3:7 GGRW Assignment
Write a blog that hyper-links your research on the characters in GGRW using at least 10 pages of the text of your choice.
For this assignment, I am analyzing locations 1581-1748 of Green Grass, Running Water (kindle edition). Unfortunately, there are no page numbers in my copy.
Lionel’s Assignment for Duncan Scott
Lionel was working with the Department of Indian Affairs as a university student, and he was asked to give a speech by his boss, Duncan Scott, about “The History of Cultural Pluralism In Canada’s Boarding Schools. When he arrived in the room at Hotel Utah to give the speech, he didn’t expect to be in the middle of an AIM meeting regarding the Occupation of Wounded Knee. (King, Location 582) What was the significance of this scene?
Lionel, who was Blackfoot, abandoned his Indigenous values and identity, for White values and identity. According to Norma, he was ashamed of his heritage. Not only that, but he ended up working at a job for the Department of Indian Affairs (DIAND)–a government entity known to control and suppress Indigenous people and their rights. DIAND implemented the Indian Act in 1876, which enforced a multitude of laws seeking to assimilate Indigenous people into wider Canadian culture, aggressively controlling their everyday lives, making it illegal to practice their culture–potlatches, sun dances, and other events–even controlling their ability to buy alcohol, groceries and clothes, or sell produce. DIAND also forced Indigenous children to attend residential schools, broke Indigenous treaty rights, targeted the Indian Status of women, and etc. Lionel, despite being Blackfoot, was working for the organization that actively suppressed Indigenous people and their rights.
Furthermore, Lionel’s boss was Duncan Scott, who alluded to Duncan Campbell Scott, the head of the Department of Indian Affairs in Canada from 1913 to 1932. Scott fiercely advocated assimilationist policies against indigenous peoples, harming their legal status, overstepping their treaty rights, and managing the implementation of residential schools. According to Flick, “Scott was involved in treaty negotiations and responsible for ordering the prosecution of Indians taking part in feasts or potlatches.” (148) In King’s story, Duncan Scott sent Lionel to deliver a speech about “History of Cultural Pluralism in Canada’s Boarding Schools” for DIAND at an AIM meeting about the Occupation of Wounded Knee. and AIM is an organization that protects Indigenous people and their rights! The American Indian Movement (AIM), created in July 1968 and fights for Indigenous rights against problems created by colonization, including broken treaty rights, systemic poverty, police brutality, unemployment and etc.
Lionel, so caught up on becoming White, adopting White values, and a White identity, did not understand the significance of what he was doing. “Lionel felt out of place in his three-piece suit, but he hitched his pants, marched to the lectern with an authoritative swing to his arms, and began to talk about the history of boarding schools. He had hardly gotten through the opening joke when one of the women at the back of the room, a woman who surprisingly reminded him of his sister Latisha, stood up and shouted, “What does this crap have to do with our brothers and sisters at Wounded Knee?” (King, Location 570) He represented a character who sought to fit in with Whites, despite his life being constantly negatively impacted by White people, and their discrimination and distrust towards him simply because he was Indigenous. After the AIM meeting, a man invited Lionel to a rally saying, “Every Indian from Salt Lake is going to be there…” (King, Location 604), Lionel tried to refuse with the excuse that he wasn’t from the area. He thought himself unrelated to these Indigenous issues in Utah, because he was Canadian and didn’t identify as Indigenous. Regardless, these issues were crucial for Indigenous people including him. The importance of AIM’s values and the need to fight for Indigenous rights was illustrated by the entire misunderstanding leading to Lionel’s unjustified arrest, criminal record, jail time, and unemployment. Lionel was constantly betrayed by White people because he trusted Colonizing culture and the system it created. Despite Lionel’s arrest being a misunderstanding of his association with AIM, when he explained himself honestly to the police, they thought he was lying. As a result, he had to go through jail time he didn’t deserve, received a stain on his criminal record that got him fired from his job at DIAND (and another job after that). He only got in the debacle in the first place because he was trying to deliver a speech by Duncan for DIAND! Regardless, the White people he worked with didn’t care about the truth: His actual actions and experience. When Lionel initially got out of jail, he called Duncan and told him about the situation. “Duncan was sympathetic and told Lionel not to worry about anything. Talking with Duncan made Lionel feel much better, and it was only after he hung up that he remembered that he was in Green River, Wyoming, and that he was broke” (King, Location 652). However, at the point that Lionel needed help, he could no longer reach Duncan or anyone from the DIAND office anymore, and in the end he got fired despite Duncan’s initial pretense of understanding. These events not only illustrated the systemic unfairness, poverty, and distrust that negatively impacted Indigenous lives and opportunities, they also represented the betrayal that was a common occurrence in the history of the relationship between White people and Indigenous people, the many promises and treaties that were intentionally broken by the government, and the lack of an ability to take responsibility for the problems they caused that Indigenous people still have to face.
