To say Green Grass Running Water is hard work to understand is like saying physics is mildly difficult(for those of us who are scientifically challenged, like me : ). In other words, a huge understatement. Unlike physics however, with just a little research and study, a whole new level of understanding can quickly be unlocked within the novel. To claim to understand all or even most of King’s allusions and meanings would be folly, since part of the joy of King’s text is in the “not knowing”. This was one of the things that struck me about the novel, upon first reading it-how easy it was to get sucked into the text, and yet have no understanding of what was going on for large portions of the narrative.

There are of course many, many allusions, references, and metaphors within every page of the novel, however I will focus on pages 269-284. The pages start about with a dialogue between Coyote and the first person voice present within the novel(presumably the narrator), discussing stories about how the world came into being. King makes extensive reference to the myth of “Thought Woman”, a Navajo mythic figure who thought the world into being(Flick 159). King crosses the story of Thought Woman over with several other references, particularly to Christian mythology and the figure of Mary. Thought Woman, also known as Spider Woman, was a important mythic figure for the Navajo, one who created things by imagining them, and wove the world into being like a spider in a web. This blending of Thought Woman and Mary both serves to highlight the emphasis placed on Christian mythology by the Europeans, to the exclusion and deletion of Indigenous mythologies, and the differences between a Patriarchal origin story and a Matriarchal one. Thought Woman thought the world into being, while Mary was arguably simply a vessel to produce a male savior.

The opening passage continues on to mention A. A. Gabriel, who represents the Archangel Gabriel who announced the birth of Jesus, and who represents the European Christian centric point of view, identifying Thought Woman in his own cultural context as Mary, before quoting the bible verbatim, specifically from Luke 1:42, re-writing the figure of Thought Woman into a Christian context(Flick, 160). A. A. Gabriel also represents the “Canadian Security and Intelligence Services”, and by extension the colonizers’ center of power-the government. His business card is perhaps a metaphor for the double sided knife of European doctrine and enforcement, enforcing the supremacy of Christianity and European superiority over the Indigenous population through religious and governmental sanctions and authority.

A. A. Gabriel asks Thought Woman: “Are you now or have you ever been a member of the American Indian Movement?”-this is a direct paraphrase of Senator’s famous quote about Communism, implying that being an “Indian” is on the same level of subversiveness for the Colonizers(represented by Gabriel) as Communists were for McCarthy, marking “Indians” as “Un-American”, or in this case, un-Eurpean and therefore “other”(Flick, 160). Gabriel also mentions racial stereotypes about “Indian smuggling”, and brings up the “White Paper“, a bill proposed by the Trudeau Government in the late 1960s that would have eventually dissolved the “special status” of Indigenous Peoples in Canada.

A. A. Gabriel’s “white with gold lettering” singing business card is possibly an allusion to Canada itself, the image of Canada as “white and official”, with the song “Hosanna Da” calling to mind different things for both Coyote and the first person narrator(Helms, 121). For Coyote, interestingly, the song represents the hypocrisies of colonization and colonizers’ anthems and justifications, while the narrator recognizes it as the national anthem, ignoring Coyote’s protests about what the Biblical connotations of the song imply, and what the anthem’s exclusion of, and ignorance about, the Indigenous “other” says about the Europeans’ view of Canada as a country.

Old Coyote is also referenced, taking the form of a snake, and is present during Gabriel’s attempts to turn Thought Woman into a “Mary”-an obedient, child bearing Christian woman. Gabriel’s parting shot about there being lots of Mary’s in the world, and his shouted questions about what to do with “all these papers, and this snake” seem to symbolize “yet another metaphor”(as mentioned by the narrator)-the whole exchange is perhaps a metaphor for the Colonizers’ dilemma about what to do with the “Indigenous problem”, with every reference in pages 269-272 making reference to ways to suppress, convert, absorb, and silence a foreign “other”, in this case the Indigenous populations of Canada.

King uses the metaphors of Lone Ranger, Hawkeye, Ishmael, and Robinsin Crusoe, traditionally European, White, or Christian heroes with “Indian sidekicks”(in the case of Hawkeye and the Lone Ranger) assuming the role of “Indians” in a subversion of their traditional culture meanings(Flick, 141), to discuss many issues in the novel, and also to introduce other mythic figures, particularly Coyote. On page 273, the figure of Coyote is discussed as dancing in the rain, an allusion to the problems Coyote causes stealing cars and creating water in the novel, classic Coyote trickery. Coyote’s dancing is a metaphor for his powers and the chaos he can cause, and the remarks of the “four old Indians” clearly highlight the problems Coyote’s actions can cause(Donaldson, 33). Lionel’s glimpse of a yellow dog dancing in the rain in the alley is an allusion to Coyote taking the form of a dog, a common theme in Coyote stories.

