Myth: Bridging the Wor(l)ds in Green Grass,
Running Water

In his essay “Discourse in the Novel,” Mikhail Bakhtin describes the process of social formation of an individual: “The ideological becoming of a human being [. . .] is the process of selectively assimilating the words of others” (341). In this statement, Bakhtin points out an important quality of the process of socialization: identities are created through the selective assimilation of available worldviews (“the words of others”) into one’s own system of views. Similarly to discourse and language itself, identity is inherently dialogic and flexible: it transforms continually in response to the changes in social and political surrounding. Thomas King’s novel Green Grass, Running Water recreates the multi-voiced world, constructed of mythic, literary, and modern discourses, and illustrates how the encounter with this multi-voiced world affects the identities of the fictional residents of the Blackfoot reservation. In this paper, I argue that the novel uses myth and mythic characters (four old Indians and Coyote) as a comic lens, which zooms in on the colossal, detrimental effects of stereotyping on Native American (Blackfoot) identities. 

Mythic discourse is a substantial part of Green Grass, Running Water: many chapters take place in mythic space and time. Not only does this novel introduce mythic characters—four old Indians and the trickster Coyote—but it creatively re-tells four Native American creation stories. In addition to these creation stories, the novel portrays selected characters from the Bible (Noah and Christ). In the novel, the Biblical characters are not privileged over the Native American mythic characters. In fact, the opening of the book imitates the style of Genesis, but it tells an alternative story of creation: “So. In the beginning, there was nothing. Just the water. Coyote was there, but Coyote was asleep” (King 1). As King continues on with his story, a monotheistic (similar to Christian) god emerges from Coyote’s dream. It is remarkable that in this demiurgic vision Coyote’s primacy is acknowledged. Contrary to the treatment of the Native American beliefs by the Euroamerican culture as a nuisance and a blasphemy (the documentary In the Light of Reverence highlights white skepticism towards Native American sacred places and rituals), King creates an alternative universe. In this alternative universe, Coyote is the primary creature. By placing Coyote—this humorous, adventurous, and subversive character—at the center of the new fictional world, the novel potentially subverts solemn seriousness of any mythology (Euroamerican or Native). Because Green Grass, Running Water suggests the primacy of laughter, no story within the novel can be taken seriously.

The fact that Coyote is the central mythological character in Green Grass, Running Water is important for the formation of the fictional Blackfoot identities. Carter Revard argues in his article “History, Myth, and Identity among Osages and Other People” that Native identity differs from the Euroamerican identity. While in Euroamerican discourse identity is perceived as something formed during the person’s lifetime and separate from identities of others, the Native American identity extends beyond self: it incorporates mythic, geologic, tribal, sub-tribal, and familial dimensions (127). Thus, the presence of a fictional and mythical character that symbolizes laughter shows that somehow this character is integral to the fictional Blackfoot self. Moreover, this presence suggests that the Native American community is prepared to employ humor as a way of coping with trauma.

Coyote is a carnivalesque character: when he enters the scene, he reverses the dynamics of the events (and often “fixes the world”) either by making a joke or performing a ritual. However, Coyote never provokes any physical violence when he “fixes the world”: his actions are “linguistic violence,” directed at the word (“the words of others”). There are multiple examples of “linguistic violence” in the text. In one instance, Coyote accompanies Old Woman, and they encounter “Young Man Walking On Water” (read “Christ”). Not only Christ is given a stylized Native name, but Coyote makes an utterly serious, but nevertheless hilarious comment about him: “All this floating imagery must mean something” (King 293). The source of laughter is Coyote’s attempt to use the word “imagery” in connection with the Biblical story: the word— which has a strong literary connotation, and is not usually used for the interpretation of the sacred people or texts—emphasizes the potential “literariness” of the Testament. Thus, Coyote treats the Christ narrative as just a story, but not as the ultimate sacred text. This sort of violence towards Native American beliefs and stories was performed many times in the past by the dominant Euroamerican discourse, which extracted the Native American stories from their original tribal context—sacred or educational—and labeled them as “childish.”

Jerold Ramsey emphasizes the importance of mythical discourse for Native American identities, defining myths as

[S]sacred traditional stories whose shaping function is to tell the people who they are; how, through what origins and transformations, they have to possess their particular world; and how they should live in that world, and with each other. (qtd. in Bailey).

