I found this project to be really interesting. It helped to get used to this 'web-world.' As I have said before, I never had a blog before, and I didn’t really have the skills of searching on the web. This project really helped me to search quickly on the web. I realized that there are infinite amount of sources on the web. I found it hard at first to collect the sources that I had in mind. However, my range of thoughts became wider as I began reading and finding new sources that alluded one to another.

          Also, this project was an exciting and a fun way of learning a bit of Canadian History and Literature. The class I had in mind of an English course,originally, was to just read and write essays. However, with this course, I learned to think more outside of the box, especially on the history of Native People. Also, this project was helpful for me to expand my knowledge on Canadian history by looking at other people’s GGRW hyper-text projects. My classmate’s blogs motivated me to find more interesting allusions.

           Further, the GGRW hyper-text project seemed to be well fitted with the actual book, GGRW. Because Thomas King puts so many allusions in the book and further motivates us to find for ourselves, this hyper-text project seemed to be very reasonable and well suited to this course. Overall, I really enjoyed this project and at the same time learned much about the History of Canada.

       King forces readers to cross many borders in GGRW. In the first instance, borders are crossed between Natives and non-natives. For instance, each book’s section is titled with Cherokee syllabics. This creates a border between Cherokee speaking people and those who do not know the language, including other Native Americans who have a different language. Languages are an enormous barrier when we don’t know a foreign language, and therefore, we cannot understand another culture. Thus, when we don’t know the language, we need to listen, and not put on the coat of ignorance.

       Margery Fee and Jane Flick in their paper, Coyote Pedagogy: Knowing where the Borders Are in Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water, talks about crossing borders and the difficulty of understanding King’s work if you are not knowledgeable in the Native culture, Christian  values, history, and North American literature. It is interesting how they define ‘borders.’ Fee and Flick describe “borders’ to be constructed by “what you know and don’t know. Coyote pedagogy requires training in illegal border-crossing” (131). One example they give is with the word play of Louis, Ray and Al. When you put these names together, you can come up with Metis leader Louis Riel (1844-1855), who sought to preserve Metis rights and culture. Another example is with the character Sally Jo Weyha. She can be alluded to Sacajawea (1784-1812), who was the sole woman and guide on the Lewis and Clark Expedition (1803-1806). She acted as an interpreter in the exploration of Western United States.

      Because there are so many allusions in GGRW, Fee and Flick says that there are at least three distinct basic general knowledge to find these allusions: Canadians, Americans, and Native North Americans.

“Anyone who wants to understand (or teach) the novel has to be prepared to cross the political border between the two countries, the disciplinary borders between English literature, Native Studies, and Anthropology, and the literary border between Canadian and American literature. The most important border is between white ignorance and red knowledge..." (Fee and Flick, 132)

     King emphasizes the importance of crossing borders between “white ignorance and red knowledge,” by telling the Coyote to “pay attention…or we’ll have to do this again” (104), and to “forget being helpful and listen” (229). When we are crossing borders to an unknown, we need to let go of our ignorance and listen just like King says. However, many times, we tend to stay within our limits and do not try to go beyond. It is the same with people. We tend to be with the people we are comfortable with. We become cautious and avoid going further of what we know. Thus, I agree with Fee and Flick that “Borders mark the edge of the expected, the edge of the known” (133).

Further, King shows in an indirect way how whites have not tried to cross the border to know the Native culture with the analogy of Babo in page 236. When Babo goes into the Canadian border post, she finds “a large picture of a woman in a formal with a tiara”(236), which as readers can immediately suppose the picture to be as Queen Elizabeth 2.  However, in GGRW, the queen is described as “a woman.” Fee and Flick states that “This is, by analogy, how whites “see” Native culture: as totally decontexualized” (133).  

There are many other borders that King emphasizes to be important such as crossing the border of Native spirituality (Sun Dance), literary canons, social, political and sexual norms, animal and human, and more. I cannot talk all about them because there are too many. Nevertheless, I find that the theme of ‘crossing border’ is not only important to understand in GGRW, but also in our culture and literature of Canada.

