Blogpost 3/7.

 PAGES 416 to 428, 2007 Edition (referencing will be based on 2007 Edition).

     Kamloops.

     “The end remembers the beginning.”

      —Every creative writing teacher.

      I have chosen to focus on the allusions in the last section of Green Grass Running Water because they help strengthen the thematics present in the cyclical structure. The themes include the fluidity of Native stories, the hegemonic influence of Christianity and Western pop culture, and the importance of orality. One could write a novel-length article if they chose to analyze every single character and symbol in this last section, and so, for the sake of brevity, I will mostly rely on Flick’s analysis and include hyperlinks for further readings. There are few thematic connections for me to draw from Flick’s list of allusions that other scholars have not already stated. To not only reiterate what has already been said I will also be focusing on the one allusion that Flick missed in these pages—Kamloops.

     Before I return to the importance of Kamloops, let us look at the plethora of allusions Flick found in these pages and connect them to some of the novel’s themes. One of the most important characters to understand is Coyote, a trickster figure from Native American tales who lived before humans existed. Coyote, along with other mystical beings had tremendous powers and created the world. They instituted human life and culture, but they were also capable of being brave or cowardly, conservative or innovative, wise or stupid. (Flick 143). In other words, for one to understand Coyote, one must be able to understand and believe in contradictions in the same way that one must understand contradictions to constructively interpret Green Grass Running Water. King also contradicts Christian stories to satirize them. “The Last time you fooled around like this,” said Robinson Crusoe, “The world got very wet.” “And we had to start all over again,” said Hawkeye. (King 416). King establishes that it was Coyote, not god, who was responsible for Noah’s flood. (Flick 164). King further subverts the Christian story when Coyote refers to the character Alberta and says, “But I was Helpful, too. That woman who wanted a baby. Now that was helpful.” To which Robinson Crusoe responds, “You remember the last time you did that?” (King 416). The last time Coyote did that refers to “the Immaculate Conception commonly misunderstood to refer to the conception of Jesus in Mary (rather than Mary’s own sinless conception).” (Flick 164). The reference to the character Alberta is one example of how King subverts, satirizes, strengthens, and dismantles stories by constantly overlapping stories within stories.

     The Old Indians–as the Lone Ranger, Ishmael, Robinson Crusoe, Hawkeye, and Coyote are sometimes referred to–influence Alberta’s life; however, Alberta is not just a character, but a reference to the Canadian province. Alberta’s frankness could represent the characteristics of Albertans. (Flick 144). All these references to stories from different times cycle back to the present. Another example of this is when King starts off page 425 in the exact same way that he starts off page 16—with the line “Dr. Hovaugh sat at his desk and rolled his toes in the soft, deep-pile carpet.” Dr. Hovaugh’s narrative has come full circle and carries with it the stories of which his name alludes to. One can understand the Hovaugh to refer to many different people and characters such as Joe Hovaugh who appears in King’s story, “A Seat in the Garden,” and a play on the word Jehovah. (Flick 144). Dr. Hovaugh’s storyline is deeply connected to the Old Indians storyline throughout Green Grass Running Water, which we also see in the section I am analyzing when the Lone Ranger says, “We could start in the garden.” (King 428). “If they offer “to help” Joe Hovaugh fix up the world, they will have to start, of course, in the garden. That is, Eden—or Frye’s “central story”—since everything went “wrong” there. Once everyone is able to mind his or her relations, there may be hope of fixing up the world.” (Flick 164). However, King is not only subverting the Christian creation story, but with Lone Ranger’s use of “We,” King is also uniting Hawkeye, a adopted Indian name from famous frontier heroes in American literature, Lone Ranger, reference to Texas Rangers and character that had a faithful Indian companion named Tonto, Robinson Crusoe, a famous character from the novel by Daniel Defoe, and Ishmael, a character from Moby Dick and the firstborn son of Abraham. These characters and western writers who have shaped problematic ideas about indigenous people are now transformed and satirized to accompany the Native story.

     Many of these allusions are not ones that I would have picked up on if it weren’t for Flick; however, the thematic connections came from my experience and knowledge from ENGL 470 99C Canadian Studies: Canadian Literary Genres. Now, in the essence of King’s writing, let’s return to where I started—with Kamloops. As already discussed, when Robinson Crusoe tells Coyote, “You remember the last time you did that?” (416) King alludes to the Immaculate Conception. Coyote then responded with, “I’m quite sure I was in Kamloops” which brings the Christian story into the Okanagan. To understand the significance of Kamloops and the Okanagan, one needs to read, Living by Stories: a Journey of Landscape and Memory by Harry Robinson. Harry Robinson was an Okanagan writer that heavily influenced King’s writing. Robinson grew up in Oyama as a member of the Lower Similkameen Band of the Interior Salish people. (Talonbooks). The Interior Salish people’s territory expanded through Kamloops which comes from the Secwepemc word Tk’emlúps, meaning “where the rivers meet” and refers to the convergence of the North and South Thompson rivers. (Tourism Kamloops). By alluding to Kamloops, King is not only referring to a writer that inspired him. The name also signifies the beginning of our world. A time when there was nothing. Just the water.

