Their braids were cut off, and they were forced to learn English and forget their own nation's language. There are numerous documented cases of settlers taking Indian children from their reservations and placing them in Catholic schools. discusses an important aspect of American history, which is that white settlers actively tried to eliminate Indian culture in order to make indigenous people assimilate to a Western lifestyle. We were trying to kill Indian culture.'" - Mr. Your songs and stories and language and dancing. We were supposed to make you give up being Indian. We were supposed to kill the Indian to save the child.' When I first started teaching here, that's what we did to the rowdy ones, you know? We beat them. It's the only thing that keeps me from smacking you with an ugly stick. The inherent problem is that Rowdy himself grows up to be a volatile, angry man, thus perpetuating the cycle of violence.
This shows the cycle of hopelessness that Junior frequently mentions Rowdy does not even consider trying to change his situation, but rather, he believes that he has no choice but to cope with it. He references war paint which certain tribes used to intimidate people for battles, claiming that people view him as tough because he takes constant beatings. Rather than viewing himself as a victim, though, Rowdy shrugs off the tragedy of his situation with specific cultural humor. Junior often alludes to these issues in his diary, especially when describing Rowdy's father.
One notable problem on the Indian reservation is abuse, which is often connected to the more widespread problem of alcoholism. 'It just makes me look tougher.'" - Junior and Rowdy, p. "His father is drinking hard and throwing hard punches, so Rowdy and his mother are always walking around with bruised and bloody faces. Junior describes the cycle of self-doubt and the crushing low self-esteem that comes from growing up poor, which means that Junior is already aware of the fact that anyone who wants to pursue a life outside of the reservation will need to be able to rely on a strong support system. The problem his parents faced, though, is that they had no assistance or support to pursue a different path than their parents nobody pushed them out of the only life they had ever known.
He knows that nobody sets out to be poor. However, he knows that his parents had dreams of escaping the reservation and their poverty when they were younger. Like almost everyone else living on the Spokane Indian Reservation, Junior and his family are poor. They dreamed about being something other than poor, but they never got the chance to be anything because nobody paid attention to their dreams." - Junior, p. "Seriously, I know my mother and father had their dreams when they were kids. Juniors anecdote about the dentist also alludes to the common racist trope of the Noble Savage in which non-Indians believe that Indians are stoic creatures who do not complain about physical torment. This type of thinking falls into the category of scientific racism, which is the (faulty) belief that certain internal attributes - like strength, pain tolerance, or intelligence - are inherent in a specific ethnic group. The dentist believes in the stereotyped and racist notion that Indians have a higher pain threshold, so he only gives Junior half as much Novocain to numb his mouth as he would give a white patient. When describing his painful medical history, Junior explains how the white dentist treats Indian patients on the Spokane Reservation. "And what's more, our white dentist believed that Indians only felt half as much pain as white people did, so he only gave us half the Novocain." - Junior, p.
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