Truth and Bright Water

Content Warning: This section refers to domestic abuse, child abuse, emotional manipulation and abuse, anti-gay language, suicide, and colonial trauma.

The novel is intimately concerned with the question of how Indigenous communities perceive, enact, and reclaim their identities after the violence and dislocations of settler-colonialism—violence and dislocation that frequently extend to the very heart of what it means to be Indigenous. Tecumseh’s perception of Indigenous identity—and, as a result, his self-perception—is shaped by portrayals of Indigenous characters he sees in white-produced media. For example, when trying to determine why the jumping woman’s skull has a hole in it, Tecumseh turns to a movie “about some white guy who wants to be an Indian” (111). Lum notes that the experience of seeing oneself portrayed by white-created media can result in self-loathing.

This double consciousness—Indigenous people always seeing themselves through the lens of white culture’s perception of them—impacts the way many of the characters enact their identity. Elvin often plays into white perceptions of Indigenous stereotypes to get what he wants, like when he uses his “dumb Indian routine” (86) to successfully cross the border. He takes this a step further when he tries to commodify his identity for consumption by white audiences.