- First stories tell us how the world was created. In The Truth about Stories, King tells us two creation stories; one about how Charm falls from the sky pregnant with twins and creates the world out of a bit of mud with the help of all the water animals, and another about God creating heaven and earth with his words, and then Adam and Eve and the Garden. King provides us with a neat analysis of how each story reflects a distinct worldview. “The Earth Diver” story reflects a world created through collaboration, the “Genesis” story reflects a world created through a single will and an imposed hierarchical order of things: God, man, animals, plants. The differences all seem to come down to co-operation or competition — a nice clean-cut satisfying dichotomy. However, a choice must be made: you can only believe ONE of the stories is the true story of creation – right? That’s the thing about creation stories; only one can be sacred and the others are just stories. Strangely, this analysis reflects the kind of binary thinking that Chamberlin, and so many others, including King himself, would caution us to stop and examine. So, why does King create dichotomies for us to examine these two creation stories? Why does he emphasize the believability of one story over the other — as he says, he purposefully tells us the “Genesis” story with an authoritative voice, and “The Earth Diver” story with a storyteller’s voice. Why does King give us this analysis that depends on pairing up oppositions into a tidy row of dichotomies? What is he trying to show us?
To start this post off, I would like to state that I believe King has created this particular dichotomy in order to force us to challenge our beliefs. Not only our beliefs of creation, but our beliefs of how we analyze information. As the question points out above, it does seem strange that King would create this dichotomy for us to examine, when he himself asks us to question dichotomies. It is exactly for this purpose that he does this. He is providing us with a direct example of why we need to question and examine dichotomies. Doing this is easier said than done though. One of the longest standing areas of debate in my field of interest, Psychology, is that of the Mind/Brain Dichotomy. Humans have thoughts and feelings (a soul), but these are all created by bits of goop in our head (neurons). Is the mind part of the body? Or is the body part of the mind? Which one is in control? Humans want easy and definable answers to their questions, that they can put into neat little boxes. But not many people have approached this concept from the point of view of…both are true. The mind is the body, and the body is the mind. This is what King is asking us to do with these two creation stories as well. He is challenging us to view both of these stories as true, and is asking us why can’t these coexist?
King presents these stories differently to draw our attention to the way the narrative in our culture is most often portrayed. As mentioned, he presents the “Earth Diver” story like a storyteller, and the “Genesis” story authoritatively. He does this to mirror our society. Christianity and God have been the driving forces behind a lot of actions in Western culture for several hundred years. King himself points out that the Genesis story has led us to being arrogant, as “God’s Chosen People” (King 28). This belief was in part what led to the Crusades. This idea of Christians justly conquering because “Christ commands it.” This entitlement is pervasive and is what leads us to brush aside alternative stories. Christ commands it, so it must be true, and anything else is in conflict with this absolute. If you do take the moment to step back and read these two stories at face value though, it becomes much easier to accept both. Living in a world of absolutes like that, feels ridiculous when you stop to think about it.
King also points out that there are many dichotomies we readily use in our daily life. “Rich/poor, white/black, strong/weak, right/wrong, culture/nature, male/female, written/oral, civilized/barbaric, success/failure, individual/communal” (25). He is trying to show us that in more ways than just the creation story, do we view things as binary. Just like we need to pause and step back when thinking about creation, so do we about almost every aspect of our lives. He’s asking us to challenge what is accepted, and try and find different viewpoints and analyze stories in a different way. He’s doing this because if we don’t change the way we think, and try and incorporate new ideas and ways of thinking, we’re never going to produce any change in how we view and treat First Nations people. We’ve arrived where we are with this arrogance, but he asks us “what kind of world might we have created” if we had arrived starting from a different story. Would we still have this arrogance or would we be more accepting and open?
This is why he presents these origin stories to us as a dichotomy, and this is what he’s trying to show us.
Works Cited
King, Thomas. The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative. Peterbough:Anansi Press. 2003. Print.
McLeod, Saul. “The Mind/Brain or Mind/Body Dichotomy in Psychology.” The Reasoned Society, 2007, thoughtdigest.wordpress.com/tag/mindbrain-dichotomy/.
“The Crusades.” Rational Christianity – Christian Apologetics, www.rationalchristianity.net/crusades.html.
Hi Ross –
Totally agree that King creates this dichotomy in an attempt to challenge tightly held Western beliefs. And I think he does so well, helping readers think about how the level of importance placed on a story effects their likelihood to believe it or, at least, to hold it dearly.
My only comment – and I offer this with kindness – is that in one of your last lines you refer to “our First Nations people.” What you mean is probably the First Nations or Indigenous people within Canada, but I’d caution you to not refer to Indigenous people as “ours”- it can come off as patriarchal and, when contextualized in broader histories of colonialism and settler-colonialism, which have attempted to exert power over Indigenous nations and land, it is easily problematized. Indigenous nations or people do not belong to Canada.
Warmly,
Georgia
Hi Georgia,
Thank you very much for your comment. I do not take offense at all, and I appreciate the kindness. I apologize for my phrasing, I believe my intent was to describe that which I think we can affect. By using the word “our” I was referring to those First Nations with whom we interact with here in Canada. Those that our actions and words directly impact. Now that you’ve pointed this out though, and I am now trying to describe what my initial intent was, I am realizing more and more the problematic viewpoint I have. My viewpoint is one of colonized Canada. Where borders exist, and I was thinking of only trying to impact those within these borders. But borders are constructs built by colonialists and may not apply to the First Nations people. And by carrying that viewpoint, I am propagating the “them and us” mentality. I was trying to focus those we can help, but I was excluding many people by doing that. That’s not ok. Thank you for your insight, as it is greatly appreciated. I was honestly hoping that this would happen eventually in this course. Part of the reason I took it was in the hope that my thought processes would be challenged, as there is probably a lot I do that can be harmful without even being aware. So thank you again!
Hi Ross,
Thanks for the blog, I agree that King purposely set out to portray the power that the message of Christianity has had on Western society. When we view “Genesis” as a sacred story, that means we are likely to see “The Earth Diver” as secular. Our mind looks at the way things are framed and psychologically look for those easy dichotomies. With “Genesis” showing good/bad rather than cooperation in Charm’s story, I think people are more likely to be conditioned to follow the story that shows consequence if you do something bad versus Charm’s story which is a more utopian and idealistic view.
Cheers,
Kynan
Thank you for a great answer to my question – I love the way King ‘plays’ with us in order to ‘show us’ — by contrasting the two stories in this way, King is showing us not only two different ways to view the world: hierarchical and authoritative /co-operative and equalitarian, but also asking us to first acknowledge that both stories are equally important and valid to the people who tell/listen to them and then to recognize that it is possible for two different stories about the same event (the creation of earth) to be true; different stories can co-exist in truth, in reality and as truth. One does not have to be sacred and the other secular; it depends on who is telling/listening to the story. If you believe that the world should be co-operative and animals and humans are equally important, you now have a story to fit your belief: like King says, “don’t say you never heard this story.
Hi Ross,
I found your answer very interesting and your comparison of mind and body a very unique perspective. I also really like the way that you acknowledge the way King is using binaries.
I specifically liked and agreed with your point: “He’s doing this because if we don’t change the way we think, and try and incorporate new ideas and ways of thinking, we’re never going to produce any change in how we view and treat First Nations people”, and would wondering if you believe that this point can be expanded past Indigenous people to include other races, or people of different socio-economical background, or people of different sexualities.
Great post!
Sandra