Aboriginal students may feel institutionalized and out of place while attending school, but other Aboriginal people see school as an opportunity to gain knowledge. Aboriginal people may come from families with harmful environments such as alcohol/drug abuse, sexual, physical or mental abuse, relationship problems with parents and other common adolescent problems. To address these issues you need to understand the situation. These problems are a direct result of colonization and residential schools. Native Americans cannot change the past, so we must collectively care for the future of our race. Aboriginal people find healing by regaining their lost culture and building close relationships with their families. Practicing the culture can be as easy as a simple scrub in an intense sweat lodge ceremony. Guillory and Wolverton assert that “establishing and maintaining a sense of 'family,' both at home and on campus, strengthens American Indian academic perseverance” (61). Strengthening family relationships is important, not just for Aboriginal people, but for all humans. Unfortunately, Native Americans have weak relationships with their families due to the intergenerational effect of residential schools, and may not want to strengthen the relationship. We must therefore ask ourselves: How can Native Americans regain their lost culture and identity? How can natives improve the average quality of life of their people? What can Native Americans do to promote success in Western academia? Aboriginal people in North America can use Western education and traditional culture as gateways to collectively improve the quality of Aboriginal life to address the trauma legacy of residential schools. As long as the inheritance remains, so does the poverty and... the middle of paper... this concerns us. Some people thought we lived in a teepee on a reservation. Others were not told about residential schools and don't even know what they were. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian briefly addresses the issue of racism, but the main character, Junior, always felt out of place. Alexie writes about a boy named Roger who tells a racist joke about natives being the offspring of buffalo and blacks (63). There is also the thought that people are racist without them saying a word. I know I've felt cold stares from older people that I thought were a result of the color of my skin. Junior had also felt these stares since his first day of school. “Those white kids couldn't believe their eyes. They stared at me like I was Bigfoot or a UFO” (Alexie 56). Unfortunately, some non-Native Americans have not taken the time to understand the root of our problems.