There’s probably nothing worse than making a dope pop culture reference and having no one pick up on it. Growing up watching the Simpsons and listening to hip hop, my vocabulary is rife with allusions, and having someone that isn’t my sister pick up on the cryptic hidden messages is like finding out you’re not the only person who drinks pickle juice. Finding someone who gets your references is finding a kindred spirit. It is like finding a sub-reddit for your identity. It is feeling like whatever story you’re telling is finally being heard.

Perhaps that is why Thomas King writes with so many arcane, subtle and humorous allusions. Why he so seamlessly weaves pop culture, religious and historical sub-plots into the more obvious stories he is telling. In writing with allusions, King is bringing to attention the pre-existing knowledge of the reader, and challenging them to develop more. He is picking at the scabs of histories that have been heard time and time again to reveal ones that haven’t. King’s stories are uniquely accessible in that one could read them with a certain whimsy that does not acknowledge any of the sub-histories of his words, but also invites readers to look into the layers of what he is saying–the foundation that holds stories we originally thought stood alone.

I will be looking at pages 31-40 “Where did all of the water come from?” to  “Eliot paused at the door. …”. I am lucky to be engaging with the introduction of Ahdamn and the First Woman, Alberta Frank’s love triangle and the trouble with the “disappearing Indians”.

When I first started to write this blog post, I was worried that I couldn’t find any allusions in the first section about the First Woman and Ahdamn. I went to Catholic primary and secondary schools, so the religious allusions seemed so obvious to me that they didn’t seem like references. An assumption about knowledge and backgrounds that I made: that this “blatant” referencing was intentional, as if everyone grew up handing out the Eucharist during “junior liturgy”.

ANYWAY, the first section was a fun little dive into the story of Eden, with a feminist, Indigenous, Thomas King original twist. When Ahdamn (note the cadence of the spelling) is introduced, there is a line, “I don’t know where he comes from. Things like that just happen, you know.” (pg. 40 in my book) Ahdamn seems to be the embodiment of settler-colonists, while the First Woman would represent Indigenous folks. Ahdamn has an endearing lack of knowledge, displayed in his attempt to name things. This naming process, in which Ahdamn gives names to creatures and is told to “try again” (41), alludes to pre-existing knowledge–even in the garden of the first man and woman–feeding into a more circular definition of time, with an ever elusive “beginning”. This is also alluded to in the beginning of the section, “where did all of the water come from?” (38, my book)–this constant digging for the beginning.

I love food. I don’t know why I got such a kick out of the fried chicken and hot dogs falling from the trees, but I absolutely loved the idea of Americana, processed foods nourishing the first people. I don’t know if this is a stretch, but I do know that John Locke was pretty influential (and very racist) in helping colonizers to form laws and political philosophies around indigenous-colonizer relations. In The Second Treatise of Civil Government Chapter Five, “Of Property” (1960), Locke delves into these complicated notions of ownership, with Christianity being the main foundation of his discussion and understanding of what man can and cannot own. I do not have the time/space/extensive knowledge necessary to break down Locke’s influence on colonial laws, and how much his notions of religious morality (and therefore who was and was not human) skrewed over First Nations groups, but I do just need to say that it is relevant for King to be referencing Locke’s 1) fixation on religious entitlement/morality 2) discussion around property via food humour.

To crudely summarize, Locke notes that God created everyone/everything, but what makes something the rightful property of man is the labour that man puts into it. This exhibits a moral lean towards agricultural rather than nomadic lifestyles. And also assumes that Indigenous people did not have any agricultural knowledge/practices–which is just plain wrong. Locke breaks down this overarching power of God into ownership being fixed by man when he exudes his effort into it. Thus justifying ownership. God technically owns everything but the white man civilizing it is the next best thing. Food falling from the sky pokes fun at the misread histories of Indigenous land use/existence and brings to question notions of “property” and land ownership that are still vital to First Nations-state relations today.

