by Thomas King
TK: Actually, now that I think about it, really, Tomson and a number of the playwrights took the first—
MA: Well, they got attacked by other native people for, I guess, opening the closet door, as it were.
TK: Yeah, see, I didn’t do that.
MA: Not quite, no.
TK: Mine was more of a wide-angle shot. From above and out of range, as it were. And Tomson, Tomson was, you know, up close and personal.
MA: On the other hand, some of your stories are not from a native point of view at all. So how does it feel to have a foot in both camps?
TK: I like writing stories in both those areas, so if I sit down and I think to myself, I don’t feel like writing a native story tonight, maybe I’ll write a non-native story tonight, even when I do that there is a part of me that sort of says, Well, how would a native storyteller tell this story, you know, what kind of slant can I put on it? But, I mean, I write what I can imagine and not what I know. If I wrote what I know, I’d have been done two books ago. But I write what I can imagine, so anything I can imagine, I’ll try writing…And this particular book has a story in there where I take on a woman’s voice, as a matter of fact.
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“I write what I can imagine and not what I know.”
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MA: I was about to mention that.
TK: I thought you were. I wanted to race you to it. I win.
MA: No, but I wasn’t going to beat you up for it. No, no. Not at all. You and James Joyce, I mean, heck.
TK: Well, thank you.
MA: Flaubert. Just to mention two or three.
TK: That should make the paper. “Thomas King, the new Flaubert & James Joyce.”
MA: Yes, um, sort of.
TK: Did we get over that bump all right?
MA: So here’s another. This is a serious question. Do white people idealize and romanticize native people? I’m thinking about your story “Haida Gwaii.” Native woman; in her voice, the story is told. White man who doesn’t understand her. Is that because he’s a man, or because he’s white? You walk on a lot of hot coals.
* * *
“Non-natives romanticize natives; I don’t think there’s anything else you can do, given the kind of cultural material that’s out there.”
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TK: Well, I suppose the easy answer is both.
MA: Both?
TK: Both.
MA: That’s an easy answer. So which would you say is worse?
TK: Can we stay with the easy answer?
MA: Which is worse: being a man or being white?
TK: You know, I spent the first twenty minutes of this interview trying to avoid that question. I think, yes, non-natives romanticize natives; I don’t think there’s anything else you can do, given the kind of cultural material that’s out there that we’re fed, you know, from childhood. I was raised on Cowboys and Indians—either the noble or the ignoble savage—one of the two. There wasn’t anything in between. There wasn’t the not-so-smart savage, or the entrepreneurial savage, who actually made a living for himself. You were either killing whites and bashing babies against trees or helping the white man chase down the bad Indians who’d just done all those nasty deeds—but nothing in between. So yes, there is certainly a sense of romanticism that’s attached itself to native people, and that, I don’t think we’ll ever get rid of that—at least not in my lifetime and not in my kids’ lifetime—because they keep making Cowboy-and-Indian movies.
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“I was raised on Cowboys and Indians—either the noble or the ignoble savage…There wasn’t anything in between.”
* * *
It’s amazing. When Kevin Costner did Dances with Wolves, all my friends called me up and said, “You’ve got to see this movie. It’s a complete departure from the standard Cowboy-and-Indian film.” And so I went to see it, and I thought, Okay, you know, I went to see it, and I came back, and I said, “What is different about this movie than the rest of them?” They said, “Well, there’s a sense of humour. Indians have a sense of humour.” And I said, “They had a sense of humour in Broken Arrow, which was back in the fifties.” I said, “You know, this isn’t particularly new.” So, yes, there is that romanticizing that goes on.
I think there is more out there now in terms of art, some fiction, to complicate that. But I don’t think it’s easily complicated, particularly. Now is it worse to be (long pause)…No. No. Not particularly. But if you work in humour and satire, as I do, you have to make—somebody has to come out on the short end of the stick. And, you know, ask yourself, given my choices, who do you think it’s going to be? It’s a real no-brainer. But, I try to make it so that readers understand that these are attitudes more than actual characters. There are attitudes that we have to deal with, and I try to write it in such a way that the reader is able to say, “Ah, but that’s not me. That’s somebody else.”
* * *
“If you work in humour and satire, as I do, somebody has to come out on the short end of the stick.”
* * *
MA: Then you’re letting them off the hook.
TK: Well, yeah, I suppose I do. But there’s a part of me that wants to be loved. (laughs)
MA: Or maybe you’re saying to them, “This could be you, but you can change your ways.”
TK: That’s right, that’s right. If you, you know—the Ghost of Christmas—
MA: Yes, you can give out turkeys to Tiny Tim.
TK: Yes, can you see all the non-natives opening up their windows on Christmas Day and saying, “Yes! I’ll buy that turkey. I’ll go down and see Tiny Timfeathers. You know, I’ll make sure he has a good education and clean housing and fresh water, and I won’t take his land anymore.
MA: It’s better than the alternative.
TK: Yeah, and we won’t turn it into a bombing range—we promise, we promise, we promise. Yeah, I suppose humour has that potential for letting people off the hook, but I’m not looking to destroy people’s opinions of themselves. I’m looking really at the call of question, and how they handle that question is up to them.
