Perception of the Modern Native American

Tommy Orange's Novel There There presents a perspective into modern Native American life which is seldom presented by modern media. It offers input into how the old traditions interact with modern elements and new technologies in what might be unexpected to many readers. However, it also presents the relationship between non-native Americans and Native Americans themselves. A comment which particularly stood out to me noted that "you don't have to defend all white people you think aren't a part of the problem just because I said something negative about white culture," (246). I find that this comment nicely outlines Orange's perspective on white culture as presented through There There. Although Orange is not necessarily saying that "white people are bad" he notes on multiple occasions the repeated actions of white Americans disregarding Native culture, attempting to hide or dismiss Native suffering, and generally causing death and destructive to a vast population of Native peoples.
This is also reflected in the noted discomfort of white train passengers when Tony travels to the powwow in traditional Native dress. He knows that his presence is providing a story which the non-native passengers will pass on to friends and family, ironically telling them they saw a Native American despite chances that they may have seen Tony before yet did not recognize him as Native American without the traditional, media-presented image of feathers. Orange also makes an interesting point by saying that nobody notices Tony's facial deformities when he wears the traditional outfit; he is simply a Native American, and he loses his personal identity.
This is further reflected in the interlude, when death of Native Americans is described, foreshadowing the shooting at the powwow. Orange notes that "the tragedy of it all will be unspeakable, the fact we've been fighting for decades to be recognized as a present-tense people, modern and relevant, alive, only to die in the grass wearing feathers," (141). Once again, Orange reminds readers that Native Americans remain Native Americans even if they are not practicing their traditional ceremonies or wearing traditional dress in the moment you meet them.
Through his novel There There, Orange conveys a powerful message about the prevalence of Native Americans in the United States and their continued struggles which began centuries ago with the introduction of white settlers. However, he reminds readers that though these struggles began centuries ago, the Native American population can and has adapted to modern characteristics. He outlines the use of drones, cellphones, and 3D printers. Yet, when Native Americans have a great tragedy which might attract media attention, they are wearing the clothing and practicing traditions which media presents as the only representation of Native Americans in today's culture and society.
Orange wants readers to recognize the presence of both old and new Native cultures, but he also wants us to understand that what we are presented is not necessarily accurate; there is so much more to Native Americans than powwows and feathers. He reminds readers of the families, careers, and every day modern struggles Native Americans face along with cyclical problems that started long ago. Orange cleverly ends his novel with what is perceived by mass media, and thus the majority of culture, in regards to Native Americans in today's America: violence, historical spiritual traditions, and wearing feathers.

Representation of Time and History in the Prologue of There There

Tommy Orange decides to open his novel, There There, with a lengthy prologue. One that does not introduce any of the characters or events of the rest of the novel but instead encapsulates a truncated interpretation of Native American history.

The prologue demonstrates the history in two prongs: the first of which are those of massacre. In the section named "Massacre as Prologue", Orange specifically describes an incident where a Volunteer militia murdered a whole group of Native Americans. Orange renders it in a way that emphasizes the death of women and children, "They tore unborn babies out of bellies, took what we intended to be, our children before they were children, babies before they were babies, they ripped them out of our bellies. They broke soft baby heads against trees" (8). Orange specifically employs pronouns such as "we" and "they" to recreate the conflict in order to show the fact that the pain is still prevalent in the lives of modern day Native Americans. He elides all of the massacres and injustices to this one incident. Those inclusive pronouns expand the implied audience. These dead are not just these dead but are representative of all of the dead Native Americans that have died under the oppression of their colonizers. This implication is the essence of the Prologue. Because it precedes all the characters and actions of the novel itself, it is meant to demonstrate the hard facts to an audience that may not understand the history.

The second way Orange demonstrates Native American history is through how they have been subsumed by the city. Orange expands upon the stereotype that implies Native Americans are inherently connected with an wild, untamed nature and shows how they have instead moved to the cities, "Urban Indians were the generation born in the city. We've been moving for a long time, but the land moves with you like memory. An Urban Indian belongs to the city, and cities belong to the earth. Everything here is formed in relation to every other living and nonliving thing from the earth. All our relations" (11). An inverse expansion as was seen with the massacres is employed here. Instead of using one moment to represent a whole, Orange connects a relatively recent development (Native Americans moving to urban settings) as still being connected with a history that is deeply tied to a non-industrial world.

