The Rez

Wellpinit is the home of the Spokane Indian Reservation where Arnold lives with his mother, father, sister, and grandmother. The Spirit family have lived on the reservation all of their lives, and Arnold is known there not by his first name, but simply as "Junior." The reservation, though, is a pretty rough place. Fist fighting is a way of life and, since Arnold is a stuttering outcast, he gets picked on and beaten up regularly. Arnold is constantly bullied and belittled, making him a regular member of the "Black-Eye-of-the-Month Club". The reservation is a rough place in other ways, as well. Poverty is a given for most Indian families, and its effects, as Arnold tells us, can be pretty soul-crushing. "Poverty," he writes, "doesn't give you strength or teach you lessons about perseverance. No, poverty only teaches you how to be poor." Arnold's family often lacks the basic necessities, such as money for gas or food in the refrigerator. Alcoholism is rampant on the reservation. Both of Arnold's parents are alcoholics, as is, well, almost everyone. This situation, unfortunately, leads to many, many senseless deaths. Arnold loses both his grandmother and his sister in alcohol-related accidents. Arnold's father's best friend Eugene gets accidentally shot in the face while fighting over the last drop of alcohol in an almost-empty bottle.
Despite all this, I also see a correlation between the more positive points of the Spokane Indian Reservation and the community I live in, which is Chinatown. The reservation is home to a very close-knit community of Indian families where everybody knows everyone else. Arnold writes that "you know every kid's father, mother, grand parents, dog, cat, and shoe size. I mean, yes, Indians are screwed up, but we're really close to each other." In a way, I feel like this is very much an accurate description of the Chinatown community because everyone that lives in the neighborhood is connected in some way and everyone knows each other or knows people that know each other. Everyone recognizes one another and grows up together being one community. Arnold also often mentions that barely anyone ever leaves the reservation because people are comfortable living where they are in an environment that is familiar to them. I think that is similar to the majority of people that live in Chinatown, especially because many families live near one another within the neighborhood, so it doesn't seem convenient for many people to move farther away from their family. I don't believe that the fist fighting, alcoholism, and poverty are points that I could find similar in my community, but a big part of both the reservation and Chinatown are that they are huge centers of culture and traditions.