the lone ranger and tonto fistfight in heaven sparknotes

Victor meets a woman he calls One-Braid at a powwow and they have sex in her car. Victor resents this but tries to stay positive. After Victor’s parents divorced, his father moved to Phoenix, Arizona and gradually lost touch with Victor and his mother. Victor remembers the close relationship he had with his father as a young boy. He says he was the only Indian to see Jimi Hendrix’s performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner”, and as he has aged, Victor’s father has become attached to that recording. 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.

The lone ranger and tonto fistfight in heaven sparknotes