Sun Dance Camp at Blackfoot Crossing, Alberta, 1927
- Everyone is on the move in this novel, road trips abound and in order to hit the road what do we need? — a road map. At the same time, Lionel, Charlie and Alberta are each seeking direction in life. As Goldman says, “mapping is a central metaphor” (24) of this novel. Maps chart territory and provide directions, they also create borders and boundaries and they help us to find our way. There is more than one way to map, and just as this novel plays with conflicting story traditions, I think King is also playing with conflicting ways to chart territory. What do you think lies at the centre of King’s mapping metaphor? Marlene Goldman, “Mapping and Dreaming; Native Resistance in Green Grass Running Water.” Canadian Literature 161-162 (1999). Web. April 04/2013.
Many of the Native characters in King’s Green Grass Running Water are on the roads, paved (settler-invader) and unpaved (toward the Sun Dance) as they seek direction in their lives. The characters seeking that direction, primarily Lionel, Charlie, and Alberta have spent their lives in cross-cultural intersections, seeking meaning from life within settler cities such as Toronto, or settler institutions such as universities. As Marlene Goldman says in Mapping and Dreaming; Native Resistance in Green Grass Running Water “their journeys will never assume a meaningful direction, so long as they stick to the man-made road and continue to rely on non-Native discursive maps” (Mapping 27). The linear non-Native maps lead to an apocalyptic end. The unpaved roads lead to the Sun Dance, the centre of King’s mapping metaphor. The Sun Dance and the circle, the basis of the traditional way of life according to Native spiritual leaders (referenced by Goldman (Mapping 29) from Lutz) whose “goal lies in furnishing participants with a map of the universe in which their location is clearly demarcated” (Mapping 34) are offered as an alternative to non-Native discursive maps.
Goldman represents that many of the young Native people in GGRW lack direction in their lives. Conventional maps and the settler-invader linear way of life have not taken them in a satisfactory direction, nor have elders since they were playing stereotyped characters expected to be successful in non-Native society. King emphasizes this point with inclusion of Portland Looking Bear, an elder whose desperation to act in non-Native society’s depiction of the settler-invader narrative results in the loss of his ability to provide direction to Charlie. GGRW “brings together both the cartographic and performative connotations associated with the word ‘direction'” (Mapping 28) as Lionel, Charlie, Eli and the elders escaped from the Florida[1] (meant to be the Fort Marion) “asylum” come together in Bursum’s store to see his “map” of televisions displaying John Wayne Hollywood Western movies. These Western movies of Native extinction are only “fixed” by the four elders when the linear narrative is fixed by a “circle of performance epitomized by the Sun Dance” (Mapping 29). Characters following non-Native discursive maps and way of life are lost until elders appropriate “the technology of non-Native society” (Mapping 29) to elucidate the “organic path of the circle and performance” (Mapping 33).
Whereas Eli is initially unsure what wisdom he can impart to Lionel on his birthday, after witnessing the elders at Bursum’s store he is able to teach his nephew as part of the circle of life and family. As Lionel contemplates leaving Blossom to complete university, Eli explains that he should never have left the circle of the community, the Sun Dance, for Toronto. We understand the importance of the Sun Dance to the community and Native life as Eli reminisces about the past. Goldman explains that Native spiritual leaders describe the Sun Dance as a “tangible model of the universe” (Mapping 35). “During the Sun Dance, the body itself becomes a map” (Mapping 35). Eli had abandoned his mother and family for many years in pursuit of a settler-invader career. With the wisdom of age he returns to his ancestral home to fight the dam that would destroy the home and the Blackfoot community. He takes Lionel to the Sun Dance circle, leaving the paved road for the “vital path that virtually fuses with the natural world” (Mapping 33). Eli stops the truck and he and Lionel look down on the Sun Dance, a circle of teepees that appear to be floating on the prairie. This circle is provided as contrast to the linear way of life that Lionel feels he must follow, and Eli now rejects. Eli offers Lionel the Sun Dance as a map for him to find his way in the universe.
