There There Part II: Reclaim: Dene Oxendene and Jacquie Red Feather Summary & Analysis

Summary: Dene Oxendene

Dene’s chapter focuses on his video interview with Calvin, who does not know much about his Native heritage. Although his father was Native and his mother had Native blood from her relatives, Calvin explains that he feels guilty identifying as Native, since he does not know what tribal affiliations he might have. The powwow he has helped to organize—and which he plans to rob—will be the first one he has ever attended, as he was previously robbed on the way to a powwow. This moment of ironic repetition—Calvin technically won’t attend this powwow either as he’ll be busy robbing it—complicates the chapter’s discussion of what it means to be sufficiently Native to participate in the documentary’s oral history project

Dene convinces Blue to let Calvin do a story interview during work hours. Dene asks Calvin to describe what it’s been like to grow up in Oakland as a Native American. Calvin says that sometimes he feels bad saying that he is Native, since his parents never talked about their heritage and Calvin just feels like he is from Oakland. He mentions that he was once robbed in the parking lot of a powwow at Laney College. Dene is unsure how to help Calvin share a story worth using in his documentary. When Dene asks Calvin if he feels any Native pride, Calvin says that he does not want to say something that is not true. Dene explains to Calvin that many of the stories about Native Americans are outdated or are stories from reservations. He wants to collect city stories to start documenting urban Native American life. Calvin says that he finds difficulty in valuing his heritage.

Summary: Jacquie Red Feather

Jacquie rides toward Oakland in Harvey’s truck. He keeps talking to her, but she rarely responds. He tells her a story from his pre-sober days about how he and his friends got drunk, and he got lost in the desert where he met two tall, white aliens. Jacquie is annoyed that people in recovery like to tell drinking stories. Opal texts Jacquie and asks if she has ever found spider legs in her leg. Opal says that she once found spider legs in her leg before everything happened with Ronald” but never told anyone. She feels as though it has something to do with their mother. Jacquie suddenly feels sad for Opal, and for Harvey, who continues to talk about the aliens. Jacquie falls asleep as he drives.

Analysis

Storytelling emerges as a central theme once again in the final two chapters of Reclaim. While many parts of the book focus on the sharing of narratives, these chapters focus on ways that storytelling fails. Not only do people often misunderstand their own stories, a lesson Dene learns through his film project, but they often don’t value their experiences as worthy of recounting. When Calvin explains that he feels like he should not participate because he knows little about his Native heritage, Dene notes that some stories arise from not knowing. Orange stresses that action, including seemingly minor action, must be understood in a broad sense. Not having a story may mean that someone has not been taught to value who or what they are. The novel as a whole takes the position that every person and group’s stories have value without exception. Communities that have been wiped out or families that are hopelessly fractured might not have much left to tell, but this too is a kind of experience that must be remembered and reclaimed, particularly for a fuller account of the Native experience to emerge.

Where Dene thinks that not having a story is itself a kind of story, Jacquie reflects on the conventions of certain kinds of stories and their formulaic similarities. Although each person may think their story of drunkenness is fascinating, they all have the same features. In Jacquie’s boredom, a second problem with storytelling quickly registered. Each person’s life is unique but, when lots of similar stories are told, individual details fall away, leaving a boring sameness. While it is crucial that stories are shared, the problem Jacquie registers is an important one for the novel. It is all too easy to tune people out as they drone on. The novel works to instill the ethical responsibility of the importance of listening to others. Listening is shown to be difficult, a turn that reflects the increasing pessimism of the book once the bullets start their journey. Jacquie doses off to the “drone” of the road, a word that recalls Daniel’s drone and Tony’s Drome, foreshadowing the danger to come.