Structure, Community, and Connection

Connection reoccurs as an important theme in Tommy Orange’s There, There. The novel’s structure, its emphasis on the Internet, and its culmination in a powwow create a sense of the “Urban Indian” community and connection.

The prologue addresses the common association between Native people and a connection to land. Orange notes that the “Urban Indian” connects to the city, and that, “[b]eing Indian has never been about returning to the land,” (11). In fact, according to Orange, “[a]n Urban Indian belongs to the city, and cities belong to the earth. Everything here is formed in relation to every other living and nonliving thing from the earth,” (11). These statements establish connection as an important theme in both Native life and in the novel.

The importance of connection shapes the structure of the novel. Orange creates interconnected characters whose narratives are shaped by others in the novel. For example, the character Harvey influences the lives of Opal, Jacquie, Orvil, and Edwin through his sexual activity/paternity. Other examples appear in the book, such as how Blue realizes that Jacquie might be her mother. These connections between characters illustrates the size and intertwined nature of the modern and “Urban Indian” community, particularly in Oakland.

Internet use connects characters in the novel, which helps create a “Pan-Indian” community, as well as emphasizing the modern/urban setting of the novel. Edwin uses Facebook to connect with his father, Harvey (Orange 69). Orvil uses videos and powwow music to connect to Native culture, planning to, “dance the dance he learned by watching powwow footage on YouTube,” (Orange 130). The use of the Internet by Edwin and Orvil help create connection and community. On the other hand, Daniel uses the Internet to ultimately 3D the guns used at the powwow. This example places the novel firmly in a modern setting.

Lastly, the powwow connects characters both emotionally and physically. Orange describes powwows as a, “place to be together,” and states that, “[w]e keep powwowing because there aren’t very many places where we get to all be together, where we get to see and hear each other,” (135). In other words, powwows exists because Native people desire connection and community. The powwow at the end of the novel serves an additional purpose. All the characters end up together, connected by their Native heritage, their urban identity, and are ultimately connected by the violence that takes place. By bringing the characters together at an event that traditionally values community, the structure of the novel reinforces the importance of connection for (urban) Native people.  

The Purpose of the Prologue

There There by Tommy Orange begins with a prologue that outlines the struggles of Native Americans throughout history and ending with their place in society today. Orange begins his novel this way to expose readers to a bevy of information they are overwhelmingly unlikely to have known prior to the novel and to instill a sense of shock as to the horrors that have been inflicted upon Native populations. Personally, I believe Orange did this to encourage readers to be spurred by the prologue to open their minds and even conduct their own research about the events outlined. This may even motivate the reader to externally search for information about the history of Native Americans. Similarly, the ‘Rolling Head’ section educates the reader on the spiritual nature of Native American stories and may similarly encourage a Google search in an effort to further their understanding as I found myself doing.

            The ‘Indian Head’ section which begins the prologue helps to portray the insignificance and erasure of Native American identity in American culture. The Indian Head in question was a TV test image that showed up on, “American TVs everywhere after all the shows ran out” (3). This image was so unimportant that it would only show up after all the scheduled shows had finished, just like Native people in America at the time. Similar to above, even those who were alive during this era would probably have to refresh their memory to even notice the Indian Head located at the upper-middle of the image. This strong symbol of Native American culture is demoted to serve the mundane purpose of setting brightness and contrast. Supposedly, “[t]he Indian Head Portrait provided the needed consistency and familiarity” (Fasciano, 2005). The cultural significance of the image is so irrelevant that the author of the test image saw straight past the Indian Head, as if it were translucent, to its utility.

All of this contributes to setting a dire tone that carries throughout the remainder of the novel. With sections such as ‘Massacre as Prologue’ which uses an overwhelming amount of violent imagery, it coalesces well with the rest of the prologue to prepare the reader for what is to come (8). A grim novel with Native people at its center who have been systematically oppressed with their cultural symbols relegated to the likes of test images and sports teams. Therefore, it is no surprise that as the characters attempt to reconnect with their culture it is met with a mix of pride and joy along with the perpetual suffering that seems to follow their people.

