2. How has the political and cultural status of Native American communities changed since the 1950s? How have Native American communities changed more recently? In the 1950s, at the height of the Civil Rights Movement and the postwar movement, Natives had been reincorporated as “Native Americans” once and for all: the government tried to finally inculcate them as “white and delightsome people” who represented the postwar American boom (Treuer, 2019). At the time, they were freshly dewarded, placed under full federal jurisdiction, and relocated and taught as full families in American urban life.
The next century would still bring tremendous changes to Natives’ status as American citizens. Through Native American civil rights activism such as the National Indian Youth Council (NIYC) and the American Indian Movement (AIM), Native rights were rightfully restored. In 1966, during the Pacific Northwest fishing wars, the NIYC directly participated in fish-ins, systematic protests, and wholehearted rehabilitation of the Native image in both non-Native and Native minds (Treuer, 2019). Their work helped return federal favor for Native self-determination and decide the Boldt decision and specific guidelines for tribal sovereignty and treaty rights, marking the most noticeable beginning of change for Native Americans in the political sphere (Dougherty, 2013). AIM would take a bold, militant approach that foiled the protests of the NIYC. Their takeovers in particular of Alcatraz Island and Wounded Knee village, as well as other attempts at a Minneapolis naval air station, the Wisconsin Lac Courte Oreilles Reservation dam, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs itself were recognized and supported through the increased spread of mass media and the nationwide digital era, forcing federal government to handle them and hear out their demands (Treur 2019). Combined with an increased government inability to quickly resolve takeovers, such as when the Wounded Knee village takeover aligned with the Watergate scandal, the government made some cessations; most notably the reversal of the termination era policies and the refederalization of Native tribes (Nelson, 2009). The Pacific Northwest fishing wars and the Wounded Knee village takeover also showcased a change in public support for Native Americans; although the stereotype of the Native image may have remained, both showed to the degree of taking over Hollywood news that many Americans supported Native Americans’ desire for tribal sovereignty and increased political demands against the state.
Recent community actions have combined 21st-century technological growth, economic growth, and scientific research with Native traditions and culture to address the problems induced through relocation and urbanization. Natives are tackling their own historical, intergenerational trauma by combining ceremonies and cultural experience with Western treatment models (Duran et al., 1998). Others, through an increased outreach through an exponentially digitized era and public desire for diverse, critical views of a changing sociocultural sphere, have published works about their and other Natives’ recent experiences, such as David Treuer, his brother, and the countless Native Americans interviewed for his 2019 publication, and Tommy Orange’s early 21st-century novel, There There, published in 2018. Native communities are increasing knowledge of their language and increasing their presence as political leaders, candidates, and federal workers (Treuer, 2019). Treuer (2019) writes, “Less and less do we define ourselves by what we have lost, what we have suffered, what we’ve endured”, and the digitization and reconnection of communities that were fractured by earlier attempts at political and cultural erasure marks a vivid contrast today to the post-1950s status of Native Americans. 3. How does Tommy Orange’s There There address the historical and contemporary situation of Native Americans living in urban areas? In There There, Tommy Orange depicts the livelihoods of both “Urban Natives” who were born and raised in an urbanized, digitized United States, and the people who witnessed the generation prior through the termination and relocation era. But it is not exactly as simple as a standard fictionalized account of history. When Orange discusses the earliest histories of Natives, long before termination and relocation began, he always discusses it as himself. In both a “Prologue” and an “Interlude” which interrupt the fictionalized setup of There There, Orange (2018), Orange speaks personally, outside the perspectives he creates for the novel’s fictionalized Oakland. His accounts on blood quantum, powwows, and the stereotypical “antiquated Indian” always use the pronouns we, us, and you, addressing Native communities and the unknowing reader.
Of note, the most modern topic which Orange addresses himself regards the Big Oakland Powwow; many other contemporary topics related to There There’s plot utilize the characters’ voice itself. When Orange alludes to AIM’s takeover on Alcatraz Island, he never addresses it in the prologue’s historical context; AIM integrates into Opal Viola and her sister’s backstory in “Remain”, and in doing so connects it to characters like Harvey later on (Orange, 2018). The historical backdrop of Native American activism and late 20th-century federal policy is not just set dressing for characters born in the midst of their events or several years after; the events of Alcatraz and the Vietnam War are embedded into the characters’ lives and personalities, even in a rapidly shifting 21st century scene. The same characters are thrust into using contemporary technology and popular culture which befits Oakland in the early 2000s to 2010s.