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Anthony Russo

Mrs. Ruff

Humanities/period FG

October 27, 2020

Junior’s Struggles

In the book we see how Junior overcomes some difficult things. He has to travel 22 miles

everyday to go to school and most of his own tribe hate him. Even his own best friend starts to

hate Junior for leaving the reservation. Junior has some trouble finding his own identity because

he left the reservation. Also, many people may not like Junior because he is trying to find his real

identity. In the next paragraphs I will be talking about customs, identity, and heritage and how

they affect Junior.

Heritage is something that is given to you or passed down to you. It could even be

physical qualities that run in your family. Junior isn’t given much physical items from his

heritage because his family was poor. Junior was given things better than that. He was a very

smart kid and he inherited that from his parents. The difference between identity and heritage is

identity is what you make for yourself by your own actions. Junior wasn’t given much so he had

to make a lot of things for himself.

The definition of identity is the fact of being who or what a person or thing is. Identity is

something that you make for yourself and isn’t given to you. Some qualities of Junior’s identity

is that he likes to draw and play basketball. Another big attribute of Junior is that he is brave and

isn’t afraid to make a stand. He went to Reardan not caring what others would think about him.
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His dad told him, “You have to dream big to get big.” Since junior left the reservation’s school,

he feels apart from the kids on the rez. Junior also feels that he stands apart from others in his

community because of his appearance. He looks much different from all the people around him.

He had a lot of extra teeth and massive hands and feet. Many people on his reservation wouldn’t

want to be friends with him because of this. People also may not want to be around him because

of his customs.

Customs are a cultural idea that describes a regular patterned behavior that is considered

a characteristic of life. A custom of Junior’s tribe is that whenever somebody died, they would

have a big funeral for them. Funerals were a big part of their culture. Junior said, “Each funeral

was a funeral for us. We lived and died together.” Funerals were also a little bit happy because

there would always be some laughter. Another custom they had was eating Indian fry bread. One

other custom he probably had was doing Indian ceremonies like dances. Not many people had

the same customs as Junior because Junior was Indian. Many of the Indians on the rez were

extremely poor. Junior said, “Poverty doesn’t give you strength or teach you lessons about

perseverance. No, poverty only teaches you how to be poor.” I agree with junior on this because

not all poor people are strong.

In this essay I talked about heritage, identity, and customs. I also talked about how junior

was different compared to others in these three aspects of his life. Junior had a hard life and

many people didn’t like him. He was very brave for the things he did. He didn’t do things just to

please other people. I respect junior because he wasn’t afraid to leave the rez. Another thing I

respect about Junior is that he stuck up to Roger even though he was a senior.