This book club will meet once or twice a semester to discuss books by Indigenous authors. The meetings will be scheduled during the free period on Tuesdays or Thursdays and I will provide lunch. 

This semester we'll be reading and discussing There There by Tommy Orange (Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma). A wondrous and shattering award-winning novel that follows twelve characters from Native communities: all traveling to the Big Oakland Powwow, all connected to one another in ways they may not yet realize. Among them is Jacquie Red Feather, newly sober and trying to make it back to the family she left behind. Dene Oxendene, pulling his life together after his uncle’s death and working at the powwow to honor his memory. Fourteen-year-old Orvil, coming to perform traditional dance for the very first time. They converge and collide on one fateful day at the Big Oakland Powwow and together this chorus of voices tells of the plight of the urban Native American—grappling with a complex and painful history, with an inheritance of beauty and spirituality, with communion and sacrifice and heroism.

Please fill out this Google form to register for the event. 

If you have any questions or recommendations for a book, please email Nicole Carvell, ncarvell@colgate.edu

Cosponsored by the Native American and Indigenous Studies Program.