3.3: Hyperlinking King’s Green Grass Running Water

My assigned pages (322-334) are the closing pages of the third volume (west/black) and the beginning of the last (North/blue).

This time around, it was Hawkeye’s turn to tell the story. He tells the story about the Old Woman who “dug a big hole . . . and falls through that hole into the sky” (King 329) According to Jane Flick’s “Reading Notes for Thomas King’s Green Grass Running Water, “Old Woman” is a reference to Star Maiden/Star Woman who is a figure in Blackfoot stories, and also a “Cherokee creation story” (Flick 161). In that story, after Star Maiden was digging “under a tree in her father’s special garden . . . she created a hole through which she fell from the sky to the earth below” (Flick 161). After doing some additional searches on the internet, and on the UBC Library archives, Star Maiden seems to be a reoccurring figure in stories from many Native Americans and First Nations communities. For instance, a Shawnee story titled “The White Hawk” found in Indian Nature Myths, tells a story about Waupee, the White Hawk, and the Star Maiden (Cowles 65-73).

I’m not going to lie, When Louis, Ray, and Al entered Latisha’s Dead Dog Cafe, I thought they were references to Louis Armstrong, Ray Charles, and Al Green. I was of course, very mistaken. (A perfect example that reading aloud the story is a very different, and important reading method as opposed to just reading the story with our eyes). As Flick writes in her article, this is a reference to Louis Riel. Riel was a Métis leader who founded the province Manitoba, and played a large role in two major resistance movements again the Canadian government in 1869-1870—the Red River Rebellion and North-West Rebellion (Stanley). As alluded by the three characters in King’s story—Louis, who was a poet and Al, who was a priest—the politician himself was engaged in priesthood and writing poetry during different parts in his life. Before Riel spent most of his life fighting for and preserving Métis‘ rights, culture, and land rights, he was “given a scholarship to study at a Sulpician school in Montreal” at the age of 13 (Stanley). He excelled in his course of studies, but he left the seminary before he could complete it. One of the poems have been published on National Post in 2009 when Riel’s notebook was auctioned.

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In Stanley Marche’s article, he also summarizes Riel’s current status and image succinctly: The new poems from Louis Riel reflect a more complicated vision of our history than the tired and Manichaean division into conqueror and conquered . . . He is uniquely Canadian and uniquely mysterious. I can think of no other political figure, from any country, who means so many different things to such a diversity of people. A hero to the Metis, he also figures on the T-shirts of Toronto hipsters. Chester Brown, comics artist and Libertarian party candidate, picked Riel as the subject for a “comic-strip biography” and he could not have chosen a more complete cipher. The ultimate rebel and traitor, Riel was also a father of Confederation. An insane man given to bouts of bizarre and deluded religious enthusiasms, he is nonetheless an idol to many Catholics.”

– Kayi Wong


Works Cited

Cowles, Julia Darrow. “The White Hawk.” Indian Nature Myths. Chicago: Flanagan Company (1924): 65-73. Web. Hathitrust.org. July 10. <http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/006802770>

Flick, Jane. “Reading Notes for Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water.” Canadian Literature 161-162 (1999): 140-172. Print.

King, Thomas. Green Grass, Running Water. Toronto: Harper Collins P, 1993. Print.

Marche, Stephen. “Prophet of the New World, I” Weekend Post February 20 2009. Web. July 15 2014. <http://www.nationalpost.com/related/topics/Prophet+World/1312345/story.html>

Stanley, George F.G. “Louis Riel.” The Canadian Encyclopedia. Toronto: Historica Canada, 2013. Web. July 15. <thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/louis-riel/>

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