This story probably won't change your life

“But don’t say in the years to come that you would have lived your life differently if only you had heard this story. You’ve heard it now” (King).

Thomas King demonstrates through his narrative The Truth about Stories that oral storytelling techniques may also be utilized through a written story. He introduces each chapter with a story about a storyteller telling the story “about the earth and how it floats in space on the back of a turtle,” and a listener’s questions about how many turtles are underneath that turtle, to which the storyteller always replies, “No one knows for sure…but it’s turtles all the way down.” The repetition of the story throughout his book is reminiscent of oral storytelling technique, certainly, but more importantly, the continuous reference to turtles upon turtles upon turtles emphasizes his overall claim that “The truth about stories is that that’s all that we are,” stories upon stories upon stories.

Stories determine our identities. They define our experience, our beliefs, and our histories. King quotes Gerald Vizenor’s assertion that “You can’t understand the world without telling a story. There isn’t any center to the world but a story.” Our current ideologies in some way originate in a story. There’s at least one story to justify each of our thoughts and actions. Somewhere we got the idea from. Take for example King’s reference to creation stories. He posits that the Christian creation story conveys a very different sense of the world than the Native creation story he tells:

Finally, in Genesis, the post-garden world we inherit is decidedly martial in nature, a world at war—God vs. the Devil, humans vs. the elements. Or to put things into corporate parlance, competitive. In our Native story, the world is at peace, and the pivotal concern is not with that ascendancy of good over evil but with the issue of balance.

So here are our choices: a world in which creation is a solitary, individual act or a world in which creation is a shared activity; a world that begins in harmony and slides toward chaos or a world that begins in chaos and moves toward harmony; a world marked by competition or a world determined through cooperation. (King 24-5)

The dichotomy of these creation stories parallels the significant distinction between ideologies of the nation of the United States (Canada, too) and Native nations. United States ideology emphasizes individual power and competition, whereas Native nations generally promote interest in the prosperity of the community as a whole, with any individual decisions made being done so in the genuine best interests of the entire people. (I recognize that this is a broad generalization of the beliefs of various Indian tribes on the part of King.) With the passing of the General Allotment Act in 1887, the United States demanded that tribes split up the land they communally owned, shaping individual Indians into competitive Americans—who would surely learn that the opportunities of capitalism were a vast improvement on their original real estate holdings. Can you see the parallels between these stories yet?

When we consider the continuous chipping away at Indian identity by the government, first through cheating Indians out of their land, then changing the definition of what it means to be Indian (basically, any definition that would be sure to exclude most Indians), instituting Indian boarding schools to replace Native culture with American culture, and so on, we might wonder how things could get any worse. But they do. What results is the stereotypical assumption that if you don’t look like an Indian, don’t speak like an Indian, don’t act like an Indian (whatever that means), or don’t live on an Indian reservation, you aren’t an Indian. And sadly, Indians often judge other Indians’ status as Indian on those very ideas, those very stories, that the government perpetuated. King laments, “the reality of identity legislation has not simply been to erase Indians from the political map of North America, it has also had the unforgivable consequence of setting Native against Native, destroying our ability and our desire to associate with each other. This has been the true tragedy, the creation of legal categories that have made us our own enemy” (149).

This part I don’t understand. Well, I do. Maybe. I guess I can only raise some questions. Is there

something frightening to certain Indians about seeing white faces on people who are supposed to

be Indian? What are the proper criteria for identifying people as Native Americans? What harm

could possibly come to one Indian because another defines oneself as Indian? I guess I was right

in my initial reaction…it doesn’t make sense.

King shares his thoughts on the ways we determine the “authenticity” of Indian identity in a rather perfect way.

This is no longer true as it once was, for many Native people now live in cities, with only tenuous ties to a reserve or nation. Many no longer speak their Native language, a gift of colonialism, and the question of identity has become as much a personal matter as it is a matter of blood. N. Scott Momaday has suggested that being a Native is an idea that an individual has of themselves. Momaday, who is Kiowa, is not suggesting that anyone who wants to can imagine themselves to be Indian. He is simply acknowledging that language and narrow definitions of culture are not the only ways identity can be constructed. Yet, in the absence of visual confirmation, these “touchstones”—race, culture, language, blood—still form a kind of authenticity test, a racial-reality game that contemporary Native peoples are forced to play. (55)

Why? The way I see it, if we cease to think of ourselves as Indian, if we abandon our (however delicate) ties to Native culture, if we forget our (hi)stories, we succeed in fulfilling the mission North American government began. We make the Indian disappear.

Is that what we want? Who are we without our stories?

Without my stories, I am not Indian. Without my stories, I wouldn’t be writing this now, and you wouldn’t be reading it. Without my stories, I am not me.

Even now, I am astounded by the variety in Native Americans’ conceptions and projections of their own identities. I listened to the contemporary stream on Native Radio last night and underwent an enlightening experience through contemporary Native sounds. The first song I heard, which I assumed to be typical of Native American musical performance, sounded similar to a meditation track—soft sounds, chimes, melodic vocals—and I thought, “I can tell this is an Indian singing.” I’d always believed Indians are such great singers (I never counted myself among them, mind you). Not only should I have determined that this generalization was borne out of the same stereotypes I condemn in others, but I was soon proven absolutely wrong with the next track. The harsh electronic sounds were painful enough, but the introduction of what can only be described as simply terrible singing was both jarring and awkward. Next song: a single drum, beat without rhythm, and the barely audible “Indian singing” of one man. I know, it’s terrible of me to call it that, but it’s the label that’s in my head that I can’t seem to get rid of. Soon I heard a spoken word track, with a severely cliché poem about the importance of children respecting the Earth. Ouch. Just when I thought I’d heard the worst, a country western song came on. But at this point, I can’t say I’m sure which song was the least pleasant. At the very least, I learned something about contemporary Native American music: the sounds, instruments, techniques, and vocals vary just as much as any music I’ve ever heard in my own experience. There is no quintessential Native American song. There’s just song. And the way we express ourselves is indicative of our own distinct, utterly human identities.