Moving on to my gal, Alberta. The negotiation in Alberta’s head around hating to travel and preferring engaging with her gentlemen callers in “her city, her house, her terms” (44) also brought be make to notions of property, terra nullis, and who got to make the rules. “But Alberta knew that apart from no men in her life, two was the safest number.”(45) The choice of the word “safe” is vital, in that its antonym is “dangerous”. I do feel like this notion of men being dangerous to an Indigenous woman has layers and layers of meaning, but would like to focus on two things. First, the Indian Act and White Paper in Canada and the notion of “Indian status”. I don’t think I am equipped to engage fully with the complexities of Indian status as both detrimental and important, but one thing to be noted is that a woman would lose her status if she married a non-Indigenous man. Patriarchy transcends female identity every. time. Furthermore, this notion that “more than sex…men wanted marriage.” (45) continues this notion of something being turned into one’s property via that insertion of labour. To marry a woman is to make her your rightful property. Same as agriculture. ~~excuse me while I barf all over the place~~ but the empowering thing is that Alberta is savvy to these dangers and is playing Charlie and Lionel like a straight up killa.

The second is a more obvious discussion around danger, and the ongoing violence against Indigenous women that is continually ignored (and thus justified) by the Canadian legal system.

Finally, the discussion between Dr. Eliot and Dr. Hovaugh around the “disappearing Indians”. Heynow this brings me full circle to my first blog post about the Edward Curtis Project. Full circle. But Edward Curtis was taking photos of Indigenous people on the basis that they were a “vanishing race”. Because genocide. But furthermore, the language of “vanishing” or “disappearing” not only adds this mystical element to the genocide of First Nations people, but transfers the agency from violent settler-colonists to the Indigenous folks themselves. This is played with in the last sentence, “why would they want to leave?” (48).

Works Cited

King, Thomas. Green Grass Running Water. 38-48. Harper Perennial. Toronto. 1999.

Locke, John. Second Treatise of Civil Government. “Of Property”. 1960. Web. https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/politics/locke/ch05.htm

4. Identify and discuss two of King’s “acts of narrative decolonization.”Please read the following quote to assist you with your answer. The lives of King’s characters are entangled in and informed by both the colonial legacy in the Americas and the narratives that enact and enable colonial domination. King begins to extricate his characters’ lives from the domination of the invader’s discourses by weaving their stories into both Native American oral traditions and into revisions of some of the most damaging narratives of domination and conquest: European American origin stories and national myths, canonical literary texts, and popular culture texts such as John Wayne films. These revisions are acts of narrative decolonization. James Cox. “All This Water Imagery Must Mean Something.”Canadian Literature 161-162 (1999). Web April 04/2013.

The ways that King engages with and uses “acts of narrative decolonization” are two fold.  First, in being a First Nations story teller and writer, King confronts Canadian readers with a different approach to discussing, understanding and experiencing the Canada’s colonial history (and present), decolonizing not only historical narratives in Canada, but definitions of the forms that art and literature can take. Concentrically, in Green Grass Running Water, King introduces characters that, through telling their own stories to identify self and home, challenge the narratives that their experiences as colonized, oppressed people–survivors of genocide. The literal narrative decolonization present in the unfolding of characters’ stories–the confrontation of creation stories, and the movement toward and from home, speaks to the subtler action of King’s writing as an action of decolonization itself.

Wha? Bare with me, and then I’m going to bring Valerie Solanas into the mix because feminism.

On a base level, the stories presented in Green Grass Running Water are stories of narrative decolonization. Characters experiencing and engaging with narrative decolonization. The rebuilding and collaboration of creation stories to retell histories and question the histories previously heard to be truth. I was about to say that Alberta Frank was my favourite character, but I do think that Lionel’s story line presents the most obvious process of narrative decolonization. The fact that Lionel’s storyline is introduced through the three mistakes he’s made in his life is tickling and vital. While his story starts here and back-pedals, the beginning of identification and story through the acknowledgement of change, of mistakes, speaks to the retelling of First Nations’ histories in the Canadian context. Or Canadian history in the First Nation’s context. This is not to label colonization as something so innocent as a “mistake”, but to start a story at a point of change, at a point of movement acknowledges that things have been happening previously. It also acknowledges that actions influence outcomes and as much as we wish for a concrete historical timeline, situations are always in flux.

