Phew, this is a long one. When you start dissecting this book, there is awful lot going on. I opened my book at random and started my analysis where the pages happened to settle, so we begin in the middle of the Changing Woman story on page 194 and continue to page 206.

Jane Flick tells us that the Changing Woman story comes from Navajo tradition where Changing Woman is a deity of “miraculous birth” (qtd. in Flick 152). Changing Woman here meets Ahab and Ishmael aboard the Pequod, the ship and characters famous from Herman Mellville’s Moby Dick. King characterizes Ahab as very bossy, rude and rule-following man while Ishmael seems to get off slightly easier. Perhaps this is because he also appears as one of the four old Indians who are trying to fix the narratives of Native colonization throughout the book. Pequod also cleverly ties to the Pequot Nation who were defeated in the Pequot War of 1637 (Flick 158).

The Europeans ask Changing Woman what her favourite month is, and though we don’t learn the answer, we do find out that one of Coyote’s favourite months is July, which makes sense as this is when Sun Dance is traditionally held.

Then the hunt for the great white whale begins and the hunters bring out their weapons which include, among spears and knives, juicers and blenders. I’m not sure what the deeper meaning here is supposed to be. Perhaps King is trying to keep the reader from getting too comfortable in the idea that Changing Woman is jumping into a story they already know? This is a new story with familiar characters. King could also be using this an aid in his efforts for narrative decolonization. As I discussed in my last blog, moments like this one that make the Europeans look ridiculous, take their power away and give it to the Native characters without any violent exchange.

As the hunters look for the great white whale they chant “Whaleswhaleswhaleswhalesbianswhalesbianswhaleswhales!” (195) Why is it important for us to know that A) the whale is female, and B) the whale is a lesbian? Flick suggests that this is a challenge to the female-less world of Moby Dick (158), but I have to wonder why that’s important to the progress of this novel. Most of the female characters in the novel are much stronger than the male ones. Alberta is dating two guys at once and wants a baby without their help, and Latisha is a single mother of three dealing with the scars from her violent, absentee husband while running a successful business –just to name a few. Perhaps this black lesbian whale is a dig at European literary culture where females are not traditionally prized as highly as males. This stands in stark contrast to Native literary and storytelling culture where many of the central characters are female.

Now we jump over to the Eli Stands Alone narrative, where Eli is reading a Western novel at home. What’s interesting here is that, even though he’s not enjoying the book and can predict how it’s going to end, he chooses to read on, thinking “This one might be different” (199). This again alludes to the contrast between Native and European literary culture, whereby Native stories vary from nation to nation and they can change based on the storyteller and environment, and European stories are rigid and unalterable (until they get in King’s hands that is).

As Eli remembers his trip to Sun Dance with Karen, we learn about his De Soto car that they rented for the journey. King has again chosen a significant brand of car because, as Flick tells us, Hernando De Soto was a Spanish Conquistador who traveled all over America causing trouble (158), just like the difficult rental which splutters and clunks all the way from Calgary to the festival.

An interesting moment was when Eli and Karen were entering the camp, Karen spotted a bird flying and asked “Is that an eagle?” to which Eli replied “No, it’s vulture” (203). The eagle appears a lot in Native art and stories as a majestic being that links the human and spiritual world and it’s interesting that King would populate the site of the Sun Dance with a very Western animal like a vulture instead. My guess would be that he is trying to make the Sun Dance more relatable to the reader: make it appear less like a ceremony that they can’t relate to or connect with if they aren’t native, but something that is inclusive of other backgrounds as well.

On his way out of camp, Eli’s sister Norma reminds him of an old friend Rita Morley (whom we don’t hear any more of but was an actress in the 50’s and 60’s) and gives him some sweetgrass to take (a rope of vanilla scented grass traditionally used in prayer).

Works Cited:

Flick, Jane. “Reading Notes for Thomas King’s “Green Grass Running Water”” Canadian Literature (1999): 140-72. UBC Blogs. Web. 22 July 2016.

King, Thomas. Green Grass, Running Water. Toronto: Harper Perennial Canada, 1999. Print.