The significance and symbolism of Wounded Knee:
In November of 1865, the US army invaded Lakota reservations in an attempt to stop the growing practice of the Ghost Dance, a ritual that a prophet named Wovoka said would trigger Earth to return to its state. In November 1980, Major James Mclaughin sparked fear in a conflict with the Lakota people by killing a Lakota leader named Sitting Bull in an attempt to suppress the Ghost Dance. This triggered a huge amount of people from different Lakota reservations to gather towards two locations: Some went to the Badlands of South Dakota to prepare for an incoming fight, whereas others gathered at Pine Ridge where an Ogala chief called Red Cloud would try to negotiate peacefully. Big Foot, the chief of Miniconjou Lakota, led 350 of his tribe towards Pine Ridge to support the peace negotiations. However, the 7th Calvary of the US army, afraid of his intentions, intercepted the Miniconjou at their camp at Wounded Knee, demanding them to surrender their weapons and forcibly search the Miniconjou. Many did surrender their weapons, however, Black Coyote, who was deaf, refused to do so. In the army’s struggle to get his weapon, his gun accidentally fired, triggering a few people from both sides to panic and react. After this, the US army started shooting everyone even though most Miniconjou no longer had weapons, killing around 250-300 people, nearly half of them being women and children. Many Lakota were killed without mercy: People who could not fight back, were unarmed, or were running away, even children who came out of hiding when beckoned to by the soldiers.
How events played out at Wounded Knee were similar to Lionel’s experience when the police intercepted AIM on their way to join the Occupation of Wounded Knee. The Indigenous protesters had peaceful intentions, but were simply fighting for their rights. Nevertheless, an accident paired with White people’s inherent distrust of Indigenous people triggered a violent altercation. Whereas in the Massacre of Wounded Knee, Black Coyote had accidentally fired a gun, leading the US army to fire, in Lionel’s case, his arm accidentally got caught in a rifle strap, causing it to come unhinged as he was getting out of the van. Regardless of Lionel’s intentions and pleas for the police to understand, their inherent distrust towards him because he was Indigenous, meant he was unjustly treated and forced to undergo jail time.
Lionel’s Conversation with Norma about George Morningstar and Latisha
When Lionel claimed he lost his government job—at the Department of Indian Affairs— due to bad luck, Norma said, “Look at your sister. She makes her own luck.”(Location 583) At this point, Lionel discussing the bad luck of Latisha, said, “What about George Morningstar? He used to beat the hell out of her.” (Location 604) The relationship between Latisha and George Morningstar is very interesting. According to Flick, Morningstar alluded to George Armstrong Custer who received the name of “Son of the Morning Star” (Flick, 146). From this, I questioned how Latisha connected with George Morningstar, who represented a commander of the 7th U.S. Calvary in the American Indian Wars. I believe Latisha alludes to Custer’s two wives, Elizabeth “Libbie” Custer and Monahsetah. Libbie was Custer’s devoted first wife, who would come with Custer on his assignments, and who wrote multiple books about his war experiences, the sole reason for his fame as an American hero after his death. Monahsetah, was the daughter of a Cheyenne chief. On November 28, 1868, Custer killed her father in the Battle of Washita River, and subsequently Monahsetah became a 2nd wife. Interestingly, Libbie was said to have met Monahsetah personally and known about the sexual relationship between the two. In Green Grass, Running Water, Latisha was married to George Morningstar, and ultimately, Lionel called the experience bad luck, mentioning that he beat her up. This kind of relationship seemed to go against the accounts of both Libbie and Monahsetah’s love for Custer, however, could be metaphorical in the many forms of pain he caused for Monahsetah (I couldn’t find any accounts of physical abuse) by killing her father as well as many others in her tribe. Custer also left her unable to marry, heartbroken, and betrayed. She waited 7 years for him to return to her before he was eventually killed. Furthermore, Custer had smoked the peace pipe and promised Monahsetah he would never attack her tribe again, and he died betraying that promise when he attacked the Cheyenne and other tribes in the Battle of Little Bighorn on June 25, 1876.
