Summary

The Prologue narrator resumes the Interlude, which opens with a Charles Baudelaire quotation about the “innocent monsters” of large cities (134). The narrator lists the diverse people who come to powwows from diverse places. They come in groups or alone, drunk or sober, young or old. The powwow gives them a place to be together. The cars outside the Big Oakland Powwow are covered in bumper stickers proclaiming their owners’ Native identities and activism. The narrator lists different types of Indian included in the “we,” whether publicly recognized or not.

Blood is essential in the body but messy outside of it. “Native blood quantum” is the colonialist idea that tribal membership depends on an individual’s percentage of Native blood. The wounds of colonization have never healed, but the “we” does not want to be called resilient: “Would you call an attempted...