By making his Coyote playfully destroy the “normalcy” of the Western discourse, the novel helps to temporarily subvert the hegemony of the Euroamerican beliefs imposed upon Native identities. In Green Grass, Running Water, Coyote helps “fixing the world” by dragging the Native creation stories through the European and Euroamerican tales. Although in his interview with Peter Gzowski King points out that Native cultures have been pushed through the “North American grinder” many times, in his novel King manipulates many well known narratives in order to highlight the cultural and racial stereotypes ingrained within the dominant Euro-American discourse. The juxtaposition of the Native and Euroamerican discourses is important because it brings to the surface the stereotypes that continue to influence the lives of many Blackfoot Indians (Eli, Charlie, Lionel, Alberta, etc.).

By juxtaposing two worlds—the Euroamerican and Blackfoot—and positioning his mythic trickster characters in the middle, Thomas King manages to dissolve the power of the dogmatic Christian discourse. While Coyote was traditionally perceived by many tribes as a trickster, four old Indians play a function similar to Coyote. They trick: they are women when it suits them (in creation stories), but they “become” men in the modern white world, possibly in order to escape misogyny. Moreover, like Coyote they are on the quest of fixing the world. Traditionally, Native American communities utilized trickster as a way of “lightening up” any dogmatic seriousness, giving shape to the irrational and fantastic inherent in humans, and celebrating survival. In his influential article on Native American tricksters “Trickster Discourse: Comic Holotropes and Language Games,” Gerald Vizenor emphasizes this aspect of tricksters. He explains that tribal tricksters are comic holotropes, i.e. they are not cultural anachronisms—reduced to existence solely in the anthropological books—but a mode of language shared (and needed) by the members of the Native American communities. Thus, as a mode of language, tricksters are not merely creatures from the “mythical past,” but they exist outside of time, and they change—in content and appearance—together with the community they belong to. Not surprisingly, Coyote in Green Grass, Running Water is simultaneously ancient and modern: as an oral phenomenon, he is comprised of multiple old and new stories.

In Green Grass, Running Water, Coyote and four old Indians enter the modern world because it is the place where the Blackfoot community needs them. They try to set the world right, but sometimes their attempts are unsuccessful. For example, during their quest, Coyote’s dance leads to the demolition of the dam. However, because the dam is a symbol of the white oppression of the Blackfoot tribe, Coyote’s still manages to “fix” an important fragment of the Native world. On yet another occasion, Coyote helps to “fix” a John Wayne movie through the act of purely imaginary and linguistic violence, which is nevertheless important for the Blackfoot characters Charlie, Eli, and Lionel who finally experience a brief moment of metaphorical justice.

Although Coyote sometimes impedes the workings of the four old Indians who attempt to fix the world, Coyote is instrumental in helping the reader to stretch their imagination and overcome the boundaries created by the dominant discourse. By showing that the boundaries can be broken, the trickster becomes the key participant of the novel who symbolizes the resistance of the Native American people. Coyote destroys the pretensions that separate people: borders, race, religion, sexuality, etc. By creating his own trickster discourse—discourse that bridges the Native American and Euroamerican discourses—King subverts all hierarchies. Not only Coyote pokes fun at the major white stories and histories, the novel subverts the expectations of the reader by employing a non-linear style of narration. The novel is narrated in a non-traditional way, and multiple stories are intertwined (with a high degree of intertextuality). The novel creatively mixes mythic time and present, myth and history, thus encouraging the reader not to take any truth or reality for granted.

Although Coyote in Green Grass, Running Water differs from what one might consider an “authentic” Coyote, it is not surprising that King deconstructs the notion of authenticity. In the context of the experimental form of the novel, pretense at authenticity poses a danger of succumbing to dogma. While some critics might argue that this “modern” Coyote is a sign of cultural decay, I believe it is not. In order to subvert—to “coyote”— the modern discourse and its stereotypes, there is a need in this novel of a character who feels at home in both worlds—the Native American oral cosmology and the Euro-American text-based discourse. Coyote mixes ideas from both worlds creatively (orality and literacy, myth and history, sacred and profane)—ideas which are usually separated by the artificially created cultural borders and expectations.

Possibly due to orality inherent in Coyote, King’s Coyote is not the only “modernized” Coyote on the modern art scene. In his book Indi’n Humor, Kenneth Lincoln discusses the portrayal of Coyote in the paintings of Harry Fonesca. Fonesca, an artist of Maidu, Portugese, and Hawaiian descent, has produced a popular series of Coyote paintings. His paintings unfold a whole new vision of modern Indian life and Coyote. His Coyote invades a conventional, often urban setting, thus making this setting absurd by his mere presence there. For example, in one of Fonesca’s paintings—“Snapshot of Wish You Were Here, Coyote”—Coyote is portrayed as a tourist. He wears a Hawaiian shirt and has a camera in his paws. Behind him are Southwestern adobe houses. The inscription above Coyote’s head reads: “Wish you were here, Coyote.” Fonesca introduces Coyote into the urban setting, thus carnivalizing the contemporary culture and reminding his audience about the injustices of the past (for example, in this painting Fonesca reminds the audience about the government policy that “transplanted” many Native Americans into the cities).