4) Identify and discuss two of King’s “acts of narrative decolonization.”Please read the following quote to assist you with your answer.The lives of King’s characters are entangled in and informed by both the colonial legacy in the Americas and the narratives that enact and enable colonial domination. King begins to extricate his characters’ lives from the domination of the invader’s discourses by weaving their stories into both Native American oral traditions and into revisions of some of the most damaging narratives of domination and conquest: European American origin stories and national myths, canonical literary texts, and popular culture texts such as John Wayne films. These revisions are acts of narrative decolonization. James Cox. “All This Water Imagery Must Mean Something.” Canadian Literature 161-162 (1999). Web April 04/2013

There are two very clear examples of narrative decolonization in Green Grass Running Water.

First are the four creation stories that get told by the four old Indians. In each of these stories the Native woman at its centre (First Woman, Changing Woman, Thought Woman and Old Woman) travels through her traditional creation story. However, along the way they each meet a figure from European or American literary tradition who gets in their way and tries to tell them what to do. The First Woman story recalls the Christian creation story in the Garden of Eden, but Ahdamn (Adam) and God are brutish and simple, and God tries to impose silly rules on First Woman that she doesn’t understand. The Changing Woman story is a retelling of the Noah’s Arc story, where Noah is misogynistic and tries to rape Changing Woman while spouting the need to follow Christian rules. The Thought Woman story doesn’t follow a known Christian parable, but it does confuse the Biblical moment of the Angel Gabriel’s visit to Mary with a Canadian border security guard in a very sporadic exchange where he also tries to impregnate her against her will. Finally, in the last story, Old Woman meets Jesus on the high seas where he is bossy and likes to take credit for other people’s achievements, and the violent hunter Nasty Bumppo who crudely and incorrectly explains the differences between Whites and Indians. In his representation of these well-known Euro/American characters as unlikable and unsavory, in contrast with each Native woman being opinionated and strong willed –not to be pushed around— King effectively transfers the power in these relationships from the European to the Native. However, it is important to note that though we see the women as being the stronger characters in these stories, they do not become violent or try to oppress the Europeans in return. This also enhances our understanding of how Natives value high moral integrity.

The second example of narrative decolonization is the episode in Bursam’s tv store on Lionel’s birthday. Lionel, Bursam, Charlie and Eli have all spontaneously gathered at the store, along with the four old Indians that no one can identify, and Coyote, when Bursam suggests they watch a Western movie. As it reaches the ending, a grand battle between cowboys and Indians, the American cavalry suddenly vanish off the screen, leaving American heroes John Wayne and Richard Widmark sorely outnumbered by the Indians. Bursam is baffled and very upset, but the four old Indians take credit for ‘fixing’ the story that had allowed the Natives to be portrayed in subservient and easily dominated light. In this way King, again, removes the power from the Americans in the story and transfers it to the Natives by allowing the Indians to win the battle they normally were massacred in.

Both of these revisions, as Cox points out in the quote above, take stories that exhibit Euro/American domination and rework them, interweaving traditional Native story and character to remove the feeling of colonial power. They also give the reader a better sense of their integrity and quiet power, often far stronger than the loud, bombastic power of a bully.

2] In this lesson I say that it should be clear that the discourse on nationalism is also about ethnicity and ideologies of “race.” If you trace the historical overview of nationalism in Canada in the CanLit guide, you will find many examples of state legislation and policies that excluded and discriminated against certain peoples based on ideas about racial inferiority and capacities to assimilate. – and in turn, state legislation and policies that worked to try to rectify early policies of exclusion and racial discrimination. As the guide points out, the nation is an imagined community, whereas the state is a “governed group of people.” For this blog assignment, I would like you to research and summarize one of the state or governing activities, such as The Royal Proclamation 1763, the Indian Act 1876, Immigration Act 1910, or the Multiculturalism Act 1989 – you choose the legislation or policy or commission you find most interesting. Write a blog about your findings and in your conclusion comment on whether or not your findings support Coleman’s argument about the project of white civility.

