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Question 2: Coyote Pedagogy is a term sometimes used to describe King’s writing strategies (Margery Fee and Jane Flick). Discuss your understanding of the role of Coyote in the novel. Throughout Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water, Coyote appears alongside the narrator, who tells and retells the story of where all the water at the beginning of the story came from. The presence of Coyote, a trickster in Indigenous fiction, “helps to communicate a particular lesson about life to listeners” (Coyote Facts). Despite his antics and seemingly clueless nature, his line of questioning not only provides comic relief, but his interjections also illuminate various issues otherwise hidden within the narrative:

“Wait, wait,” says Coyote. “When’s my turn?” “Coyotes don’t get a turn,” says Coyote. “Nonsense,” I says. “In a democracy, only people who can afford it get a turn.” “How about half a turn?” says Coyote. “Sit down,” I says. “We got to tell this story again.” “How about a quarter turn?” says Coyote. (327)

In this particular example, the narrator’s remark regarding democracy is an unfortunate aspect of our system – those who make the decisions at the top of our democratic hierarchy are often the wealthy elite who can afford the expensive campaigns often needed to win elections. To further this point, in 2008 “successfully-elected candidates in the Vancouver municipal election spent on average $36,246. In Vancouver, the average spending of elector organizations supporting candidates that were elected was $1,100,233, and the average spending of campaign organizers was $47,826” (Campaign Financing, 4). As such, though Coyote’s ignored appeals for his turn to speak feels lighthearted in this context, it highlights the important issues of silenced voices that those who are powerless or part of the minority face in our society. Apart from expanding our awareness, Coyote also serves to embody the oral culture of the Indigenous people. I found that as I was reading the novel, I had to read certain parts aloud (particularly some of the names on page 182 – well played, King). Most notably, the parts with Coyote speaking seemed to work better when I read them out loud, which was rather reminiscent of Harry Robinson’s short story, “Coyote Makes a Deal with King of England”. Having experienced Robinson’s story, feeling compelled to read aloud wasn’t what stood out for me; rather, it was the smooth blending of both this vocal and silent story-telling that really made the whole experience unique. This blend is not only a combination of the Western literary style with Indigenous oral story-telling, but it is also the amalgamation of Christianity and Coyote. On page 146 of the novel, when Noah states that bestiality is “against the rules,” Coyote responds with “but he doesn’t mean Coyotes.” Here, Margery Fee and Jane Flick comment on King’s blending of two cultures in one narrative:

Rules are made for coyotes to break! Apart from ignoring borders between animal and human (or divine and human, if you prefer), this subversive move makes the central story of the Christian religion into a Coyote story, and repeats the novel’s overall strategy which subsumes European culture and history into an Aboriginal framework, and counters a patriarchal religion with a matriarchal one. (136)

At the beginning of the novel, it took me a while to grasp what was happening – the significance of each character and their connections with one another were revealed bit by bit; the whole process felt like putting together a puzzle, really. Even then, the narrative would slip away from me sometimes, and I found myself flipping back a few pages to check if what I inferred was correct or to reorient myself within the context again. It may just be me, but this novel seem to have the characteristics of Coyote: tricky at times, and despite the humour, there are important lessons to be learned. Sidenote: As I was reading up on the character of Coyote, I stumbled across this term that I thought would be interesting for people to know: Heyoka, which means “trickster spirit”. There is also a discussion forum with helpful postings about what this term encapsulates.

