Indian Social Power

When viewed through a social power lens in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, it will reveal that the generally white people and mostly all the people who don’t live on the rez have the most power. Power depends on a few key things, mainly, money. Throughout the entire book, they claim money is quite scarce on the reservation. Power plays a large role in book, this paper will explain examples of social power in the book.
The people with the most power are generally the whites, everyone seems to know that in the book. It is a mindset of the Native Americans, a quote that excellently explains this is ““Who has the power” I asked, “White people” my parents replied” (45). This shows that the Native American parents both think this

In the story, characters refer to societies of white people living within the reservation. These people have very little money, ultimately meaning low social power. Compared to the white people from Rearden, these people are powerless. It was said they tried to secede from the reservation, this attempt was not successful. In this instance, white people had less power than the Native Americans. The following is a quote from the text that supports that not all whites have power “If Gordy says it’s true, then it’s true, even Dodge knew that” (86). Gordy is a student who was defending Junior’s answer, when the teacher, Dodge, said it was wrong. This type of power is determined by knowledge, rather than money. Another example would be the casino owners, they are very rich and powerful, much more so than the whites of Rearden. Another quote that supports the claim is “Indian boys weren’t supposed to dream, and white girls from small towns weren’t supposed to dream either” (112). This quote is putting white girls and Indian boys on the same level. Still beneath someone, but the two are put on the same level. It should be clear that not all whites are powerful, and not all Native Americans are