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