Harry Fonesca’s Coyote is reminiscent of Coyote in Green Grass, Running Water. Both Coyotes inhabit mythic and real worlds, past and present; they both possess knowledge about Euroamerican history and literature, and often utilize this knowledge for their own purposes. For example, in Fonesca’s Pas de Deus # 1, Coyote and his girlfriend Rose (a Coyote too), dance the pas de deux from Swan Lake. Rose is dressed as a ballet dancer, while Coyote wears a leather jacket and high-top tennis shoes on. Lincoln calls Fonesca’s art a “survivalist vision charged with Indi’n humor” (151). As Fonesca himself points out, he makes his Coyote do things that he wouldn’t have him do if “[his own] face were up there” (qtd. in Lincoln 148). In connection with Harry Fonesca’s Coyote, Kenneth Lincoln argues,

Coyote mediates the “old ways” and new fads. He improvises the next step in the embattled dance of native life; he acculturates Indian resistance to and the necessity of accommodating with a Euroamerican “invasion” over tribal soils, social ways, cultural mores, and fragile ecosystems. He banquets on caviar or trash, salmon or tripe. [. . .] Coyote is a bisociative comic figure, a conjunctive pluralist. (148)

Lincoln’s comment about Coyote’s cultural pluralism would apply to King’s Coyote. By knowing the symbols associated with white culture, King’s Coyote is able to manipulate this culture, thus re-inventing himself as a modern day trickster (and offering this option of “reinvention” to other members of the Native American community). At the same time, Coyote continues the ancient tradition of storytelling: in fact, Coyote is an active participant in a carnivalesque re-telling of the Euroamerican stories (for example, the stories of Noah and Ahab). This re-telling of the white stories is a type of survival: by laughing at the major Euroamerican stories, by cleaning up the discourse from the pervasive stereotypes, Coyote helps free up the symbolic space for the Blackfoot stories—old and modern.

While the hegemony of the major Euroamerican texts of the past (the Bible and some fictional works) is subverted easily by laughter, the “modern mythologies”—movies, novels, and stereotypes that derive from them— are more pervasive and damaging for the residents of the Blackfoot community. Many Blackfoot residents deal with identity problems that result from living in a society with virtually no positive representation of the Native American people in public discourse (other than the humiliating and debilitating images from the movies). For example, Charlie—the Blackfoot tribe member and a lawyer—is afraid to embrace his Native identity. He is alienated from his father because as a child he had to witness his father’s humiliation. Charlie’s father, Portland, lost his acting job to an Italian actor whose nose looked more “Indian.” Shortly after this accident, Portland left California; when he finally returned there after the death of his wife, he was unable to find a decent acting job. Portland ended up acting as an “Indian” in a distasteful strip bar show. In his mind, Charlie—now an adult—continues to re-play the pictures from his young years: his dad dancing with Pocahontas, whom he strips with his tomahawk; his dad, defeated by a cheerful cowboy, who abducts the naked Pocahontas. This portrayal illuminates how stereotyping endows Charlie and the whole Blackfoot community with a warped vision of an Indian identity. These stereotypes dehumanize Native American people in the eyes of the whites, but more important, they deprive the Native American people of a more objective and sophisticated view of themselves. 

A lot of evidence in Green Grass, Running Water (often humorous) illustrates the pervasiveness of stereotypes. For example, in one conversation, Clifford Sifton (a white dam builder) says to Eli Stands Alone: “Besides, you guys aren’t real Indians anyway. I mean, you drive cars, watch television, go to hockey games. Look at you. You are a university professor” (King 119). This comment illustrates attitudes of average U.S. or Canadian citizens who believe in a myth about assimilation of the Native Americans. Belonging to the white majority, Sifton clearly misunderstands the concept of ethnicity. Eli responds to Sifton: “That’s [being a professor] my profession. Being Indian isn’t a profession” (155). In yet another instance, Eli reads a western, full of fictional clichés (a noble savage who falls in love with a beautiful white woman, but the relationship is, of course, doomed):

Eli opened the book and closed his eyes. He didn’t have to read the pages to know what was going to happen. Iron Eyes and Anabelle would fall madly in love. There would be a conflict of some sort between the whites and the Indians. And Iron Eyes would be forced to choose between Annabelle and his people. In the end, he would choose his people, because it was the noble thing to do and because Western writers seldom let Indians sleep with whites. Iron Eyes would send Annabelle back to the front and then go to fight the soldiers. (King 166) 

This passage describes Eli imagining the content of the book, and later when he reads the book his expectations are confirmed.

