Who is Junior?

Arnold Spirit, Jr., or Junior, is a fourteen-year-old boy who lives on the Spokane Indian Reservation in Washington; Alexis loosely based the character on himself. Junior is a budding cartoonist who also enjoys playing basketball. Like the other members of the Coeur d’Alene tribe who live on the reservation, Junior has grown up impoverished and surrounded by alcoholism. Yet Junior strives to pursue his education and transfers to Reardan, an affluent school with a mostly white student body. As a result, he suffers from extreme alienation both at his new school and on the reservation, leading him to question where he truly belongs.