The Sun Dance lies at the centre of King’s mapping metaphor for its importance in charting life direction, as well as potentially for the symbolic importance of the Blackfoot Sun Dance Camp in the 1877 Treaty Seven political devastation. In reviewing King’s interviews and other scholarly references I was unable to find King’s assertion that this is in fact true. Treaty Seven resulted in the transfer (see linked article to see the settler-invader view and the Blackfoot view) of 50,000 square miles of Southern Alberta land from Native control in exchange for reserves, livestock and farming implements. On the fiftieth anniversary of the treaty signing government officials selected the Blackfoot Sun Dance Camp, as a National Historic Site because of the significance of the treaty signing. When officials photographed the site in 1927 for unveiling of the Historic Site plaque they captured the settler-invader “narrative of success in fulfilling treaty promises” (Sundance 5) and undisturbed Native life by depicting a “circle of teepees surrounded by vacant wilderness landscape” (Sundance 7). However, the reality was that the Sun Dance was banned in 1913 as Duncan Scott felt that it stood in the way of the civilizing process and was a nuisance as it occurred when the Blackfoot should be working crops. The fact that the Sun Dance still existed in 1927 was an act of Blackfoot defiance in retaining a ceremony central to their culture. In GGRW King repeatedly rejects photography (a form of non-Native mapping) of the Sun Dance. King’s selection of the Blackfoot Sun Dance is potentially a reminder of the devastating impact of how the settler-invader interpretation of “land as property to be consumed and used by Europeans was written into the language of maps” (Goldman quote of Chandra Mukerji – Mapping 19) and King’s rejection of the settler-invader narrative.
In GGRW King positions the Sun Dance at the centre of his mapping metaphor as the map of the universe that will help the Native characters find their life’s direction. It is offered as an alternative to linear mapping found in non-Native institutions and cities. As Goldman says, GGRW is “like a participant in the dance itself” (Mapping 36). Potentially underscoring the importance of Native tradition and mapping, King uses the location of the Treaty Seven signing, the Blackfoot Sun Dance, as a reminder of the consequences of how settler-invader maps are used to take the Native way of life and land. Is anyone able to find any reference to King purposefully choosing the Blackfoot Sun Dance to highlight Treaty Seven?
[1] Florida is meant to represent the Garden of Eden and the settler-invader linear narrative of creation. However, all of the trees are dead.
Works Cited:
Hugh A. Dempsey, “Treaty Research Report – Treaty Seven (1877)” Treaties and Historical Research Centre, Comprehensive Claims Branch, Self-Government, Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, 1987 http://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/DAM/DAM-INTER-HQ/STAGING/texte-text/tre7_1100100028790_eng.pdf
King, Thomas. Green Grass Running Water. Toronto: Harper Collins, 1993. Print.
Goldman, Marlene. Canadian Literature: Mapping and Dreaming: Native Resistance in Green Grass, Running Water. University of British Columbia Press, 1999. Web. 16 Mar. 2016. https://canlit.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/canlit161-162-MappingGoldman.pdf
Jauca, Halena. “Sundance Camp at Blackfoot Crossing: Perpetuation of a Pioneer Narrative.” Canadian Studies Undergraduate Journal 14 (2013): 2-8. http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/theseed/article/download/184880/184402
Lutz, Hartmut. “The Circle as Philosophical and Structural Concept in Native American Fiction Today.” Native American Literatures. Ed. Laura Coltelli. Pisa: SEU (Servizio Editoriale Universitario), 1989. 85-97.
Paterson, Erika. “Lesson 3.2.” ENGL 470A Canadian Studies: Canadian Literary Genres. University of British Columbia, 2013. Web. 16 Mar. 2016.
Images used:
Sundance Camp, Blackfoot Crossing, Alberta, 1927. Photographer: WJ. Oliver. Glenbow Archives, NA-3331-1.
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