In looking at the passage from Green Grass Running Water from 258-270 (263-274 in my edition), many historical references can be derived from the two stories. In particular, I would like to look at the symbolism in Lionel, his sister Latisha and George Morningstar. To begin, the story of Lionel offers an interesting revelation of Lionel as a forty year old man, following intentional word selection that leads the viewer into believing he is perhaps  child. Words such as; insect, “click click click”, colour, black, sound, and a display of hopelessness  lead to an evocation of childhood. The final evocation of this is a  “happy birthday” which is met  is immediately met with the revelation that Lionel is, in fact, forty on this day. The name Lionel itself seems to be in reference  to the toy train company, which is based in George Morningstar’s “home” Michigan. As he discusses what he wished to be as a child, he discusses career possibilities while referencing a hart topping single in the 1940’s from Betty Hutton, ‘Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief’.  Hutton’s birthplace is, you guessed it, Michigan.

In revealing a childhood wish to be John Wayne, Jane Flick describes this as signalling a self hatred of “indianness”. As Native Americans picketed his shows for being a “Injun-hating” character, no other explanation could be offered.

Taking this further unto the next portion of the chapter, King introduces John Wayne’s outfit as a allusion to George Morningstar’s (George Custer’s) wartime attire (Flick).

“LOOKS A LOT LIKE MY JACKET.” . . . . “YES,” SAID THE LONE RANGER. “IT’S YOUR JACKET ALL RIGHT.” “IF YOU LOOK CLOSELY” SAID ISHMAEL, “YOU CAN TELL.”

Here Flick offers this passage as a direct link between George Morningstar and General Custer. Custer himself was also given the nickname “son of the morning star” by plains Indians.

The character of Latisha is presented as a contradiction to the stereotype, of a “stock image of a Native woman on Welfare” (Knopf 264). She is portrayed as a successful businesswoman, and loving mother to her three children in stark contrast to that idea. The name of Latisha’s business, Dead Dog Cafe, is too alluding to a stereotype of “dog meat” being a part of Native cuisine. “It’s a treaty right, there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s one of our traditional foods.” While the food is merely beef, it serves as a refrain of King’s attempt to dispel inaccuracies and inequities in Native perceptions in the general public. Ironically (or intentionally by King), Custer wrote a novel in 1872, My Life on the Plains, which featured American’s eating dog meat at a Native ceremony, and after spitting it out (Mardsden 262).  The character of Latisha, the cafe, and the family all serve to further King’s attempt at quashing the stereotypes which pervade modern Canadian society and Literature.  In fact, King found this so profound that he launched a CBC radio show by the same name a the cafe, which ran for four seasons in the late 90’s.

For those class members who may have asked why it is we are reading this, here is an example of the general scholarly consensus who mimic Professor Patterson as to the importance of this work:

The fiction of Thomas King has been instrumental in breakin up dominant stereotypes of the “Indian” in mainstream Canadian literary history. There is no doubt that King has managed to modernize the image of the Native. (Knopf)

Citations

Flick, Jane. “Reading Notes for Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Wate.”Canadian Literature 161-162 (1999): 140-172. Print.

Kendall, Mary Claire. “Betty Hutton’s Miraculous Recovery.” Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 11 Mar. 2013. Web. 21 July 2014.

Knopf, K. Aboriginal Canada Revisited. 2008. University of Ottawa Press

Marsden, P.H. Towards a Transcultural Future: Literature and Human Rights in a ‘post’-colonial World. Rodopi, 2004

Paterson, Erika. “Student Blogs.”  English 470A Canadian Studies Canadian Literary Genre 98A May 2014. UBC Blogs, 2014. Web. 17 Jul 2014.

Media:

Digital image. N.p., n.d. Web.<http://wd4eui.com/Pictures/Toy_train_1952_cat.jpg>

“Betty Hutton in “Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief” Number.” YouTube. YouTube, n.d. Web. 21 July 2014.

1. Find three examples of names that need to be spoken aloud in order to catch the allusion. Discuss the examples as well as the reading technique that requires you to read aloud in order to make connections. Why does King want us to read aloud?

In King’s Novel the topic of Orality is intended as a takeaway from the stories that are written–to later be shared through the art of storytelling. Things take on a different meaning upon being told aloud; physicality, place, emotion, direction, and authenticity of the speaker can each be derived and/or portrayed as the speaker retells a story. King uses metaphorical names to directly connect characters with a predisposition that is imposed by the name of the character at hand.

Researchers have stated that King’s stories ‘denaturalise the colonial perspective’, providing “an important opportunity for readers of the dominant culture to look in the mirror of stereotypical caricature” (Wyile).

Furthermore, the ridiculous nature of the names in the stories can be seen as a caricature of the westernized myths which are attached the cultural significance of the characters themselves. As cultural signifiers go, names are perhaps the most succinct and informative of any that I know of.

For an example of this, Sally-Jo Weyha is introduced as a character which as names go, brings with it the attached inequity whivh is placed on the Western portrayal of “Pocahontas” in popular media. The true story of Sacagawea is far removed from that idealized version of Settler/Native relations, and thus King references it as an humorous recall of the inaccuracy of western intrepretations of historic events/stories.

I think further that with this example of Sally Jo-Wehya showshow stories are also powerful tools to fit a narrative of propaganda–thus being the story of “Pocahontas” which romanticizes a relationship that was anything but.