The poem “How to Write the Great American Indian Novel” by Sherman Alexie evokes similar romantic expectations of the white audience: an interracial relationship, beautiful white women, and Indian men from “horse cultures.” Although not blatantly racist, these images nevertheless are harmful. At the end of his poem, Alexie says, “In the Great American Indian novel, when it finally written, all of the white people will be Indians and all Indians will be ghosts” (Alexie 427). This line implies that these stereotypical expectations essentially deny Native American identity if it is not connected to Euroamerican culture.

Intertwined with Eli’s reading of the novel, the reader sees glimpses of Eli’s life with his wife Karen. The life of these people (Karen is white) is quite different from an affair described in the book Eli reads: in fact, Eli and Karen seem to be a happy couple; however, Eli feels anxious about introducing Karen to his family. Although King does not state it explicitly, Eli’s general anxiety is based on the fact that he measures his life up to an odd mental archetype, which dictates what should happen to a hypothetical Indian in a specific situation:

It was a common enough theme in novels and movies. Indian leaves the traditional world of the reserve, goes to the city, and is destroyed. Indian leaves the traditional world of the reserve, is exposed to white culture, and becomes trapped between two worlds. Indian leaves the traditional world of the reserve, gets an education, and is shunned by his tribe. (King 239)

This passage shows that Eli lives in an imaginary world: his identity is warped by the multiple stereotypes popular culture bombards him with. Eli’s circumstances are different from his “imaginary Indian” who leaves the reserve: his family does not shun him. In fact, they welcome Eli and his wife, but the imaginary identity—stereotype—seems to be stronger than his own life.

Maybe because imaginary identities are so pervasive, the novel establishes justice by violating cultural artifacts—books and movies—that perpetuate stereotyping. When four old Indians and Coyote—the mythic characters—enter the modern Blackfoot reservation, they fix the world by fixing the ending of an old western with John Wayne and Richard Widmark.

The scene where Coyote and four old Indians fix the movie is highly carnivalesque. When the mythic company enters the store of Bill Bursum (the white owner of the television store), three men from the Blackfoot tribe are there: Eli, Charlie, and Lionel. Coyote inquires of everyone whether the movie with John Wayne has any Coyotes in it. One of the old Indians, Robinson Crusoe, responds that most likely not, but they should wait and see for themselves. In another comment to the movie, Coyote acknowledges that he does not shoot Indians, and therefore he would make a wonderful president (King 264). Although Coyote’s comments seem irrelevant and bizarre, he intuitively responds to the ideas implied in the movie: the movie mirrors the official power relations between two worlds, where Indians are always victimized, both politically and culturally. When they are not killed, imaginary violence against them continues on a TV screen and in movie theatres. When four Indians and Coyote fix the movie, and John Wayne and Richard Widmark are defeated by the Indians (led by Portland, Charlie’s father), they—through an act of imagination—reshape the past and the imaginary identity created for the Native American community by the dominant discourse.   

Stereotyping is clearly a linguistic phenomenon, an ideological cocoon, a label which reduces the diversity of human experience to easily manageable binaries (for example, superior, more developed cultures vs. inferior, less developed cultures). In order to discredit these stereotypes, King subverts the mainstream discourse itself, by comically manipulating the famous Western narratives (for example, the story of Noah and Melville’s Moby Dick). Similar themes—stereotype as an ideological cocoon, mental border—can be found in King’s short story “A Seat in the Garden.” In this story, Joe Hovaugh (reminiscent of the word “Jehovah”) is haunted by the apparition of the big Indian. The ghost appears in his garden. Joe and his friend Red both see the Indian, but at first fail to comprehend that the big Indian is only an apparition. In hope to get rid of a big Indian, Joe turns for help to the Native American old men who come to his garden every day. King emphasizes an interesting detail: Joe labels the Indians as “winos,” although the old men don’t drink alcohol. In fact, the Indians come to Joe’s garden to pick up trash and empty beer bottles Joe throws into the bushes. Despite this fact, Joe continues to insist that the Indians drink Lysol. King masterfully portrays Joe, a closed-minded paranoiac, whose preconceived notions about the world (blurred by alcohol), prevent him from thinking clearly. Pretending that they can communicate with the big Indian (who is nothing less than Joe’s and Red’s own paranoid consciousness), four old Indians make Joe build a bench in his garden. One of the implications of this story is the debilitating power of stereotypes: stereotypes create artificial boundaries, thus inhibiting learning.

