Each student will be assigned a section of the novel Green Grass Running Water (pages will be divided by the number of students). The task at hand is to first discover as many allusions as you can to historical references (people and events), literary references (characters and authors), mythical references (symbols and metaphors).

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The occupation of Wounded Knee was in its second month (55)

The reference to Wounded Knee alludes to two significant events that took place in the hamlet of Wounded Knee within the Lakota Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, US. The first event is the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890, where 300 members of the Sioux tribe were killed in a confrontation with American soldiers. The second event, which Lionel finds himself involved, is the Wounded Knee Incident in 1973,  where many Indigenous people occupied Wounded Knee for 71 days in protest of the 371 treaties broken by the American government. The first event shapes the second event because the selection of Wounded Knee as the site of protest was due to its historic and symbolic value. The second event in particular highlights the conflict between state interests and tribal interests where the tribal president, Richard Wilson, seems to be working for the benefit of the government, the FBI, white settlers, and himself rather than for the best interests of the people he is suppose to represent. The tribal president’s shifting identity, no doubt, forces an examination of Lionel’s conflicting identity as employee of the Department of Indian Affairs and as a member of the reserve in Blossom. Has Lionel sold out the people that he is suppose to represent?

He was to give his talk on “The History of Cultural Pluralism in Canada’s Boarding Schools” (56)

This is a brilliant example of white-washing by Lionel, substantiating accusations from Norma that he thinks like a white man and does not defend his own culture. What we refer to today as “residential schools” are called instead “boarding school”, evoking a sense of culture of prestige and civility for something that was far from civilized. His use of the term “cultural pluralism” goes against the grain of the current conventional understanding about what actually happened in these schools, which the current government has finally decided to describe as cultural genocide.

Massasoit was the Indian who greeted the Europeans at Plymouth Rock (58)

Massasoit first encountered the pilgrims of the Mayflower in 1620. His diplomacy with the pilgrims secured peace between his tribe and the colonists for his entire life. He formed alliance with the pilgrims through treaties that ensured the safety of the pilgrims, while ensuring the support of the colonists in the case of warfare against enemy tribes. Perhaps the mention of his name invites the juxtaposition of his ideal leadership against that of Richard Wilson and Lionel. After hearing this name, Lionel reacts by saying that he is Canadian, which implies that he does not consider the first contact between the colonists and the Indigenous  to be of any relevance to his personal narrative, and therefore, can excuse himself of the responsibility to engage with it.

American Indian Movement (59)

The American Indian Movement (AIM) is an advocacy group established since 1968 to bring public awareness to violations of Indigenous treaties by the US government through organized demonstrations. It is the AIM activists that make up a significant portion of the dissidents at Wounded Knee.

Battle of the Little Bighorn (61)

The Battle of the Little Bighorn took place in 1876, which witnessed the conflict between the Indigenous forces and the US Army. Contrary to the other conflicts mentioned above, the victors of this battle were the Indigenous people. By bringing this battle into the narrative, King brings about the irony of glorifying this event within a luxurious hotel predominated by affluent white visitors, as well as insuating its broader implication of how the Indigenous’ struggle for freedom may be trivialized, rather than aided, by its depiction within popular culture and within art.

“I’m Tom, and this is Gerry”/Chip and Dale (63)

The first pair of names are the main characters of the television show Tom and Jerry. The second pair of names are the main characters of the television show Chip and Dale. It should be noted that these humorous allusions are both examples of MGM shorts, among which there are often cartoon depictions of stereotypical Indigenous characters. Their popular portrayal informs the public perception of Indigenous identity and motivation, and perhaps also affect Lionel’s perception. By using these names to describe the two hotel staff, King is poking fun of Hollywood’s of  giving exotic names to its Indigenous characters by giving his two characters names derived from animals.

Works Cited

“1973: Siege at Wounded Knee.” libcom.org. libcom.org group. 19 Sept 2006. Web. 12 June 2015. <https://libcom.org/history/1973-siege-at-wounded-knee>

Johnson, Caleb. “Massasoit Ousemequin.” MayflowerHistory.com. N.p. N.d. Web. 12 July 2015. <http://mayflowerhistory.com/massasoit/>

“Massacre At Wounded Knee, 1890.” EyeWitness to History, Ibis Communications, Inc. 1998. Web. 12 July 2015. <http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/knee.htm>

“MGM Shorts.” doctormarco.com. N.p. N.d. Web. 12 July 2015. <http://www.doctormacro.com/movie%20summaries/m/mgm%20shorts.htm>

“The Battle of the Little Bighorn.” EyeWitness to History, Ibis Communications, Inc. N.d. Web. 12 July 2015. <http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/custer.htm>

