Orvil has just danced for the first time in his regalia, while Opal and Jacquie look on from different vantage points in the coliseum. All the key characters are present except for Daniel Gonzales, who observes the event via his drone. Parts 3 and 4 of There There build a rising tension that climaxes in a large shooting at the Big Oakland Powwow. The three boys head to the Coliseum for the powwow.

Orvil completes an interview for Dene’s storytelling project. The three boys are trying to raise money to buy Lony a new bike. Jacquie accepts a ride to Oakland with Harvey so that she can see her sister, Opal, and her three grandsons, Orvil, Loother, and Lony. Blue now works at the Indian Center in Oakland which is helping to put on the powwow. As a result of the rape, Jacquie gave birth to a daughter named Blue whom she gave up for adoption as a baby. This is the same Harvey who is Edwin’s father. Around the same time, Jacquie, struggling to stay sober, attends an AA meeting where she encounters the man, Harvey, who raped her at Alcatraz. Octavio leverages this debt to convince Calvin and Charles to help rob the Big Oakland Powwow. Calvin Johnson, who lives with his sister, owes a large sum of money to his brother Charles, who works for Octavio. Bill works at the Coliseum as a custodian and gets frustrated when a drone flies too close to him overhead. Bill Davis is dating Karen, Edwin’s mother. Part 2 introduces more characters, all of whom will come together at the powwow. Edwin researches his father, a Cheyenne man named Harvey, and eventually talks to him via Facebook. The final character introduced in Part 1 is Edwin Black, who has an internet addiction and almost never leaves his room. In the section on Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield, she describes a childhood visit to Alcatraz Island to attend a protest with her mom and her sister, Jacquie Red Feather during the trip, Opal finds Jacquie after she has been raped. Part 1 also introduces Dene Oxendene, whose dying uncle gives him a camera and a project thanks to an arts grant, Dene plans to conduct a series of interviews with Indigenous Americans in Oakland.

Tony’s narrative foreshadows the eventual shooting at the Big Oakland Powwow as he describes how Octavio Gomez directs him to procure and hide the bullets in some bushes beyond the Oakland Coliseum’s metal detectors. Tony Loneman explains his relationship with “the Drome” (16), the fetal alcohol syndrome he was born with. Thereafter, the novel is divided into four parts, with the first part delivering critical backstories for several of the main characters. The novel begins with an essay in which Orange decries the violent genocide carried out by white settlers against Indigenous Americans since the 15th century.

Book there there by tommy orange