From the moment of its very inception “The Indian Act” seems to represent a piece of legislature that could never ‘get it right’. It’s every revision since the initial implementation in 1876 has been met with resistance from Native bands which, in more recent years has largely been as a result of lack of consultation (Henderson n.p.). This, among many other, much more controversial reasons, leads me to think that Canada would have been much better off if those early proclamations which began to bring the ‘Indians’ under colonial control, had never been. But with sadness we must admit that, like King’s retelling of how Evil came into the world, these stories, once told, cannot be taken back.

“The Indian Act” has gone through many many revisions since its inception. Initially each new version added laws or amendments which intensified European dominance over the Aboriginals. It’s principle goal was to assimilate Indians into European life by eliminating their traditional governments and cultural practices, beginning slowly by offering land and the right to vote in exchange for relinquishing their Indian status (enfranchisement). Gradually this escalated to mandatory enfranchisement, creation of residential schools and banning of the potlatch ceremony. After the 1950’s the amendments were to slowly take away these laws, which had so brutally marginalized the Natives (Henderson n.p.). But, as we know, this process has been slow and relatively unsuccessful. Even today The Indian Act reveals some unfair and racist legislature such as, disallowing true ownership of land, even on a reserve without written permission from the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs (20:1), and that the Crown may take control of reserve land without permission if it is for “public use,” and any payment agreed upon for that land is to be given to a government trustee in charge of Indian moneys, not to the actual Band themselves (35:1,4).

Such blatant unfairness is what caused subsequent legislature such Pierre Trudeau’s “White Paper” which attempted to eradicate this “separation of Canadians” (“Canada” 6) of any one particular group. I can only imagine that from Trudeau’s perspective, he was trying to create equal treatment for all Canadians and eliminate government-sanctioned racism. Reading through the document, we can see that they had good intentions: “This Government believes in equality. It believes that all men and women have equal rights. It is determined that all shall be treated fairly and that no one shall be shut out of Canadian life, and especially that no one shall be shut out because of his race” (“Canada” 6). Instead, we learned that Aboriginals do want to be treated differently, but not in the way that they had been getting. They wanted respect for their tradition and culture and room to practice it, and felt that removing “The Indian Act” would also remove any need to acknowledge their differences at all. Harold Cardinal put it so succinctly when he wrote in his book The Unjust Society that “The Indian Act” was “a lever in [their] hands . . . we would rather continue to live in bondage under the Indian Act than surrender our sacred rights” (qtd. in Hanson n.p.).

Coleman’s analysis describes the creation of a Canadian national identity as a ‘project’ and I feel this is the perfect word. ‘Project’ implies a long process with many steps and possibly a ‘go with the flow’ attitude where you don’t really know if the process you’re taking is going to be successful or not. The fact of it’s many revisions and missteps gives “The Indian Act” a very ‘project-y’ feel. Especially in the early years when each move was an intensifying measure, it gives the impression that Europeans were always working step-by-step to a greater end goal. In more recent years, the project of national identity has been more of two party negotiation. European descendants are trying to rectify their mistakes, but by asking the Natives to kindly ‘forget’ what has happened in the past and allow us to move forward, again, as a nation: a unified community under Canada that unfortunately isn’t all that unified yet. Coleman’s commentary is as complicated as the issue at hand, but at it’s heart he makes a good observation that our ‘Canadian’ national identity was truly created  out of a British understanding of civility and perpetuated, essentially, through story, or in this case, unfortunate legislature.

Works Cited:

Canada, Indian and Northern Affairs. Statement of the Government of Canada on Indian Policy. Ottawa: Department of Indian and Northern Affairs, 1969.

Hands Holding the Land. Digital image. Stories From the Road. Bryan Creech, Apr. 2014. Web. 08 July 2016.

Hanson, Erin. “The Indian Act.” Indigenous Foundations. First Nations and Indigenous Studies UBC, 2009. Web. 08 July 2016.

Henderson, William B., and Zach Parrott. “Indian Act.” The Canadian Encyclopedia. Historica Canada, 02 July 2006. Web. 05 July 2016.

“Indian Act .” Justice Laws Website. Government of Canada, 17 June 2016. Web. 08 July 2016.