The basic idea of collective continuance is that people have a natural urge to work alongside one another to create a sense of community. Kyle Whyte connects this idea with ethnic perspectives and viewpoints, mainly indigenous people, a community built on shared experience and endurance. This unit's theme is reconciliation, and Collective Continuance has a mix of communal and cultural reconciliation. He talks about how indigenous people see the world as one big ecosystem with everyone connected, understanding that what we do today will change what will be tomorrow. The main takeaway from reconciliation is that it is not one-sided, but rather both sides reconciling together. It means breaking down barriers and having a mutual understanding. …show more content…
Like Collective Continuance, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian taps into communal and cultural reconciliation, but also looks into the personal side of reconciliation. Junior was faced with many hardships, growing up on a Spokane Indian reservation, hydrocephalus, and poverty to name a few. Poverty had a significant impact on Junior and his desire to leave the reservation and go to an all-white high school. Going to an all-white high school would give him a lot more opportunities than staying on the reservation, as "Poverty doesn’t give you strength or teach you lessons about perseverance. No, poverty only teaches you how to be poor. "(Alexie 11) One of the biggest players for causing trauma in this novel was the presence of alcoholism. This linked the poverty he and his family faced, along with the reservation, as reservations have a high unemployed, alcoholic, or addict population. There are all kinds of addicts, I guess. We all have pain, we all have pain. And we all look for ways to make the pain go away"(Alexie 86). The emphasis on "We all have pain" alludes to Junior wanting to find a way to deal with his pain in a different, safer way. This novel also incorporates dark humor and witty remarks, which could be junior's way of coping with the pain discussed earlier. "The world is only broken into two tribes: The people who are