Monthly Archives: March 2019

Write a blog that hyper-links your research on the characters in GGRW using at least 10 pages of the text of your choice.

P.16-26 (note that I am using the Kindle edition for reference, so these pages may be slightly off)

I’ve yet to come across a novel that makes more use of the literary device of allusion than Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water. While there were several names whose reference I understood immediately, there were many others that were vague to me, and there were even more that I didn’t even realize were a reference at first. However, it doesn’t take long for readers to understand that nothing in GGRW is in there without reason. King is a careful writer and even the smallest characters have names which were chosen quite consciously.

On page 16, we are introduced to the character of Dr. Joe Hovaugh, a reference to the Christian deity Jehovah. He sits at his beloved massive wood desk, which reminds him of a “tree cut down to a stump” (King 16). Here, it seems King is referencing the anthropocentrism of modern Western Christianity, with its belief that all of nature was created to serve man. As the eponymous Jehovah says to man, “Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground” (New International Version, Genesis 1:28). Even the grounds of Hovaugh’s hospital are described like the paradise of Eden, with Hovaugh reigning over them like God reigns over his creation.

Behind the wall, the willows were beginning to get their leaves, the cherry trees were heavy with pink and white blossoms, the evergreens stood dark and velvet against the stone. Yellow daffodil lined the front of the flower beds, and the wisteria and the lilacs around the arbors were greening up nicely. Dr. Hovaugh sat in his chair behind his desk and looked out at the wall and the trees and the flowers and the swans on the blue-green pond in the garden, and he was pleased. (King 17)

In the next scene, we meet Alberta Frank for this first time. Alberta, a university professor, has the namesake of the province in which the story is set. Meanwhile, the province itself was named after Princess Louise Caroline Alberta, daughter of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Princess Alberta was also the wife of Canada’s Governor General between 1878-1883. At first I thought this to be ironic- why would a strong, proud Indigenous woman share a name with a colonizing force? Upon research, however, I realized that there is more to it. Princess Alberta is considered to be somewhat of a rebel in royal terms, often described as “unconventional, determined and ‘dreadfully’ contradictory” (Seskus). She smoked,she sculpted, she dressed unconventionally, and she spoke up for women’s rights. She was also an individual who shunned the expected dating life of a princess, rejecting royal suitors to marry a man who was a politician and a writer, but who was not considered a royal. Thomas King’s Alberta also follows her own path when it comes to courting, choosing to casually date two men, and preferring to start a family with neither. Furthermore, the provincial motto of Alberta is fortis et liber (“strong and free”). Alberta, a successful and educated woman, is certainly a representation of a strong and free individual.

In Alberta’s first scene we also meet several of her students. The names of her students are Henry Dawes, John Collier, Mary Rowlandson, Elaine Goodale, Hannah Duston, and Helen Mooney.

Dawes is named after the U.S. Senator and creator of the Dawes Act, a land grabber who essentially stole over 90 million acres of Native land. He strongly believed in the assimilation of Indigenous people, attempting to carry it out through the Dawes Act.

Collier is named after the U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs during the 1930’s. Unlike many other politicians of his time, Collier did not believe in the assimilation of Indigenous people, but instead “encouraged self-sufficiency among tribes and provided them with the land rights, religious and educational freedom, and organization to achieve it” (Your Dictionary). He was committed to preserving Native land, Native culture, and Native history, an attitude reflected in his creation of the Indian Reorganization Act, which helped to conserve Indian land while also extending the rights of America’s Indigenous people.

Mary Rowlandson’s namesake is the British American colonial figure who is perhaps most famous for being held captive by members of the Narrangasett tribe, and then writing an account of her experience, a piece of writing in the colonial literature/captivity genre. Rowlandson’s capture was the result of tensions between Native Americans and European settlers, in regards to land rights. Prior to Rowlandson’s capture, three members of the Wampanoag tribe had been executed by the Plymouth Colony, while many other Native Americans were suffering from famine and disease due to land encroachment.

Elaine Goodale’s name comes from the missionary teacher who wrote about her experiences with Native Americans. While Rowlandson’s writing portrayed Indigenous culture in a more negative light, Goodale was considered to be somewhat of a voice for Native rights, though she was a firm believer in assimilation.

The real-life Hannah Duston was an English colonist who was taken captive during King William’s War. With her fellow captives, Duston killed and scalped 10 of her Indigenous captors, including six children. Later on, Duston

was often portrayed as a righteous woman who did what she needed to do in order to escape her “savage” captors.

Lastly, there is Helen Mooney, whose name does not seem to directly (or obviously) correlate to any particular figure. Jane Flick suggests that it may be a reference to the ethnographer James Mooney, who studied Cherokee culture. Flick also suggests that the name could be a private joke.

