There There

“Being Indian has never been about returning to the land. The land is everywhere or nowhere.”

Place is a critical component of the novel. While most of the characters live in or near Oakland, the book interrogates the idea that “returning to the land” allows Indigenous Americans to be in touch with their identity. Indeed, much of the novel argues that Indigenous Americans can claim their identity regardless of place and in relation to it.

“Maybe I am a ghost. Maybe Maxine doesn’t even know who I am. Maybe I’m the opposite of a medicine person. Maybe I’m’a do something one day, and everybody’s gonna know about me. Maybe that’s when I’ll come to life. Maybe that’s when they’ll finally be able to look at me, because they’ll have to.”

Tony, whose narrative frames the novel, lives on the outskirts of society because of his physical appearance. This suggestion that he may be “a ghost” critically foreshadows his decision to sacrifice his life to stop the powwow shooting. Through this act, he forces others to “finally be able to look” at him.

“We had our own way of naming before white people came over and spread all those dad names around in order to keep the power with the dads.”

All of the characters associated with the Bear Shield and Red Feather family have names that most white Americans perceive to be atypical. These names stand in contrast to the characters with more Americanized names, and although some of the Red Feather family feel frustrated at times with their names, they also feel that there is something special about having a different kind of name.

“We got in the car and rode home in silence, the low sound of the engine and road leading us toward some shit we’d never make our way back from.”

Calvin reflects on his choice to support Octavio in the scheme to rob the powwow. As Calvin rides home with his brother, he suggests that this decision will lead the group “toward some shit we’d never make our way back from.” This prescient realization comes to pass when Calvin is shot and dies at the powwow.

“Kids are jumping out the windows of burning buildings, falling to their deaths. And we think the problem is that they’re jumping. This is what we’ve done: We’ve tried to find ways to get them to stop jumping. Convince them that burning alive is better than leaving when the shit gets too hot for them to take. […] They’re making the decision that it’s better to be dead and gone than to be alive in what we have here, this life, the one we made for them, the one they’ve inherited. And we’re either involved and have a hand in each one of their deaths […] or we’re absent, which is still involvement, just like silence is not silence but is not speaking up.”

A presenter tells this lengthy story at the conference Jacquie attends. This question of why young Indigenous Americans are dying by suicide or from addiction reveals one of Orange’s underlying arguments in the novel. The deaths of young Indigenous Americans are not, to Orange, going to be changed by finding “ways to get them to stop jumping.” Instead, these youths must be allowed to inherit a different life than the “one we made for them.”

“The trickster spider, Veho, her mom used to tell her and Opal about, he was always stealing eyes to see better. Veho was the white man who came and made the old world watch with his eyes. Look. See here, the way it’s gonna be is, first you’re gonna give me all your land, then your attention, until you forget how to give it. Until your eyes are drained and you can’t see behind you and there’s nothing ahead, and the needle, the bottle, or the pipe is the only thing in sight that makes any sense.”

The trickster white man accomplishes his greatest colonial efforts not just by murdering Indigenous Americans. He also does it by recreating systems of seeing and understanding so that Indigenous people are tempted to use “the needle, the bottle, or the pipe” to cope with their circumstances. This analysis clearly pinpoints white colonial efforts as the cause of addiction in Indigenous communities.

“You can’t really think you’re gonna be the one who finally turns it all around for me. I would fucking kill myself if you were the one to finally help. Do you understand that?”

Jacquie vehemently argues against the idea that Harvey can “fix” her. This is because he is the one who caused her pain and set her life on its difficult path. Although she agrees to ride with him to Oakland, Jacquie makes sure to insulate herself from Harvey’s attempt to repair her past.

“There was even one time, when he was dancing in Opal’s room with his eyes closed, when he felt like it was all his ancestors who made it so he could be there dancing and listening to that sound, singing right there in his ears through all those hard years they made it through.”

Orvil picks up on powwow dancing without any encouragement or teaching. He begins listening to the music and then starts dancing. In this way, Orvil is able to find a deep connection to “his ancestors” even though he has no way to learn about his history. Orvil’s capacity to be able to find his ancestry in this way implies that Orange believes that Indigenous identity can exist and be understood even when it is erased from direct teaching between generations.

“I know guns are stupid. But that doesn’t mean they don’t make you feel in control when you’re holding one.”

The 3D-printed guns cause all the deaths at the novel’s end. Daniel reflects on the ways that guns allow people to feel control. The young men who perpetrate the violence are seeking this kind of control, since they have only limited ways of being in power in their lives.

“Anyway, I mostly see Oakland from online now. That’s where we’re all gonna be mostly eventually. Online.”

Daniel, like Edwin, stays online most of the time instead of leaving his house. His statement suggests a belief that people are becoming less and less connected to physical reality. This also highlights the generational divide between young men like Edwin and older men like Bill.