We go back in story to examine the process of Lionel’s mistakes and swing forward to see the results, with his current situation being continually influenced by past experiences and actions. This supplements the emphasis places on getting the whole story, on starting at the beginning. The need for context to understand Lionel’s current existence speaks to the greater narrative of  of need for context Canada’s identity as a colonial nation and the identities of current day Indigenous folks who are experiencing historical and current oppression simultaneously.

Continuing with this exchange of past and present to tell a new and ever changing story of self-situation, the creation story woven throughout the novel (both the conversations with Coyote and GOD etc and the banter between Lone Ranger et al) speaks to the different layers and angles of stories that are ignored when history is seen as objective truth. **I use “ignored” rather than “go unheard” because I do believe that those not hearing First Nations histories are actively doing so–it is on us, not on oppressed voices to speak even louder.** The creation stories break down the binary options often presented to us in understandings of history–not only are contexts always in flux due to histories, contexts are always feeding off one another. Histories are always feeding off one another. Decolonizing narratives is not simply presenting an alternative narrative, but making heard an angles of the current narrative that were previously ignored.

The second fold of King’s decolonization of narratives is his very existence as a story teller and the creation of the book Green Grass Running Water. I recall engaging with this notion much earlier on in the class, but what I love about King is his use of humour. Not only was King’s narrative style so unique based on the cadence of his dialogue–his mark as a storyteller and keeper of oral tradition–but his subtle humour and use of the absurd and super natural to engage with a very serious history (read earlier comment about Canada’s colonial past as genocide). I wouldn’t be so condescending as to say that King makes the First Nations’ perspective accessible (namely because I don’t think it is on the backs of First Nations to make the complexity of their experiences accessible to the colonizers who dominate narratives), but he changes the game when it comes to literature, the telling of story and the validation of histories as true.

Valerie Solanas, in her S.C.U.M Manifesto, discusses the notion of “great art” and “culture” as something that is decided and monitored by men in misogynistic and patriarchal society. The history of colonization is in itself part of and partly the product of patriarchal structures, and this is noticed in what is generally deemed to be valuable and legitimate “art” or “literature”worthy of being heard/read/taken seriously/discussed. “This allows the [passable]`artist’ to be setup as one possessing superior feelings, perceptions, insights and judgments, thereby undermining the faith of insecure women in the value and validity of their own feelings, perceptions, insights and judgments.”  (Solanas, 1967) The cadence and humour of King’s novel hold true to his way of knowing and sharing through orality, and challenges the colonial Western notion that orality is somehow the antithesis of literacy. Furthermore, his combination of read-aloud-tone in the written medium goes back to the overcoming of binaries in creation stories. Rather than King’s art being defined as either passably Western, Canadiana lit, or traditional, First Nations storytelling, he bends boundaries of what we expect his identity to be. Is he telling stories as an Indigenous man or is he catering to the Canadian literary canon. PSYCH his is doing both and neither. He is writing as a man whose histories, identities and art can’t be neatly divided into pre or post-contact. His use of humour digs deeper into the obscurities of morality, group histories/identities and individual stories.

King’s identities as a writer, as a Cherokee man, as a funny guy etc are continually challenge the colonial narratives that are imposed on him. His bending of storytelling styles to amplify ignored histories continues the decolonization of narratives. The idea of “good” art goes hand in hand with the notion of “objective” histories, everything is dependent on contexts, and contexts are always in flux with one another.

Works Cited

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

Solanas, Valerie. S.C.U.M Manifesto.1967. Web. http://www.womynkind.org/scum.htm