Position Paper:

Marxist reading of ‘The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian’ by Sherman Alexie

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is a novel that tells us about the trials and
tribulations that Native Americans go through in current-day USA. Not only are we able to
see the alienation of Native Americans in general, through this novel we the see internalized
alienation that happens in Native American reservations.

We see the story from the eyes of Arnold Spirit, also referred to as Junior. He’s a poor
Native American boy who grew up ostracized from his tribe because of his sickly nature. The
author seems to have modeled Junior after himself. Alexie had hydrocephalus as a child and
had many bad experiences with white people while living on a poverty-ridden reservation.

In the beginning of the novel we are only able to see the intermingling of Native
American societies and people, as a large number of white characters don’t appear till the
middle of the novel. Despite there not being any characters of higher social class physically
present, we can see the bourgeoisie controlling the entire infrastructure of the reservation.
Jobs for people of the Spokane Tribe are scarce, since open positions in public and
educational institutions in Wellpinit are given to white people loitering around the reservation.
Work is hard to obtain without any education, which is hard to achieve because of poverty.
And the cycle continues.

Despite the obvious issue being the higher-ups’ negligence, blame is shifted onto the
proletariat. They are taking blame for everything that was not in their control. Because of this
we see many Native Americans in the novel turn to alcoholism and other addictive
substances. People turn to addiction when they no longer see any hope left for anything else.
Everyone on Junior’s reservation had given up before they even had a chance, because the
oppression did not let them dream of achieving anything big. The only person partial to
overcoming the oppression was Junior, who was already ostracized enough by his own people
that he did not fear the upper class, or in this case the white population outside of Wellpinit.

The second half of the book takes us to Reardan. A wealthy town inhabited by a
mostly white population. Junior transfers to Reardan High School which causes even further
alienation from his Native American peers. The reason he transferred was simple. He wanted
to prove that there is hope and that he can achieve as much as any white person can. His
reasoning was that if he gets out of an area so heavily neglected by the government and into a
nicer environment he might amount to something. The reserve seemed like a lost cause to
him. There were no attempts, neither from the bourgeoisie nor the proletariat, to fix the
broken framework of the Spokane Tribe.

At first Junior faces a lot of racism, but Reardan turns out not as scary as he expected.
Despite their differences, the people he gets close to in Reardan seem to understand and
support him. The same cannot be said for his tribe members. The oppressed banded together
to take him down. They couldn’t take down the bourgeoisie, but they could knock a traitor
down a notch. This shows us the repressed anger the proletariat felt, but could not express
correctly. It also shows us how deeply ingrained it was in them to maintain the status quo.
Even though some of the oppressors accepted Junior, his own people could not accept change.

Throughout the entire novel Junior tries to keep his social status a secret, fearing
rejection from his new wealthy white friends. Towards the end of the novel we have a direct
conflict that happens because of this. When the charade is over and Junior expects exclusion,
Penelope and Roger show him sympathy. The bourgeoisie knew of the oppression and looked
down on the Wellpinit natives but maintaining the status quo was never their priority. The
ones heavily obsessed with maintaining it were the oppressed.

External oppression was never the issue. The issue was internalized oppression. The
more the Native Americans told themselves they were oppressed the deeper they fell into
oppression. Not because of outside forces or the bourgeoisie; which did indeed have influence
at the beginning, but even they lost interest when the oppressed themselves began their own
alienation. The solution to the problem that whole time had been to break down the walls they
built themselves. At the end of the novel we never get direct closure, since it’s an open
ending, but we do know that at least Junior managed to break free from a fate so easily
accepted by others in his position.

Nejra Galijašević