American Indian Culture and Research Journal

In Canadian (Cherokee-Greek-German) writer Thomas King’s 1993 novel Green Grass, Running Water several intertwined “realistic” plots involving contemporary Canadian Blackfoot characters parallel and then intersect with a mythically based “supernatural”plot which itself includes at least four parallel stories. Lionel Red Dog approaches his fortieth birthday uncertain of his purpose in life. Alberta Frank tries to figure out how to have a child while avoiding a relationship with either Lionel or the ambitious, successful Charlie Looking Bear. Lionel’s uncle, Eli Stands Alone, blocks the opening of a dam that would submerge his mother’s house. Each of these realistic characters has a complex history, which is also told. Simultaneously, four old Indians set out to “fix the world,” and arrive near the Blackfoot Reserve in time to celebrate Lionel’s birthday and attend the annual Sun Dance. They are occasionally accompanied by Coyote, who moves back and forth between their real-world adventures and another space in which an unnamed narrating “I” comments on storytelling, the events told, and Coyote’s behavior. Simultaneously, Doctor Joseph Hovaugh and Babo Jones, a janitor, set out to find the old Indians and return them to the hospital where they have been held, under treatment, according to Hovaugh, for depression. Most of these characters and their stories converge near the novel’s end for one or more of its climactic moments. The convergence of plots and the interactions not only among characters but also among their distinct planes of being demonstrate the interpenetration of the mythic and the mundane that is an essential element of traditional American Indian understandings of myth. While these convergences and interactions, particularly given their often parodic impact suggest a postmodernist critique, the novel’s dialogic double emphasis on the oral and the literate suggests a critical approach congruent with its multiple stories, sources, and effects.