1. Coyote Pedagogy is a term sometimes used to describe King’s writing strategies (Margery Fee and Jane Flick). Discuss your understanding of the role of Coyote in the novel.

My elementary school was situated next to a densely forested park, home to many coyotes. Each year we would have an assembly that would teach us how to deal with a coyote if one ever found itself wondering on the playground or on our ways home. We were told that they feared easily and were almost always more scared of us than we of them. The speaker at the assemblies would tell us to stretch out our hands and yell “GO AWAY COYOTE”, if we ever encountered one.  My first instinct when I think about coyotes always traces back to these moments in elementary school as opposed to Wile E. Coyote, although I am very familiar with him as well. We ran into many when we would go on runs for gym class or track and field. Each time the coyote would simply scamper away. Therefore, my understanding of coyotes assumed them to be fearful, harmless, and an animal species that keeps to themselves. It was incredibly interesting, thus, to read of and try to understand Thomas King’s Coyote in Green Grass, Running Water.

Before I started this novel, I did a quick look up of two things: the word pedagogy –  which turned out be not what I had in mind – as well as the origins of the title.  Pedagogy actually refers to the method and practice of teaching, usually in the form of an academic subject or theoretical concept.  With this in mind, I had an odd first encounter with Coyote. Understanding that he was a trickster I had foreshadowed that we might learn through his mistakes, but he turned out to be both a student and teacher through the course of the novel. The title of this novel Green Grass, Running Water  serves as a metaphor. It is from a famous line drawn out of the contracts between the Europeans signed with the Indigenous people. Both the title of this book and Coyote serve as symbols that King has placed for us to distinguish between what is myth and what is reality, and both these concepts serve as themes throughout the novel.

Coyotes character comes across as the traditional trickster often found in Aboriginal Tales. He’s the second animal I have read about, portraying  this role, the first being a raven. However, trickster in this sense is a synonym for protagonist. Coyote is impish, lively and almost childlike as he rushes to the next tale and has a never ending desire to start the next story for the creation of the world. There is a clear  but unknown first person narrator in the novel, however Coyote is prone to interrupting and joining in with him/her/it.  My understanding of Coyote’s role is that of challenging authoritative norms. This novel is a symphony of voices telling the tale, with both orality and literacy in play and King has created a unique platform for his story to exist.

Coyote is a character who leaves autonomy for readers to draw their own conclusions.  Carlton Smith studied the role of post modern tricksters and has called this text “performative” (520), and I think it’s a perfect word to summarize it. This read was far from anything I have read before – that is to say conventional Western literature. As Fee and Flick state, readers of these conventional literature have an understanding and “knowing where the borders are” (131). King’s text had blurred an unclear borders and he ultimately challenges his readers and through Coyote and ultimately Coyote Pedagogy forces his readers to become tricksters.

It was great fun to read with its many points of view, quick pace and resulted in a great chorus  the many voices managed to orchestrate.

Works Cited

Flick, Jane. “Reading Notes for Thomas King’s Green Grass Running Water.” Canadian Literature 161-162. (1999). Web. April 04/2013.

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

“Pedagogy.” Dictionary.com. 2016. Web. 18 July. 2016.

Flick, Jane. “Reading Notes for Thomas King’s Green Grass Running Water.” Canadian Literature 161-162. (1999). Web. April 04/2013.

Smith, Carlton. “Coyote, Contingency, and Community: Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water and Postmodern Trickster.” American Indian Quarterly. Berkeley: Summer 1997. (515-535). Print.