Works Cited

“Alberta Canada.” Travel Alberta, www.travelalberta.com/ca/.

Archibald, Jo-Ann, and desLibris – Books. Indigenous Storywork: Educating the Heart, Mind, Body, and Spirit. UBC Press, Vancouver, 2008.

Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. “Garden of Eden.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 6 Sept. 2013, www.britannica.com/topic/Garden-of-Eden.

Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. “Robinson Crusoe.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 22 Jan. 2019, www.britannica.com/topic/Robinson-Crusoe-novel.

Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. “Tonto.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 7 Jan. 2016, www.britannica.com/topic/Tonto.

Eldatari. “Dr. Joseph Hovaugh and Jehovah.” Words and Names, 19 July 2010, litstudies.wordpress.com/2009/03/30/dr-joseph-hovaugh-and-jehovah/.

Flick Jane. “Reading Notes for Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water.” Canadian Literature 161/162 (1999). Web. 18 March 2016. 

GotQuestions.org. “Who Was Ishmael in the Bible?” GotQuestions.org, 8 Mar. 2017, www.gotquestions.org/Ishmael-in-the-Bible.html.

“Harry Robinson.” Harry Robinson » Authors » Talonbooks, talonbooks.com/authors/harry-robinson.

“Immaculate Conception and Assumption.” Catholic Answers, 19 Nov. 2018, www.catholic.com/tract/immaculate-conception-and-assumption.

“Kamloops Indigenous Culture | Tourism Kamloops, BC.” Kamloops Indigenous Culture | Tourism Kamloops, BC, www.tourismkamloops.com/thingstodo/artsandculture/ kamloopsindigenous/.

Kennedy, Dorothy, and Randy Bouchard. “Interior Salish.” Interior Salish | The Canadian Encyclopedia, 21 Nov. 2006, www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/interior-salish- first-nations.

King, Thomas. Green Grass Running Water. 1993. Perennial-Harper, 2007.

LitCharts. “Hawkeye Character Analysis.” LitCharts, www.litcharts.com/lit/the-last-of-the-mohicans/characters/hawkeye.

Paterson, Erika. Lesson 3:3 ENGL 470 99C Canadian Studies: Canadian Literary Genres. UBC Blogs.

Robinson, Harry. Living by Stories: a Journey of Landscape and Memory. Ed. Wendy Wickwire. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2005. 64-85.

Trailers, Movieclips. “The Lone Ranger Official Trailer #2 (2012) – Johnny Depp Movie HD.” YouTube, YouTube, 11 Dec. 2012, www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjFsNSoDZK8.

7. Describe how King uses the cyclical paradigm of the Medicine Wheel (and a little help from Coyote) to teach us to understand, or at least to try to understand the power behind the stories we tell ourselves.

The cyclical paradigm of the Medicine Wheel in Green Grass Running Water forces the audience the engage with the text and make connections. The fractured and cyclical narrative reflects an indigenous way of thinking; however, I will conclude this blog post with a list of cyclically structured movie narratives to show how less esoteric writers have mixed various cultural orientations through story structure. First, I will elucidate on how King attempts to heal and teach his readers by creating a structure that reflects the Medicine Wheel. The Medicine Wheel may not be a native term, but indigenous people used the Medicine Wheel as a tool for teaching, which in the First Nations worldview is interchangeable with healing. (Paterson). The Medicine wheel’s colours (red, white, black, and blue) represent cardinal directions, seasons, states of being, and natural elements. In the case of King’s novel, the four quadrants also represent the four Old Indians (which are also the names of the four sections in the book), and the four women that fall from the sky. (Paterson). For the purposes of this blog post, I will be addressing the influence that repeated stories have on the characters, and that the cyclical structure causes the reader to feel the power of stories along with the characters.

The most repeated story in Green Grass Running Water is the creation story. The first creation story involves Ahdamn and First Woman, mixing Indigenous and Judeo-Christian creation stories. Coyote becomes confused when First Woman is given the name of the Lone Ranger, and joined by three other figures, so the narrator begins the story again. In the second retelling of the creation story, Changing Woman falls from the sky and meets a chauvinistic Noah. Coyote keeps getting the creation stories wrong. Even at the very end, when the narrator is retelling the story of Old Woman, and when the narrator asks what Old Woman sees, Coyote says “A burning bush” which is the wrong answer. The reason Coyote got the wrong answer was that Coyote read a book. The narrator tells Coyote that Coyote must forget the book to tell the story. (King 349). Even though the narrator keep returning to creation stories, Coyote is still influenced by written texts. Coyote, who is godlike in that he has the power to cause earthquakes through dance and song, is not much different than the audience. The audience cannot get King’s story right without engaging in the text orally as well. When the narrator teaches Coyote (and the audience) creation stories, King is fixing the belief that Indigenous cultures lack the same rich history as European Christians. The satirical humour makes the Christian story seem subordinate to the Indigenous story in a similar way that the Westerns made indigenous people seem primitive compared to white cowboys.

