Write a blog that hyperlinks your research on the characters in GGRW according to the pages assigned to you. Be sure to make use of Jane Flick’s reference guide on you reading list.

For this blog assignment, I was assigned pages 412-416 the 1993 edition of Thomas King’s Green Grass Running Water  and there are three specific sections of this passage that I will divide my analysis upon.

Part 1 (412-413)

Alberta Frank and Lionel
In section one Alberta is the main character and the two pages focus mainly on Lionel and her discussing her surprise pregnancy. Alberta is the main female character in the realist story and her name could allude to the province of Alberta or to the famous Frank Slide of 1903. In Jane Flick’s “Reading Notes for Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water” Flick discusses that the Frank Slide is “one of the disaster dates that Dr. Hovaugh tracks” (Flick 144), supporting the allusion of her name. Alberta is the lover of both Lionel and Charlie and would like to have a child, however, she does not want a husband or marriage. Her pregnancy is completely unexpected to her and is Coyote’s doing, which I will discuss later in this post.

Part 2 (414-415)

Sir Clifford Sifton and Lewis Pick

Sir Clifford Sifton is a direct reference to the historical figure, Clifford Sifton (top photo), who was an “aggressive promoter of settlement in the West through the Prairie West movement, and a champion of the settlers who displaced the Native population. Federal minister of the Interior and Superintendent of Indian Affairs in Laurier ‘s government from November 1896.” (150) In this section of the book, Siffton is accompanied by Lewis Pick who I have discerned to be a reference to Lewis A. Pick (bottom photo), the head engineer in New Orleans during the Mississippi River Flood of 1927. I think that the reference to the Mississippi flood is to correlate the flooding dam to an American disaster. When the earthquake hits the men “were knocked to the ground, and as they tried to stand, they were knocked down again. It was comical at first, the two men trying to find their footing, the cars smashing into the dam, the lake curling over the top. But beneath the power and motion there was a more ominous sound of things giving way, of things falling apart” (King 414). This is a reference to the men who are representative of Western colonialism not taking things seriously until it is to late and everything falls apart for them. The flooding is a metaphor for Western interference within Aboriginal peoples lives and the power they have to fight back.

 Dr. Joseph Hovaugh, Babo Jones, and Bill Bursum 

Dr. Joseph Hovaugh is a reference to Northrop Frye and his view of literature as a closed entity. This is understood when the water swept up his and Babo’s cars and all he could think about was how this disaster was written in the book he had:

“Dr. Hovaugh sagged against the bus, took out the book, and held it up. ‘It’s all here,’ he said to Babo. ‘I was right, after all.’
‘Sorry about your car,” said Babo.
‘The Dates.’
‘Looks like I lost mine, too.’
‘The places.’
Babo looked at Dr. Hovaugh, and then she turned and watched the lake race for the breach in the dam” (415).

Dr. Hovaugh is also representative of King’s love for oral storytelling as his name sounds like Jehovah when it is verbally spoken, however when reading, it does not come across this way. Hovaugh is a representation of Christianity within the book which is further supported by Babo who is mostly surrounded by. Although Babo Jones is not a major character in this scene, she “may be one of the three Wise Men of the East (the black King) following the mysterious star/light, indicated by the “westward leading” clue (276)—to Blossom and Alberta’s mysterious pregnancy” (Flick 145).

Bill Bursum reacts differently than both Babo and Dr. Hovaugh in this scene when the lake is flooding. Rather than subtly sitting by
like Babo or being completely consumed in something else like Dr. Havough, Bursum kind of freaks out. “he stood transfixed for a moment, and then he began walking down to the lake, trotting after the retreating water. ‘Now what’s gone wrong?’ he shouted, breaking into a run. . . ‘What the hell has gone wrong now?'” (415). Bursum represents a
person who is not flexible to change and becomes overwhelmed at the loss of control. “King combines the names of two men famous for their hostility to Indians; Holm O. Bursum (1867-1953) (top photo). . . and the Buffalo Bill part of the name . . . William R Cody (1846-1917)“(148) (bottom photo). Bursum proposed the Bursum Bill of 1921 which intended to take away large portions of land from the Pueblo Natives and give it, and water rights, to non-Indians.  Bill Bursum’s reaction to the water is representative of Holm O. Bursum’s reaction to the blocking of the Bursum Bill of 1921. As he thought it would be a sure thing and that there would be nothing preventing the passing of the bill, when everything started to go wrong he was overwhelmed.

