The medicine wheel is a tool that Native American people use as a way to view the world. As a metaphor the Medicine wheel can represents a number things such as the stages of life, the seasons within a year, or the four states of being. Other than being a representation of certain ideas it can also come in different forms which include an “artifact or painting, or it can be a physical construction of the land.” What connects all these different representations is that the medicine wheel is cyclical and always turning. This means that while all these states come to pass, they also return, in an everlasting cycle of change. In his novel Green Grass Running Water Thomas King uses the flexible nature of the medicine wheel and applies it in own storytelling. This is evident in each chapter of his book which is clearly inspired by the medicine wheel cyclical structure due to the fact that each of them all begin the same way, but also end the same way. This is seen on the very page with King starting his novel with the line “In the beginning, there was nothing. Just the water.” Moreover the story also begins with the tale of coyote, and also ends with coyote as well.

Another aspect of the medicine wheel that is reflected in King’s novel is that both deal with the story and concept of creation. The medicine wheel reflects how ““Aboriginal peoples see and respond to the world in a circular fashion and are influenced by examples of the cirlces of creation in our environment.””

Another aspect of the medicine wheel that I found so interesting is, as I have previously mentioned, there is no one set interpretation as to what exactly it represents, and as a result it has been utilized in many different ways. I am not sure if many of these are accurate but if you search for images for Medicine wheel on google you are bound to get many different wheels each with their own way of categorizing each of its four quadrants. This in my opinion can get quite confusing as it is hard to determine which one should be pegged as the standard, if there is even any standard at all. In a way, this is the same concept that Thomas King is trying to impart in us in his novel. This is because the medicine wheel, like the stories that permeate Native American culture, are notions that one can never truly understand it as an outsider. Thus it is important that we try to take in these cultural institutions as they are, instead of immediately trying to analyzing it using your intellect. In other words, it is better to just take the story, like the medicine wheel as is, and not what you may interpret it to be. Ironically, I believe that doing this will actually allow outsiders to better connect with what is going on, rather than continually analyze what it may represent which only serves to affect your idea of what the story is truly trying to convey.

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