In our last blog assignment, I ended by referencing King’s literary style in Green Grass Running Water and how it emphasized the role of orality in its literary style in conveying the story to the audience. I concluded with a statement not realizing how relevant it would be to this next assignment:

“I think of it as a way of hyperlinking a story…of having one story act as a gateway and a medium to many other stories.”

My section is from pages 24-37…it starts off with the 4 old Indians who keep escaping from Dr. Hovaugh’s institution and it ends with a unique version of a creation story.

The 4 Old Indians

Although these 4 men play some of the smarter , savvy people imprisoned at the institution, the only ones who escape and continuously too, he bases them in a rather ironic fashion. These ‘Indians’ all are subtexted by characters who placed indigenous peoples in a very secondary position; they were the heros with no mention of the ‘help’. Here King flips this over,by re-positioning each person as an ‘Indian’ to start with…the European identity has been overwritten. 

–LONE RANGER: This is a reference to the popular Western’s hero, the only survivor of the Texas Rangers and a “Do Gooder” (Flick 141). The interesting thing is he always has an Indian sidekick on his adventures, but is the only one who comes out as the hero save-the-day dude. Ironically, in many Westerns he was played by a Native American.

-HAWKEYE: He is another popular culture reference, this time a literary hero of the East and he also had his very own Indian sidekick too. He was a European man named Nathaniel Bumppo who had “knowledge of ‘Indian Ways'” (Flick 142).

-ROBINSON CRUSOE: This is a reference that many often get right away as he is the shipwrecked survivalist in the similarly named book. He likewise is the hero who conquers all, albeit without credit to his sidekick, a native of the island he finds himself on.

-ISHMAEL: He is another literary reference, this time to the sole survivor in the popular novel Moby Dick. He also had a sidekick who was referenced as a savage native as well.

Lionel’s Tonsils Experience

This scene starts with an attempt to remove the boy’s tonsils…an operation which somehow nearly ends with him being mistaken for a white child and his heart nearly being operated on. The irony of this story, and how the desire of the indigenous child is subverted purposefully or not to nearly cost him his life is not lost. The way this story echoes that of residential school children, right down to the we-know-best officials is clear.

-JESSE MANY GUNS: Could this be a play on the Jesse James type of character like that of the real-life guerilla outlaw who robbed from the Union soldiers during the Civil War? He infamously became known, however untrue it was, as a Robin Hood type person and became a Wild West hero after his death.

Creation Story

Here, King took the Genesis creation story and mapped it alongside and intertwined with the creation story of many Aboriginal cultures. The results ask some interesting questions on how we see stories and what authority and patriarchy in the Christian story signify and mean to the cultures of its adherents as well as those it touches.

-FIRST WOMAN: She is a feature of both creation stories…representing Eve in the Christian version and the First/Star Woman in Aboriginal versions. In King’s version, her descent from the Sky to Water worlds is unintentional…an accident. The question of culpability, of Original Sin is all gone. King’s rewriting of this key issue that plays into the ideas of sin and patriarchy are interesting.

-AHDAMN: An obvious play on the biblical figure, Adam’s name. And just as his name is similar to the popular expression of regret upon committing mistakes, Ahdamn is a man who in the stories also makes tremendous amounts of mistakes in naming everything. Interestingly, he, unlike First Woman, is the one who King creates as the one making the mistake.

Works Cited

“Creation Stories: Canadian First Nations.” Native Creation Myths.University of Calgary History Class. Web. Accessed on 31

    March 2016.

“Genesis 1.” Bible Gateway. Web. Accessed on 31 March 2016.

Rothman, Lily. “Johnny Depp as Tonto: Is the Lone Ranger Racist?” TIME Magazine. 3 July 2013. Web. Accessed on 31 March

     2016.

The novel Green Grass, Running Water is a unique type of literature, one that I have never encountered. Its introduction of the rich cultural knowledge of the First Nations is both a new reading experience and a journey of learning right through. After reading the lesson,I realized that reading this work out loud would result in a richer and better grasp of many of the concepts that Thomas King was trying to impart on his readers. Here are three of the allusions that stood out especially when read aloud:

-1- First Woman and Ahdamn 

First Woman herself is in reference to the first state of life: birth. But a few paragraphs later we are introduced to Ahdamn. When reading it aloud, readers suddenly hear ‘Adam’ as they read the name and the allusion falls into place.

This is a reference back to the Christian European creation story in Genesis…that of Adam and Eve, the first man and woman. She comes from Sky Worl…which alludes to Heaven. But unlike that story, this one has done some significant things to the characters. The female is the one who came first, and Adam just appears later on…not Adam was created and then Eve. There is Sky World…but the other world is the First Nations story of Earth: a land of water where land is formed when the animals pack mud around Turtle’s shell. Also, it is not through the First Woman’s fault that she ends on land; rather this is a blameless story. Ahdamn makes fumbling mistakes in the naming of stuff and First Woman is trying to fix things and ends up falling out of the sky.