Part 3 (416)

Coyote and The Four Indians – Lone Ranger, Ishmael, Robinson Crusoe, and Hawkeye

The four Indians represent predominant European and Western ideas of white power and colonization and I will briefly summarize Flick’s description of each of the four and of Coyote. The Lone Ranger is a “hero of western [stories] . . . At the centre of stories about the Texas Rangers and the lone survivor of a raid. He is a Do Gooder. The Texas Rangers myth has it that one ranger could be sent to clean up a town” (141). Hawkeye is “Another adopted “Indian” name. Most famous of the frontier heroes in American literature, when the frontier was in the East— Appalachia, before the frontier “moved” West” (141). Robinson Crusoe is a character based on the true story of Alexander Selkirk who was deserted on an island but managed to survive. “Crusoe survives through ingenuity and finds spiritual strength through adversity. . . King mocks Crusoe’s passion for making lists and for weighing the pros and cons of various situations” (142). Ishmael is a character from Herman Melville’s Moby Dick who survives when Moby Dick destroys Pequod “by staying afloat on Queequeg’s coffin. The name is Biblical: Gen.15.-15” (142). Finally, Coyote “The familiar trickster figure from First Nations/Native American tales, an especially important personage in the mythology of traditional oral literature of Native North America; one of the First People, “a race of mythic prototypes who lived before humans existed. They had tremendous powers; they created the world as we know it; they instituted human life and culture—but they were also capable of being brave or cowardly, conservative or innovative, wise or stupid” (143).

The last part of my section is a conversation between Coyote and the four Indians that basically summarizes the last few pages regarding the flood and Alberta’s pregnancy. This section refers to Coyote being God and that he/she is the reason for Noah’s flood, the conception of Jesus in Mary, Alberta’s pregnancy, and Christianity. Page 416 begisn with Coyote immediately denying that he had any part in the earthquake “I didn’t do it!” (King 416) to which Robinson Crusoe replied “The last time you fooled around like this the world got very wet” (416) and Hawkeye added “and we had to start all over again” (416). This is alluding to Coyote, not God, being responsible for Noah’s Flood (Flick 164). Coyote exclaims that he may have made a mistake with the earthquake but he was also useful;

“‘But I was helpful too. That woman who wanted a baby. Now that was helpful.’
‘Helpful!’ said Robinson Crusoe. ‘You remember the last time you did that?’
‘I’m quite sure I was in Kamloops,’ says Coyote.
‘We haven’t straightened out that mess yet,’ said Hawkeye” (416).

This conversation between Coyote, Robinson Crusoe, and Hawkeye is alluding to the conception of Jesus Christ being the work of Coyote “rather than Mary’s own sinless conception” (Flick 164). The emphasis of the italisized “that” could also be a reference to the formation of the entire Christian religion, “the result of Mary’s pregnancy, one of Coyote’s mistakes” (164).

The section of Green GRass Running Water that I was assigned is extremely important to the book as it is riddled with religious allusions and forces the reader to breach the cultural barrier to fully understand.

Important Symbols, all directly from Jane Flick’s Reading Notes for Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water

“PINTO (23) Ford automobile. Plains horse. A piebald or “painted” pony associated with Indians of the Plains. Note that Pinto ponies are promi nent in the drawings of the Cheyenne imprisoned at Fort Marion, described in Alberta’s lecture (19). Jokes about naming cars after horses, Indians and explorers may be at work here, as well as the play on words with Columbus’s ship, the Pinta. Babo thinks “the Pinto [in the puddle] looked a little like a ship,” and then, “not exactly a ship . . . Not a ship at all” (27). At the dam episode, Babo recognizes the red Pinto as “The cars [sail] past the bus” (406).