Source: http://www.indiancanyonlife.org/ksr/

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Topic for this week: “outline why colonial authorities couldn’t conceive of accepting the Métis as a third founding nation” (Paterson)

As globalization and migration became more prolific, European explorers discovered and settled in their new-found territories, exploiting the resources and the people already residing there; colonizers in what is now known as Canada were no different. Though several nations laid claim to Canada’s lands, the British soon asserted their dominance in the 1759 Battle of the Plains of Abraham over the French. Even though British superiority reigned over Canada, the victors were willing to accommodate the French in this new nation: “…success in national politics has often required the accommodation of the aspirations of the French speakers in Canada, since they have always formed the largest group of non-English speakers in the country. Other cultural and linguistic groups, including Indigenous peoples, were expected to assimilate to the notion of Canada as British” (Nationalism, 1500-1700). To the south, the outcome of the American Civil War in 1783 resulted in the migration of over 30 000 defeated Loyalists to British-ruled Canada where they “called upon colonial administrators for new lands [in return for fighting for Britain]” (A History of Treaty-Making). More and more land was being taken from the Indigenous people and being given to the foreign settlers.

After the War of 1812, relations between the British and their former colonies improved. Despite being their allies during the War, Indigenous people found themselves on the receiving end of British assimilation efforts. Indigenous people were reduced to “wards of the new Canadian state” (Nationalism, 1800s) – a result of colonial mentality and need for ownership of the land. The mentality is what Daniel Coleman calls “loyalism,” which he identifies as a “problematic and still pervasive collective concept of Canada as a white, Christian, primarily Anglophone, civil society” (Nationalism, 1800s). The AANDC (Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada) describes the result of this mentality: “Based upon the belief that it was Britain’s duty to bring Christianity and agriculture to the First Nations people… [the government encouraged] First Nations people to abandon their traditional ways of life and to adopt a more agricultural and sedentary, more British, life style.” Refusing to acknowledge the legitimacy of people such as the Métis, the British established themselves as guardians of the state and therefore caretakers of the land, effectively taking what they justified was theirs. 

Looking specifically at the Métis Nation of Manitoba who “created a provisional government [in 1869] and attempted to negotiate directly with the new government of the confederation to establish their territories as a province under their leadership” (Paterson), this “problematic” and “pervasive” mentality of Indigenous people as lesser beings resulted in the rejection and suppression of the Métis Nation’s attempt at independence. Unlike their acceptance of the French, the British did not consider any Indigenous groups as their equal. Thus the provisional government was seen as a rebellion from those who should only be content with being governed; to allow the Métis government was to acknowledge them as equals to their European counterpart, which was unacceptable in the British mindset at the time. The Canadian forces outnumbered those fighting for the Métis cause and the provisional government’s leader, Louis Riel, was captured and subsequently executed.

Louis Riel

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That’s what my brother said when I told him to read Harry Robinson’s short story, “Coyote Makes a Deal with King of England,” to himself silently.

“What is happening?” he asked. He was barely into the second page.

I must admit, I had the same response as well when I read Robinson’s stories silently. We both found that his colloquialisms, nuances, and the grammatical liberties he had taken made focusing on the story itself difficult. As I read the story, I found myself progressing from reading mentally to mouthing the words silently and finally I gave in and read the rest of the story aloud. My brother also found that he couldn’t help but do the same; only then did the story make sense to us. When it was time to read to each other (we had read the stories aloud to ourselves separately), I found that I was more animated when reading aloud to my brother than when it was just for myself. I also realized that I adjusted Robinson’s words as I tried to emulate the colloquial tone he was setting. Mostly, I would modify the -ing suffix: “Lots of soldiers watchin’. And Coyote went through there. Nobody seen ’em” (Robinson 68, emphasis added). I would do this only when I noticed another modified word (in this case, “’em”) either immediately preceding or following the verb. I think I needed to add my own touch to help the story flow a little for me as I was reading it. My brother, on the other hand, read the story verbatim.

