The various allusions King weaves together throughout pages 126 – 136 create themes around power and control, and Indian stereotypes. For beyond the cheery and humorous storytelling is a dark and unsettling story of dominance, sexism, and racism.

The first of the two chapters takes place in Bill Bursom’s Home Entertainment Barn with the focus being on what Bill calls The Map. The tone of disrespect and domination is set immediately in the chapter when Bill doesn’t know how to address his employee properly, and responds with her correction with “Whatever.” He also assumes moral and intellectual superiority over her when his dismisses her as not being able to understand the “unifying metaphor” and the “cultural impact” of The Map.

Bill himself represents an oppressive force to Natives. His name is a combination of the names of two men known for their hostility towards Indians (22). Holm O. Bursum advocated for New Mexico’s mining resources at the expense of the Pueblos. There is a parallel between Bill creating The Map, and Holm having “his eye on the map of New Mexico…which aimed to divest Pueblos of a large portion of their lands and to give land title and water rights to non-Indians” (22). The “Buffalo Bill” part of his name alludes to William R. Cody who was known for exploiting Natives in his plays. Thus, Bill Bursom has links to individuals who oppressed and dominated Natives, with the latter also contributing to creating Indian stereotypes.

Bill oppresses Natives by selling televisions. Throughout the novel, television and t.v. watching is used like alcohol to Native people. It draws them into a false reality that they use to escape from the hardships they face. Lionel, Amos, and many other Natives in the novel resort to television when life becomes unbearable. It produces tropes of stereotyped Natives being dominated by whites. And behind the scenes of these movies and shows is a world that exploits and humiliates Natives like Portland. Finally, television is a defining thread in the capitalistic, materialistic, Western web that is antagonistic to the Native way of life.

Bill sees himself as a Machiavellian prince. He will unapologetically exploit Natives because they are a potential threat to stable Western culture and government. Like a Machiavellian prince he cruelly oppresses those who might threaten stability, and his tool of oppression is televisions. This is the “unifying metaphor” of The Map that Lionel and Ms. Smith don’t understand (128). The Map represents a North America that maintains power and control over internal dissent by television. Thus, for Bill, the “cultural impact” (128) of television is its use as a tool of oppression.

The next chapter continues expanding on the theme of power and control by narrowing its exchange between Native women and white men, and expands more on the issue of Native stereotypes.

Jeanette, Nelson, Rosemarie De Flor, Bruce are all active in the stereotyping of Canadian Indians (25). Although Jeanette is kind to Latisha, Nelson’s blatant sexual harassment sullies the exchange. He views her as an object and, like George Morningstar, knows she is a “real Indian” (130, 133). Both men dominate Latisha and see her for her Indianness rather than her individuality.

Like Bill, George represents a figure known to be hostile towards Natives, namely George Armstrong Custer (20, 33), who is known as a famous Indian fighter. His glib, spiritually empty character prevents him from seeing past generalizations and stereotypes. Although he appears intelligent and attentive, he really lacks understanding and can’t see anything more than an Indian stereotype.

5. Narratives assume, in Blanca Chester’s words, “a common matrix of cultural knowledge.” The Four Old Indians are perhaps the best examples of characters that belong to a matrix of cultural knowledge, which excludes many non-First Nations. What were your first questions about and impressions of these characters? How have you come to understand their place in the novel?

At first I was confused by the Old Indians. I wondered how they can both be telling a Creation story while also standing beside a highway and talking about being hungry. There seemed to be two separate narratives that were fragmented and interrupted by other stories. I wondered if the Old Indians where the same as the characters telling the story at the beginning of the novel. These two narratives also gave me the impression that they existed within two different realms. The first storytelling one left me with the impression that they were talking within a spiritual realm, or perhaps in a dream. The second set of narratives seemed to work within the real world also inhabited by Lionel, Charlie, Eli, and Alberta. These two realms seem to operate in parallel with one another.

As I read the novel, I began to see the Old Indians as a fusing of Native and non-Native worldviews. It struck me as peculiar that they had anti-Native names – that is, names associated with popular culture figures that represented Western elements that undermined and crippled the Native way of life. Yet the Old Indians were, at least to my mind, depicted as Natives in how they spoke and were treated by the other characters in the novel.

Their quest to fix the world led me to see them as bridging between myth and reality, and imagination and truth. My cynical side was snickering along with Lionel, expecting the Old Indians to prove ineffectual and fail to fix the world. They seemed naive and even delusional. After all, what chance do they have against a reality that has crushed and destroyed Natives for so long? My optimistic side, on the other hand, expected they would play a role in resolving at least one of the conflicts faced by the character inhabiting the real world. Wouldn’t it be great if the Old Indians really did now some power over the gears of reality? Maybe they have a monkey wrench up their sleeve after all.

Reading Blanca Chester’s ‘Green Grass, Running Water: Theorizing the World of the Novel’ deepened my view that the Old Natives serve as a fission between two worlds. She argues convincingly that King has created a syncretic narrative to show the power that stories have to impact the real world. She unpacks the “there is no truth only stories” idea that the narrator says to Coyote in Green Grass, by claiming that stories have the power to create multiple realities. By fusing together seemingly incommensurable elements, King has created a world that is very different from any of its aggregate elements. He has created a world qua emergent property from its constituent parts.

Chester interpreted King as making weak metaphysical claims about the interconnectedness between language and reality. Our experiences of reality provide the raw materials for our stories. Conversely, the stories we tell shape and mold the realities from which we experience. In this sense, we construct our own reality. However, I wouldn’t go so far as interpreting this as being a uniquely Native way of knowing since this is perfectly compatible with Western scientific ways of understand the interplay between language and experience.