“The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada: Interim Report.” TRC. Truth and Reconcilliation Commission of Canada. 2 June 2015. Web. 12 July 2015. <http://www.trc.ca/websites/trcinstitution/index.php?p=580>

“The UK’s best boy’s and girl’s public school.” UK Boarding Schools. UK Boarding Schools Metroplis Business Publishing. N.d. Web. 12 July 2015. <http://www.ukboardingschools.com/>

Wittstock, Laura W., Elaine J. Salinas. “A Brief History of the American Indian Movement.” American Indian Movement. American Indian Movement. N.d. Web. 12 July 2015. <http://www.aimovement.org/ggc/history.html>

In order to tell us the story of a stereo salesman, Lionel Red Deer (whose past mistakes continue to live on in his present), a high school teacher, Alberta Frank (who wants to have a child free of the hassle of wedlock—or even, apparently, the hassle of heterosex!), and a retired professor, Eli Stands Alone (who wants to stop a dam from flooding his homeland), King must go back to the beginning of creation.

Why do you think this is so?

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If stories are the vehicle through which we navigate conflicts to reach a point of a more stable stasis, where does this resolution come from, how does it manifest itself in relation to what has happened, and why is it so powerful? In order to answer this week’s question, I approached it not by thinking about the starting point at once, but by looking at the destination to make sense of the beginning in the context of the whole narrative trajectory. Why is the beginning written as it is, constructed by the author as a point of departure from which the characters and other forces diverge and converge?

First of all, we must study the peculiar structure of this story. The story is written in four parts and consists of a multitude of characters whose lives are set on very different courses and directed by diverse personal philosophies. Eli has chosen to relinquish his comfortable status to fight for a cause charged with moral conviction, while his nephew Lionel seeks to improve his social status and is a helpless puppet in the current of events that swirl about him. Alberta seeks to live a life of complete autonomy and control, while the forces operating at the backdrop of the story seem to be continuously pulling the characters ever closer towards the sundance, whether or not they are willing participants. In other words, they must confront their sense of community and individualism and engage in a precarious balancing act of convergence and divergence. Because of the way King seems to unravel his novel into several yarns of narrative, the novel can easily be mistaken as a collection of short stories told simultaneously, if it were not for some unifying element. The creation story might possibly serve as the unifying element to make sense of their point of departure and provide hints to their ultimate destination, but King doesn’t need to use the creation story to tie these characters together. These main characters are of Native descent, and their common ground could easily have been their heritage. Furthermore, all the characters are connected in a genealogical web with familial links and a history of correspondence, so the creation story, in my opinion, is not the necessary basis for connecting the characters themselves.

I suspect that the creation story plays an elemental role in this narrative because King hopes to engage the reader with his story. It is difficult for an Aboriginal writer to tell an Aboriginal story to a non-Aboriginal audience . How does an Aboriginal writer even begin to convince the reader that the story is worth listening to, that it’s not just some mythical legend that has little in the way of instructing our 21st scientific worldview? King does so with the creation story, because that way the non-Aboriginal audience has some footing, or even a stake in the story. At the point of creation there are no boundaries separating the Natives and the Europeans. The nexus between the reader and the stories that he is confronted with becomes a locus that has been decolonized by first removing the authoritative tone of the European voice (with the effect emphasized by entitling the Christian God as Dog). As we proceed in King’s novel after this partial erasure of preconceived notions, we are encouraged by this narrative device to disarm our sensors for veracity and expose ourselves to the ambiguity of literature and of life itself, where absolute answers begin to blur and we begin to approach, albeit cautiously, the subjective nature of truth. This seemingly dangerous philosophical quagmire is actually the only possible point of story creation, because new stories can only be told once past stories are displaced through distortion, deconstruction, and destruction. However, the process of revitalizing old stories can ultimately create a more inclusive and intimate space for the accommodation of all cultures.

Happy Canada Day. The four flags show the different layers of stories that are relevant to the ground on which I stand, and as a Canadian citizen I am automatically inducted to the national narrative, whether or not I believe and support it.

I will end this entry with a lighter analogy: spending Canada Day 5000 kilometers away from home in Moncton, New Brunswick. What makes this city figuratively closer to home (or home itself) then 40 km south of Richmond across the US border? My connection to home in Moncton begins with the creation story of Canada 148 years ago, when places of disparate histories and impossibly vast distances converged in a single document, and today we continue to observe the ways in which Canadian cities and its people incessantly moving farther from and closer to one another as the forces and agents act upon one another. There is no objective truth in the Canada national narrative, but we can certainly trace our point of origin and I hope that it might inform us of our direction as we head into the future.

WORKS CITED

Choi, Timothy. “Four Flags.” 2015. JPEG file.

“Sun Dance” Native Americans Online. N.p. N.d. Web. 3 July 2015. <http://www.native-americans-online.com/native-american-sun-dance.html>