What are the lessons Junior learns about poverty?

Junior learns that poverty is a key contributor to poor nutrition and poor health services. He acknowledges that his family is poor, and sometimes they have to go hungry because there is nothing available for them to eat. Junior says, “…and sure, sometimes my family misses a meal, and sleep is the only thing we have for dinner”. Junior further articulates his statement by saying that “…poverty = empty refrigerator + empty stomach”. The above statements indicate Junior’s realization that poverty greatly contributes to poor feeding habits and poor nutrition.
Later, Junior learns that hunger is not possibly the worst thing about being poor. This is articulated in his words “…so hunger is not the worst thing about being poor”. He realizes that lack of proper healthcare is a greater challenge as compared to hunger. His sentiments are drawn from the fact that his family cannot raise the necessary funds to take his dog to a vet for treatment. Eventually, his father shoots the dog to end its misery. Junior is deeply pained by this occurrence to the extent of almost blaming his own parents for their poor state. In his words, Junior says that “...I wanted to hate dad and mom for our poverty”. This is a clear indication that poverty threw him into a state of despair and hopelessness.

One of the lessons that Junior learns about poverty is that it's closely related to his ethnicity. Living on a reservation with other Native Americans teaches him early on that people like him are at the bottom of society, with a chronic lack of educational and employment opportunities.
In keeping with their lowly status in society, Native-Americans are palmed off with second-rate public services. Junior discovers this when he has to go to the dentist. He has ten extra teeth which would normally be removed over the course of several appointments. However, because Indian Health Services only does major dental work once a year Junior has to have all his extra teeth pulled out in one particularly painful session.
As well as substandard health care, Junior also experiences poor-quality education. The school that Junior attends is chronically underfunded and lacks facilities that schools outside the reservation take for granted. Worse still, Junior and his classmates are expected to work with old, outdated textbooks that their parents used when they were at school. Junior is so angry to discover his mother's name written inside an old geometry textbook that he throws it straight at his teacher, Mr. P.