a struggle but somehow his family found a way to pull it together. The last sentence about hope and fear was there to ensure us that there were reasons why his life was hard while living on the reservation because of the situations his family was put through. He’s trying to make an emotional connection to the audience. Later on, he tells us a in particular paragraph in 3rd person that, “If he’d been anything but an Indian boy living on the reservation, he might have been called a prodigy. But he is an Indian boy living on the reservation and is simply an oddity.” (p357) With this sentence, he was referring to how kids thought it was strange for him to be intelligent and it wasn’t the norm to be that way. He’s making a connection to if he was anybody else but a minority, then he would have been acknowledged for his talents. So for us, as the audience, we make an emotional connection because he struggled fitting in and being…
If an individual lives in an immoral or ruthless community, they are subjected to immoral and ruthless actions. One may think a community is just a place where one resides but it is much bigger than that, it’s a second family. It was stated that “The basketball court is a strange patch of neutral ground, a meeting place for every element of a neighborhood cohort of young men…We were all enclosed by the same fence, bumping into one another, fighting, celebrating. Showing one another our best and worst, revealing ourselves—even our cruelty and crimes—as if that fence had created a circle of trust. A brotherhood” (pg.45). The streets can teach one various life skills that a parent cannot, especially in a rough neighborhood in the heart of Maryland. The author Wes and his family moved into his grandparents’ home and the same rules that applied to his mother applied to him. “… My grandparents figured if these rules had helped their children successfully navigate the world, they would work on their grandkids too” (pg.42) states the author Wes as he discussed how he had to be in before the street light would come on. His family was sterner on him and his sister because they wanted what was best for them. They lived in the nicest community and went to the nicest white school for the reason that their mom wants her kids to stay away from all the trouble and how bad Harlem had changed since she left. Not saying the other Wes’…
The effect of poverty within the Indian reservation was detrimental to the Indian’s lifestyles. Alexie describes the…
The aspects of a person’s life are not entirely determined by the circumstances he is born into – his decisions, the actions of others, and luck plays a large role as well. Since people are autonomous, they control how their lives turn out, but everyone’s life prospects are more “deeply shaped by a social structure that he or she did not choose” (page 130). This means that the poor are not entirely at fault for their living conditions; society’s structure may also affect their life outcomes. Not every citizen is granted equal opportunities, so not everyone should have the same social…
It is one of several cartoon strips that depict Junior’s awkward or uncomfortable situations. This particular strip is titled “How to Pretend You’re Not Poor” and it provides a variety of excuses Junior uses when questioned by his white peers. The final excuse called “A good all-purpose excuse” shows Junior blaming his inability to participate on a made up Indian ceremony. This clearly portrays Junior taking advantage of the ignorance of his white classmates; however, it also shows Junior taking advantage of the heritage that he seems to shy away from unless it is convenient for him. While many of the readers of this novel are not Native American, there are many readers who are poor and must constantly come up with creative excuses to give their peers in an attempt to preserve their reputation and image. This also appeals to minority readers who acknowledge that the majority of the population do not understand their culture and/or beliefs. This image contributes to the narrative because it provides a humorous tone to an uncomfortable topic that many readers can understand all too…
1. A description in your own words of what this bill proposes and how it changes existing law; why was this bill proposed? (you may speculate if the reason isn’t apparent)…
“Back home on the reservation, my former classmates graduate: a few can’t read, one or two are just given attendance diplomas, most look forward to the parties. The bright students are shaken, frightened, because they don’t know what comes next.” As we can see in this excerpt people who stayed at the reservation received a less than stellar education which has left even the brightest of students ill prepared for the future. Meanwhile Victor graduated valedictorian of his school and we can see that they will have very different futures. “Victor said, “Why should we organise a reservation high school reunion?…
Moral Law is a rule or a group of rules of right living conceived as universal and unchanging. Moral law is a system of guidelines for behavior. These guidelines may or may not be part of a religion, codified in written form, or legally enforceable. For some people moral law is synonymous with the commands of a divine being. For others, moral law is a set of universal rules that should apply to everyone.(SR, page 87) It is understood to combine the pinnacle of “Natural Law” and “Deontological reasoning” (advanced by Immanuel Kant) and any contemporary variants that make central notions of law justice and duty.…