In “Godzilla vs. Post-Colonial,” Thomas King states: “[Robinson] develops what we might want to call an oral syntax that defeats readers’ efforts to read the stories silently to them­selves, a syntax that encourages readers to read the stories out loud” (King 186). My brother and I wholeheartedly agreed that the story was much easier to understand when we heard it aloud, without the text in front of us. That being said, I disagree in part with King’s next comment:

“The common complaint that we make of oral literature that has been trans­lated into English is that we lose the voice of the storyteller, the gestures, the music, and the interaction between storyteller and audience. But by forcing the reader to read aloud, Robinson’s prose, to a large extent, avoids this loss, re-creating at once the storyteller and the performance.” (King 186)

While Robinson’s story did have a distinct style that allowed his voice to shine through, no matter who read it, the story’s grammatical particularities made reading it aloud a clumsy (for lack of a better word) attempt at recreating a story that Robinson no doubt knew off the top off his head. While parts of Robinson’s oral telling may be preserved in the translation to text, I would argue that it does not re-create “at once the storyteller and the performance”. While Robinson may pause where appropriate, when telling this story, my brother and I would stop abruptly mid-sentence to figure out how to tell the next bit aloud, mangling the story’s narrative at certain points. That being said, understanding the story was a bit of a magical moment for the both of us and by the end of this exercise, instead of asking “what is happening?” we both said, “I get it now.”

The magic of hearing someone else’s voice in your mind.

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Question: “First stories tell us how the world was created. In The Truth about Stories, King tells us two creation stories; one about how Charm falls from the sky pregnant with twins and creates the world out of a bit of mud with the help of all the water animals, and another about God creating heaven and earth with his words, and then Adam and Eve and the Garden. King provides us with a neat analysis of how each story reflects a distinct worldview. “The Earth Diver” story reflects a world created through collaboration, the “Genesis” story reflects a world created through a single will and an imposed hierarchical order of things: God, man, animals, plants. The differences all seem to come down to co-operation or competition — a nice clean-cut satisfying dichotomy. However, a choice must be made: you can only believe ONE of the stories is the true story of creation – right? That’s the thing about creation stories; only one can be sacred and the others are just stories. Strangely, this analysis reflects the kind of binary thinking that Chamberlin, and so many others, including King himself, would caution us to stop and examine. So, why does King create dichotomies for us to examine these two creation stories? Why does he emphasize the believability of one story over the other — as he says, he purposefully tells us the “Genesis” story with an authoritative voice, and “The Earth Diver” story with a storyteller’s voice. Why does King give us this analysis that depends on pairing up oppositions into a tidy row of dichotomies? What is he trying to show us?”

In a Classical Studies course that I took in second year on Greek mythology, my professor said something along the lines of: “…then Christianity came to Greece. It soon became the dominating religion in Greece because in the face of a new and perfect God, who could believe in the ancient deities with all their many humanistic flaws?” Creation stories, or origin stories, seem to impart the message that there was one beginning, and perhaps that is why we feel the need to choose only one as sacred, dismissing all others as stories. It is in the nature of all stories to set the stage, but by setting a stage, you eliminate (for the most part) the possibility of other settings. Genesis begins: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering  over the waters.” King points out that the Bible’s narrative possesses a more authoritative voice than “The Earth Diver,” but both have firm, distinct beginnings. Note that Genesis has “In the beginning” – there is no ambiguity about whether or not there are several other beginnings out there. What follows, God’s creations, is a very specific stage set-up. Likewise, “The Earth Diver” also starts with a description of the setting: “Back at the beginning of imagination, the world we know as earth was nothing but water, while above the earth, somewhere in space, was a larger, more ancient world” (King 10). Again, we have the specific “at the beginning”; both stories claim to talk about a singular beginning, but both beginnings are seemingly distinct. The perception of needing to choose between stories in order to establish an origin of existence stems may stem from these differing settings. Why the need to choose? Why not have several settings? Perhaps it is our desire to have certainty in our lives, free from the ambiguities that follow when attempting to reconcile differing origin stories.

Yet are they that different? Both stories are about creations: the world was empty, but then someone came and put things where they are. What we view as a series of choices (what King refers to as dichotomies) are actually different perspectives of the same stage. Perhaps one storyteller had a balcony seat, front-and-center, and the other had a floor seat off to the side. Stories are perspectives – if we choose one side of the dichotomy, we ignore the other half that is also part of our world.

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