Works Cited

Fasciano, Pete. “The Art of Engineering The Indian Head Test Pattern .” Wmbt.org, 2005, www.wmbt.org/ihtp_restoration6.pdf.

The Importance of History

               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.

Thomas Frank

There There follows the lives of so many characters that, at some points, it’s nearly impossible to follow their storylines entirely. Towards the back-end of the novel, Tommy Orange, the author, introduces the readers to the final character of the story, Thomas Frank. His storyline, told entirely in second person, is extremely important in the novel as it is a reflection of both the history and the contemporary experience of the Native American people.

From the offset of his chapter it’s made apparent that Thomas’s story is more than just his own, “Before you were born… You were two halves of a thousand different kinds of possibilities, a million heads or tails, flip-shine on a spun coin” (Orange 208). The “two halves” refers specifically to his two parents but more broadly this section refers to the Native American people as a whole. They are different, all have different experiences, and all have different possibilities, but they all have this collective identity of being Native American. This collective identity is seen in Thomas’s affinity for drumming, “Once you were out in the world, running and jumping and climbing, you tapped your toes and fingers everywhere, all the time” (Morgan 209). Native American culture is rich and diverse but one thing it is commonly associated with is drumming. Tommy Orange showcases Native American culture through Thomas with his drumming, an obsession that continues his whole life. Beyond drumming, the specific history of the Native American experience can be seen in many ways in Tommy’s section. Some examples are his mother’s attempts at Christianity, the gentrification of his neighborhood, his limp (described as his abilities to “roll with the punches” (Morgan 214), after being “fucked over, knocked down” (Morgan 214)), and his tension with the group of white teenager.

All of Tommy Orange’s characters experience being Native American in different ways. Thomas being the last character comes almost as a culmination of all their experiences.  Alcoholism is a common issue in current Native American populations and a common theme throughout the novel. Thomas is an alcoholic because he suffers from an irritating skin condition. When he “drank enough [he] didn’t scratch at night” (Morgan 218). It becomes apparent, through Jacquie Red Feather and other characters, that many Native Americans drink to quell their feelings caused by generational trauma. This numbing is directly comparable to Thomas’s want to stop scratching. Beyond the alcoholism, he possesses many other themes seen throughout the novel. He comes from a broken family (a sister addicted to PCP, an alcoholic father, and parents in a loveless marriage), he is fired from his job, and he’s half-white. All of these are things Tommy Orange seems to argue are associated with the contemporary Indian.

In writing in second point of view, Orange isn’t just representing Native Americans through Thomas, but also projecting the Native American experience on the reader. These things are happening to the character Thomas, but they’re also happening to the metaphorical “you”. In these ways it fully encapsulates what the whole book does; relating Native American history to current Native experiences and opening perspectives to what it’s like to be Native America in contemporary America.

History Lessons from a Teddy Bear

In Tommy Orange’s There There, Opal has an illuminating conversation with her teddy bear. Opal tells “Two Shoes to stop talking like an Indian.” Indianness, in the way that Opal understands it, is tied with notions of spirituality and knowledge native traditions because Two Shoes uses phrases like “sacred bear medicine” and “Creator” (Orange 51). These spiritual aspects and cultural knowledge are characteristics of the identity that Opal prescribes to natives, but being native by blood is a necessary condition in Opal’s conception of Indianness. Two Shoes is a teddy bear, and this automatically disqualifies him from being native in her view. However, Two Shoes refers to the native teenagers as “our relatives,” identifying himself as a member of the native community (Orange 50). Two Shoes is, in a way, adopted by Opal, so he could feel like a part of the community through this familial tie, even if it is not one of blood. Opal named him Two Shoes, which a name that sounds similar to the style of names native people often have. Two Shoes goes on to tell Opal “we’re not so different.” Two Shoes’ notion of Indianness appears to revolve around their commonalities and shared history of suffering at the hands of “pig-brained men” (Orange 51).