It is an unwillingness of god’s part to share, not a temptation by her, that triggers the exit from the Sky World. And most importantly, they leave of heir own free will because of the “Christian rules” and are not kicked out.

-2- “Eli Stand Alone”

In his willingness to be the sole opposition to the damn, Eli is a striking figure. He is an allusion to the equally memorable Elijah Harper, the Manitoba MLA and the only Aboriginal member who stood alone and opposed the Meech Lake Accord with an eagle feather in his hand. The Accord had been negotiated without Aboriginal input and so this one man was able to stop the constitutional reforms. King uses the name to overtly carry these references, but even in his actions, Eli projects the image of the man who is not afraid to stand alone against what he sees as an injustice.

-3- S. Moodie…aka Sue

This is a direct allusion to Susanna Moodie, a woman who became the embodiment of the frontier woman. I found it quite interesting that her mention in King’s work comes amidst the great debate about where Canada, America, and Europe intersect and where they diverge to create unique stories. Susanna Moodie was seen as doing this for Canada in her novel, Roughing it in the Bush…she marked the point where literature moved from being by British about life in a land called Canada to being by Canadians about home.

These are just some examples of the many allusion that Thomas King used…in fact just about every character name is a reinvention of some historical figure connected in some way to the story of the First Nations and other indigenous peoples. If readers approach this novel as any other book, the names will just be character names with no meaning beyond what’s on the pages. But for those who choose to read it out loud, they are given a second level of meanings, a richness obscured to those who did not choose orality as their medium.

I think this is deliberate on King’s part…the indigenous literary culture tells and shares its stories orally. He wants his readers to experience his stories in the oral form, to benefit from what this type of literacy offers. Orality as literacy…not the eurocentric view of orality as a step before literacy. It is a way that allows stories to adapt, to absorb the context, to always be relevant to the audience. And this is what King does. He takes elements from older stories and weaves them into newer stories, giving his story both the richness of the plot he is creating as well as that of the original stories they were taken from.

I think of it as a way of hyperlinking a story…of having one story act as a gateway and a medium to many other stories.

Work Cited

Hanson, Erin. “Oral Traditions.” Indigenous Foundations. First Nations

Studies Program at UBC. N.d. Web. Accessed on 21 March, 2016

“Manitoba MLA Elijah Harper votes against Meech Lake Accord.” The

     National. CBC Digital Archives. 12 June, 1990. Web. Accessed on 21

March, 2016

Moodie, Susanna. Roughing it in the Bush. Ebook: Project Gutenburg.

(2003). Web. Accessed on 21 March, 2016

The Immigration Act of 1910 is a piece of legislation that formed the cornerstone of restrictive immigration policies in Canadian history. It reinforced and expanded on another legislation: the Immigration Act pf 1906. In its totality, this law was a guide of exclusionary powers granted to the Cabinet. It granted authority to:

-exclude “immigrants belonging to any race deemed unsuited to the climate or requirements of Canada.”

-a 3 year ‘probationary’ period during which a person could be deported for moral or political unsuitability

-a prevention of Courts from interfering or ruling in these cases

-a head tax of $200 on all Asian immigrants

-exclude immigrants sponsored by charitable organizations unless with explicit permission

-a head tax of $25 on all immigrants arriving outside of winter

Daniel Coleman, in his argument on the project of white civility, identifies an intentional move by nation-builders to “formulate and elaborate a specific form of [Canadian] whiteness based on the British model of civility” (5). And if ever there was a particular “literary endeavor” in Canadian history to exemplify this, this Act fits that bill.

The fictional story of the whiteness of the Canadian nation and its history was directly challenged by immigration and this law was meant to deal with that issue and circumvent it. (Ironic, considering the immigration of this same British “whiteness” is what challenged and disturbed the indigenous nations of this land.)

The “whiteness” of Canada was being created by this legislation in its discrimination and exclusion of peoples of Asian descent. This extended to Japanese, Chinese, and Indians, amongst others. In one example, an Indian man named Munshi Singh fought his deportation in Court, ultimately losing. But the words that the Judge used in handing down his decision were more reflective of the systemic racism that pervaded Canadian institutions than of that case alone.

The Judge said, “the better classes of the Asiatic races are…undesirables in Canada.” “Their ways and ideas may well be a menace to the wellbeing of the Canadian people.” “The Parliament…may well be said to be safeguarding the people of Canada from an influx which…might annihilate the nation…introduce Oriental ways as against European ways.”

But a fictive version of whiteness, being a brand of civilization free from whatever was deemed contrary, was also being created. The laws against charitable organization’s sponsoring of immigrants specifically responded to an influx of poor British peoples in 1907 brought to Canada through charity. The $25 head tax depending on seasons also targeted undesirable European prospective immigrants by narrowing the scope to those with money: the rich and therefore of a particular class.