In contrast, a strong metaphysical claim is to take the power the Old Indian have on constructing reality as literal and attributing this as essential to a Native way of knowing. In the story, the Old Native provided a bridge between storytelling and imagination, and real actual event and states of affairs. In the storytelling realm they tell and retell Creation stories, and in the realm or reality, they talk about fixing the world. This implies that their power to fix the world comes from telling stories which become true in the real world. For example, they tell of a new ending to the Western movie with John Wayne killing all the Indians which causes that new ending to happen.

I’m not sure how to interpret this story-reality fusion and what stance a Native way of knowing takes on this. How do take this claim by Armstrong that Chester uses:

“In the Okanagan language, perception of the way reality occurs is very different from that solicited by the English language. Reality is very much like a story: it is easily changeable and transformative with each speaker” (57).

In what sense is reality changeable and transformative?

Similarly, in what sense does a Native view understand language as retaining “the power to influence and construct multiple realities” (58)?

Works Cited

Chester Blanca. “Green Grass Running Water: Theorizing the World of the Novel.” Canadian Literature 161-162. (1999). Web. April 04/2013.

King, T. (2007). Green grass, running water. Toronto: HarperPerennial Canada.

1] The Quebec Act of 1774, and the BNA act of 1867 each document the historical ability of Britain, as colonial authority, to accommodate two founding nations in the interest of confederation. Shortly after confederation of the eastern provinces, in 1869, the Metis Nation of Manitoba created a provisional government and attempted to negotiate directly with the new government of the confederationto establish their territories as a province under their leadership. In the end, their leader, Louis Riel was charged with treason – as the CanLit guide puts it, “Canada at the time was not willing to accommodate more than two founding nations.”For this blog assignment, I would like you to outline the reasons why colonial authorities could not conceive of accepting the Metis as a third founding nation. Use the CanLit guide and the summary of Coleman’s argument on the literary project of white civility to substantiate your observations. You might also find part of your answer in The Bush Garden. You should also take into consideration past discussions on ‘the civilizing mission’ of colonialism in Unit 2. Louis Riel also appears in Green Grass Running Water, and accordingly it is worthwhile to do a little outside research around Riel’s provisional government and its attempts to negiciate with the new Canadian government.

In 1869, Louis Riel spearheaded the Metis National Committee which was consolidated as a provisional government for the Metis Peoples. Essentially, the committee represented the Metis rejection of British-Canada’s authority to govern them and aimed to negotiate a settlement between the new Canadian government and the Metis people thereby granting them independence from colonial Canada. However, the Canadian government rejected the Metis demands as being recognized as an independent nation and began to use military force to pressure them into disbanding the committee. This strife with the Metis came at a time when there was both pressure from the American south, and from French Canadians who also wanted their own independence. Thus, it was a risky venture for the Canadian government to fall into conflict with the French sympathized Metis. Their reasons for rejecting the Metis claim of national independence must have been strong. So what were they?

In White Civility: The Literary Project of English Canada, Coleman argues that the Canadian identity was being modelled after an ideal of British whiteness.

“[W]hat has come to be known as English Canada is and has been…the formulation and claboration [sic] of a specific form of whiteness based on a British model of civility…whiteness has been naturalized as the norm for English Canadian cultural identity” (5).

The Metis peoples were seen as an alternative to this ideal. This, like other alternatives such as French and Eastern European worldviews, was considered a threat to white Britishness and had to be neutralized, or eliminated, if Canada was to continue to progress as an independent nation.

Coleman lays out what I will call the moral superiority argument.

“Because Britishness for the English Canadians represented the most advanced form of political and social life in the world, it was therefore assumed as the civil norm to which non-British Canadians should assimilate” (19).

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Europeans where “classifying and stratifying humans into a hierarchy of racial types” (13) with the Indigenous peoples being viewed as “uncivilized human beings whose cultures were decidedly inferior to British culture” (12). Moreover, like uncivilized children, the Indigenous could not be bargained with, but rather, placated, manipulated, or forced into complying with their superior British-Canadian rulers.

The Metis where viewed as inferior and treated as such by the Canadian leaders. Riel’s attempts to earn Metis national independence through political, or “civilized”, means was either rebuffed, or, as in 1870 when the Canadian government sent a lynch mob to kill Riel after compromising with him to grant the Metis unique rights and freedoms.

A second thread to Coleman’s discussion is the necessary evil argument. English Canadians believed that there was a single path to civilizations and that through social Darwinian forces – i.e. that “better” societies devour worse ones – the alternative less evolved Indigenous and Metis societies were destined to be swallowed up by British-Canada. The Metis where viewed as being part of a “vanishing race” that was “doomed under the unstoppable wheels of progress” (29). By granting the Metis national independence, the Canadian government would be supporting a lost cause, an impending failure, while hindering its own progress.

“Civilized whites, therefore, must cherish evil memories of the necessary losses that have been incurred so that an enterprising, cultivated society could come into full flower” (30).

Do these myths still play in the Canadian subconscious? Is there an implicit assumption of moral superiority over Indigenous and Metis people, and do Canadians placate themselves with stories of necessity to justify the moral evils that occurred when creating this nation called Canada? Is forgetting and denial the only way we can call Canada home? Perhaps Ernest Renan was right in 1882:

“Forgetting, I would even go so far as to say historical error, is a crucial factor in the creation of a nation, which is why progress in historical studies often constitutes a danger for nationality. Indeed, historical enquiry brings to light deeds of violence which took place at the origin of all political formations, even of those whose consequences have been altogether beneficial. Unity is always effected by means of brutality” (8).

Works Cited

CBCnews, CBC/Radio Canada, www.cbc.ca/history/SECTIONSE1EP10CH4LE.html.

Coleman. White Civility: The Literary Project of English Canada. University of Toronto Press, 2006.

“Louis Riel.” The Canadian Encyclopedia, www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/louis-riel.