NISSAN, THE PINTO AND THE KARMANN GHIA (407) The Pinto is the first of a series of jokes about the disappearing cars that go over the dam. The three ships of Columbus on the voyage sponsored by Isabella of Spain were the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria. The belief that their ships would fall off the edge of the world is often (falsely) attributed to old-world mariners. Note another minor funny bit: Dr. Hovaugh drives the slightly more upscale car; the Karmann-Ghia is white and a convertible, just the thing for a theological figure on tour” (Flick 146)

“THE CARS TUMBLED OVER THE EDGE OF THE WORLD (414) Recalls the belief falsely attributed to Old World mariners that the world was flat, and that they would sail over the edge” (164).

Works Cited

“BBC – History – Scottish History”. Bbc.co.uk. Web. 30 Mar. 2016.

“Bible Gateway Passage: Genesis 5:32-10:1 – New International Version”. Bible Gateway. Web. 30 Mar. 2016.

Flick, Jane. “Reading Notes for Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water.” Canadian Literature161/162 (1999). Web. 30 Mar. 2016.

“Jehovah’S Witnesses—Official Website: Jw.Org”. Jw.org. Web. 30 Mar. 2016.

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

“Mississippi River Flood Of 1927 | American History”. Encyclopedia Britannica. Web.30 Mar. 2016.

“New Mexico Office Of The State Historian | Places”. Newmexicohistory.org. Web. 30 Mar. 2016.

“PRX”. Beta.prx.org. Web. 30 Mar. 2016.

“Texas Rangers – Making Order Out Of Chaos”. Legendsofamerica.com. Web. 30 Mar. 2016.

“The Ledo Road – Lieutenant General Lewis A. Pick”. Cbi-theater.com. Web. 30 Mar. 2016.

Alberta, Government. “Frank Slide Interpretive Centre Frank Slide Story”. History.alberta.ca. Web. 30 Mar. 2016.

Ayre, John. “Northrop Frye”. The Canadian Encyclopedia. N.p., 2001. Web. 30 Mar. 2016.

Hall, David. “Sir Clifford Sifton”. The Canadian Encyclopedia. N.p., 2001. Web. 30 Mar. 2016.

Moby-Dick; or, The Whale. “Moby-Dick; Or, The Whale”. Americanliterature.com. Web. 30 Mar. 2016.

PBS,. “PBS – THE WEST – William F. Cody”. Pbs.org. N.p., 2001. Web. 30 Mar. 2016.

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.

In their essay Coyote Pedagogy Knowing Where the Borders Are in Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water Margery Fee and Jane Flick present the term “Coyote Pedagogy”. Within this term, Fee and Flick describe the educational experience of reading Thomas King’s Green Grass Running Water. King forces the reader to surpass cultural boundaries by mixing imagery of both First Nation and Western culture into clever jokes and dialogue. Unless the reader is able to breach cultural confinements to engage with and appreciate a variety of symbols, they will not understand as King intended them too. “There is no reader of this novel, except perhaps Thomas King, who is not outside some of its networks of cultural knowledge. But every reader is also inside at least one network and can therefore work by analogy to cross borders into the others. We want to put as much emphasis on the “knowing” in our title as on the “borders”: borders are constructed by what you know and don’t know. Coyote pedagogy requires training in illegal border-crossing” (Flick and Fee 131). The need to understand a plethora of symbols within both First Nation and Western culture is the basis of Coyote pedagogy.

