Introduction
For this assignment I decided to take a look at pages 136-148 of Green Grass, Running Water by Thomas King. These pages contain three stories that I find significantly engaging: the dialogue between Eli and Sifton about Eli forfeiting his property, the story of the tourist taking pictures of the Sun Dance when Eli was a child, and the introductory interactions between Noah and Changing Woman. All three stories portray Indigenous-settler relations, and not only starkly portray them as challenging but highlights how inconsiderate and hostile settlers can be. These relations are portrayed tensely as well as humorously in these pages, and I believe they all illustrate some important lessons about how to better handle finding mutual understanding of those who are different from each other.
Indigenous-Settler Relations
I find the relationship between Eli and Sifton to be a fantastic microcosm of Indigenous-Settler relations, specifically in the larger context of land disputes and trying to push through settler infrastructure. When Sifton says “I could have had the big project in Quebec” (King 136) he’s referring to The James Bay Project. As Jane Flink points out in Reading Notes, The James Bay Project was “a monumental hydroelectric-power development” that significantly disrupted the Cree and Inuit people’s way of life. The project was initially rejected by these Indigenous groups, but eventually the Cree and Inuit came to an agreement with the developers and the project has since been built. Sifton is lamenting the fact that he did not get to work on the James Bay Project because those Indigenous groups made a deal and the project was built, whereas Eli is halting development on his property because he refuses to compromise.
Jane Flink explains that the character Sifton is named after Sir Clifford Sifton, a Canadian lawyer and Minister of Interior around the turn of the 20th century (while researching “Sifton” further, ironically I also found a real estate company called “Sifton Properties”). Historical Sifton was responsible for a great increase of immigration into Canada while he was in office at the sake of Indigenous dispersal. Although this Sifton acted in bad ethical taste, he believed those with a “pioneer” mindset would be good to strengthen the young nation of “Canada” and encouraged those sorts of people to settle (Waddell). Historical and King’s Sifton are both vanguards, as they represent the mentality of progress and capital gain for the sake of their sense of a strong community and nation, and both represent the drive to meet their ends at the diffusion of First Nations. Sifton also tells Eli that he reminds him of Bartleby the Scrivener (King 142), the main character from a short story by the same name – a story of “passive resistance” (Desmarais).
The Sun Dance confrontation from Eli’s flashback was a tense scene that made me uncomfortable; reading a story like this is always upsetting as it highlights how ridiculous privileged people can be when confronted with barriers. A Sun Dance is an important ceremony practiced primarily by Plains Indians that has survived even after it was banned by colonial law (Dance Facts). The conflict between the tourist and Eli’s clan in GGRW is another microcosm of the broader relations of Indigenous people and settlers. The resistance of the clan in demanding the tourist hand over the film with the photographs of the ceremony is a metaphor for Indigenous resistance of the despotism of colonialism. By refusing to let the tourist go before meeting their demands, Eli’s family is standing up for their way of life despite the tourist not understanding the harm he was causing. Eli’s family also explained to the tourist that he was in the wrong, calmly compromised, and finally had the film handed over (even if the tourist tricked them). Eli’s family tried to make peace with the tourist by having him understand why his actions were wrong in an attempt to build mutual respect, something that often feels like a losing battle even to this day on a national level.
Clash of Indigenous and Biblical Creation Stories
Near the end of the chapter, Sifton says to Eli that once they open the floodgates, Eli’s “house is going to turn into an ark” (King 142). This is clear foreshadowing for the next chapter where Changing Woman meets Noah from the Bible. Changing Woman, as Flink points out, is a Navajo deity. In the novel, King alludes to her being gay (196), something that would never be suggested in the Bible. In GGRW Noah is portrayed to be a predator and misogynist (“Thou Shalt Have Big Breasts” is a play on the Ten Commandments), blatantly sexualizing Changing Woman and chasing her so he can sexually assault her. As bold as this retelling of Noah may be (although not the first; Jane Flink catches the reference on page 148 to Timothy Findley’s novel called Not Wanted On The Voyage in which Noah is again portrayed as a negligent and abusive man), it brings to light the underlying misogyny found within the Christian church. On the contrary, in many Indigenous communities women are highly regarded and treated as equals to men. The stark difference in characterization of these two spiritual figures helps highlight how far apart the two ideologies can be, and why when they meet the collision is so disruptive.
