In “The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative” by Thomas King, King presents two stories that are vastly different: one, based on Native myth, about Charm and the animals that helped create the earth with her, the second, based on Judeo-Christian doctrine outlining the hierarchy that is God, who created the earth, and placed man to rule the animals in it. From the get-go, our background knowledge of the stories we’re told predispose us to internalize one of these stories as more credible, and the other as not, even though both, according to Lutz, are equally based on irrational mythologies and beliefs (Lesson 2:2). In terms of Western belief and culture, according to King, we have a “perfectly serviceable creation story”, that consequently means when it comes to non-Christian monologues and Native creation stories, “we listen to them and then we forget them” (King 21).

King, like Chamberlain, believes in the importance of meeting each other in our misunderstanding and bridging our stories to eventually bridge the gap between “us” and “them” (Chamberlain 233). It seems rather misleading then, that King would encourage binary thinking when it comes to creation stories. His claim that if we are “to believe one story to be sacred, we must see the other as secular” (King 25), seems to contradict the previously stated beliefs. However, King may be presenting these dichotomies as a warning of the dangers involved in such cut and dry, black and white, worldviews. He calls these dichotomies—and our tendency to love buying into them—an “elemental structure of Western society”, which we trust simply because they are easy, unlike those pesky complex enigmas which take time, tolerance, and patience on both parts, to understand (25).

This detrimental tendency to categorize everything into dichotomies, reaches beyond the boundaries of storytelling, and underlines the first encounters between Natives and Europeans, as well as underlines the rest of the events between Natives and Europeans. King’s warning against binary thinking is a fair and justified one when we consider the ways Western doctrine has negatively led to the violence against Natives. Concerning the treatment of Natives by Europeans, in this lesson, we were asked to “stop and ask yourself, how would you answer these questions — using the stories you already know?” The only justification I could possibly conjure and jot down was that the Western people felt what they were doing was not a punishment but a treatment option. Even while trying to be as sensitive as possible, and as open-minded as possible to “step outside and see one’s own culture as alien” (Lutz 32), my language, suggests I am still justifying and sympathizing with engrained European belief. Why am I defending their actions at all? It is binary thinking that leads to such devastating consequences for the side deemed unfit, barbaric, and in need of intervention. No matter the intention, when dichotomies are created, ignorance and misunderstanding are sure to follow.

Considering the idea of why such violence was used against the Natives, and considering my own response and justification, a story came to mind by Leslie Marmon Silko, titled “Lullaby”*, about a Native woman who had her children taken from her because they were being treated for Tuberculosis. Overtime, the children learned to speak English, and consequently forgot how to speak in their native tongue—the only language their mother understood. This violent separation was beautifully chronicled, and presented an example of how binary thinking, no matter how good the intention, can have such detrimental effects on the personal lives of the people it tries to “fix”. While our Western tendency, influenced by our Christian roots, is to accept our own truth as the one and only healthy, correct, freeing truth, King’s example suggests there are consequences to this way of thinking.

Even now, in our course, and in our individual pursuits of a higher education, there are binary systems ingrained in us that must be met with a serious effort to understand and meet each other on another level besides opposing.

*I know it may seem long and unnecessary, but please do read “Lullaby”, it was a really eye-opening story, at least for me personally.

Works Cited

Chamberlain, J. Edward. If This Is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories?. Toronto: Random House. 2004. Print.

King, Thomas. The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative. Peterbough:Anansi Press. 2003. Print.

Lutz, John. “First Contact as a Spiritual Performance: Aboriginal — Non-Aboriginal Encounters on the North American West Coast.” Myth and Memory: Rethinking Stories of Indigenous-European Contact. Ed. Lutz. Vancouver: U of British Columbia P, 2007. 30-45. Print.