Harvey is talking a lot he starts telling her a story about a time he got stuck out here in the desert, drinking tequila with two of his buddies. Jacquie and Harvey drive through the desert. Calvin doesn’t know what to do with all the talk of blood and lineage. Dene tells him that, according to his mom, they should forget their Native ancestors, even as they live on in them. He knows that a lot of Natives have similar stories to his family, but he doesn’t feel like his is a particularly Native story. The Big Oakland Powwow will be his first. One time, he got robbed in the parking lot on his way to a powwow. His mom has Native blood on her Mexican side, but he doesn’t know too much about that either. Calvin tells him that his dad never talked about being Native and left their family at some point. Dene introduces the project and asks Calvin for a story. Calvin tunes out, bored.ĭene interviews Calvin for his storytelling project in Blue’s office.
![sparknotes there there tommy orange sparknotes there there tommy orange](https://66.media.tumblr.com/1c5a8c3cb496ac80e5fb48fa76ff5bca/tumblr_p973wj5mBY1x4ktkeo3_r1_500.png)
He introduces himself as Dene and says he will be setting up a storytelling booth.
![sparknotes there there tommy orange sparknotes there there tommy orange](https://64.media.tumblr.com/06c87b66b702a300fcf547dbb221965d/tumblr_pbhf5qV6D01u8bgh0o1_540.jpg)
Another young man walks in who barely looks native. Stammering, he tells the group he plans on enrolling with the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes, and he’s here to help out with the powwow. Blue begins the meeting by asking Edwin to introduce himself. Thomas Frank, the custodian, walks in, smelling like alcohol, and introduces himself to the big guy, Edwin. Calvin had suggested the name, “Big Oakland Powwow” as a joke, and everyone had loved it. They had gotten a big grant and wanted to expand the reach of the powwow. The committee had wanted fresh perspectives. Blue and Maggie used to work together in youth services, and it was she who got Calvin the job. Looking up at the moon, watching his breath made visible in the air by the cold, he wonders how he has arrived here, at the coliseum, swinging bullets into the bushes in preparation for the Powwow.Ĭalvin arrives at the powwow committee meeting and sits down next to a big guy, the only one without a plate of food. Once there, he places the bullets into pairs of socks and swings them into the bushes behind the metal detector. Tony buys them at a Walmart in Oakland, puts them in his backpack, and rides his bike to the coliseum. They are packed in boxes of sixteen and stored in a warehouse in California for seven years. The bullets come from the Black Hills Ammunition Plant in South Dakota. The tragedy will be how long Native people have fought for recognition, only to die at their own gathering. When the bullets come, they will be almost expected. At the same time, it is expected in the same way that death is. No one at the Powwow expects gun violence-shootings happen somewhere else, to other people. White men also gave Natives their last names to keep track of them. Descendants of colonizers say Natives should “get over it” without realizing that they benefit from the violent deeds of their ancestors. Now, Indians have survived, but it is not resilience, not a badge of honor. Blood matters: it used to define their “Indianness” to the colonizers. Their mix of white and Native blood varies. Every kind of Indian, from cities, reservations, and everything in between, travel to the Oakland Powwow because it is one of the last places where they can be together. First, the narrator explains the far-reaching phenomenon of a Powwow.
![sparknotes there there tommy orange sparknotes there there tommy orange](https://www.frenchfragrance.com/15915-large_default/tommy-hilfiger-bold-eau-de-toilette-100-ml.jpg)
The first section of Interlude is in essay format, like the opening prologue.