Analysis Of Green Grass Running Water By Thomas King

Colonial Companions: Marriage in Green Grass, Running Water

Many schools of both post-colonial and feminist thought recognize the integral relationship between the two concepts. Post-colonial novelist Thomas King’s female characters often remove themselves from positions of subservience, maintaining the autonomy and equality also hoped for but oft denied in First Nation’s relations with colonizing forces. This paper will explore depictions of marriage in Thomas King’s novel Green Grass, Running Water and how rejections of hierarchical male-female relationships, specifically by female characters, parallel and aid rejections of cultural oppression of First Nations, establishing a new basis for equality. Particularly, Alberta and Latisha each

Their relationship, as one between a white man and a Native woman, is heavy in societal and historical imbalances of power in not only gender relations but also relationships between colonialists and First Nations; McKay explains that Latisha is a figure “doubly colonized” as she is “a Native married to an abusive white, and a woman married to an abusive man” (58). George Morningstar also has multiple ties, including his origin in Michigan, name, and signature jacket to his being a reincarnation of American General George Custer who was responsible for perpetuation of governmental violence in placing First Nations on reserves in the American Indian Wars of the 19th century (Flick 146,

His desire to honeymoon at the Sun Dance, but subsequent insistence on his superior theories of tepee construction exemplifies this hypocritical admiration and rooted perception of superiority (King 335-338). After a few months of marriage George begins to lecture Latisha on the virtues of America, even rejecting multiple First Nations historical figures and leaders in battles against colonialist forces as “great military men of North America” in his bid to prove supremacy (King 157). Davidson, Walton, and Andrews suggest in their book Border Crossings that it is this blend of admiration and superiority that gives rise to George’s nickname for Latisha: “Country”, as if she is a land mass that he, the white man, must conquer (Davidson, Walton, and Andrews 165). The metaphors for colonialism presented in this relationship, especially the violence perpetuated in the colonialists claims to the land itself, grow even more acute when George becomes abusive following Latisha’s dismissal of George’s pride after he receives a fringed jacket reminiscent of General Custer as inheritance from a ‘relative’. In this multitude of connections George’s role as a symbol for the violent colonialist powers in