Book “There There”

Week 10 Discussion
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Imagine that you were leading a discussion about There There and you asked your discussion group for their reactions to the section of the novel. The participants begin to offer their responses, but nearly all of them are reading the novel through the lens of old, but unfortunately very commonplace, stereotypes about Indigenous peoples—alcoholism, drug abuse, laziness—in short, the “deficiencies” Daniel Heath Justice explains are part of the typical settler narrative that paints Indigenous peoples as deficient, or portrays Indigenous peoples as doomed victims of colonial progress and expansion.
You need to help your participants recognize the ways their responses recycle settler stereotypes of Indigenous people, but more than that help them see how those stereotypes are getting in the way of seeing the novel differently.
What parts of the novel would direct your participants to in order to redirect the discussion, but also to help them begin to dismantle these kinds of persistent, harmful stereotypes? What would you say about those parts of the novel, and about what Orange is showing readers through them, to help persuade your participants to become critical of their assumptions and the stereotypes that inform them?
Your post should include at least two passages from the novel, and should be at least 300 words in addition to the length of the quotations. Remember to include citations.

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