29 pages • 58-minute read
Indian Education
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Symbols & Motifs
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of substance use, addiction, mental illness, disordered eating, and racism.
Substance Use
Substance use is a prominent motif in “Indian Education,” illustrating how generational trauma shapes behavior and identity in Junior’s community. In fourth grade, Junior describes his father as sobbing in “dark spaces” and drinking “a gallon of vodka a day” (288). While this may be hyperbole, it portrays addiction as part of a cycle of despair, where people turn to substance use to cope with the depressing reality of living with few opportunities to improve their situation. Junior’s peers engage in this self-destructive form of escapism as well. For example, in fifth grade, Junior’s cousin Steven Ford inhales fumes from rubber cement: “His ears rang, his mouth was dry, and everyone seemed so far away. But it felt good, that buzz in his head, all those colors. It was chemistry, biology. It was beautiful” (288). The word choice and timing parallel Junior’s discovery of basketball, but Stephen’s form of “escape” is as fleeting as it is damaging.
Outsiders, too, recognize the prevalence of substance use on the reservation. However, rather than sparking reflection regarding the systemic roots of the problem, this recognition manifests in harmful stereotypes of Indigenous people. In ninth grade, a teacher assumes that Junior has been drinking after he faints, saying, “I know all about these Indian kids. They start drinking real young” (291). Ultimately, Alexie’s depictions of substance use in “Indian Education” show that it is both a coping mechanism and a stereotype and that the two are interrelated, both symptoms of systemic racism.
Poverty
“Indian Education” uses a motif of poverty to demonstrate the pervasive structural inequities Indigenous families living on the reservation face, as well as the dignity these characters preserve in the face of their hardships. From first grade, Junior is acutely aware of his material circumstances. He is bullied for his “U.S. Government glasses,” which are “horn-rimmed, ugly” (285). His family’s economic status—their inability to afford other glasses—thus becomes associated with outsider status and persecution. In fourth grade, Junior’s parents “[sit] in separate, dark places in [their] HUD house and [weep] savagely” (288). The Department of Housing and Urban Development provides affordable housing for low-income families; in the above passage, this government-subsidized house becomes a space of emotional withdrawal as Junior’s father develops an alcohol addiction and his mother fruitlessly quilts, linking their economic hardships to their psychological states. In eighth grade, Junior attends the mostly white farm town junior high school, where the girls struggle with eating disorders. Meanwhile, Junior’s family struggles for sustenance, relying on government welfare and eating “canned beef that even the dogs wouldn’t eat” (291)—a description that suggests the dehumanizing treatment of Indigenous Americans. That they nevertheless survive underscores the theme of Trauma and Resilience in Indigenous Communities.
Hair
Junior’s hair is a symbol of his cultural identity and freedom of expression, an important form of personal resistance in the face of Systemic Racism in the Indigenous Education System. In second grade, Junior’s Christian missionary teacher, Betty Towle, singles him out for his long braids and sends a letter home insisting that he cut his braids or leave school. This reflects a long, traumatic history of forced assimilation in which boarding schools forced male Indigenous students to cut their hair to conform to white norms. In response to Towle’s demand, Junior’s parents come to school and “drag their braids across Betty Towle’s desk” (287). Though likely not literal, his parents’ actions constitute an assertion of their heritage and cultural pride.
Junior retains his long hair for the rest of the story, making it one of the key ways in which he resists assimilation. At his high school graduation, Junior notes that his “cap doesn’t fit because [he’s] grown [his] hair longer than it’s ever been” (292). The graduation cap, itself a symbol of the education system, cannot physically constrain the most powerful symbol of his cultural identity, which has survived the white education system.
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