'And that one takes a big bite of one of those nice red apples': Portraits of Native Women in Thomas King's Green Grass. Running Water and Medicine River

Abstract

Given the multiplicity of voices and perspectives (female and male, Native and non-Native) existing in Canada, the question now is how we might collectively learn to reconcile our differences. In western culture, both gender and culture are thought to be fixed, predetermined and separate. But when viewed from a Native perspective, gender and culture are actually aspectival, rather than essential. The women in Thomas King's novels Green Grass, Running Water and Medicine River shed light on a Native world view which resists white western patriarchal assumptions about culture and gender and suggests entirely different roles for women and a new paradigm for human relationships.

In Chapter One, I explore how and why the essentialized image of the "Imaginary Indian" arose and persists in white western culture and the consequences this stereotype has for Native peoples, and Native women in particular. In Chapter Two, I examine the ways both the Native and non-Native women in GGRW and MR are marginalized by the white western culture's essential views about race and gender. The women in King's novels prove their capacity to resist racism and sexism and survive by showing their communities how to look at the world from multiple perspectives.

Chapter Three looks at the strategies Native women use not only to resist maginalization, but to re-imagine and transform the culture(s) they live in. These strategies are based on the Native practice of braiding. In the same way that different strands weave together to form a braid, culture and gender are also not individualistic (essential), but individualized (aspectival).

My conclusion will extend my discussion of Thomas King's writing to address the question of cultural difference and Native values in Canada. I will make particular reference to the current debate about Canadian immigration policy, which, rather than embracing difference, suggests that immigrants must conform to the cultural norms of the dominant society in Canada.