THERE THERE

Author: Tommy Orange
Year: 2018
Publisher: Bokförlaget Polaris
Language: Swedish (translator Eva Åsefeldt)

Present day America. The date for the annual pow wow in Oakland is approaching. Native Americans, predominantly from the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes, prepare for the great event, each for their own personal reasons. A middle-aged woman is going to re-unite with her children, a young man to collect stories for posterity, still another to dance for the first time in the ritual dances, and some are up to no good and plan to steal the safe containing rewards for the winners in various competitions.

Tommy Orange’s “Pow wow” (“There, There”) follows a dozen individuals in their preparations for the big day. It is a groundbreaking novel that reexamines the narrative of contemporary Native American life. Some critics have already hailed it as the beginning of a new era in Native American writing in the United States.

By means of a diverse gallery of characters and interwoven storylines, the book offers an intimate depiction of the challenges faced by Native peoples navigating urban environments, grappling with history, and negotiating identity in the 21^st century. Among the characters, to me Edwin Black in particular stands out as a compelling figure whose struggles illustrate the complexities of later-generation First Nations identity.

Edwin Black, a middle-aged man living in Oakland, embodies the tension of inherited trauma without the means to process it. The son of a white mother and a Cheyenne father, he is raised with little exposure to his Native roots. He struggles with alcoholism, obesity, sporadic employment, and his addiction to online gaming. Yet beneath this dysfunction lies a yearning for cultural grounding. His identity is less about participation in traditional rituals, which he remains largely oblivious of, and more about negotiating absence: absence of homeland, of community, and of coherent selfhood. Edwin’s narrative exemplifies the identity struggles likely faced by many later-generation First Nations individuals, whose connection to their heritage is fragmented due to historical displacement, systemic erasure, and colonial assimilation policies.

In this respect, Edwin’s experience shares similarities with second-generation immigrants in countries such as Sweden, who juggle multiple cultural belongings. Both groups negotiate between inherited cultural identity and dominant societal norms. However, the key difference lies in the historical context: second-generation immigrants often engage with living, accessible cultures from their parents’ homelands. Their identity is tied to a physical place where their heritage is prevalent as an idea. Edwin, on the other hand, must reconstruct identity from fragmented histories, oral narratives, and intermittent exposure to tribal knowledge, often from a distant, perhaps mythical, past. The urban Native experience, as dramatised by Edwin, is thus uniquely burdened by historical erasure and dispossession, making identity reclamation both a personal and generational endeavour, based on myth rather than roots.

Comparatively, later-generation First Nations identity shares features with other stateless or marginalised peoples, such as Kurds, Roma, and Sami. All face pressures of marginalisation, displacement, or cultural suppression. Kurds navigate multiple nation-states that deny sovereignty; Roma contend with centuries of persecution and societal marginalisation; the Sami face assimilationist pressures in Arctic regions. In this sense Native Americans’ experience is similar in its intimate connection to settler colonialism and land dispossession. Unlike diasporic peoples whose cultures may persist across borders, later-generation Native Americans must contend with erasure within a single nation-state. Edwin’s identity crisis is therefore intertwined with the absence of homeland and the historical trauma, adding layers of complexity absent from many other marginalised identities.

Juxtaposed with second-generation immigrant identity, Edwin’s experience is uniquely shaped by politics of recognition and erasure. Immigrant communities often negotiate belonging within pluralistic frameworks, while urban Native Americans must assert cultural presence against a backdrop of historical invisibility. It is telling that while a mere 0.3% of the population in the United States identified as First Nation in 1960, nearly 3% did so in 2020. Similarly, compared with Kurds, Roma, or Sami, the struggle of Native Americans intertwines personal, cultural, and legal dimensions: treaties, reservations, and federal recognition create a complex framework where identity is simultaneously lived and legislated. Edwin’s search for selfhood is therefore not only personal but also political, bridging historical trauma with contemporary urban realities.

Orange’s structural choice to follow multiple characters amplifies these explorations. For Edwin, the Oakland Coliseum pow wow symbolises both a literal and metaphorical “there”: a site of reconnection, performance, and confrontation with the past. Like other characters, such as Orvil Red Feather who learns traditional dance through Youtube, Opal Bear Shield who tries to hold her family together in a hostile social environment, and Dene Oxendene who documents Native stories as a filmmaker, Edwin’s journey emphasises the active labour required to reconstruct identity in contemporary urban contexts. The novel shows that Native identity in cities is neither static nor monolithic; it is a dynamic interplay of memory, cultural performance (or re-enactment even), and resilience. One could argue that the colonial and later US authorities over the centuries successfully shattered it, but failed to erase it.

In conclusion, “Pow wow” is a profound exploration of identity, trauma, and resilience. The individual journeys of each of the characters illustrate the particular struggles of later-generation Native Americans negotiating urban life and ancestral heritage. Tommy Orange’s novel challenges readers to confront the legacies of colonisation, the nuances of urban Native identity, and the interplay between past and present. This is knowledge that has been available to sociologists and anthropologists for decades. Would that this literary effort bring it to the attention of a broader public.