Your blog assignment is to hyper-link your research on the characters and symbols in GGRW  — according to the pages assigned to you on our Student Blog page.

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PAGES 340 – 348, 1993 Edition

For my section, I’m going to examine what I consider one of the most significant cultural reclamations in the novel: the obliteration of the dam.

Eli vs. the Dam

My section starts off with a conversation about the dam which plays a significant role in the novel. It’s a reference to the Great Whale Project, in Quebec in the 1980s. There was a plan to build hydro-electric power stations on the Great Whale River – which would be an encroachment on the Cree’s traditional lands.Ultimately, after a lot of legal struggle, this plan was delayed.

In King’s novel, the Canadian government is developing a similar project. Once their dam is operational, it will flood the reserve lands – including the ancestral house in which Eli Stands Alone lives. As Jane Flick points out, Eli is likely a reference to Elijah Harper, who is best known for his solitary opposition to the Meech Lake Accord, on the grounds that First Nations had not been consulted or recognized in the discussions around the accord.

Similarly, in the novel, the government has signed off on a project without consulting or recognizing the Blackfoot community’s claims to the land. Nor have they considered the negative consequences the dam has on the habitat – which impacts the First Nations’ cultural life (as the cottonwood trees which are essential in their Sun Dance won’t grow). In this way, the dam can be seen as an enforcement of colonial authority that still persists today.

Coyote’s Earthquake

Coyote, the Creator/Trickster figure, who is present in the conversation tries to fix this. He does a little dancing and creates an earthquake. The next page has only a few lines – with people screaming ‘Earthquake’. I feel like this is a very powerful scene when you consider who they are.

One is Clifford Sifton – a reference to the Minister of Immigration under Sir Wilfred Laurier, who increased immigration from Britain, US and other European countries and offered “free” land to the settlers. He also tried to appropriate First Nations Treaty land to give it to the European settlers. In the novel, the character is the engineer of the dam.

The other is Bill Bursam – a reference to the US Senator in 1921 who devised the Bursam Bill, which ultimately deprived Pueblo Indians of their land to European and American settlers. In the novel, the character anticipates a financial gain from the project as he bought up lake-front property on the man-made lake by the dam.

Both characters are strongly entrenched in the settler’s myth – they see the Blackfoot community’s land as being available and refuse to acknowledge their presence. So in this context, the earthquake is very significant. As these colonizers appropriate First Nations land and re-draw the map of this land (another exertion of colonial power), it’s very fitting that reclamation comes in the form of an earthquake. As Stratton says in her article, Coyote’s earthquake “rearranges the geography” and obliterates the colonial landscape – with the destruction of the dam (97).

Destruction of the Dam

On page 346, Sifton is with his colleauge Lewis Pick, and they both are repeatedly knocked down by the earthquake. Lewis is probably a reference to Colonel Lewis A. Pick of the Pick-Sloan projects of the 1940s-50s that took acres of Native land for the Missouri River dams – a project that is said to have done more damage to Native land than any public work in America.

I think it’s important to note the way in which the dam is actually destroyed here. The three missing cars – the Nissan, Pinto and Karmaan-Ghia are thrown into the dam repeatedly until it breaks.

The three cars are an allusion to the Nina, Pinta and Santa-Maria, the names of the European explorer, Christopher Columbus’s ships in which he ‘discovered’ America. His conquest of the ‘new world’ devastated the Native Americans. I think by making this reference, King challenges the Eurocentric view of Columbus as cultural hero. (After all, Columbus Day is still recognized in many US states…) King appropriates this historical narrative and inverts it. Unlike their namesakes, which brought over the explorers, these cars are used to resist colonization and ultimately reclaim the First Nation’s land.

There’s also a line in this section that jumped out at me – “There was an ominous sound of things giving away, things falling apart.”

James Cox notes that this might be an allusion to that famous line from Yeats’s Second Coming: “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold/ Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.” What makes this interesting is that while Coyote’s attempt to fix the world does result in chaos (the bursting of a dam, flooding of a river), the end result is ultimately beneficial. Now the cottonwood trees will get their nutrients. This is good news for the Blackfoot tribe, as these trees are necessary for their Sun Dance. It’s not an apocalyptic end then, as is the case in Yeats’s poem, for Coyote’s chaos brings something positive, something new into the other characters lives.

 

WORKS CITED

Cox, James H. “There Are No Truths…Only Stories.” Muting White Noise: Native American and European American Novel Traditions. Norman: U of Oklahoma, 2006. 90-99. Print.

“Cree Legal Struggle Against the Great Whale Project.” The Grand Council of the Crees. Cree Nation Government, n.d. Web. 16 Mar. 2015.

Joinson, Carla. “The Bursum Bill.” Canton Asylum for Insane Indians. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Mar. 2015.

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

“Meech Lake Accord.” The Canadian Encyclopedia. The Canadian Encyclopedia, n.d. Web. 16 Mar. 2015.

“Native American Netroots.” Dam Indians: The Missouri River. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Mar. 2015.

“Pioneers and Immigrants : The Last Best West (1896 – 1914).” Canada in the Making. Ed. Jean-Claude Robert. Early Canada Online, n.d. Web. 16 Mar. 2015.

Stratton, Florence. “Cartographic Lessons Susanna Moodie’s RoughingIt in the Bushand Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water.” Canadian Literature (1999): 82-102. Canadian Literature. Web. 16 Mar. 2015.

Strong, Byran. “Slavery and Colonialism Make Up the True Legacy of Columbus.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 03 Nov. 1989. Web. 16 Mar. 2015.

Yeats, William. “The Second Coming.” The Second Coming – Yeats. Poem of the Week, n.d. Web. 16 Mar. 2015.