Dr. Joe Hovaugh is another example in Green Grass, wherein the name resonates with the religious connections that are implied with its use. In it, he describes stories of creation which give credence to the name usage of King.

A further example are the names, Nissan, Piulo, und Karmaiin Ghia which refer to the ships of Christopher Columbus’ maiden voyage to North America with the ships the Nina, Pinta, and the Santa Maria.

“Thus, a storyteller’s observations and speculations are often inferred and carry with them an element of presupposition. The storyteller does not tell all he or she knows, or explain the meanings of names, places, and things. There is an assumption of a common matrix of cultural knowledge, and invoking words—names and places—suggests that shared epistemology. In King’s novel, that sharing covers a broad spectrum of cultural knowledge.” (Chester 55)

King assumes with us the reader, and with those with whom the stories are being shared in the oral tradition that a baseline cultural understanding id achieved within the context of the name usage, As stories are made to be read aloud, as they are so done the stories punch the reader in the face with meaning, rather than letting it perhaps be determined. King’s intentions can be derived from the above as well, with the evoked intent being as previously stated, to let the dominant culture view

Chester, Blanca. _Green Grass, Running Water: Theorizing the World of the Novel_. _canlit.ca_. Canadian Literature, 9 Aug. 2012. Web. 11 July 2014.

Flick, Jane.Reading Notes for Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water.Canadian Literature 161-162 (Summer/Autumn 1999): 140-172. Aug. 9 2012. Web. 17 Jul 2014.

King, Thomas.Green Grass, Running Water. HarperCollins Publishers Ltd, 1999. Print.

Wyile, Herb. “Trust Tonto: Thomas King’s Subversive Fictions and the Politics of Cultural Literacy.” Canadian Literature 161-62 (1999): 105-24.

Once in the winter
Out on a lake
In the heart of the north-land,
Far from the Fort
And far from the hunters,
A Chippewa woman
With her sick baby,
Crouched in the last hours
Of a great storm.

So starts Frye’s piece ‘Bush Garden’, which offers a general background on both the barriers and magnetic attraction to cultural diffusion and creation in Canadian literary history. His work throughout the 1950’s and 60’s on myth’s and archetype’s were highly influential and he became known as the “center of critical activity as one of the major critics of our age, whose work represents one of the most impressive achievements in the recent history of criticism.”
When discussing Duncan Campbell Scott, Frye is quick to allude to the vast polarization between his works among the literary spectrum. Yet, it was his writings of Native stories that raises the question of Agency on the part of Scott in writing these stories. As occupier of perhaps the most important seat in the Department of Indian Affairs, Scott himself wrote:
The policy of the Dominion has always been to protect Indians, to guard their identity as a race and at the same time to apply methods, which will destroy that identity and lead eventually to their disappearance as a separate division of the population (In Chater, 23 cited in Instructor Blog).
In ‘The Bush Garden’ Frye offers reasons as to why it is irrelevant for Scott to be credited with both the interpreter of native stories and the harbinger of cultural destruction on the communities themselves—or why he can outright ignore it. Frye proposed throughout his work that literature and myths should both be studied as a whole to observe the individual stories/myths. The first of Frye’s reasons is the historical bias created in Canadian literature.
Frye believes that To Brown et al. the Indian Act seems as if the just response, caused by a lack of understanding of cultures and/or the acceptance of. Just as writers have tried (yet failed in the individual production) of identity creation, so too did the governments. The Indian Act served to strip any and all cultural heritage from Aboriginal groups; traditions or artifacts, kinship, in hopes of stripping away one further layer of the Canadian identity.
As Frye states, Canadians desire for works that encapsulate its many faceted identity, but often fail in their delivery. What he proposes is in a way a message that coincides with Canadian media theorist Marshall Mcluhan’s idea that the ‘Medium (itself) is the message’—it is not the end result that matters much, it was the purpose of the literature itself. This comparison between the two celebrated Canadian theorists can be taken further, as Frye’s concept of the social imagination of Canada is a product of the medium of collective literature. For both McCluhan and Frye, the very act of the work being disseminated alters the underlying cultural current that creates a place we have come to know as Canada. As noted by Frye, “Canada’s identity is to be found in some via media or via mediocris”.
Canada’s cultural identity traits are not uniquely derived, they are culminations of the broader contextual existences of North America, France, Great Britain–and its geographic isolation. Furthermore, Canada’s identity itself was self-fulfilled by endless manifest destiny unto the west. The obstacles–whether human (Aboriginal, French) or natural—exist merely as encroaching upon the expected seizure of opportunity. Researchers such as Tina Loo at UBC have also discussed how the Canadian identity of ‘oneness of nature and man’ is lost in the exploitation of both.
Yet, what Frye also proposes is a closed system of literature writing based upon recall of values, subjects, and locations that are known to him/her. Frye refers to nearly all of 19th century Canadian literature as this ‘formula writing’. There is both the literature of conquest and the literature of propaganda both at play with Scott’s work. Either way, system of mythology at play with Scott’s ‘The Forsaken’ seems to offer a one sided perspective from the point of view of a man with an agenda.  While Frye might easily dismiss the writings due to the inadequacy of studying a single myth, or literature in the context of the exposed historical bias, the true bias that was exposed was that of Scott’s

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