Reservation Nation - 9781893448049

The story of the Uwharrie is told by Warren Eubanks, who first must unlearn the lessons of his childhood: "There was a lot of not-saying on the Reservation, when I was a kid. I learned it." Possessed of a keenly observant nature, the boy Warren - whose Indian name is The Seed - sees smoke of varying colors around the adults who people his world; his imperative is to figure out what each color means. He does it in the only way he knows how: by observing. By the time he is an adult, Warren has collected myriad stories whose protagonists are propelled by a fierce independence, yet are intertwined through a shared land, a common fate, and the engaging and infectious humor with which Warren portrays them.
There is Grandmother, a weaver of lives whose death at the start of the book doesn't erase her presence throughout it; and Grandfather, a man of few words who said them a long time ago, but who at the close of his life offers surprises of his own. There is Chief Billy, who wrangles the tribe's economic life like a Las Vegas wheeler-dealer; Ruay Overmoon, Thomas Matoas Paint, Ruby Kehoe, and a dozen other richly conceived characters. And there is Sun Susie, who loves horses and Marlboros, and whose mysterious disappearance evokes the fragility of reservation life, and propels the plot into a murder mystery.
Warren's imperative to uncover truth takes him down Reservation Road to the American Indian Movement and tribal politics - the land grabs, oil and mineral rip-offs, and betrayals, the long-nurtured grievances that divide the tribe. And of course the essential question facing the Uwharrie, the question of identity, which insinuates itself into every conflict, And as his journey takes him from the innocent wisdom of the child observer into a young adulthood of discovery, he uncovers much of what the deep silences of the Reservation are designed to hide. "There was a lot not said on the Reservation, but it didn't mean you didn't know it," Warren concludes. In the book's startling finale, the Seed assumes the role he was born for and named for: that of uncompromising witness.