There There

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”