The repeated motif of Western movies shows the influence that these narratives have on indigenous people. For instance, when the siblings Benjamin, Elizabeth, and Christian watch a Western, Christian asks his mother, Latisha, “How come the Indians always get killed?” Latisha explains that’s how western movies are to which Christian responds, “Not much point in watching it then.” (King 193). These movies perpetuate the idea that indigenous people are powerless to the white man. Furthermore, the reader can make connections that cross temporal boundaries when relating all the scenes that mention Westerns. One of the most significant influences of Western’s is on Charlie Looking Bear and his father, Portland. Charlie sees his father perform a stripping gig where the announcer says, ““And now, straight from the engagements in Germany, Italy, Paris, and Toronto, that fiery savage, Pocahontas! Put your hands together for the sexiest squaw best of the Mississippi.” (211). King shows us that the Western story still exists today, but Charlie’s nostalgia toward Western’s subverts it from something that the white man owns to something that Charlie can enjoy. The repeated use of Western’s allows King to show us that one can understand to contradictory statements—Western’s perpetrated fabricated ideas about indigenous people, and indigenous people can enjoy and profit from Westerns.

Another contradiction that the reader can only understand through a cyclical structure is that of Eli’s existence. Norma tells Eli that nobody on the reserve believes he’s alive, and when he tells her to tell them that he’s dead, Norma lets him know that nobody believes that either. (286). This not only foreshadows his death but works with the theme of cycles and stories. Eli dies when the damn collapses which reflects his disappearance from the reserve in his earlier life, but also his return from Toronto. King writes Eli’s story so that two contradictory believes that exist at different times can exist simultaneously. Eli’s story is also the one that breaks the common narratives. “Indian leaves the traditional world of the reserve, goes to the city, and is destroyed. Indian leaves the traditional world of the reserve, is exposed to white culture, and becomes trapped between two worlds. Indian leaves the traditional world of the reserve, gets an education, and is shunned by his tribe.” (286). Eli left the traditional world of the reserve, got an education and became successful from a Western point of view, and then returned to a traditional way of life while slowing down an inevitable damn project. However, the three common narratives about Indians leaving the reserve are also present in Eli’s life. The Truth is rarely one thing, and that is something that King wants us to understand.

To believe in contradictory statements is common among cultures cyclical view of the world. Psychologists, Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck, explain cultures through four different value dimensions—time, nature, human nature, and relational. Individualistic Western cultures often focus on the future, believe in mastery over nature, see human’s as evil (must be washed from their sins), and relationships are approached with an individual point of view. Indigenous cultures, on the other hand, don’t distinguish between times in a lineral way, believe in harmony with nature, see human’s as having a mixed human nature, and approach relationships collaterally. (Cheung). The indigenous world view becomes especially apparent with coyote. Coyote struggles to understand the story about Thought Woman and the narrator explains the story with anthropomorphized natural elements. The trees tell thought woman to wake up, the rocks seem indifferent to what happens, and the river sings “La, la, la, la” as it takes Thought Woman to the edge of the world where she floats into the sky. (King 232). There is no good or bad, the natural elements connect to Thought Woman, and there is no hierarchy of characters.

It seems that King wants us to understand that the stories we tell affect how people understand themselves and others and that it is essential to recognize the possible fabrications within stories. King uses the cyclical paradigm of the Medicine Wheel to break free from linear thinking and bring the reader closer to an indigenous way of viewing the world. Even though there are cultural differences between the West and Indigenous cultures, I want to end this blog post with a link to a list of movies (see the last half) that don’t give into linear thinking. It is important to understand that cultural values and ways of seeing the world always exist on a dimension (people from all cultures are capable of thinking in ways that differ from their own culture). Sometimes there is no need to exclude people by alluding to various historical figures and making the story more academic than it needs to be (which I think King does at times). The majority of people understand emotion, and if you write rich characters and place them in a story structure that forces the audience to make connections, people will engage and emphasize with stories, and therefore, the world.

 

Works Cited

Cheung, Benjamin. “Lecture 15: Self and Personality.” Cultural Psychology. University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC. 7 February 2019. Lecture.

CineFix. “10 Best Structured Movies of All Time.” YouTube, 16 Aug. 2016, www.youtube.com/watchv=mgk6e8gWDbk&fbclid=IwAR3V2MrAdgvrkFwxZ0alpSlFsEwaWrQyqiJsrJHIE3Xku22VM3hkuWg0TqU.

Hills, Michael D. “Kluckhohn and Strodtbecks Values Orientation Theory.” Online Readings in Psychology and Culture, vol. 4, no. 4, 2002, doi:10.9707/2307-0919.1040.

King, Thomas. Green Grass Running Water. 1993. Perennial-Harper, 2007.

Paterson, Erika. Lesson 3:2 ENGL 470 99C Canadian Studies: Canadian Literary Genres. UBC Blogs.