The Immigration Act tried to create a Canada with a particular brand of British “whiteness”, a fictive population that did not exist even in Britain. Is this fictive story a part of Canadian history? I would argue that the answer is no. The narrative is one that is still being perpetuated, that Canadians held a front-row seat to in recent months.

Under the previous government, Canada saw the creation of “safe country” lists which excluded many from immigrating as refugees including some of the most discriminated European groups like the Roma of Hungary. Former PM Harper’s references to Muslims and Islam as a “barbaric culture” climaxing in the creation of the Barbaric Cultural Practices Against Women and Girls perpetuated this story of the “old stock Canadians” being the desired bedrock of this country. It is interesting furthermore as we also saw the refusal to investigate let alone act on the entrench and longstanding issue of the horrible tragedy of abducted and murdered Aboriginal women in which the desired narrative would be implicated. The same arguments of incompatible lifestyles and a threat to Canada are still being used today in the attempted exclusion of Muslim immigrants. And even with the government change, the sentiments are still rumbling loudly in groups like JDL and Pegida Canada.

Works Cited

“Forging Our Legacy: Canadian Citizenship and Immigration, 1900–1977.” Government of

     Canada, 1 July, 2006. Web. Accessed on 11 March, 2016.

Gagnon, E., Raska, J., Van Dyk, L., and Schwinhamer, S. “Immigration Act, 1910.” Canadian

     Museum of Immigration at Pier 21. N.d. Web. Accessed on 11 March, 2016.

Kanji. Azeezah. “The disturbing movement against Syrian refugees in Canada.” Thestar.com.

Toronto Star Newspapers. 10 March, 2016. Web. Accessed on 11 March, 2016.

Keenan, Edward. “When Stephen Harper refers to “barbaric culture,” he means Islam — an anti-

Muslim alarm that’s ugly and effective because it gets votes.” Thestar.com. Toronto Star

Newspapers. 5 October, 2015. Web. Accessed on 11 March, 2016.

Lenard, P. T. “Stephen Harper’s abhorrent record on refugees and immigration.” The Broadbent Blog.

     Broadbent Institute. 12 September, 2015. Web. Accessed on 11 March, 2016.

Susanna Moodie’s introduction to the third edition of her work, Roughing it in the Bush, is a unique and interesting start to a ‘pioneering’ book. It is reflective of the book itself, focusing not on a romanticized idea of the Canadian settler experience, but on the hardships and disillusionment of such a life.

But that is not to say that Moodie’s story is the complete reality because she abstained from romanticizing it. Rather it is part of the reality because it tells only part of the story…it tells the story of the European dream. But more importantly, it tells the story of the falsity of that dream.

The intersection of indigenous and settler stories is one that only happens when we each choose to listen to all the stories. Moodie’s work does not do this; she did not hear the indigenous stories and her work does not  include their accounts of the land she lived upon. But what her work does is play a role in laying the groundwork for that intersection by exposing the fallacies of the settler stories. She recreates the stories that the European settlers brought across the ocean in all their glory and optimism. And then she shows her readers how these stories fall apart.

-We can hear echoes of the spiritual stories that the settlers arrived with: the stories of the land being their gift from God,being like the Garden of Eden.

She “told of lands yielding forty bushels to the acre” and of ” log houses to be raised in a single day, by the generous exertions of friends and neighbours.” This was the story of the “El Dorados” that the settlers had been told and expected to find, where farming was easy and bore in abundance.

She says that it is God’s Will that they come here,that “He chooses such, to send forth into the forest to hew out the rough paths for the advance of civilization.”

-Moodie also echoes the story of an empty, unused land that colonizers used to attract settlers and justify their push into the ‘wild’.

She writes of how people came to “reclaim the waste places of the earth.”

-The ‘vanishing Indian’ is not just vanishing in her introduction; he is already vanished.

In her intro, she makes not a single mention of the indigenous peoples that the settlers encountered on their arrival. It is as though the land was empty, in need of being tamed and “civilized.”

Moodie’s book was published after the fact, and the intro likewise written after. The stories of this land being an Eden are ones that she retells and rewrites, but those of the vanishing Indian and the Terra Nullius are ones that still have heavy resonance in her work. It is almost blatantly obvious in its exclusion; the need to justify the pushing back of so many civilizations is one that Moodie holds firm to and reflects in her writings.

In her pulling at the threads of the European settler stories and her unraveling their stoic truthfulness, Moodie sets the stage for readers to doubt that these are the only stories. If the settler stories that they brought were not the full truth, then maybe there are more stories to make up the truth out there. I don’t think Moodie intended or  endorsed this course, but she unknowingly did by revealing a world unlike the one that had been told.

Works Cited

Lockwood, Brett. “They’re Giving Away Land.” O’ Canada. WordPress. 11 April 2015. Web. Accessed on 2 March,

2016.

Moodie, Susanna. Roughing it in the Bush. London: Richard Bentley, 1852.

“Tales on the Trails.” Le Canada: A People’s History. CBC, 2001. Web. 2 Mar. 2016.