Dr. Hovaugh appears, a metaphor for both Northrop Frye’s attitude towards First Nations literature(Frye seems here to completely ignore the role of Indigenous culture and peoples in forming the country, or indeed having a literature or stories at all-he really doesn’t seem to take “Indians” into account on any serious level in this early publication), and a rather blatant(in this passage at least, in my opinion) example of European and Christian attitudes of superiority over, and “othering” of, Indigeous peoples-seen through Hovaugh’s treatment of Babo, and the implication Babo would know how the “four old Indians” would think and act, simply because she was also “Indian”(King, 275).

Alberta’s story about her father Amos and the government confiscating their “religous outfits” speaks further to the theme in this passage of the Canadian Government paying lipservice to the image they respect and care about the rights or welfare of “Indians” and Indigenous issues, while turning a blind eye and ear to any real issues and problems-the broken feathers and boot marks a screamingly loud metaphor for the abuses suffered by First Nations under the Colonizers’ boots. The end of the passage returns to the theme of the flood, and missing cars, bringing the blending of Indigenous and Christian narratives full circle.

There are many other subtle references, allusions, and themes hidden in this passage of King, but I have chosen to focus on those mentioned above because, in my opinion, they all speak to the common theme of the hippocrisy of the suppression and subjugation of Indigenous peoples by European settlers and the Canadian government. King appropriates and manipulates traditional Christian or European names, characters, attitudes, and myths to emphasize the hippocrisy of othering the First Nations, and the suppression of their culture, religion, and myths. At every turn the Indigenous narratives are viewed as inferior by the characters, and yet, as Coyote craftily asserts, “there is only one Thought Woman”, undermining and even reversing the ideas of superiority by suggesting there are “many Marys'”, but only one Thought Woman, and then tricking the seemingly sermonizing narrator into agreeing( subversive and powerful message that is, in my opinion, a more subtle echo of Coyote’s blatant statement in changing the old Western so the “Indians” won, not the “Cowboys”). King’s intertextuality and subtext spin a web of meaning which, once understood even partly, at the very least causes us to question our view of the world, and perhaps even shakes it, just a little.

Works Cited:

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Donaldson, Laura E. “Noah meets Old Coyote, or Singing in the Rain: Intertextuality In Thomas King’s Green Grass Running Water.” Studies in American Indian Literatures. 2.7(1995): 27-43. Web. July 17, 2014.

Drinnon, Dale. “Coyote the Trickster.” Frontiers of Anthropology. blogspot.ca June 15, 2013. Web. July 17, 2014.

Fed Vid. “Trudeau’s White Paper(June 1978).” Online Video Clip. Youtube. Youtube, October 13, 2008. Web. July 17, 2014.

Flick, Jane. “Reading Notes for Thomas King’s Green Grass Running Water.” Canadian Literature 161-162(1999):140-172. Web. July 16, 2014.

Frye, Northrop. “Conclusion to a Literary History of Canada.” Literary History of Canada: Carl F. Klinck, General Editor; University of Toronto Press; pp. xiv, 1945; 1965. Northrop Frye-The Bush Garden. Blogspot.ca. 2013. Web. July 17, 2014.

Helms, Gabriele. Challenging Canada: Dialogism and Narrative Techniques in Canadian Novels. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003. Print.

King, Thomas. Green Grass Running Water. Toronto: Harper Collins, 1993. Print.

Klooss, Wolfgang, ed.  Across the Lines: Intertextuality and Transcultural Communication in the New Literatures of English. Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi, 1998. Print.

Lousley, Cheryl. “Hosanna Da, Our Home On Natives’ Land”: Environmental Justice And Democracy In Thomas King’s “Green Grass, Running Water.” Essays On Canadian Writing 81 (2004): 17-44. Web. July 17, 2014.

“Native American Coyote Mythology.” Native Languages of the Americas. Native Languages.com. 2012. Web. July 17, 2014.

Raine, Lauren. “The Hands of the Spider-Woman.” RaineWalker. RaineWalker.com., 2012. Web. July 17, 2014.