Here’s my question: where do all of these tourists get off treating everyone so horribly?
When I read my section I couldn’t help but recognize an overpowering theme of tension. It’s everywhere. There’s tension in the Café, there’s tension between Latisha and George, there’s tension between Eli and Sifton, and there’s tension between the people of the Sundance and the tourists. Tourism for entertainment leads to trespassing, interrogation, curiosity and spectacle of Aboriginal culture. Aboriginal culture is literally explored, put on stage for viewing, and judged like Duncan Campbell Scott watches and criticizes his “Onandaga Madonna”.
It’s not as much surveillance as it is carnival.
We begin with the four tourists at the Dead Dog Café: Jeanette, Nelson, Rosemarie De Flor, and Bruce. According to @eldatari (wordpress):
“The four customers sitting in Latisha’s Dead Dog Cafe are named in reference to Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy, who appeared in the 1936 MGM musical, Rose-Marie. In the film, they portrayed the characters Rose-Marie de Flor and Sergeant Bruce; a famous opera singer and an RCMP officer, respectively.”
User @eldatari explains how the Aboriginal character that accompanies Marie de Flor eventually robs and abandons her. This negative portrayal of the only Aboriginal character in the film provides sympathy to Marie’s exploratory, invasive actions. While it is mentioned that Marie’s Aboriginal guide has understandable reason for the robbery, the viewer does not deem his actions understandable.
In Green Grass Running Water, Latisha undergoes awkward, disrespectful interrogation at the hands of Jeanette, one of the other tourists in Marie’s company. Such spiteful inquisition leads me to think that King is alluding to this film to demonstrate the power of trauma. In the case of modern-day Aboriginal culture we continue to battle the echoing horrors of colonialism. By turning the tables and viewing the trauma from the “white” lens, the reader not only recognizes the power of traumatic memory, but also gains sympathy for the interrogated Latisha. In the film we originally sympathize with the white colonial, and in King’s novel we sympathize with the original “evil” Indian.
In addition, this interrogation represents a power-tension between the tourists themselves, as well as with Latisha. Jeanette says that she is “the spokesperson” and “ask[s] all the questions everyone else is too embarrassed to ask” (130) framing an alpha-beta struggle that competes between Jeanette and Latisha. While Latisha is the owner of the café, Jeanette feels entitled to answers for all of her questions. In turn, Jeanette provides playful answers that mock Jeanette’s need for personal and factual information about Latisha and the café.
(Food for thought: Alpha-beta, you say? Sounds dog-like to me.. Dead Dog café, you say? GOD-DOG?)
While there are certainly other interesting parts within my section (mine was kind of a goldmine) I think it’s worthwhile to closely examine the Sundance-photography-incident and how it relates to the ignorant tourists of the café that I just peeled apart.
Summary: narrator describes Eli’s yearly trips to the Sundance in his childhood. The narrator explains how “Every year or so, a tourist would wander into the camp…Occasionally there was trouble” (138). One year “when Eli was fourteen… [a] man climbed on top of [his] car and began taking pictures” (139). According to the narrator, photography isn’t allowed in the Sundance.
Here’s that tension again…
Something that resonates with me here that also resonates with me earlier (in Latisha’s section) is the spectacle of Aboriginal culture for white/Western culture. It’s almost like the tourists feel they’re being “respectful” or making themselves “cultured” by visiting the café when it’s really just an invasion, a reason for interrogation, judgemental analysis and pretence. Here, the tourists literally invade Sundance territory to entertain some sort of curious-touristy inclination. The camera shoots pictures, the photo roll given up is black, blank, dead—injury by literacy, death by colonialism. The Aboriginal ritual is rejected in the most literal sense—their legal claim is rejected by the RCMP even though the tourists broke Aboriginal law. Why is one perspective recognized, and another rejected? Even if the café served dog it still obeys the laws of the Blackfoot territory, yet the ex-RCMP officer still threatens “..if we had heard of anyone cooking up dog and selling it in a restaurant, we would have arrested them” (131).
The struggle for dominance has never been so obvious…
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Works Cited
King, Thomas. Green Grass Running Water. Toronto, Ont.: Harper Perennial, 2007. Print.
