Chose the option A, B or C

As you begin reading what can be a confusing, if nonetheless enriching book, please keep the following in mind.

-review your notes on the Thomas King essay we looked at in class, as well as the main ideas about Canada.

-make a character chart. There are many characters in the novel and it is important to keep them straight, especially as a comparison of characters is one of your essay options. Take note of the different character traits, quotes and worldviews.

-Keep a look out for main themes: Settler-indigenous relations and colonialism more generally, the different attitudes to Nature and Nation, Themes having to do with Canadian history are particularly worthy of attention. Water, Water, Water.

-I will be focusing my teaching on the realistic parts of the story which are set in the recognizable world. Although the mythical plotlines intersect with these, do not let yourself get too bogged down in the shapeshifting and history jumping.

We will begin our formal study of the novel in mid April. I encourage you to start reading as soon as possible. The classes where we will discuss the novel will encompass around 75 pages each session.

All of these questions should be considered throughout your study of the novel. I have added the sections as they correspond to initial passages where such topics are introduced.

Pp1-16

How does Norma’s view on carpet reflect the moment of creation expressed in the first pages of the novel?

The question of Carpet refers to the fundamental foundation of the world. You can equate it with nature and the worldview that interacts with it. This is also funny and ironic in a typically Thomas King sort of way. What we take to be a rather meaningless consumer decision turns out to be powerfully important. It functions both as a wakeup call and an indication to pay attention to our environment, but also our seemingly mundane choices that have tremendous impact.

Does the carpet in Joe Hovaugh’s office fit in with the motif?

Notice Joe Hovaugh is a play on one of the terms for GOD in the Judeo-Christian tradion. He is certainly paying attention to the carpet as he establishes a certain condescending dominance.

p.21

Does the described situation reflect your experiences of the classroom and education in general?

Old dates, charts, Names etc. What is actually a vitally important series of events that has a desperate need for recognition is reduced to a bunch of boring stuff you memorise for marks. Education as quantified credentialing where everyone, even the teacher, is merely going through the motions and missing the point. Our ability to appreciate History, Art, Science everthing really, is curtailed to the point where our very societies are imperiled.

What is being said about school, academia and students in this scene?

p. 24-25

How do the conversational confusion between Babo and her interlocutors fit in with the differing social status and context of the characters?

Although it is not explicitly mentioned in the text, Babo is often interpreted as reflecting the fraught history of slavery in the US. There is also a class dimension to this as it speaks to the underappreciation and underacknowledgment of the people whom our society has determined as being lower class or low status. The irony (this is why a sense of irony can be powerfully political) is that Babo is far wiser than the bumbling Joe Hovaugh. This is an especially important point about how we recognized and reward the people who are actually fundamental to our well-being. I think of the celebrity industrial complex flailing around right now as it is exposed as fundamentally vapid and unimportant. Meanwhile, it is the ill treated and underappreciated who keep us alive, including many of you.

Pp25-65

How do Lionel’s misfortunes in Toronto and Salt Lake reflect something of his character?

It emphasizes Lionel’s passivity. He ends up drifting through some of the most important incidents in North American History, primarily the standoff at Pine Ridge. This passivity is also reflected in his bureaucratic job with the Federal Government.

Pp 65-199

How do the perspectives of Sifton and Eli reflect different perceptions of Canadian territory?

Sifton has an essentially instrumental and practical way of looking at the land. Eli, after much study of the humanities, has realized its sanctity.

How does the portrayal of the tourists and the marketing of the Dead Dog Café present a critique of the tourism industry? Can the café be seen as decolonial?

Tourism does not come off all that well in the novel. There are some great jokes here about Canadians and USAmericans. Both come in for some ribbing. The Americans are loud and brash, the Canadians are quiet, humble and sheeplike. Notice the references to Jeannette Armstrong and Rita Joe, two indigenous authors.

The café can be seen as a kind of reappropriation of the fantastical narratives that are embraced by the tourism industry and the tourists themselves. It turns the tables on them through profiting from these stereotypes.

How does Portland’s interaction with Hollywood shed light on the history of the perception of the indigenous by mainstream culture?

Hollywood has a long history of shaping wider culture, in particular the perception of minority and marginalized groups. This is especially important when it comes to indigenous peoples and cultures. GGRW makes the claims, and I agree, that the mythologies (out right romantic lies sometimes) surrounding indigenous peoples and their histories are the founding cultural moments of North American identities. These come out in Hollywood’s treatment of indigenous characters. There is strong irony that Portland, an actual indigenous person, is considered to not look indigenous enough for film.

What is the perspective that Bill Bursum brings to the novel?

Bursum is essentially a local agent for Hollywood. His interactions with Lionel and Charlie mirror those between Hollywood and Portland, this highlights the intergenerational nature of the relationship between indigenous and non-indigenous North Americans. Bursum also exposes the toralitarian nature of settler-colonialism with his wall of TVs which purport to capture everything that is essential and important; the tyranny of entertainment triumphing over Art. Although GGRW being Art and not a politicized screed, there is ample recognition of the importance of entertainment and the false dichotomy which strictly separates Art and Entertainment. Eli himself, esteemed professor of LITERATURE, enjoys the cheapest of cheap entertainments in the pulp fiction he enjoys about the Wild West.