Lionel’s Admiration of Custer
Interestingly, the hotel Lionel was staying at featured a painting of the Battle of Little Bighorn, where George Armstrong Custer was killed in June of 1876. In the painting, “George Armstrong Custer stood at the center of the drama, looking splendid in a fringed leather jacket, matching gloves…” (674), this imagery of splendor was something Lionel admired in his hero John Wayne who played the part of Custer in multiple movies. The heroic way he was framed in both the painting and real movies like Son of the Morningstar seemed to overshadow the negative aspects of what happened in reality, when he kidnapped women and children after killing Monahsetah’s father and massacring her tribe. Lionel felt some sort of connection with Custer, which seemed to indicate his abandoning of Indigenous values and identity for White values and identity. While watching the painting, Lionel compared his experiences when the police surrounded the AIM van to what Custer must have felt when he made the wrong move in the Battle of Little Bighorn before he was subsequently killed on June 25, 1876. “Lionel considered the painting for a time, remembering the convoy of police cars that had descended on the van. He was still shaken and embarassed by the whole episode. Maybe that’s how Custer had felt when he discovered his mistake. Embarassed” (King, Location 675). In Lionel’s eyes, Custer was a hero he identified with. According to Flick, “Lionel’s childhood desire to be John Wayne and to have his jacket signals his denial of ‘Indianness.’ King uses Wayne’s movie costume of leather jacket, hat and gloves to parallel George Morningstar’s ‘Custer’ jacket, hat and gloves” (Flick, p.147). But Lionel’s admiration for Custer–and John Wayne who played the character of Custer–was quite strange because he repeatedly mentioned that Latisha marrying George Morningstar was a mistake and that he beat her up. But Custer and George Morningstar are representations of the same person, something Lionel can’t recognize. In King’s book, Custer takes on two different characters, which may symbolize the dual nature between Custer’s heroic image to the public, and the kind of person he actually was. Lionel seeing Custer as a hero seems to represent his attachment to the White identity without realizing the harm it does to him and other Indigenous people including Latisha, someone close to him.
Latisha’s Dead Dog Cafe and God
Latisha’s Dead Dog Cafe seems to be related to Coyote’s dream taking a life of it’s own. His dream was a dog who took the name of God. He got it backwards. From this point “God” created a lot of trouble by wanting to become something he was not. He put himself into a role of superiority and status, jumping into the garden created by First Woman, telling her to put everything back the way it was. He claimed the world, the garden, and all the food in the garden was his. According to Flick, “GOD turns out to be the loud-voiced God of the Old Testament.” (748) But the fact that he was dog backwards seemed to symbolize his attempt to be something he was not, and to impose that on others who had nothing to do with him. He tried to impose his authority on First Women and the garden (an allusion to the Garden of Eden), thinking it was the one he supposedly created, when he didn’t belong to the scene at all. God seemed to represent a story and a set of western values relating to entitlement, control, beliefs of superiority, and self-righteousness. Latisha’s Dead Dog Cafe seemed to be symbolism and mockery about this God that was actually a dog. God isn’t what he seems. However, those under Colonizing Culture would not understand the metaphor. According to Flick, her restaurant name is, “Part of the jokes about traditional Blackfoot cook-ing and tourists’ desire for the exotic.” (149) Tourists come to Latisha’s cafe to experience the “exotic-ness” of Blackfoot culture, not realizing it’s a tourist trap meant to take advantage of their desire to fetishize Indigenous people. Her restaurant seems to be reversing to relationship of control, entitlement, superiority, and etc. that Colonizing Culture imposes on Indigenous people. Whereas, Lionel and other Indigenous people suffer economic disadvantages, poverty, job discrimination, and etc. as a result of Colonizing Culture, Latisha turns this around by being an entrepreneur who makes money off of duping White people and discretely mocking their identity of superiority.
Works Cited
Hi Gaby!
Really fantastic blog here with some powerful words and allusions that you picked up on. In particular, I want to highlight this passage about Lionel:
“These events not only illustrated the systemic unfairness, poverty, and distrust that negatively impacted Indigenous lives and opportunities, they also represented the betrayal that was a common occurrence in the history of the relationship between White people and Indigenous people.”
I found this to be particularly moving and just wanted to acknowledge how well I believe you chose your words. Great work!
Furthermore, I found the section about the Battle of Little Bighorn to be so interesting! I find it truly amazing how many allusions King was able to fit within GGRW. I chose different pages, obviously, and I had none of these same connections but an entire catalogue of other ones! It truly amazes me.
My question isn’t so much insightful as it is straightforward, but I wanted to ask what moved you to choose the section 1581-1748. Was there something about this part of the book that particularly drew you in?
Excited to hear your thoughts!
Chase