The presence of mythic characters in the fiction of Thomas King subverts two things: seriousness that is instrumental in the creation of dogma, and the myth of the vanishing Native American. The novel is a statement against this myth: in fact, Native American culture not only has preserved its authenticity, but has managed to incorporate Euroamerican artifacts within its system (however, without undergoing cultural absorption). Coyote’s (and other mythic characters’) use of Western symbols is not an instance of colonization, but evidence that intercultutral exchange can occur without eliminating Native American cultures and identities. In his article “Decolonizing Criticism: Reading Dialectics and Dialogics in Native American Literatures,” Moore tells a story of a Native American woman who chooses to give her newborn son a Christian name Bastian. Moore argues that this story shouldn’t be interpreted in terms of colonization and cultural absorption; in his opinion, this story is rather an example of intercultural exchange. Moore believes that people may exchange cultural goods without allowing other discourses to colonize their identities. Applying this mode of interpretation to Green Grass, Running Water, Coyote’s knowledge of the Euroamerican stories is a pre-condition for cultural survival. Only by possessing good knowledge of others (“the words of others”) can individuals separate themselves from them. “Being fluent” in both languages and worlds, Coyote perfects the art of survival in a society with “colonizing tendencies.”  In fact, Coyote’s power is in his knowledge of the Euroamerican conventions, which helps him to avoid cultural absorption. In addition to this slyness in avoiding cultural absorption, in the world according to Coyote, Native American cultures continue their unique traditions of mythmaking and storytelling. These traditions, in turn, help in maintaining the integrity of the Blackfoot community; despite the cultural traumas, Blackfoot Indians in King’s novel use mutual support, traditions, and rituals as a source of cultural knowledge. For example, they participate in the Sun Dance festival, a festivity during which the Blackfoot community becomes one big family.

Summing up, myth and tricksters in the modern Native life of Green Grass, Running Water revive meaning and livelihood of Native American identity. They assure the health of this identity, which is otherwise limited by inflexible stereotypes. For example, myth and storytelling have a healing effect on Eli and Charlie: they expose these characters to alternative ethnic experiences and alternative views of the universe. Therefore, I agree with Gerald Vizenor who argues that Native American tricksters do not fit within the anthropological models because anthropology deals with the past and dead matter, while tricksters are linguistically alive.^[1]  I would argue that this novel’s modernized Coyote (and other mythic characters) are essential for the cultural survival of the Blackfoot community because only imagination can bridge the Native and Euroamerican communities—separated by an imaginary, ingrained within language ideological chasm.

Works Cited

Andre Andrews, Jennifer. “Reading Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water: Border-Crossing Humor.”  English Studies in Canada 28.1: 91-116.

   Alexie, Sherman. “How to Write the Great American Indian Novel.” Nothing but theTruth:  An Anthology of Native American Literature. Eds. John L. Purdy and James Ruppert.  Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall Inc, 2001. 425-27.

   Bakhtin, Mikhail. The Dialogic Imagination. Ed. Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002.

   King, Thomas. Green Grass, Running Water. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1993.

   King, Thomas. “Peter Gzowski Interviews: Thomas King on Green Grass, Running Water.”  Canadian Literature 161/162 (1999). 65-76.

   King, Thomas. Interview with Constance Rooke. “Interview with Tom King.” World Literature Written in English 30.2 (1990). 62-76.

   Lincoln, Kenneth. Indi’n Humor: Bicultural Play in Native America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. 120-170.

   Moore, David L. “Decolonizing Criticism: Reading Dialectics and Dialogics in Native American Literatures.” Nothing but the Truth: An Anthology of Native American Literature. Eds. John L.
Purdy and James Ruppert. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall Inc, 2001. 94-119.

   Revard, Carter. “History, Myth, and Identity Among Osages and Other Peoples.” Nothing but the Truth: An Anthology of Native American Literature. Eds. John L. Purdy and James Ruppert.  Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall Inc, 2001. 126-40.

   Vizenor, Gerald. “Trickster Discourse: Comic Holotropes and
LanguageGames.” Narative Chance: Postmodern Discourse on Native American Indian Literatures. Ed. Gerald Vizenor, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1989. 187-212.