Scott, Duncan Campbell. “The Onondaga Madonna Poem.” Poemhunter.com. Poem Hunter, n.d. Web. 11 July 2015.
Tari, Elda. “”Rose-Marie”, or “Indian Love Song” (Part One).” Words and Names. WordPress, 14 Mar. 2009. Web. 11 July 2015.
Great post! I think spectacle and performance are huge in this text. Dr. Paterson mentioned the idea of the “imaginary Indian” in an earlier blog post and King is certainly playing with that. There are no real Indians, but rather the Indian is a vacant caricature ready to be inhabited by whoever wants to take advantage of it. For instance, an Italian man (C.B. Cologne) plays all of the most coveted Native roles in Hollywood films. I think it’s really interesting to counterpoint the two most blatant performances, the Sundance and Portland’s various jobs in Hollywood. The scene in the strip club is particularly heartbreaking, but all the more poignant as King points out the connections between a kind of sexualized lust for domination and the subjugation of Native peoples. How different is this performance from the one we get in the Westerns Eli reads or the film playing on Bursum’s map? Are they not equally pornographic? Whereas the Sundance is “alluded to, but not described” as Blanca Chester points out. The egregious appropriation of the films and dance routine are juxtaposed with the reverent distance King keeps from the Sundance performance.
Hey Hayden!
I LOVE when you say “There are no real Indians, but rather the Indian is a vacant caricature ready to be inhabited by whoever wants to take advantage of it”. I think this is a huge theme for King: in Hollywood’s quest for authenticity it is actually rejecting the authentic, therefore creating a mind-blowing oxymoron that anyone would prescribe as uncanny. The strip club scene is definitely the most upsetting scene in the novel for me. I feel like King fetishizes the Indian in an effort to convey the true “stripping” qualities of Hollywood upon Aboriginal identity and heritage.
I think King creates both the authentic and inauthentic Aboriginal cultural atmospheres for empathy’s sake. Not only is the reader more inclined to pick up on the Hollywood misconception of Aboriginal life in general, but the reader is also more likely to express a negative attitude toward this misconception. I feel like this emotional backlash is what King is aiming for.
Cheers!
Hailey
“Something that resonates with me here that also resonates with me earlier (in Latisha’s section) is the spectacle of Aboriginal culture for white/Western culture.” This is so true. Other cultures that have been marginalized in Western/white culture are now, while still disadvantaged, not as much of a spectacle: for example, there is a store near where I work whose mascot is a cartoon of a young Native boy–it’s a mattress store, so there’s really no purpose for it other than using the cartoon as a stereotype. More innocently, my work (I teach summer school to grades 7 – 9) did a PSA under the guise of a “Native American” tale–this definitely wouldn’t fly if it was under the guise of an “African” tale, but apparently Native culture and mysticism is fair game. It’s just interesting and sad how permeated and obsessed our culture is with the “imaginary Indian”.”
Hey Hava!
I totally agree. Not only is this indian “imaginary” but it’s completely fetishized. If you look at music festival culture you can clearly see attendees dressed up with Indian headdresses.. It just blows me away. While it might be worn as a mere “fashion statement” it demonstrates how colonialism has so clearly taken Aboriginal culture for themselves.
Cheers!
Hailey
Hi Hayley,
It’s interested how you focused particularly on tourism. I think that as a tourist in another part of Canada right now, I do feel that tourism certainly has its dark sides. When I think about my backpacking experience in Europe, I was constantly reminded of how the quality of life for the citizens there were often lowered by the flood of tourisms clamouring for space on the street, seats at the best restaurants, and seeing their neighbourhoods gentrified. It is such a difficult topic to approach because I think all countries have to face it in their own particular fashion with the resources they have at end, yet tourism really can be empowering and educational. What should a non-Aboriginal person do to approach Aboriginal culture that does not encourage appropriation or simply feeding a misplaced fantasy?
Your dear partner in crime… I mean project,
Timothy
Hey Timothy!
Your comment brings me back to the topic of colonialism: as a “Canadian” are we just tourists flooding Aboriginal land? It’s interesting to think about..
Cheers!
Hailey