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.