Latisha Encounters Tourists and Reflects on George

The first of the two selected chapters begins with a group of tourists entering Latisha’s Dead Dog Café. As Jane Flick’s GRRW reading notes makes known, the tourists are named after a group of actors who were known for their stereotypical portrayals of Natives in Canada. King plays with this by making this group all, to greater or lesser degrees, oblivious to what would be thought of as “manners.” Jeanette basically opens the conversation with a blunt “May we assume that you are Indian?” followed by Nelson’s equally callous, “Any fool can see that.” While perhaps not intentionally racist, the bluntness of it all makes the entire encounter awkward at best. This is made no better by Nelson’s attempt to grab Latisha’s hips and butt on two different occasions. Seemingly innocent but completely, and perhaps willfully, unaware of proper boundaries, Nelson is a perfect picture of the colonizer.

While dealing with these tourists, Latisha reflects on the beginnings of her relationship with George Morningstar. Flick’s notes point out the similarities between George and General Custer, from the reference to given name of “Son of the Morningstar” to later references to both George and Custer’s roots in Michigan and Ohio, king seems to be impressing upon the reader the comparison a great deal. I think the comparison goes even further, with both men seemingly fascinated and appreciative of Native culture, yet at the same time come to treat that culture with disrespect and violence. Another aspect of George’s character that stood out to me, especially as the book went on, is his relation to Satan/Lucifer. Besides Lucifer meaning “Morningstar,” there’s a certain shared character between the two that I found particularly interesting. Even in this passage we see George’s pride, with him thinking himself to be far more intelligent and cultured than he truly is. Flick points this out when he offers Latisha his copy of Gibran’s The Prophet, a pseudo-spiritual text as vapid and empty of real depth as George is himself. There’s also, I feel, a certain weakness to George as a man. Of course, a prerequisite for a man beating a woman is weakness, and even though this is best on display when George lashes out violently at Latisha we see traces of it in this passage. Latisha comments in several places on George’s vulnerability and insecurity, and though it’s not on full display yet we can see the seeds of his violent nature being sown in this and following passages.

Eli Speaks to Cliff and Remembers the Sun Dance Intrusion

The next chapter sees Eli Stands Alone talking with Cliff Sifton. Flick describes the historical Clifford Sifton as an “aggressive promoter of settlement in the West through the Prairie West movement, and a champion of the settlers who displaced the Native population.” In this regard, the name is fitting. Throughout the novel Sifton tries to get Eli to move on, to accept that he’s trying to defend a past that can’t be brought back. He speaks with high esteem for the dam, often calling it beautiful. He speaks disparagingly about Native treaty rights and special privileges, and accuses Eli on page 141 of not being a “real Indian.” He’s a picture of a certain type of person in today’s world, one that would, for lack of a better way of putting it, prefer indigenous populations to assimilate into the broader culture and leave their history behind, seeing no value in it. He says, again on page 141 and at other points in the novel, that Eli “can’t live in the past.” This conversation between them is essentially the same as all conversations between them, with all conversations being initiated by Sifton in his attempt to get Eli to move.

Like in Latisha’s chapter, during this conversation Eli is reflecting on an incident that took place at a past sun dance. A family intruded on the sun dance and the father attempted to take pictures. There are clear parallels between the father and Sifton, with both men holding little respect for indigenous practices and values, seeming to believe that the only rules are Canadian law. On the part of the father (and perhaps Sifton as well), he seems to believe to be entitled to the photos of the sun dance that he’s pretended not to take. This could symbolize the Canadian settler, settling on land and displacing indigenous people while believing they’re entitled to this because it’s in accordance with wider Canadian (or, at the time, British) law. It also foreshadows the climax with George towards the end of the novel.

Works Cited

Flick, Jane. “Reading Notes for Thomas King’s Green Grass Running Water.” Canadian Literature 161-162. (1999). Web. April 04/2013.

Hall, David J. “Sir Clifford Sifton.” The Canadian Encyclopedia, 22 Jan 2008, https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/sir-clifford-sifton. Accessed 17 Mar 2020.

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

Turcotte, Yanick. “James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement.” The Canadian Encyclopedia, 3 July 2019, https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/james-bay-and-northern-quebec-agreement. Accessed 17 Mar 2020.