It is no coincidence that the behaviors of Alberta’s students reflect the actions and attitudes of their namesakes. Henry Dawes- named for a politician who showed little care for Indigenous affairs- is asleep during class, and when forced to answer a question, replies with a vague, uninformed response. John Collier, on the other hand, speaks up frequently, asking questions and reacting to Alberta’s teachings. Mary Rowlandson and Elaine Goodale, both named after New England writers, spend the class huddled together. Rowlandson even asks if it’s necessary for her to know all of the names of the figures in Alberta’s lesson, perhaps a nod to the real-life Mary Rowlandson’s view of Native Americans as nothing more than barbaric savages.

While I admit that many, if not most, of King’s references would go over my head had I not done extra digging, I certainly find myself having more appreciation and respect for Thomas King now that I have this knowledge. Not only do I better understand why one can criticize Northrop Frye for his idea that writing is a closed system (how could anything be closed when there are so many external references?), but I also feel like King is demonstrating “Coyote Pedagogy”. He does not give us the answers to who these characters are or where their names come from, but he requires us to do the searching, ultimately making it all that more meaningful.

 

Works Cited

Cutter, Barbara. “The Gruesome Story of Hannah Duston, Whose Slaying of Indians Made her an American Folk ‘Hero’.” The Smithsonian. 9 Apr. 2018. Web. 18 Mar. 2019.

“Dawes Act.” Our Documents. N.d. Web. 18 Mar. 2019.

“Elaine Goodale Eastman.” PBS. N.d. Web. 18 Mar. 2019.

Flick, Jane. “Reading Notes for Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water.” Canadian Literature 161/162 (1999). Web. 15 Mar. 2019

“Indian Reorganization Act (1934).” The Living New Deal. N.d. Web. 17 Mar. 2019.

“John Collier Facts.” Your Dictionary. 2010. Web. 17 Mar. 2019.

The New Testament: New International Version. Bible Gateway. N.d. Web. 19 Mar. 2019.

Rowlandson, Mary. The Sovereignty and Goodness of God Together with the Faithfulness of His Promise Displayed: Being, a Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson. Project Gutenberg. E-edition. 1682/2005. Web. 18 Mar. 2019.

Soniak, Matt. “How Canadian Provinces and Territories got their Names.” Mental Floss. 30 June 2014. Web. 17 Mar. 2019.

Seskus, Tony. “5 Things about Queen Victoria’s Rebel Daughter, Alberta’s Namesake Princess.” Calgary Herald. 17 May 2015. Web. 17 Mar. 2019.

White, Lynn. “The Historical Roots of our Ecological Crisis.” Science 155. Number 3767 (1967): 1203-1207.  

Everyone is on the move in this novel, road trips abound and in order to hit the road what do we need? — a road map. At the same time, Lionel, Charlie and Alberta are each seeking direction in life. As Goldman says, “mapping is a central metaphor” (24) of this novel. Maps chart territory and provide directions, they also create borders and boundaries and they help us to find our way. There is more than one way to map, and just as this novel plays with conflicting story traditions, I think King is also playing with conflicting ways to chart territory. What do you think lies at the centre of King’s mapping metaphor? Marline Goldman, “Mapping and Dreaming; Native Resistance in Green Grass Running Water.” Canadian Literature 161-162 (1999). Web. April 04/2013.

 

As mentioned in the question above, few characters in Green Grass, Running Water seem content to be sedentary (in both a literal and metaphorical sense). Everybody seems to be on the go, yet their ways of getting there are all different.

Charlie starts off with the goal of going to see Lionel and Alberta in Blossom, only to have his means of transportation stolen. Instead, he finds himself lying around his motel room, browsing through real estate advertisements for homes all over Canada. At the end of the story, he decides on a new direction: Los Angeles, the current residence of his father, a man with whom he once shared his own fateful road trip.

Lionel, about to turn forty, is adrift in life; he doesn’t like his job and contemplates returning to school, but shows no real motivation, or even a certainty as to what he would study. He struggles with his identity- even his own aunt frequently accuses him of wanting to be white.

Alberta knows she wants a child, but also knows she doesn’t want a husband. She is trying to map her own course in life, but as it is an “unconventional” course, there isn’t necessarily a road map for her to follow.

One of the few characters who seems at peace with his place is Eli. Despite having spent decades away from his family, Eli has now returned to the cabin of his youth, with no intention of going anywhere. Eli, it seems, no longer needs a map. When Eli takes Lionel to the Sun Dance site on his birthday, he takes the lease road, a “long run of potholes and washboards, dusty and slippery in the late summer and fall”, a road that is “a pitch of hill and coulees that dipped and rose on the land” (King Part 4). Prior to this drive, it had been a very long time since Lionel took this road home, as he normally takes the road that goes to Cardston, the road that is “all asphalt and mileage signs and billboards” (Part 4). Unlike that paved road, this lease road is a “wild thing” (Part 4). Lionel, in his search for identity, had been sticking to the signed road, the road that told him where he should go, the road that that seems like the path one should take, yet he has remained lost and without direction, clueless as to where he should be going. Yet on this day, by ignoring the paved and signed road, the “mapped road”, Eli and Lionel are following their own course to the Sun Dance.

