How does Junior cope with the poverty and alcohol abuse in his reservation in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian?

Junior recognizes early on the in the narrative that he is
fundamentally incapable of changing the structure of Native American life.  There is
very little he can do to remedy the impoverished conditions on both emotional and
financial levels that helps to facilitate so much of alcohol abuse.  Instead, he
recognizes that this is not the life he wishes to become for himself.  With the
alcoholism that has robbed his father of his emotional and spiritual senses of self and
the alcohol induced fire that robbed his sister of her life, Junior understands that
this is not something in which he is going to indulge.  To this extent, Junior is able
to cope with the alcoholism that is such a part of his community.  The issue of poverty
is a force that Junior recognizes he cannot defeat on his own.  Yet, what he can do is
to envision a life where poverty does not control him so very much.  It is here where
Junior's endeavors in Reardon, in a White school with a White community, become
important.  Junior copes with his poverty by seeking to rise above it, to leave it
behind so that it does not follow him and haunt him as it has so many others in his
community.  It is to this end that Junior recognizes that such a move will be difficult,
as the hold poverty has on the community is a strong one.  Yet, Junior also knows that
one of his primary character traits is a sense of resilience and endurance that will
allow him to find success in an eventual frame of reference.  It is through this that
will enable Junior to cope with the poverty that is so embedded in his culture and
something that is such a strong part of his identity as a Native
American.