Two Shoes states that the pig-brained man that misnamed Indians was Columbus, and for bears it was Teddy Roosevelt. This is an important anecdote because these are two historical figures who are still praised by many, and this stellar reputation is juxtaposed by the harm that they caused. The story that is commonly told about the origin of the name teddy bear leaves out the fact that Roosevelt “slit that old bear’s throat,” which mirrors the stories that are preached about the discovery of the so-called new world by Europeans that conveniently leave out the genocide of the natives. Roosevelt’s killing of the bear was characterized as the “kind of mercy the don’t want you to know about” (Orange 51). Again, this parrots the rhetoric of colonizers that claimed they were bringing civilization and Christianity to the natives in order to save their souls, as well as in more modern examples of assimilation schools where they would kill the Indian to save the man. Two Shoes ties this comparison of bears and natives together when he says, “Sister, they slit all our throats,” and then shares Roosevelt’s racist quote (Orange 51).

This interaction relates to the overall theme of narrative and authenticity that occurs throughout There There. The interaction is authentic because it tells the truth about what happened to Native Americans, and does not shy away from giving well-deserved criticism. Two Shoes tells Opal that “[y]ou gotta know about the history of your people” because where she is now was determined by people before her (Orange 51). Two Shoes tells Opal stories that she was unaware of, and this helps her contextualize native people’s place in history and how she wound up talking to a teddy bear on Alcatraz.

Inheriting Trauma

Orvil’s first point-of-view chapter begins with him trying on traditional regalia. His first worry in the novel is wondering if Opal will catch him. Orange writes, “Ever since they were in her care, Opal had been openly against any of them doing anything Indian” (118). Orvil is obviously drawn to his culture through dance; he wants to connect with his community and his past. Opal, however, will not teach Orvil anything about the culture from which she comes. Even though Opal is not Orvil’s mother, she is still the elder to with Orvil looks up. The older generation passes culture to the younger generation, but Opal denies Orvil this passing of knowledge. Her excuse is, as Orange writes, “[There are t]oo many risks… Especially around powwows” (118). Opal sees danger where Orvil sees community. He does not understand that to immerse himself in Native American culture means accepting the good along with the bad.

Trauma scars Opal's life. Someone rapes her sister, her niece and her mother die by suicide, she's witnessed countless people fall into alcoholism, and she almost kills her sister's would-be assailant. Her life has not been an easy one, and she associates her trauma with her culture, hence telling Orvil that there are “[t]oo many risks” (Orange 118) for her to teach him about “Indianing” (Orange 118). Her decision not to teach Orvil about the culture that has scarred her is an understandable one. Unlike Orvil, she understands that accepting culture means accepting the good and the bad. She just wants to protect Orvil from the bad.

Ultimately, Opal’s fears are realized, and someone shoots Orvil at the powwow. For Orvil’s story, the powwow is a physical manifestation of the good and bad of Native culture. Through dance, he accepts the joy of his heritage; through the fear and pain of being shot, he accepts the trauma from which Opal wanted to shield him. He cannot pick and choose what part of the culture he inherits. Opal knows this and tries to keep Orvil away from Native culture entirely. Orvil, however, chooses to immerse himself in Native culture. Being shot is not a punishment for going against Opal's wishes; rather, it is a lesson. He learns that to inherit the joy, he also inherits the trauma.

Native Symbols in There There

Tommy Orange explores the lives of modern Native Americans in his novel There There. Because of the urban setting of the novel, Orange sticks to a less stereotypical image of Native American life, which includes leaving out many symbols of superstition and myths within the Native culture. Though these symbols are left out for the most part due to the modern nature of Native American life, the symbols and myths that are used are good reminders of how Natives still remember their culture through the forced modernization and separation of their tribes.

One prevalent example of the continued use of different superstitions and myths is through Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield. Opal believes in some popular superstitions such as not stepping on cracks, but takes them to a new level ash she has the “sense that there are holes everywhere, cracks you can slip between--the world is after all, is porous” (Orange 160). Instead of having the modern American reason for not stepping on cracks, which is that it would “break your mother’s back”, Opal follows what appears to be a much more Native take on this. Natives have a tremendous amount of respect for the natural earth, and her rationale for not stepping on cracks correlates with this ideal, showing that she has her superstitions due to her Native heritage.