More conflict of fundamental story characteristics is Noah’s “strict rules” and what they are trying to control. Flink mentions that one of these rules is that animals do not speak, unlike how they do in Indigenous stories. Even Coyote and the narrator are aware that there are many rules imposed by these Biblical characters (King 147), which is a play on how strict Christian stories are compared to the fluidity and changeability of Indigenous stories. This harkens back to King in The Truth About Stories when he tells an Indigenous creation story in an engaging and oral tone, followed by a cold retelling of the Genesis story with minimal fun and intrigue.
A humorous allusion on page 146 is when the narrator tells Coyote that beatiality is “against the rules,” and Coyote gets defensive (King). Flink reminds us that this is reference to the numerous stories that Coyote sleeps with humans, but this also reminded me of all the time Zeus turned into animals to sleep with or seduce objects of his desire. Honestly – the gods are crazy.
Summary
I believe these twelve pages of Green Grass, Running Water encapsulate the dichotomy of Indigenous and settler stories and illustrate what happens when they collide without mutual respect. The episodes present are why we need to slow down as a society and take the time to listen to others and hear their stories; if we approach someone different with our own sets of biases and prejudices against them, we are never going to find common ground.
Works Cited
“Aboriginal Women.” The Justice System and Aboriginal People, http://www.ajic.mb.ca/volumel/chapter13.html. Accessed 18 March 2020.
Blumberg, Antonia. “Christian Women On Twitter Unload About Misogyny In The Church.” Huffpost, 20 April 2017, https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/christian-women-on-twitter-unload-about-misogyny-in-the-church_n_58f8f71ce4b018a9ce592e05?ri18n=true. Accessed 18 March 2020.
Desmarais, Jane. “Preferring not to: The Paradox of Passive Resistance in Herman Melville’s ‘Bartleby’.” Journal of the Short Story in English, vol. 36, Spring 2001, pp. 25-39, https://journals.openedition.org/jsse/575. Accessed 18 March 2020.
Flick, Jane. “Reading Notes for Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water.” Green Grass, Running Water. Toronto: HarperCollins Publishers, 1999. Print.
“The James Bay Project.” Cree Nation of Waskaganish, https://waskaganish.ca/the-james-bay-project/. Accessed 18 March 2020.
King, Thomas. Green Grass, Running Water. Toronto: HarperCollins Publishers, 1993. Print.
King, Thomas. The Truth About Stories. House of Anansi Press Inc., 2003. Print.
“Noah’s Ark.” Answers In Genesis, 2020, https://answersingenesis.org/noahs-ark/. Accessed 18 March 2020.
Rutherford-Morrison, Lara. “8 Weirdest Things The Went Down In Greek Mythology.” Bustle, 5 July 2015, https://www.bustle.com/articles/94692-8-weirdest-sex-things-that-went-down-in-greek-mythology. Accessed 18 March 2020.
“The Story of Changing Woman.” YouTube, uploaded by KJZZ Phoenix, 13 September 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bSpMC-dS2s. Accessed 18 March 2020.
“Sun Dance – Ceremony of the American Indians.” Dance Facts, 2020, http://www.dancefacts.net/dance-list/sun-dance/. Accessed 18 March 2020.
“Ten Commandments List.” Bibleinfo, https://www.bibleinfo.com/en/topics/ten-commandments-list. Accessed 18 March 2020.
Waddell, Deborah. “Clifford Sifton and Canada’s Immigration Policy.” British Immigrants in Montreal, 2018, https://www.british-immigrants-in-montreal.com/clifford_sifton_policy.html. Accessed 18 March 2020.