Answer:
When the narrator says, “it didn’t pay well at all,” he means he felt like his identity presented challenges with few rewards
Step-by-step explanation:
In the excerpt, the narrator speaks about the difficulty of going between two different communities. Though he is American Indian, he spends only part of his time on the reservation, and therefore he thinks of it as something he does “part-time.” It is like a job to him because it is a role. Here pay refers to rewards because he does not have an actual job.