My first impression of this book was confusion. At first, I thought this book was going to be a story on Native America’s creation. However, as I read further, I was confused because other characters started jumping in and out within the story. I began to understand why Professor Erika emphasized this course to find allusions. The book seems to have so many allusions within the story that I cannot understand and find because of my lack of knowledge of Canadian and Native American history. I also found many nonsensical comedies in the book, although I did not understand most of them. It seems as if King is mixing together the way that Westerners and Native Americans tell their stories.

King notes the various unanswered questions in the history of Canada. He brings various historical, religious, and intellectual elements of both the Native Peoples and the Western people in North America. It seems that King himself knows both sides of the culture, yet points out the stories that we as western culture have been neglecting. Thus, he discusses the idea of ‘crossing borders.’ All four Native characters in the book are 400 years old, came from Florida to Canada, where the Blackfoot live in Alberta. It brought me to question whether they really exist, or exist only in some people’s minds. Through King’s ingenious way, he brought me to see that there are still barriers in Canada that we need to understand what we still do not know about the Native people’s history of Canada. There is much ignorance and lack of understanding by the general population of Native people’s lives and history.

Because I do not know much about Canadian history and literature, I was not able to find many allusions to other historical characters or literature. However, growing up in a Christian family and believing in the Christian faith myself, I found many Biblical allusions in Green Grass Running Water. One of the examples of the allusions to the Bible was when Coyote stated “I read the book.” Further, “Young Man Walking on Water”(meaning Jesus Christ), the creation story of Adam and Eve, and the story of Noah and the Flood are also allusions to the Bible. Personally, the jokes were very sensitive to me rather than funny. It was cutting and critical towards the Christian culture and faith.

Another allusion that I was able to find at the ending of the book was when the dam burst at sunrise on “Sun Dance” day, which alludes to an important ritual in Native People’s culture. I learned from last year’s Native Art History class that the Sun Dance is an important ceremony of the Great Plains Indians. This ceremony dance is significant where one ‘relives birth’ by being cleansed through the Sun dance. The break of the dam because of Coyote’s dancing was interesting and satirical because it seemed that King was saying that there needs to be a “cleansing” of what we ‘Canadians’ think as truth. This book was difficult to understand at first, but it is very interesting how King does not pander to the production of explaining the ‘truth.’ Rather, he challenges and even tricks the reader into finding out for meaning of his story for themselves. Through his book, I would like to learn much about the history of Canada and through the many allusions he makes, learn more about the historical figures of Canada’s history, Native People and all Canadians.

               

Backstory: Nuuchaanulth Ceremonial Curtains and the Work of Ki-ke-in, which presented thliitsapilthim by Ki-ke-in. 

Each curtain expressed and represented the families, histories, and cosmology of the Nuuchaanulth. Each had been painted for purposes to tell the “backstory” of its history and spiritual ancestry. One of the main themes was the remembrance of ancestors. They represented much of peoples’ identity in one’s family and acted as a connection between an individual and his/her particular culture and family tradition.

For instance, “Asmanahey Hiikuulthat-h Thliitsapilthim,” one of the thliitsapilthim in the exhibition, depicted six generations of women in Ki-Ke-in’s family. It showed the importance of each generation and its connection within each other. The story, narrated by Ki-Ke-in, was about his great-great grandmother, Asmanahey. From her, five next generations were represented within the background of a mountain range called Aawaachis and the beach at Wa’atnit. Each woman represented all the women in her family of her generation. It helped and guided the present generation to look backwards at their ancestors and find their sense of identity. For instance, as each generation look back at their ancestors, they can realize that they are meant to be deeply rooted to their ancestors and understand their whole family belonging. To cherish and remember their ancestors, this curtain thus had been used at ceremonies. It was first used at the wedding of Jacqueline, Ki-ke-in’s niece, and at the naming potlatch for his two sons.

Although the curtains were not "written literature", through this exhibition of curtains and oral presentation, I learned alot about the culture and history of Nuuchaanulth in Canada. Specifically, Ki-ke-in emphasized that curtains are not art. Rather, I learned that curtains gave them ancestry, privilege, and a family history, in which takes a life time to fully understand and appreciate the history of one’s ancestors. Also, it enlarged a bit of my view of "my Canada," which had such a limited and insufficient amount of knowledge on the traditions  and history of Native Nation in Canada.