“Cuz that means there’s something going on, somewhere inside all of it, all that turning the world is always doing, that means it was never supposed to stay the same heat. Miss you.”

As Daniel concludes an email to his dead brother, he feels somewhat hopeful. No matter what, he believes the world is always going to change. This statement comes right before the climax of the novel, implying that the shooting is just part of this “turning the world is always doing.”

“I brought home outdated racist insults from school like it was the 1950s. All Mexican slurs, of course, since people where I grew up don’t know Natives still exist. That’s how much those Oakland hills separate us from Oakland. Those hills bend time.”

Blue, who was raised by a white family outside of Oakland, experiences her Indigenous identity in very different ways from many of the other characters. She suggests here that the physical separation of the Oakland hills “bend[s] time” by allowing the white inhabitants of the suburbs to stay within their outdated racist modes of living.

“Maybe we’ve all been speaking the broken tongue of angels and demons too long to know that that’s what we are, who we are, what we’re speaking. Maybe we don’t ever die but change, always in the State without hardly ever even knowing that we’re in it.”

Thomas remembers his mother telling him that taking drugs was like going into heaven. He thinks that maybe there is no death, and that, instead, one can find “the State” he is always searching for as an escape from trauma. Later, when Thomas lies actually dying, he returns to this idea.

“Your prayer will be the hit and the song and the keeping of time. Your prayer will begin and end with the song.”

Music, and drumming specifically, are viewed as a form of prayer. Both Thomas and Orvil view their relationship to music as a way to offer a prayer into the world. This healing property makes scenes involving music of particular importance in the novel.

“This unflinching stare into the void of addiction and depravity, this is the kind of thing only a camera can keep its eye wide open for.”

Dene likes using a camera because it allows one to record a different kind of story than if a person is just observing. The camera can keep “its eye wide open” even when a person cannot. This reveals a deeper intention of Dene’s storytelling project, which might be to capture more about the Indigenous experience than even a book could do.

“The dread keeps going, moves out of him, like he had his chance with what it was telling him but he missed it, because just as he feels it a bullet drops and rolls out in front of him.”

As Octavio loads his gun with the bullets in the bathroom, he feels a passing sense of dread. If he had listened to this dread, Octavio might not have started the shooting at the powwow. But instead of listening to it, he continues loading the gun, and many people are hurt as a result.

“Harvey turns to him and sees him right away for who he is.”

Though an imperfect character in many ways, Harvey is also able to see the real parts of people. He immediately recognizes Edwin as his son. This kind of honest vision makes Harvey an interesting supporting character as he builds a new relationship with Jacquie in the second half of the novel.

“He doesn’t want to know what he knows but he knows.”

Orvil knows that he has been shot and injured but wants to “stand up” instead. The youngest narrator in the book, Orvil is presented as remarkably insightful and thoughtful. His injury occurs just after he has completed his first powwow dance, so that the greatest sadness is that he might not dance again.

“He wants to believe he knows how to dance a prayer and pray for a new world. He wants to keep breathing. He needs to keep breathing. He needs to remember that he needs to keep breathing.”

Orvil is presented as almost an angelic figure in this section of his narrative, as he “wants to believe he […can] pray for a new world.” His capacity for getting in touch with his ancestral practices makes him a bridge between tradition and modern Indigenous life. As he remembers to keep breathing, his ability to survive the shooting adds hope to the novel’s conclusion.

“She wonders, she has the thought Did someone really come to get us here? Now? She doesn’t know what she means.”

Many of the final scenes of the novel do not directly reference the violence in Indigenous history. However, Opal’s comment about someone coming “to get us here” signifies the fragile position of Indigenous Americans: They are always potentially threatened by someone coming to kill them or divest them of their experiences.

“Some part of him is trying to leave, into the dark cloud he’s only ever emerged from later. But Tony means to stay, and he does. His vision brightens.”

Tony wills himself to survive long enough to stop the shooting. He does this despite having been shot several times. The “dark cloud” is part of something he has experienced in the past because of “the Drome.”

“He feels harder than anything that might come at him, speed, heat, metal, distance, even time.”

As Tony runs into the heart of the shooting at the powwow, he realizes that he is able to compete against the danger ahead. His ability to be “harder than anything” allows him to even transcend “time,” which is both literal in the way that he resists falling down from being shot, as well as metaphorical in how his narrative slows down the “time” of the novel so that others can survive.

“He watches himself go up, out of himself, then he watches himself from above, looks at his body and remembers that it was never actually really him. He was never Tony just like he was never the Drome. Both were masks.”

Tony’s death scene concludes the novel. As he begins dying, Tony realizes that both his identities, Tony and “the Drome,” were “masks.” Because Tony is the character who frames the novel, a core message of the book is that identity is not possible to quantify or define—that a person’s body is not “really” them.