I’m glad we got the chance to revisit this topic. I had forgotten about this book and King’s juxtaposition of his creation story and the genesis story (or his version of it anyway), but in all honesty I was a little irked when we read originally read this material. I’ll admit to potential bias at the outset, I’m an Orthodox Christian. However, it wasn’t the criticism of the genesis story that irked me. Good criticism is great, it’s often warranted, and it’s not exactly something Christians are unfamiliar with living in the modern world – especially in university. But King was so preposterously off the mark that it almost felt like a joke, or maybe more accurately, it felt at times like a deliberate misrepresentation.

I’ll give an example of what I mean. On page 24 King writes, “In Genesis, all creative power is vested in a single deity who is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. The universe begins with his thought, and it is through his actions and only his actions that it comes into being.” (italics mine)

I don’t know what book he read, or what religious tradition he’s working within in his interpretation of the text, but I know of no mainstream Christian sect that would agree with that statement. Many schools of Jewish thought wouldn’t even agree with that statement, and their conception of God is actually unitary in the sense King implies. But I’m assuming he’s approaching the text from a Christian perspective because he alludes to just that at several points in the preceding pages. However, if he were working within a Christian tradition in his analysis of the text, then he would know that Christian’s don’t believe creation to have been, as King puts it on page 24, “[…] a solitary, individual act […]” It was, as any student of the religion could tell you, an act of cooperation and love between the three Persons that makeup the Godhead. The Trinity is one of the most basic and well-known Christian doctrines, so for King to leave that unmentioned seems, to me, an oversight at best, and intentionally malicious at worst.

Of course, he’s trying to set up a clear juxtaposition between his story and the genesis story, and in service of this juxtaposition he sets up three clear and distinct dialectical relationships between the stories: solitary act vs shared activity, harmony to chaos vs chaos to harmony, competition vs cooperation. But the fact is that these two stories aren’t nearly as different as King attempts to paint them, and I’m not quite sure why he’s so intent on doing so. As I just mentioned, mainstream Christian traditions (Catholic, Orthodox, High-Church Protestant) do not and have never viewed creation as a solitary act, and if King had just read a handful of verses further he would have seen God speaking in plural (Us, We, etc.).

There are issues with the other two dichotomies as well, though they’re less frustrating. The second one just sort of puzzled me, and I was left scratching my head wondering what he was talking about. Genesis isn’t harmony to chaos, it’s chaos to harmony in the exact same way as King’s own story. A formless void, a chaotic bundle of potential, given order through the cooperative interaction. When exactly is the slide into chaos King mentions on page 25?

The first dichotomy was frustrating because everyone familiar with Christianity (and some schools of Judaism for that matter) know that that just isn’t true. The second dichotomy was confusing because it doesn’t make any sense within the genesis story itself. The third dichotomy, I think is fair to say, is open to debate. I can see how he would be justified in interpreting the post-Fall world as one marked by competition rather than cooperation. There are mainstream Christian traditions who would agree, at least in part, with King’s interpretation. Without spending another 400 words on a really nit-picky aspect of Kings piece, all I’ll say is that it’s probably an overgeneralization at best.

My point in all this (besides venting a bit) is that the two creation stories aren’t all that different from one another. I was, obviously, unimpressed with King’s personal interpretation of the genesis story, as it doesn’t jive with Christian theology at all. The dialectical relationships he set up feel, to me, forced and invented. All this being said, the point of creation stories isn’t really to explain how the world came to be, is it? Some of the earliest Jewish and Christian traditions argued the genesis story is truth, not fact, and rather than explaining the literal creation of the world it describes our own lives and relationship with God, as each of us eats from the Tree and falls as we reach the age of self-consciousness (between 8 and 14 in the Catholic and Orthodox traditions), and we each are cast out from the paradise of childlike innocence and have to find out way back again.

Works Cited

Breck, John. “On Reading the Story of Adam and Eve.” Orthodox Church in America, www.oca.org/reflections/fr.-john-breck/on-reading-the-story-of-adam-and-eve.

“BibleGateway.” Genesis 1 NKJV – – Bible Gateway, www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+1&version=NKJV.

King, Thomas, “The Truth about Stories: A Native Narrative.” CBC Massey Lectures. House of Anansi Press, 2003.