In terms of character, Coyote embodies the familiar trickster from First Nation storytelling and an extremely important figure within the Native North American mythology of traditional oral literatures. According to another article by Flick, “Reading Notes for Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water”, Coyote is believed to be “one of the First People, a race of mythic prototypes who lived before humans existed. They had tremendous powers; they created the world as we know it; they instituted human life and culture” (Flick 143). From this, we can infer that Coyote is the equivalent of God in Judeo-Christian culture. Coyote’s importance in GGRW is to aid the reader in the recognition of the cultural distinctions that King proposed. By adding Coyote into the creation story as a representation of First Nations culture he enables the reader to open their mind to a larger picture. On the opening page King immediately describes Coyote as a creator of the world “In the beginning, there was nothing. Just Water” (King 1). However, GOD makes an appearance within the first few pages as well. In order for the reader to understand the beginning of GGRW they must understand and appreciate First Nation creation stories AND Western culture creation stories. I feel like Coyote is extremely important as he/she enables the reader to look between the lines of the story and to read what is not written.

Works Cited 

Flick, Jane, and Margery Fee. “Coyote Pedagogy”. Canadian Literature161/162 (1999). Web. 21 Mar. 2016.

Flick, Jane. “Reading Notes for Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water.” Canadian Literature161/162 (1999). Web. 21 Mar. 2016.

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

3 ] Frye writes:

A much more complicated cultural tension [more than two languages] arises from the impact of the sophisticated on the primitive, and vice a versa. The most dramatic example, and one I have given elsewhere, is that of Duncan Campbell Scott, working in the department of Indian Affairs in Ottawa. He writes of a starving squaw baiting a fish-hook with her own flesh, and he writes of the music of Dubussy and the poetry of Henry Vaughan. In English literature we have to go back to Anglo-Saxon times to encounter so incongruous a collision of cultures (Bush Garden 221).

It is interesting, and telling of literary criticism at the time, that while Frye lights on this duality in Scott’s work, or tension between “primitive and civilized” representations; however, the fact that Scott wrote poetry romanticizing the “vanishing Indians” and wrote policies aimed at the destruction of Indigenous culture and Indigenous people – as a distinct people, is never brought to light. In 1924, in his role as the most powerful bureaucrat in the department of Indian Affairs, Scott wrote:

The policy of the Dominion has always been to protect Indians, to guard their identity as a race and at the same time to apply methods, which will destroy that identity and lead eventually to their disappearance as a separate division of the population (In Chater, 23).

For this blog assignment, I would like you to explain why it is that Scott’s highly active role in the purposeful destruction of Indigenous people’s cultures is not relevant for Frye in his observations above? You will find your answers in Frye’s discussion on the problem of ‘historical bias’ (216) and in his theory of the forms of literature as closed systems (234 –5).

In Northrop Frye’s book “The Bush Garden; Essays on the Canadian Imagination” he explains Canadian literature to be extremely historical and factual rather than creative and imaginative. He states that “the form of [the Canadian writer’s] expression of it can take shape only from what he has read, not from what he has experienced” (Frye  234) and describes Canadian writers abilities are constricted to the argumentative use of language and textbooks. Frye understands Canadian literature to be written out of history books and never from personal experience or pure imagination. I think this is why Duncan Campbell Scott‘s highly active role in the purposeful destruction of Indigenous people’s cultures is not relevant for Frye in his observations.

Scott’s work aims to fight for the Indigenous people referring to historical facts but yet it is limited to those historical facts themselves. Scott was limited to only seeing the left and right, the primitive and civilized, the educated and the savage. “Right was white, wrong black and, nothing else counted or existed” (Frye 228). Rather than breaking free from the box of historical bias, Scott focused purely on the black and white which limited himself to writing strictly about traditional, historical and well-known facts. This type of thinking and writing has no positive effects on intellectual life and according to Frye, seeing things as just “two solitudes” is highly problematic as “nothing original can grow” (228). Being that Scotts work is entirely based on reiterating Canadian Aboriginal history rather than exploring the Aboriginal culture, his role in the destruction of the Indigenous culture is completely irrelevant to Frye. Scotts work negates the entire foundation of literature that Frye recognizes as he sees things as black and white rather than shades of gray.

