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?

King emphasizes the dichotomies of the two creation stories because it is not about what is true or false, but that the way stories are told, are an influence on how society works.  A creation story is a mix of imagination and reality to establish a political system and a way of life. As Tanya Gahr  writes in the Indian Corporate Training Inc blog, creations stories pass down understandings about themselves and their landscape.   I think King likes to emphasize the dichotomy of the stories, because the way they contradict themselves, only one would be “correct”, as King even says in The Truth About Stories, “we are suspicious of complexities, distrustful of contradictions, fearful of enigmas” (King 25),.  Hence, the reason for causing Native genocide by the colonialists.

Now it is clear that King emphasizes the believably of one creation story over another; the believability of the “Earth Story,” because he is trying to show us how the Adam and Eve creation story has created a lot of animosity in human civilization.  The Adam and Eve story would have helped bring a world where something is good or evil, where there is a hierarchy, fortune and punishment, right or wrong. Because of this, it would have paved the way for discrimination against anything outside of the norm.  We see that with the way of the treatment towards Indigenous populations, through the establishment of residential schools to assimilate them into colonial populations, Native camps, and the establishment of laws such as the Indian Act of 1876, that sought control over the Indigenous way of life.  Overall, there were grave consequences for Aboriginal communities, in that there was a loss in knowledge and storytelling, and culture inheritance. The First Stories, and the Indigenous way of life would have been a complexity and outside the norm for Colonialist life, thus in a hierarchy, it would be below them.  Hence the need to control Indigenous populations. 

However, I am aware that King does not want us to attack one creation story over another, but to be aware of the consequences of a story. Stories establish a system and a way of life.  I think he wants us to be more open minded and going beyond what we think as “normal.” I think he wants us to rethink what we have accepted socially, and understand why we think the way we do.  After reading the article, “Why do we have creation myths?” by Julian Baggini from the Guardian, I understand why we feel the need to create creation stories. We are trying to make a causal link between what we are and the world. We try to make sense of it by linking reality and imagination.  It seems to be the way we cope in making sense of the world around us. Unfortunately, sometimes this way of thinking has more good than bad. It can lead to prejudice, and discrimination. Understanding our prejudices and discrimination, can help us be more open minded, because we are aware of the way we think and why we think the way we do.  I think that is what King was trying to show us.  By creating a tidy row of dichotomies between the two creation stories, he is able to emphasize the values being portrayed in both populations.  The “Earth Diver” creation story emphasizes a world of accepting uniqueness, and collaboration.  The Adam and Eve story emphasizes structure, dominance, and hierarchy. 

Works Cited

Baggini, Julian. “Why Do We Have Creation Myths?” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 27 Mar. 2006, www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2006/mar/28/features11.g21.

Gahjr, Tanya. “Creation Stories – The Origins of Culture.” Creation Stories – The Origins of Culture, 7AD, www.ictinc.ca/blog/creation-stories-the-origins-of-culture.

King, Thomas. The Truth about Stories: a Native Narrative. House of Anansi Press Inc., 2010.