Another symbol that is seen is the recurrence of spider legs. The spider leg symbol is one that was quite confusing to many, as it was very casually thrown in, but still had a large significance. Though Opals other superstitions were examples of very clear beliefs that she held, the symbol of the spider legs were not as obvious. Jacquie Red Feather is the first character who appears with the spider symbol as she has it as a tattoo of a web on her foot. She recounts the significance of her tattoo as a memory of her mother telling her that a spider’s web was a trap, connecting it to her own issues saying “[in] this case jacquie was the spider, and the minifridge was the web” (Orange 101). Jacquie decided to toss the minifridge to get out of the web and trap that is alcoholism, and therefore continued her trek to a more mature and fulfilled life. The spider legs symbol was also seen in Jacquie’s sister, Opal, and her son Orvile. Opal pulled out the spider legs from her legs right before she left with Jacquie to escape from her abusive home (Orange 165-166). The escape from the constant abuse and the start of a new life shows Opal’s emergence into a better, more flourishing, adult life. Orvile pulled out the spider legs directly before he went to the powwow, showing his emergence into a life more fulfilled by his interests in the Native community, and his own sense of belonging in that community. However, before he went to the powwow, him and his brothers decided that the legs were “‘[definitely] indian’”, showing a significant Indian specific symbol in the novel (Orange 128).

Identity Crises in There There

Continuing our discussion in class, I believe that there are some similarities between the African American experience and the Native American experience, specifically when it comes to identity. Within the black community, there is sometimes tension between Africans and African Americans. This is due to African immigrants refusing to identify as black because they can trace their ancestry back to a specific country in Africa, while African Americans don’t have knowledge or access to their cultures of origin. In There There, some characters display some sort of identity crisis because they don’t know much about their Native heritage.

For example, Opal never taught her grandsons anything about being Native, leading Orvil to look online to watch powwow footage and documentaries and reading articles online about “what [it means] to be a real Indian,” (121). Despite his efforts, he still feels like “a fake, a copy a boy playing dress-up,” (122). Even at the powwow, when he dances alongside other ‘real’ Indians, “[he] tries to shake off the feeling of feeling like a fraud,” (232). Because of his disconnection with his heritage, Orvil still feels like he doesn’t belong in Native spaces, despite his eagerness to go to the powwow and be in that space.

When it comes to Dene and Calvin, they both had absent fathers and never learned much about what it means to be Native from either of their parents. In his interview with Dene, Calvin says, “I feel bad sometimes even saying I’m Native. Mostly I just feel like I’m from Oakland,” (148). While this introduces the idea of being Native but not identifying as such, does identifying as Native mean that one must know about the culture and history of Native Americans? This identity crisis seems to be echoed by Natives everywhere; Calvin mentions that “there’s a lot of Natives living in Oakland and in the Bay Area with similar stories. But it’s like [they] can’t talk about it because it’s not really a Native story, but then it is at the same time,” (148).

Blue has a similar experience. She is adopted and, growing up, she “knew [she] wasn’t white. But not all the way”; even after finding out about her Cheyenne mother on her eighteenth birthday, continues “feeling white while being treated like any other brown person wherever [she] went,” (198). Blue has a double consciousness, feeling white on the inside while having darker, seemingly Mexican physical features, and she doesn’t feel like she belongs until she starts working at the Indian Center in Oakland.

Because of their identity crises, the characters in There There seek Indiana spaces in a search of a space where they belong. Tying this back to African American experiences, more recently, black Americans have been embracing African cultures through music and clothing. Afrobeats are becoming increasingly popular in mainstream music and even on IU’s campus, many African American students attend African Student Association meetings and events, possibly in attempt to reconnect with their roots.

The Trapping of History in Opal and Jacquie

At the beginning of Part Three, Tommy Orange quotes James Baldwin when he writes, “people are trapped in history and history is trapped in them” (Orange 157). Throughout There There, the characters constantly reference their history to describe the problems they deal with in the present as described in the quote. Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield and Jacquie Red Feather are two of the characters that best exemplify this relationship. As half-sisters, they share a similar past but have quite different lives in the present.