Dr. Hovaugh, on the other hand, seems almost feverish about his use of mapping. Desperate to find the four old Indians, he surrounds himself in a “sea of maps and brochures and travel guides” (Part 4), and approaches his mapping in a more traditionally Western style, plotting “occurrences and probabilities and directions and deviations on a pad of graph paper, turning the chart as he [goes], literal, allegorical, tropological, anagogic” (Part 4). Hovaugh also attempts to map the events surrounding the 4 escaped Indians, cross referencing dates and tragic events throughout history that coincide with the disappearances of the allusive women. He believes in facts.

The role of borders in the novel also alludes to conflicting ways of charting territory. To the Native characters, the political borders seem arbitrary, yet they face challenges with these borders. Lionel finds himself stuck down in the United States by inadvertently getting caught up in a protest. Alberta’s family has their dance outfits confiscated by border security. Another interesting view on borders is that of Babo, who is not of European descent, but is not Indigenous either. To Babo, a black woman, the borders seem trivial and are depicted in a manner that is almost silly- take the regal portrait of Queen Elizabeth which is described by Babo as a “large picture of a woman in a formal with a tiara” (Part 3). Dr.Hovaugh, on the other hand, approaches the border with great solemnity.

The question we are asked to consider is “what lies at the center of this mapping metaphor”? I think the answer to this question is two-pronged.

Firstly, there is the more obvious, the more literal approach; the characters in this story  have different approaches to mapping because traditional approaches to Western and Indigenous mapping ARE different. As Marline Goldman points out, maps and the strategies of mapping have been central in  “conceptualizing, codifying, and regulating the vision of the settler invader society” (19). (One only has to consider the Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en case of “the map that roared”).  

The second approach to analyzing the mapping metaphor comes back to story-telling. Like approaches to mapping, different cultures have different views on story-telling. Western stories (including creation stories) are linear. There is emphasis on dichotomies, on categorization, on labelling. There must be order, and there must be a satisfying conflict and solution. The Western approach to mapping is not much different- it aims to categorize (land vs. water) and label (Who owns this land? What do we call it?). Like their stories, Western maps are linear; the point is to get to the “end”. On the other hand, traditional Indigenous story-telling emphasizes patience and emotion- Sto:lo scholar Jo Ann Archibald writes that “we should listen with three ears: two on our head and one in our heart.” Stories may not provide “satisfying” or objective conclusions, but may instead encourage readers to seek out answers on their own (tying in to the idea of Coyote Pedagogy). The point of an Indigenous story is not necessarily to reach a conclusion, or final destination, but is instead an exploration of the territory of the story.

Mathematician Alfred Korzybski popularized the idea that the map is not the territory. His idea reminds us that maps are flawed, that they are merely a reduction of the place itself, and that in the mapping we lose important information. Additionally, reading a map is a form of interpretation, and in any interpretation, there is plenty of room for error. I’ve always loved a good road trip story. Admittedly, I’ve also always loved a good conventional map. There was always something mysterious about them. Looking at the name of cities, of lakes, of small towns… I always felt that behind each label there is a story to be told. Green Grass, Running Water explored a different kind of “road trip”. I would love to hear suggestions for other road trip stories, especially ones that explore different cultural approaches to the idea!

(Yes, it’s a bit cliche, but I couldn’t help thinking of the idea of mapping when I saw this commercial).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_h6Jojip2Q

 

Works Cited

Archibald, J. . “Coyote Learns to Make a torybasket: The place of First Nations stories in education”. 1997. Simon Fraser University dissertation. 06 Mar. 2019

Fee, M. & Flick, M. “Coyote Pedagogy Knowing Where the Borders Are in Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water”. Canadian Literature 131-139 (1999) . Web. 05 Mar. 2019.

Goldman, Marline. “Mapping and Dreaming Native Resistance in Green Grass, Running Water”. Canadian Literature 161-162 (1999). Web. 04 Mar. 2019.

King, Thomas. Green Grass, Running Water.  ePub edition. Toronto: Harper Collins. 1993/2012. Kindle edition.

“The Map is Not the Territory”. Farnam Street. 31 Dec. 2018. Web. 7 Mar. 2019.

Sparke, Matthew. “A Map that Roared and an Original Atlas: Canada, Cartography, and the Narration of Nation.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, vol. 88, no. 3, 1998, pp. 463-495. 05 Mar. 2019.

“Storytelling”. First Nations Pedagogy Online.  2009 .Website. 6 Mar. 2019.

Subaru. “2018 Subaru Outback | Subaru Commercial | See the World (Extended)”. Online video clip. YouTube. 28 Feb. 2018. Web. 09 Mar. 2019.