Throughout the novel There There, characters can be taken to represent different aspects of time, either through their direct rumination of its effect on their culture and heritage, or indirectly through their actions and mediums. Certain factions show up, each with a different take, but a same chronological position: Opal and Bill, for example, take up the side of ‘the past’ – the history of being an American Indian in the United States – while characters like Orvil and Edwin represent the ‘modern’ or ‘the future’ American Indian.
The way Opal raises her grand-nephews shows two views which
situate her in the past: first, Opal is reluctant for the boys to participate
in or celebrate their native ancestry. She looks down on it as a sort of
dangerous responsibility; she likens “Indianing” to “drinking or driving or
smoking or voting” (173). The second is her desire to prepare them for the
inevitable prejudice they will face for their being Indian. She thinks that “She
needs to push them harder because it will take more or them to succeed than
someone who is not Native,” (242). Despite this, Orvil and his brothers attend
the Powwow, and Orvil, who educated himself through YouTube videos, performs a
traditional dance.
Similarly, Bill has a hard view on the life of the American
Indian, and his reflection on his son Edwin’s “baby” character shows a sort of
disapproval for the way modern technology steals the truth of Native oppression
from the youth; “When it comes to the real cold hard gritty world outside,
beyond the screen, without the screen, [Edwin]’s a baby,” (119). Edwin,
meanwhile, struggles with meeting this expectation, trying to bridge together
the Native life into something real in the present. Referring to art, Edwin
explains how difficult it is for modern indigenous music to truly be both
modern and indigenous. He explains that “If it isn’t pulling from tradition,
how is it Indigenous? And if it stuck in tradition, in the past, how can it be
relevant to other Indigenous people living now, how can it be modern?” (112)
The shooting which takes place at the Powwow represents
something which truly unites the Native people, no matter their place in time:
violence. Among the victims of the crossfire, Bill, Edwin, Orvil, and Thomas (a
drummer who we might also say represents the present) are shot, with Bill and
Thomas confirmed as dead. The violence, both in history and in the present,
affects Natives indiscriminately. Of note, however, is that Dene Oxendene
lives. As someone who spends his entire time recording the stories of Natives,
both young and old, we might be able to say that Dene represents the full,
unabridged history of the Native people, something which, despite the violence,
lives on.
I'm glad you wrote this post about the unity of time through violence. I noticed that there are past, present and future representations through the characters, but didn't realize the connection of all them through violence. There's often the saying that the future generation will be the one to enact real change. Bill and Thomas, the past and the present, dying could also mean that even though violence unites the times, the future generation will be the ones who live through it and enact change. During Orvil's point of view of the shooting, the reader sees that he still yearns for more. Orvil "wants to hear the drum one more time. He wants to stand up to stand up, to fly away in all his bloodied feathers" (Orange 401). This want, this drive symbolizes the future generation that even through experiencing violence, he wants to learn more about what it means to be Native American and wants to experience his culture. At the end of his passage he thinks "he needs to remember that he needs to keep breathing" (Orange 401). He is fighting to live compared to Bill and Thomas who both up and die wit acceptance. Orvil, like the future generation of Native Americans have the passion and the means to learn about their history and culture and will change the way Native Americans are viewed.
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