Opal and Jacquie’s shared history is described in detail by Opal in Part One. They are introduced in a house that is “the brightest but smallest house on the block” (Orange 45). Their mother then forces them to rush to Alcatraz during the Native American occupation. Opal describes her experience there as “stay[ing] on the island because there was no other choice” (Orange 56). She also leaves her teddy bear out in the elements which weather it. She leaves the teddy bear behind, symbolizing Opal leaving behind her Native American culture. Jacquie gets along better than Opal at first, but Jacquie is then assaulted by Harvey, a teenager on the island who is initially a part of her friend group. She also is introduced to alcohol by Harvey, which is a problem that sticks with her to the present.

In the present, Jacquie is trying to not let alcohol control her life. She is introduced as sober for ten days, but to her “ten days is the same as a year when you want to drink all the time” (Orange 99). She is now working as a mental health and substance abuse counselor to help others that suffer the same problems she does. Jacquie is attending a mental health conference when she goes to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. At the meeting, she encounters Harvey from Alcatraz, and he reveals that he has been sober since 1982. Their shared past justifiably angers Jacquie, but she reluctantly allows herself to go with Harvey to the Oakland powwow so she can visit her Opal and Jacquie’s grandchildren.

Opal is currently living in Oakland working as a mail carrier for the USPS. She is quite superstitious; examples of this are not stepping on cracks in the pavement and delivering the mail to the odd numbered houses first. This superstition hearkens back to when she leaves Two Shoes out on the Alcatraz coast and leaving her Native American culture behind. Despite her best efforts, she still has certain aspects of Native American culture in her life. The two main examples are the traditional garb Orvil discovers and the “lump that’s been in [Orvil’s] leg for as long as he can remember” (Orange 125) that Opal also shares. This lump has spider legs in it, which is a Cheyenne omen for a bad occurrence in the future. The history Opal and Jacquie share is trapped in them through spider legs and alcoholism, proving the James Baldwin quote true.

Keeping the Past Alive in an Ever-changing Present

          Tommy Orange’s There There focuses on undermining the popular one-sided view of Native Americans and their culture by sharing the diverse stories of Native lives in an urban setting. The theme of storytelling in the novel serves to not only create an accurate depiction of life for Natives today, but also to incorporate the importance of history in Native American culture and how it works to shape Native identity and community across urban centers today. Early on, Orange begins to show the importance of keeping past Native American history alive when the prologue discusses the horrible treatment of Natives as they were pushed from their land by colonizing Americans. Orange writes that the English “first came for [Natives] with their bullets, [but Natives] didn’t stop moving even though the bullets moved twice as fast as the sound of [Native] screams” (10). This gruesome history is shown to live on throughout the novel and is foreshadowed when Orange says, “the bullets moved on after moving through [Native Americans and] became the promise of what was to come” (10). This history is what led to diversification of Native people as they began new lives in cities, but the complete cycle of the past to the present depicted in the novel shows this history remains. History is also used by characters like Orvil to find identity and understand what it means to be Native American. Orvil tries to get his grandmother to tell him about his history but ultimately has to learn from the internet by searching “what does it mean to be a real Indian” (121).

The Native American reliance on history to find identity is also discussed in the epigraph to “Part III: The Return.” It states, “people are trapped in history and history is trapped in them” (157). This epigraph begins to complete the circle of the novel when it says, “history is trapped in them.” Orange is saying that, although history is important and brings identity and community to Native Americans, it is their history that continues to define them and lead to horrible circumstances that they cannot seem to escape. The final shooting at the Big Oakland Powwow is a gruesome depiction of history as it has been experienced by Native Americans. It symbolizes the hardships that they continue to endure. Even when the Native community tries to get together to celebrate their culture, they are hunted, shot down, and dispersed, just as their ancestors were. When Tony decides to charge the gunman, Charles, he does not let the bullets slow him down, he decides to keep fighting. Tony runs at Charles and, “when the second bullet hits him in the leg, he stumbles but doesn’t lose speed” (287). The bullets from their history continue to hit Native Americans today, but Orange shows that they will not give up. They will continue to search for community and find their identity, no matter how diverse they may become. They are trapped in this history and reality, but they must hold onto this history to continue to find strength and fight back.