Why a Booktrail?
An array of contemporary Native American voices
There There
What you need to know before your trail
Jacquie Red Feather and her sister Opal grew up together, relying on each other during their unsettled childhood. As adults they were driven apart, but Jacquie is newly sober and trying to make it back to the family she left behind. That’s why she is there.
Dene is there because he has been collecting stories to honour his uncle’s death. Edwin is looking for his true father. Opal came to watch her boy Orvil dance. All of them are connected by bonds they may not yet understand.
All of them are there for the cultural celebration that is the Big Oakland Powwow.
But Tony Loneman is also there. And Tony has come to the Powwow with darker intentions.
Locations
Reset- America/ USA - CA - Oakland
- A: Oakland Raiders baseball stadium
- B: Intertribal Friendship House
- C: Fruitvale
- D: Oakland Hills
Travel Guide
Oakland
A story about the Native American struggle in Oakland. This is the examination of how colonialism can result in the loss of Native American culture.
The novel speaks through the personal experiences of the author and many characters in the story, a group of Indians / Natives that intersect at a powwow at the Oakland Raiders baseball stadium in California.
This is a journey of cultural identity.
We made powwows because we needed a place to be together. Something intertribal, something old, something to make us money, something we could work towards, for our jewellery, our songs, our dances, our drum. We kept powwowing because there aren’t many places where we get to be all together, where we get to see and hear each other.
What does it mean to be Native. What does it mean to be White?
“Getting us to cities was supposed to be the final, necessary step in our assimilation, absorption, erasure …. But the city made us new and we made it ours”
Tommy Orange:
“I want to bring something new to the vision of the Native experience as seen on the screen. We haven’t seen the Urban Indian story. What we’ve seen is full of the kind of stereotypes that are the reason no one is interested in the Native story in general …..it’s too sad, so sad it can’t even be entertaining .. but more importantly because of the way its portrayed it looks pathetic …. [but] the individual people and stories you come across are not pathetic or weak or in need of pity, and there is real passion there and rage”
Booktrail Boarding Pass: There There
Destination : Oakland Author/Guide: Tommy Orange
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