There There Themes

The Nature of Modern Urban Native Identity

Tommy Orange, as part of the New Native Renaissance, deals extensively with the theme of what it means to be an Urban Indian. Today’s Urban Indians are likely to be a generation or more removed from their tribal or ancestral families and lands. Still, many are actively involved in local Native communities and are well educated in Native American history. Meanwhile, others locate their identities in the cities in which they live rather than in their tribal heritage.

Questions about the nature of Native identity—who can lay claim to it and how it should be expressed—are constantly visited in There There. Edwin Black, a young man raised by his white mother with no contact with his Native father, struggles with feeling “not Native enough.” Although he has a degree in Native American literature and is knowledgeable about issues that affect Native people, Edwin feels like an imposter when considering claiming Native identity. “Every… way I think… to say I’m Native seems wrong,” he confesses.

Calvin Johnson echoes Edwin’s sentiment about identity. In Dene Oxendene’s storytelling booth, Calvin expresses ambivalence over Dene’s request that Calvin tell a story about what it means to be Native in Oakland. Calvin mentions his lack of a father growing up and notes that many Oakland Natives have the same experience. Yet he is adamant that fatherlessness is not “what being Native means.” Calvin doesn’t want to present a negative experience as a typical one. Yet he recognizes his own contradiction when he says, “We can’t talk about it because it’s not… a Native story, but then it is.”

The Trauma of History

For the characters in There There, history is both a traumatic inherited legacy and a continuous force in their lives. Orange shares the belief of African American author James Baldwin that “people are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.” The quote prefaces Part 3 of the novel.

History is a wound in the lives of Native people, but one that is always changing. As the narrator muses using this metaphor, the wound that was made “when white people… took all… has never healed.” However, the living wound of history doesn’t define the limits of Native identity, nor does it turn Natives into “broken” people. They continue adapting to new circumstances and environments.

Voicing, sharing and listening to Native experiences—a task that Dene Oxendene facilitates by filming Oakland Indians telling their stories—is important but not sufficient for healing. The climax of the novel’s plot is an eerie and horrifying repetition of the long history of the massacres of Native people. That the nature of the wound has changed over time is underscored by the fact that this massacre is performed by Native people rather than by white outsiders.

Indians on the Move

Indians in America have always been on the move. Periodic, seasonal migration was a way of life for many tribes as they followed cyclical patterns of hunting and gathering. This natural history was perverted first by white Europeans who wanted sole control of the land in the eastern part of the continent. The second push came from American statesmen whose demands for land tried to erase the Indian identity, thus putting Native Americans in a perpetual peripatetic existence.

This experience is dramatized in the novel by the many characters who are on the road, both figuratively and literally. Tony Loneman rides his bike aimlessly around town. Dene takes the BART, writes his name on its walls, and sees infinity in its map. Blue drives around Oakland trying to organize the powwow, with each stop changing her understanding of who she is. Harvey and Jacquie Red Feather travel to Oakland together, abuser and victim, neither sure what to do about their past.

There There can be characterized as a peripatetic novel. Famous examples include The Decameron (written c. 1348–53; Giovanni Boccaccio, 1313–75), The Canterbury Tales (written 1387–92; Geoffrey Chaucer, c. 1342/43–1400), Don Quixote (1605; Miguel de Cervantes, 1547–1616), Pilgrim’s Progress (1678; John Bunyan, 1628–88), and Tristram Shandy (written 1759–67; Laurence Sterne, 1713–68). In these stories, the main characters unite on a voyage. However, such novels are usually lighthearted and endearing, whereas Orange’s is deeply disturbing. His characters do not actually leave Oakland. Instead, they remain perpetually on the move, with nowhere to go.