Books, Philosophy
This book is about the experience of being Native American and living in a city, specifically Oakland, California. Each chapter is a short snippet of a different person’s life, sometimes only a few pages. I was amazed that I could understand someone so well after being in their shoes for just a few moments. These character snapshots are interspersed with Orange’s own views on Native life, especially in a city. He dabbles in history and explains many Native customs and views, drawing us deeper into his culture.
Orange’s writing is poignant, cutting at times. He pulls no punches on his characters or the world they live in, his characters all floundering in their own way and the world painted as cruel and insensitive. The story centers around an Oakland Powwow, some characters involved in the planning, one boy preparing (in secret) to dance in full regalia for the first time, several others preparing to rob the place. The story progressively feels like a slow-motion car crash. You know the inevitable conclusion. You can’t look away. The writing was beautiful, the pacing fantastic, the history and story tragic.
But we all know the tragic story of what it means to be Native in America—driven from homes, cut off from culture. My favorite quote from the book comes from one of the ‘narrator’ chapters, where Orange is writing his own thoughts:
“This is the thing: If you have the option to not think about or even consider history, whether you learned it right or not, or whether it even deserves consideration, that’s how you know you’re on board the ship that serves hors d’oeuvres and fluffs your pillows, while others are out at sea, swimming or drowning, or clinging to little inflatable rafts that they have to take turns keeping inflated, people short of breath, who’ve never even heard of the words hors d’oeuvres or fluff. Then someone from up on the yacht says, “It’s too bad those people down there are lazy, and not as smart and able as we are up here, we who have built these strong, large, stylish boats ourselves, we who float the seven seas like kings.” And then someone else on board says something like, “But your father gave you this yacht, and these are his servants who brought the hors d’oeuvres.” At which point that person gets tossed overboard by a group of hired thugs who’d been hired by the father who owned the yacht, hired for the express purpose of removing any and all agitators on the yacht to keep them from making unnecessary waves, or even referencing the father or the yacht itself. Meanwhile, the man thrown overboard begs for his life, and the people on the small inflatable rafts can’t get to him soon enough, or they don’t even try, and the yacht’s speed and weight cause an undertow. Then in whispers, while the agitator gets sucked under the yacht, private agreements are made, precautions are measured out, and everyone quietly agrees to keep on quietly agreeing to the implied rule of law and to not think about what just happened. Soon, the father, who put these things in place, is only spoken of in the form of lore, stories told to children at night, under the stars, at which point there are suddenly several fathers, noble, wise forefathers. And the boat sails on unfettered.”
This, alongside the tragic stories of his characters—all of them driven into hardship by the poverty and abuse that seems attached to their heritage, affected me deeply. I’ll be thinking about it for a long time.
I’ve been reading a few other books by Native authors that lean more toward ‘Native wisdom.’ There has been an effort lately to learn from Native peoples how to care for the land we all share and bring balance back into the lives we live. That’s what I hear talked about more when people discuss Native Americans. There’s much to learn. We would all be better people if we incorporated the ethics of the ‘Healthy Harvest’ into our lives.
But at the same time, are we just taking again? Taking their knowledge and creating wellness practices and making ourselves feel better for doing a land acknowledgement before the City Council decides whether or not to tear down the community garden and build another Walmart? Where is the talk of reparations?
Reparations are happening, in small steps by people who do care. The community/nature preserve where I used to live has been fostering relationships with the native tribes in the area. There are a few people who come to collect acorns to make traditional foods and have planted different plants for basket and medicine making. They’ve been promised that they can come collect from this piece of land that used to support their people.
I attended a workshop there, on the land, taught by a Native woman. She showed us how to make beads from different materials and steep manzanita tea. She taught us the uses of several plants, and I was awed to see the plants I’d lived among be unfolded before my eyes, as though they’d been shyly hiding their secrets from me all this time.
Orange writes:
“Being Indian has never been about returning to the land. The land is everywhere or nowhere.”
Reading There, There you see the internal struggle of being Native and living in a city. What does it mean to be Native, especially if you are cut off from access to the land, you can barely afford rent, and the nearest forest is an hour’s drive away.
I’ve had struggles with identity as well, as I’m sure we all have. Wondering who and what I am, exploring the heritage of a country that my family left almost two hundred years ago and coming up feeling empty and more lost than before, feeling divided by different visions of what life could be and the needs that drive different stories I tell of my own life—community and solitude, family and work, exploration and rootedness, the excitement of city life and the serenity of the wild faraway places of the word. Wondering all this time where home really is, where I can find my people and a place where I know I belong.
I’m coming to realize that such a place doesn’t exist, and also that I’m full of contradictions and conflicting needs and wants. I don’t have to live anywhere special, or be doing my ’dream job,’ or travel the world to be able to find myself. Just like you don’t have to be communing with nature to be a “real Indian.”
The land is everywhere. We’re all living in it, the people that we already are. I think that’s a good place to start, at least a good place to start to understand yourself.