“There are no truths, only stories”
Thomas King’s Blue Grass, Running Water is a meta-creation narrative, packed full of theology and critiques of Colonialism. He produces multiple stories and disguises them as one novel, or perhaps one novel disguised as multiple stories. The stories are modeled after Christian and Native traditions synthesized together as one.
In telling the story of an oppressed people, King utilizes certain words as triggers that are much stronger than mere letters combined into generic words; they are symbols burdened with loss and violence. The use of these words, to those applicable, evokes a dark history of the burning of their roots: land, creation, and stories.
His message is clear: creation is not stuck in the carnage of the past, but to understand creation, you must also understand the past. Creation is of great importance not only to the Natives, but to all human beings. It tells us how things came to be, an explanation that can offer us answers to why, how, where, what, and when. It can enlighten us on current situations, feelings, positions, and so on.
Whilst telling the stories of the creators, four escaped Native elders, Lionel, and Eli, King adds humor in his stories. The permeating humor in their dialogues penetrates every level of human and divine experiences. You can clearly tell that the vantage point is Native American, as the characters, mainly the gods, tease each other throughout the entire novel.
The inserted humor is most certainly vital. Why? Well because King is trying to tell you a story that deals with some heavy subjects: the tragic oppression of Natives over centuries, the submission in their “whiting” by some ambitious Natives, and Religion.
Almost the entirety of the novel is about storytelling. At one point the Lone ranger is talking to Ishmael: “everybody makes mistakes,” he says. “Best not to make them with stories,” Ishmael replies (8-9). I found this part in the conversation quite ironic, as stories are constantly being told in different versions, with the use of different words and tones. However, who is to say that making alterations in stories is to make a mistake…
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King, Thomas. Green Grass Running Water. Toronto: Harper Collins, 1993. Print.
http://canlit.ca/interviews/18
http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?historyid=ab83
Hi Kayla,
Thanks for your thoughtful post!
I really liked what you said about creation stories being meaningful to all cultures. The fact that King places so much emphasis on our creation stories also suggests that they are foundational to the way in which we view and experience the world.
It made me think about how we actually have a lot of stories in common that transcend cultural barriers or geographic differences. One of the most cited examples is the flood story that is pretty much universal across all cultures. It was hard to find a link that wasn’t Christian-biased…but this site discusses how flood stories have their basis in actual geographic occurrences: http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jul-aug/06-biblical-type-floods-real-absolutely-enormous#.Uy-eDF6T4nI. It just makes me think that perhaps much of our difference isn’t so different after all. I think that ties into what you said about Green Grass Running Water being “multiple stories…disguise[d]…as one novel, or perhaps one novel disguised as multiple stories.” I wonder if frequently our cultural stories are more united than we think but are disguised as disparate stories.
Green Grass Running Water jumps around in time quite a lot. I wonder if King is thus suggesting that our creation stories have more to do with our current understanding of the world than we usually give them credit for? Or perhaps it may be viewed as a coping mechanism. In order to understand how we came to be where we are socially we need to understand the very beginnings and tie them to our present existence.
Good point about the humor being an attribute of First Nation story telling. I hadn’t thought of that before. Like you said, the undercurrent of humor is important in that it avoids being judgmental of any one way of life. Certainly, some characters are portrayed as villainous. For the First Nations characters who have historically had a lot of contention to deal with, it is important that the way in which they make sense of their past by living their present is not judged or deemed unacceptable or shameful. In this sense, all of the characters are portrayed lovingly but with a sense of humor. Their flaws are visible but no one is necessarily “right.”
Thanks again for your thoughts!
Hi Kayla,
Thank you for this well-put piece, I appreciate your insights into a pedagogy of humour that King is toying with, balancing the fine line between trauma and laughter that is so prevalent in indigenous writings, particularly ones that center on traumatic life events.
This has been a thought I’ve been having for a while now, the how and the why of humour and indigenous writings. I’ve recently been doing some preliminary research for our final papers and came across the most phenomenal resource that touches a bit on why and how humour keeps making a resurgence in indigenous works of art. I think the trauma/laughter dichotomy is an important note but Martin Nakata also points to the ways that humour can act to subvert or unsettle contemporary expectations around the native body–citing humour as not only a self-care act, but as a political act. It’s totally worth a read if you’re interested in indigenous knowledge production http://search.informit.com.au/documentSummary;dn=208224435424405;res=IELIND
Work Cited
Nakata, Martin. “An Indigenous Standpoint Theory.” Disciplining the Savages: Savaging the Disciplines (2007): 213.