In his novel
“There There,” Tommy Orange opens the book with a brief history of how the
Europeans came to the Americas and how they treated the Natives already inhabiting
this land. While it is known by all that
the Europeans treated the Natives in terrible ways, the stories are very rarely
told in this much detail. This section
allows the reader to sympathize for Native Americans before they even meet any
of the characters in the novel itself, and the reader automatically begins to
root for these characters to overcome whatever hardships they face, because the
reader wants them to have a better life than that of their ancestors introduced
in the prologue.
The
prologue also sets the tone for the reader that Native Americans have been oppressed
by the white population since some of their earliest interactions many years
ago. The prologue ends by discussing a
passage about war, and how the Native Americans were slaughtered by guns and
then their bodies were used as if they were animals, “ground…down to dust as
fine as gunpowder” (Orange 10). The prologue
shifts from this talk of war and savage treatment to speaking of Urban Natives,
reminding the reader that the same people that were once slaughtered in mass
numbers now live among everyone else as normal people.
Throughout
the prologue, the Indian head is used as an icon, stating how it was nothing
more than a symbol to the white population, as seen through how Indian heads
were bought and sold as if it were a common good. The novel also discusses how the image of a
Native American head “[is on flags, jerseys, and coins…the penny first, of
course, the Indian cent, and then the buffalo nickel, before we could even vote
as a people” (Orange 7). This relates to
the erasure of Native American culture in the way that the Native culture was
nothing more than a symbol to be used by every non-Native person. It was merely a symbol to be mocked by everyone
that is not Native American, and for nothing more than that. The symbol of a Native head reflects how the
Europeans cut away everything else from the Native Americans, such as their
land, culture, and many other things, and only left the image of a past time, for
everyone to view Native Americans as a thing of the past and forget that many
are still around today.
I agree - Tommy Orange's book is a novel view on Native American life, very different from the either dated or rural stories that authors tend to gravitate towards when writing on this culture. To many modern Americans, these various groups and people exist perpetually in the background. If they are aware of them at all, Native Americans are to modern Americans far removed from popular culture, confined to reservations and their casinos. This could not be further from the truth, as Orange shows in his novel. Native Americans are scattered throughout the nation, living among the rest of the populace: urban, suburban, or rural.
ReplyDeleteTheir distribution is in part a consequence of earlier American policies seeking to eradicate Native culture, and There, There’s introduction is a response to the fact these atrocities tend to be pushed into the background of contemporary America’s interpretation of history. This erasure can be found almost everywhere, as you mentioned, and reduces Native American culture to just another symbol of America to be cheaply used as necessary.
This cultural erasure has left mostly romanticized versions of Native American history in modern American thought, and Tommy Orange obviously seeks to change this with his novel.
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DeleteMickey,
ReplyDeleteNicely written. You definitely highlighted the message that Orange had intended for his audience. It is quite shocking for readers to come to the realization that whites are responsible for not only committing genocide against Native Americans, but also for stealing key symbols of imagery. Personally, I found the history in the prologue to be very grim and varying from what was taught to me years ago. The fact that there was a second “Thanksgiving” type meal that led to “two hundred indians [dropping] dead that night from an unknown poison” (4) shows how Native Americans and white settlers in conflict since the very beginning. The dark history continues with the grisly death of Metacomet (4) and the massacre of the Pequot (5). It was these initial acts of violence against Native Americans that led to the social constructions whites possess today.
It is extremely tragic how whites are responsible for taking land from the Native Americans as well as brutally slaughtering them as part of America’s “Indian Relocation Act, which was part of the Indian Termination Policy” (9). It only adds insult to injury that Native American symbols such as the head were used on “flags, jerseys, and coins” (7). Unfortunately, a great deal of damage has already been done, and it is irreversible. As the American society continues to grow more tolerant, hopefully any racist symbols will phase out.