Victor’s father was imprisoned for two years, but he returned to the counterculture immediately after being released and attended the Woodstock Music Festival. When Victor’s father was a young man, he was the subject of a famous photograph depicting a violent moment during an anti-Vietnam War rally. Victor keeps the drum for years.īecause My Father Always Said He Was the Only Indian Who Saw Jimi Hendrix Play “The Star-Spangled Banner” at Woodstock She tells him she knows everything he saw, and gives him a tiny drum that he can beat if he ever needs her help. The next day, Big Mom, the tribe’s spiritual leader, approaches Victor. Victor has a frightening vision of his grandmother, and throws the mushrooms in the lake. Junior and Victor send Thomas away when he compares their drug use to a Spokane coming-of-age ritual. In the first, Victor steals a horse in the second, Thomas sends all white people back to Europe using a magic dance and in the third, Junior is a successful singing cowboy in an alternate United States governed by Indigenous people. Each young man describes his drug-induced hallucinations, all of which involve alternate versions of events from Spokane and Indigenous history. Victor and Junior Polatkin sneak away from a party to take psychedelic mushrooms, and reluctantly bring Thomas Builds-the-Fire along.
In this story, Victor and his friends are young adults. A hurricane touches down on the reservation but causes little damage, and life goes on.
Victor reflects on the many difficult times he has had in childhood as a result of his parents’ poverty and alcoholism. The guests are drunk and rowdy, and his uncles Adolph and Arnold fistfight in the yard. In 1976, nine-year-old Victor Joseph listens to his parents’ New Year’s Eve party as he tries to sleep in his room.
0 kommentar(er)
