Narrative Decolonization – Assignment #3.5

Identify and discuss two of King’s “acts of narrative decolonization.”Please read the following quote to assist you with your answer.The lives of King’s characters are entangled in and informed by both the colonial legacy in the Americas and the narratives that enact and enable colonial domination. King begins to extricate his characters’ lives from the domination of the invader’s discourses by weaving their stories into both Native American oral traditions and into revisions of some of the most damaging narratives of domination and conquest: European American origin stories and national myths, canonical literary texts, and popular culture texts such as John Wayne films. These revisions are acts of narrative decolonization. James Cox. “All This Water Imagery Must Mean Something.” Canadian Literature 161-162 (1999). Web April 04/2013.

King challenges the colonial legacy and the narratives that enact and enable colonial domination throughout the novel, Green Grass, Running Water (1993).  This is achieved by describing “acts of narrative decolonization” according to Cox (2013). However, from my own observations before even reading the blog questions or the article by James Cox, I would have described it in much the same way, as a way of using particular experiences, symbols and storytelling to deconstruct the narration of the colonial story, aka the one of European American origin stories and mythology.

It is difficult to choose only two acts out of the many but I feel that the two that moved me most included the experiences that Lionel had from early childhood as well as Eli Standing Alone. The first “act of narrative decolonization” is when Lionel wanted to get his tonsils out but ended up being flown to Toronto and forever being labelled as a person with a heart condition, and secondly, when he attended Wounded Knee and had a misunderstanding with the authority related to possession of a weapon (59-62). These were both “acts of narrative decolonization” as it challenges the rhetoric surrounding ideas about how the system is believed to be unbiased, culturally-universal and that the court system treats all citizens equally regardless of ethnicity, sex, age or socioeconomic status.  It is apparent that if it did, Lionel wouldn’t have had this experience in the first place. In addition, the trouble with getting mixed up with another patient also indicates how this child, even though a child, has already become invisible and not carefully listened to by the medical services due to culturally-insensitive services.

Lionel felt completely helpless in both situations, and essentially because of who he was, he was helpless. As King describes, a child can tell the difference between knowing trouble with the throat versus problems with a heart. Yet, nobody stopped to say, why is this child saying this? Should I perhaps listen to what they are saying? It was discarded as being invalid, inconsequential and as that of well, “a child.” King uses narrative decolonization by redirecting the problem not to Lionel but to the colonizers, making erroneous assumptions despite Lionel appearing to be a relatively good guy.  Not listening when they should have been. As was said various times throughout the story, “listen, pay attention, forget that, listen up!”

The second act of narrative decolonization was the ongoing situation with the dam and the desire of Eli who was fighting the dam. This is going on today with the pipeline that is to be throughout North America. It seems that this is an ongoing colonization practice that hasn’t stopped as despite claims of ties to the land, the corporations feel they have more of a right to the land and the resources than the Indigenous peoples all in the prospect of profit. It was made pretty obvious the effects this has on people living on these lands, such as Eli wanting to save his childhood home and consistently challenging the status quo in relation to Western-European culture such as using what resources are desired, regardless of who may be using them or how they may be valued.

Works Cited

Cox, James. “All This Water Imagery Must Mean Something.” Canadian Literature 161-162 (1999). Web.

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

 

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ColleenFish

Works in Mental Health and Addictions as a rehabilitation worker with Vancouver Coastal Health. I enjoy yoga, biking, watching supernatural TV series and reading.

One thought on “Narrative Decolonization – Assignment #3.5”

  1. Hi Colleen. Your insight regarding Eli’s plight in fighting the dam really enlightened me to how some forms of colonization still takes place even until today. Yes, countries are no longer claiming other territories as their own, but as you pointed out huge corporations and their interests are forcing themselves upon the lands of Native Americans. It just goes to show that despite the progress humanity has made over the years, remnants of our colonial past still resonate in the present, it just comes in a completely different packaging. All in all while these remnants of colonization may not be as violent or obvious as before, I believe they can be just as damaging to a community.

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