199- 300

1.Take a particular note of the stereotypical plot lines laid out by Hollywood’s portrayal of ‘The West’

I’ll leave this up to you but there are several of note: The romanticised vanishing indian, the romantic spiritually wise talisman indian etc. etc.

2. Describe Karen’s reaction to her visit to the Blackfoot community.

Karen and her family represent some of the trouble with those we have come to refer to as ‘allies’. There runs a risk of romanticism, exoticism and in the case of Karen, sexual fetishism (the ‘mystic warrior’ sex scene). Once again, King is an artist, not a polemicist. This is not an indictment of Karen and her family, in fact the novel is rather sympathetic to them. This aspect of the novel is to show the complexities and difficulties, maybe even impossibilities of understanding each other across our differences.

3. How does Portland’s treatment in Hollywood reflect wider plotlines in the story and in North American culture in general?

Portland is robbed of his own identity and then has it sold back to him. To an extent this happens to Alberta, Eli and Lionel. Indeed it could be extended to the entire Blackfoot community as illustrated through the Dead Dog Café and the kerfuffle around the Sun Dance.

4. How do Charlie and Portland reflect each other as characters?

To be short, they both sell out. Portland and his son both agree to fill the role of token indigenous person, respectively to a nature destroying natural resource company and to a culture destroying entertainment industry.

5. How does Lionel’s existential crisis reflect his character?

As with all the characters, and this is why this novel is so great, Lionel is both a real human character but also subject to the structural forces of history and contemporary society as are we all. Lionel, yes suffers from a sort of early onset mid-life crisis but is also batted around by the cultural and economic forces of the Bill Bursums and the Indian and Northern Affairs departments of our world.

6. How does George Morningstar see ‘The West’ and the people in it?

He essentially sees it as a make believe fairy land where ‘men can be men’ and where a pure uncorrupted truth exits. This view of indigenous peoples in particular and the west in general denies people their most basic humanity, starting with his family and ending with entire peoples and geographies.

7. Outline the discussion that Eli has with Sifton about the dam. How does such a conversation reflect wider themes in Canada more generally?

I’ve already touched a bit on the relationship between these two characters. GGRW is a profoundly hopeful book. This comes through strongly in the relationship between Eli and Sifton. Despite their opposition about what is really the central question of a decolonizing Canada: What to do with the Land? These two create and sustain a genuine human connection and loving friendship across their multiple differences.

8. How is Canada chracterised vis a vis US America?

300-431

1. How is Connie a feminist character? Do she and Alberta make a connection?

Connie foregrounds gender as central to the current state of the world. There are also frequent allusions to men being the prime movers of most of the ills that have befallen the world. Hard to argue with that sadly, alhough I’m not sure this is only because of gender as a singular variable.

2. What is the sly critique of the real estate industry made on p.373?

Well, it’s dishonest in its marketing for one. But more profoundly, treating the land and nature solely through the lens of unquestionable private property to be hog traded back and forth to gin up a false market has real social consequences. The fact that my generation and yours are largely unable to afford to own our homes is not unrelated to the fact that we also live during an environmental collapse.

3. What is the reference to Quebec made on p. 376? How does this relate to the overall novel?

I’ll let you do some research here, although we already spoke about it in the context of Abitibi Canyon. Duck Duck Go ‘James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement’ hopefully this is a revision from High School for most of you.

4. Formulate a philosophical reason for why individuals or groups might resist having their photo taken? What does such a resistance say about our modern world?

Travel advice 101: never, never stroll around the world like you are on a human safari or enjoying a bit of innocent poverty porn. I’ve seen some truly shocking behaviour by my fellow wealthy westerners in my jaunts around our home planet. Don’t be that guy…

Sorry for that. I’m having trouble transitioning to our new digital teaching environment –The Regina Prophet (twitter account an old group of students set up for me and I’ve never touched)

In our current age which focusses so much on visual culture and its control and manipulation, largely to our detriment I might add. Maybe a few months of sweatpants, hair growth etc. etc. will prove beneficial.

At any rate, the control of images is powerful stuff. Many indigenous and non-indigenous societies saw making images of oneself or others as inherently destructive. It removes us from the movement and from those around us, it fixes us in place and pretends we don’t change. It is used to exploit us and sell us insecurity and anxiety which is then used to sell us junk we don’t need. One old adage has it that it steals your very soul. Most indigenous leaders on the prairies refused to have their picture taken.

The role Bill Bursum and Hollywood play is crucial here. They focus on and function exclusively through images. Words make you think. Pictures make you gawk.

5. On 391 there is a repetition of the argument put forward in the King essay we studied. How does GGRW reflect such a strong assertion of the power and importance of narrative and story more generally?

I’ll leave this for you

I hope this is helpful. Feel free to comment or post questions or your own analyses in our class forum or communicate them directly to me. Remember, there are no right answers in English Class.

Hope you and yours are well.

Paul