	In There There by Tommy Orange many characters undergo a moment of reflection where their indigenous identity is called into question. Children learn traditional powwow dances from watching videos on YouTube, while others build identity in reconnecting with people from their past in an attempt to remedy the distance they feel between who they are and their heritage. However, not all moments of reflection are done for the character to gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be Indigenous. Bill Davis’ moment of reflection occurs while he is at work, where he talks about his life, never directly addressing his Indigenous ethnicity. Bill thinks of himself as a citizen of Oakland and a participant in that culture before he thinks of himself as Indigenous. He sets himself up as an outsider to the community he sees in Oakland based on this relationship to history, but also by putting himself in conflict with the younger generations. Understanding the significance in Bill’s reflection requires an understanding of how Bill sees himself and how he develops that view, who he sets himself up in conflict with, and who controls how he sees himself in that moment. I argue that Bill’s moment of reflection, then, is more concerned with the Indigenous body than it is the Indigenous identity. 
	Bill never mentions that he is Indigenous, perhaps because that isn’t the most important part of who Bill thinks he is. Instead, he discusses the historical titles his body has accumulated, namely “the crazy AWOL Vietnam vet”. Bill was dishonorably discharged from Vietnam and he says, “he hated the country and the country hated him”. The country that Bill fought on behalf of had committed genocide against Indigenous people like him, and by going absent without leave he rendered his body unusable in this conflict. He says that “the country hated him,” which he seems to take as a response to his leaving Vietnam, but it could also be referring to the hundreds of years where the United States actively committed genocide against Indigenous nations. The vague motives of Bill’s hatred don’t specify exactly why he hate the United States Government, but because he didn’t participate in Vietnam, it seems it is connected to his body, and how they were willing to use it as a means to an end. 
This removal of his body from the conflict of Vietnam changes how Bill sees himself as well, where he takes on the identity of a violent man. Once again he became a part of the solution to a problem that wasn’t his, where “it was his knife somehow in the end,” that got him five years in prison for presumably stabbing a biker, even if it was just self defense. He doesn’t understand how it happened but concedes that it made sense, since “he was the one with a history of violence,” even though the history of violence here isn’t Bill’s. The history instead belongs to all Indigenous people who had been attacked before, who had reacted in self defense and still managed to take some sort of punishment for it, as though his body meant less. The prison background and the dishonorable discharge, both identities that the government inflicted upon Bill, change how he sees himself, as well as how he relates to the world. He may not have the history of violence but has one preserved in his body from previous generations. Except he doesn’t think of himself as Indigenous, but as a lifelong supporter of Oakland athletics, especially baseball.  
