Coyote pedagogy, astutely described by Fee and Flick in Canadian Literature, is a fantastic way of interpreting the writing of Thomas King. Fee and Flick pick up on how King forces his reader to transcend cultural boundaries by mixing both First Nations and Western tropes into jokes and dialogue; thus the reader must engage and appreciate symbols from a multiplicity of cultures if they want to be part of the ‘in-group’ of King’s novel (in this case, Green Grass Running Water). This need to understand numerous cultural symbols of both ‘white’ and ‘Aboriginal’ origins is the basis of Coyote pedagogy, and Fee and Flick argue that this “requires training in illegal border crossing” to fully enjoy King’s work (131). They had me at illegal.
The first instance of Coyote pedagogy is immediate in Green Grass, and there should be no surprise that Coyote is front and center in the story as well.
“In the beginning, there was nothing. Just Water.” (1)
Don’t worry, Coyote was there too. Not God, as we may have expected based off of Judeo-Christian stories, although GOD does show up once Dog Dream gets himself sorted out (with some help from Coyote). To understand these opening pages one must be attuned to First Nations creation stories as well as Western ones. The reader needs to appreciate the presence of both Coyote and God, but to add another fun little twist he throws himself in there too (or the narrator, if he and it are not duplicates). But if he is the narrator, then what we really have here is the creation story of Green Grass, with Coyote, God, and King, all playing roles. Our Coyote pedagogy now has three levels in this book; hope your passport is empty (just kidding, this is illegal border crossing so we don’t need those).
Coyote’s importance in the book is to facilitate the cultural transcendence that King wants his readers to achieve, and he does this by adding Coyote to the creation story as a representative of First Nations cultures. GOD serves as the representation of Judeo-Christian culture, and the narrator (whether King or not) brings both of these representatives together for the reader. One instance of this is when the narrator is trying to recount his creation story, and is continually interrupted by both Coyote and GOD (38-41). To assuage GOD’s worries about the presence of a garden the narrator assures him that “the garden will be here soon” (40), and aside from telling Coyote “we’re going to have to sit on that mouth of yours” (147) he is fairly patient with Coyote’s constant interjections. The narrator is to Coyote and GOD as King is to us, the reader. During the interspersed bits of creation story the narrator recounts his creation story to the two representatives (Coyote and GOD), explaining as he goes, and during the rest of the novel King is priming the reader to make these same connections with the various characters. Coyote, then, is not only an important figure during the creation story, but he serves as a symbol to help readers make broader connections throughout the text as a whole.
Works Cited
Flick, Jane, and Margery Fee. “Coyote Pedagogy: Knowing Where the Borders Are in Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water.” Canadian Literature 161/162 (1999): 131-39. Web.
King, Thomas. Green Grass, Running Water. Toronto: HarperPerennial Canada, 1999. Print.
Hi Nicolas,
Loved your analysis, and I really like how you bring humour into your post. The idea of “illegal” is a really interesting, essentially saying that there is a forbidden. I really loved your idea that King is also a creator when you said: “But if he is the narrator, then what we really have here is the creation story of Green Grass, with Coyote, God, and King, all playing roles.” Do you think that the teller of a creation story is also a part of the creating? With oral stories, I would strongly argue that they are, as each retelling will alter, creating not only the story but how the creation was created (pwef). But if it’s written down, the one writer essentially becomes the authority as that is the “permanent” version… even as I type that I feel that it is problematic. What do you think?
Best,
Caitlin
Hey Caitlin, thanks for checking in! I absolutely think that retellings can be considered as original creation, especially given what King tells us in ‘The Truth About Stories’. With respect to written work it obviously remains unchanged, otherwise it is no longer the original work of the author and would be considered plagiarism. But that is the crucial difference/issue that we are looking at here with respect to Canadian cannon building. We have one historical group of Canadians, the First Nations, who have an oral tradition that allows their stories to grow and evolve over time without any repercussions to the reteller. We now have to find a way to include this history into the cannon, which is a Western construction, and the First Nations histories do not fit very well into this construction. Because of this there has been a lack of focus regarding non-English Canadian literature, and as we try to change this we need to realize that we have two important gaps to bridge. We first need to bridge the gap between First Nations and Western cultures, to facilitate understanding, and we then must determine how to accommodate Native communication styles with Western ones. This is undoubtedly a formidable daunting task, but to have a truly inclusive cannon it is a problem that needs to be solved. Thanks for the question!