Thought the brothers think Lony’s question is dumb, it’s a good question about what a pow wow is and what the point is. I like that they relate it to food, but the food they relate it to, Indian Tacos, are not “real” Indian food, just comfort food poor people make. But then doesn’t that also make it authentic Indian food since everyone was eating it? Where does authenticity begin and end? What is authenticity?

The kids are all into their own music, finding their own way

What the hell is up with Orvil’s leg and these spider legs?

I wonder if it’s problematic that they are getting paid (for Dene’s film) $200? Do stories have a monetary value? Or does it matter if the person telling the story has more personal (even selfish) motives for telling the story even though the whole point is to share the stories so others won’t feel so alone?

Good question “What does it mean to you when I say ‘story’?”

ndn = Indian. Pretendian = pretend Indian. All names that are changed for a word that was wrong to begin with since nobody is from India.

Names / identity – the boys’ mom spelled all their names wrong and so the kids make fun of them, though nobody notices that Orvil isn’t actually spelled right which is funny since it’s more of a white name anyway.

Heroin babies, so like Tony’s “drome” but it seems at least Orvil hasn’t suffered any disabilities.

Does Opal mean what happened on Alcatraz when she told Orvil there are “too many risks” to being … Indian – “Indianing”?

Wow, he’s been sober since 1982 and she’s only been sober for 10 days. That’s got to be the worst because she blames him yet he seems to be in a much better place than she is. If that isn’t enough to make someone want to relapse I don’t know what is.

So Harvey is leading this group and Jacquie still hates him for what he did to her and she believes he’s probably raped other women, but then there is he running a group so has he changed? She can’t honestly blame him for her addictions, those were her choice, even if it was to mask the pain of what he did to her, so at what point to people have to forgive each other and themselves? Is it possible?

Yikes, running into the guy who raped her back on Alcatraz.

Good detail about how she didn’t want Opal to send her pictures of the boys as a text but only as email attachments – that way she has control over when she sees them. Sad, really.

Interesting that it’s a mother who left her kinds, not a father as it’s usually portrayed. And again we get images of the “ideal” family through media, this time as emails of photos – there’s always a screen between everyone, a way of being portrayed.

Well he’s not wrong – if all this counselling is just a way for people to have a job and it’s not actually helping someone then, yeah, his speech is dead on. People want control in their lives and they’ll find it however they can, either through addiction or suicide or crime or whatever.

It’s too bad we live in a society where for some people to win so many others have to lose.

All the people at the conference are old, because at that age you realize that you no longer have any fuck-ups to give, especially for an addict like Jacquie.

ndn as shorthand for Indian, it’s like a new name from the old, like how Tribe Called Red is build off of Tribe Called Quest.

“But was the problem really suicide itself” is a good question to ask. Why exactly *are* so many people in this community killing themselves – and of course we can see through the stories as to why some might.

When they ask Calvin if he remembers about the money that will be at the Pow Wow it gives you some insight into why people do really really dumb things. He had told them about the money basically to show off but they took him seriously and now he’s stuck between some very serious (even deadly) peer pressure and doing something really dumb. Adds insight into news stories we hear about “idiot” criminals.

I like how he describes them bobbing their heads slightly to the bass as a form of dancing, just dancing in the smallest denominator possible. It’s like he’s taken the image of the native dancers, mixed it with A Tribe Called Red, then put it on a slow simmer where just the slightest hint of traditional dance still seeps in.

Legal drugs, medications to keep bipolar under control. No wonder Carver and Kesey are right at home on the shelves in these characters libraries. Everyone is medicating something because everyone is ill.

Is anyone ever healthy? And it’s interesting he hasn’t delved into Native spirituality as some sort of savior (though the Pow Wow ism coming up) – not even culture and past can cure us.

Feel kinda bad for Bill chasing that drone around the stadium and not being able to get it. Old vs young and the old usually lose.

He also has in common with Edwin all the reading the both of them have done – they both have turned inward, turned toward that which provides clear ideas and has an internal morality that can be studied, even if Carver and Hemingway and Kesey were drunks – it was at “real” and provides a weird sort of comfort.

Bill is angry with young people for having no impulse control or respect for their elders, yet he went AWOL in Vietnam and stabbed a guy and went to prison. Apparently this irony is lost on him, so no wonder Edwin can’t stand him – neither of them are self aware enough to be in control of their lives.

I was wondering when we’d meet someone who was a native and also a vet. And Vietnam fucked everyone up – the country never really was the same after that damn war – we’re still fighting it, too.

No surprise Bill likes baseball, not only is it old-fashioned, but it’s slow and it has clearly defined rules and goals, unlike the modern world. I actually watched the final monologue of No Country For Old Men (again; I love that scene) where he dreams about going on ahead with his father into the darkness, into that space the old have set aside in a cold world. But that space is also death and ending.