However, I am not quite convinced this is the only reason why Scotts role is completely irrelevant to Frye. Maybe I am just playing the devils advocate here or maybe I am seeing two answers to the same question but I feel like Frye may have dismissed Scott because Frye doesn’t consider Indigenous people to be of any intellectual value. Frye spends a lot of time highlighting the division of two languages and two kinds of literature, emphasizing his elimination of any other source of cultural value. Specifically, the fact that he doesn’t even recognize any human being ever being present in North America before the two Canadian cultures arrived supports my claim that he doesn’t consider Indigenous people to be valuable beings at all. From the perspective of Frye, he doesn’t recognize Indigenous people to have a voice in the Canadian literary canon or have an impact on shaping Canada as a country.

Thanks for reading! Let me know what you guys think 🙂

Works Cited

Frye, Northrop. The Bush Garden; Essays on the Canadian Imagination. 2011 Toronto: Anansi. 228-234. Print.

3] In order to address this question you will need to refer to Sparke’s article, “A Map that Roared and an Original Atlas: Canada, Cartography, and the Narration of Nation.” You can easily find this article online. Read the section titled: “Contrapuntal Cartographies” (468 – 470). Write a blog that explains Sparke’s analysis of what Judge McEachern might have meant by this statement: “We’ll call this the map that roared.”

When Judge McEachem stated “We’ll call this the map that roared” the popular allusion noted was McEachern being demeaning about the cartography by the West’suwet’en and the Gitxsan. In his analysis “A Map that Roared and an Original Atlas: Canada, Cartography, and the Narration of Nation” within the section entitled “Contrapuntal Cartographies”, Sparke mentions that McEachern’s comment may be a reference to Peter Sellers 1959 film, “The Mouse That Roared”. This was an extremely clever association by Sparke, however, in order to completely understand the relationship between McEachems comment and Sellers film, one must know about the film. “The Mouse that Roared” is a film adaptation of Leonard Wibberley’s 1955 novel that satirizes Cold War geopolitics. The film takes place in a small fictional community in Europe after an attack in New York City. The Rotten Tomatoes description explains “In this film, the tiny country of Grand Fenwick faces economic ruin when their chief export of wine loses out to a California vintage. They declare war on the United States, hoping to receive money to rebuild the country after they lose. However, things don’t go according to plan”. The satire of this film is blatant and rude while it suspiciously correlates with Canadian politics, specifically the Delgamuukw trials.

To make this association clearer think of the Gitxkan and the Wet’suwet’en as the impoverished tiny European country in the film and think of the United States as the Canadian government. In the film, the European country declared war on the United States in order to receive a financial victory just as the Gitxkan and the Wet’suwet’en declared a court battle with the Canadian government in order to receive financial compensation, Aboriginal title and land declaration. After making this association I think it is quite clear what McEachern was saying when he stated “We’ll call this the map that roared”. Unfortunately, this comment of his is extremely insulting to the Gitxkan and the Wet’sewet’en as they are made to look like fools.

The cartographic maps are representations of the Gitxkan and the Wet’sewet’en people and they created these maps in “attempts to outline their sovereignty in a way Canadian court might understand” (Sparke 468). Unfortunately, rather than these maps helping the Gitxkan and the Wet’sewet’en people in court, McEachern dismissed their efforts to illustrate their presence on their land with “colonist claims about the extinguishment of aboriginal rights” (470).

I personally feel that McEachern was succumbing to colonialism during these trials and did not care to give the Gitxkan and the Wet’sewet’en the chance to prove their Aboriginal title and sovereignty. I also feel like the Supreme court agrees with me about that as they ended up overturning McEachern’s ruling so the trials cound continue and the Gitxkan and the Wet’sewet’en were given more time to prove sovereignty of their land, hurray!

Thanks for reading everyone 🙂

Works Cited

(1959), Rotten Tomatoes. “The Mouse That Roared”. Rottentomatoes.com. N.p., 2016. Web. 11 Mar. 2016.

BC Treaty Commission. “A Lay Pearson’s Guide To Delgamuukw”. N.p., 1999. Web. 11 Mar. 2016.

Sparke, Matthew. “A Map That Roared And An Original Atlas: Canada, Cartography, And The Narration Of Nation”. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 88.3 (1998): 463-495. Web. 11 Mar. 2016.