In a particularly ironic passage in "Indian Education" Alexie remembers the "sweet, almost innocent choices" that Indian boys were forced to make, such as that between sniffing glue or playing basketball.

This would suggest that Indian kids are faced with only two means of escape from the reservation: drug abuse or sport. Of course, this is meant to be (darkly) humorous, but it contains more than a kernel of uncomfortable truth. And it says a lot about the lack of opportunity for these young people that this is the choice available to so many of them.

Life on the reservation is incredibly hard. Alcohol abuse, poverty, and domestic violence are widespread. It's especially hard on the kids, forced to attend a chronically under-funded school without out-of-date textbooks and no science lab.

Thankfully, when it comes to a choice between sniffing glue or playing basketball, Junior opts for the latter. But it's notable that he's only able to develop his sporting skills at a white school off the reservation. In other words, the only way to escape the mindset induced by growing up on the reservation is to leave the reservation altogether. Inevitably, this creates tensions between Junior and the people he leaves behind. But under the circumstances, he really has no choice. For his own sake, he has to leave.