MA: Yes, well, of course you know the problem with satire is Swift’s Modest Proposal to solve the Irish problem. The people ought to sell and roast and eat Irish babies, which would provide a source of income and other things like that. And some people apparently took this seriously and thought it was quite a good idea. And I had that problem with The Handmaid’s Tale as well. I thought, “Uh oh, somebody’s going to take that as a recipe.”
TK: This is a good idea, they say. We could take women and—
* * *
“Humour has that potential for letting people off the hook, but I’m not looking to destroy people’s opinions of themselves.”
* * *
MA: Well, alas.
TK: Did you get letters about that?
MA: No, but it seems to be playing out…
Some of your stories are not funny. They instead are pointed and touching. Or, did I miss something? In other words, do you suffer from Jack Point’s problem in the Yeomen of the Guard—that everyone expects you to be funny all the time and it depresses you?
TK: That’s a good question. I was going to tell you about a skit for Dead Dog that was like Swift’s Modest Proposal. One of Jasper’s schemes—and this is playing off of The Handmaid’s Tale—is to have Cryo[genic] babies. The idea is that, you know, the problem that women seem to have in this modern age is that they want to have children, but they don’t want to have children when they’re young. They’d like to have them when they’re older.
MA: This is like frozen babies.
TK: Frozen babies, rather than frozen embryos. You see, what you do is you have the baby when your body is really able to have it, but you don’t have to raise it; you just freeze it.
MA: That’s a very good idea.
TK: And then, when you’re thirty-five or forty, and you’ve got nothing better to do—you’re retired—then you defrost the baby, and you raise it.
MA: You know, Tom, that’s got legs.
TK: And arms. And a head.
MA: And on that—although you didn’t answer the question.
TK: No, we’ll get back to the question. I just wanted to throw that out, because you’d brought up the other thing. So what was the question again?
MA: Some of your stories are not satire. They’re actually sad and touching. So do you suffer that problem of “everyone wants me to be funny all the time, and I’m not allowed to be other things,” and is that depressing?
TK: Yeah, what’s depressing is that in most of the stories that I write there’s an underlying problem—that if you looked at the problem all by itself, then these would be very sad stories. But I can tell these stories without the satire and without the humour and they would be, you know, positively depressing. And so, yeah, I get depressed when people don’t see the other layer. But it’s my own fault. I mean, do you cover it over? It’s like burying a bone—and sometimes I bury the bone too deep, and people say, “That was the funniest thing I’ve ever heard in my life.” And I’m going, “What do you mean? This is terrible. Look what happens. Little Tiny Timfeathers dies at the end of the piece.”
* * *
“I write stuff that will make people laugh, that’s serious. It’s a razor’s edge. And, you know, writers who work with satire sit on that razor. The trick is not to move.”
* * *
So, yeah, if you’re a native person at this particular period of time, there is a general depression that you have to live with. And that, you know, I do live with. And one of my ways of dealing with that is to try and write this stuff that will make people laugh, that’s serious. It’s a razor’s edge. And, you know, writers who work with satire sit on that razor. The trick is not to move. Once you’re there, don’t move. You’re okay.
MA: And you’re okay.
TK: I’m okay.
MA: Yes, and on that note, you’re more than okay. Thank you so much.
Read On
Web Detective
Web Detective
To listen to CBC’s interview with Thomas King about his Massey lecture: http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/massey/massey2003.html
For an interview with Thomas King about the Dead Dog Café radio series: http://www.ubyssey.bc.ca/article.shtml?/19980925/king.htmlf
To learn more about the Assembly of First Nations: http://www.afn.ca/
For interviews with Thomas King about other books: webcontent.harpercollins.com/text/guides/pdf/0006481965.pdf
For an article about King and his writing: www.firstnationsdrum.com/Fall2002/CovKing.htm
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Acknowledgments
These stories, with occasional variations, have been published and/or broadcast, as follows:
“A Short History of Indians in Canada” in Toronto Life and Canadian Literature; reprinted as “A Short History of Indians in America” in Story and broadcast on CBC’s Gzowski in Conversation and Alaska Radio’s Air Traffic; “Tidings of Comfort and Joy” in the National Post and broadcast on CBC’s Between the Covers; “The Dog I Wish I Had, I Would Call It Helen” in The Malahat Review and Journey Prize Anthology; “Coyote and the Enemy Aliens” in Our Story: Aboriginal Voices on Canada’s Past; “Little Bombs” in West Magazine; “Bad Men Who Love Jesus” in New Quarterly. “The Closer You Get to Canada, the More Things Will Eat Your Horses” in Whetstone; “Not Enough Horses” in The Walrus; “Noah’s Ark” in Descant; reprinted as “Nuh’un Gemisi” in Paralelin Ötesinde: KanadaliYazarlardan Öyküler; “Where the Borg Are” in Story of a Nation: Defining Moments in Our History; “States to Avoid” in Parallel Voices; “Fire and Rain” in Border Crossings; “Domestic Furies” in The Malahat Review; “The Garden Court Motor Motel” in Prairie Fire and The Nelson Introduction to Literature; “Not Counting the Indian, There Were Six” in The Malahat Review; “Another Great Moment in Canadian Indian History” broadcast on CBC’s Between the Covers; reprinted as “Another Great Moment in North American Indian History” in Story.
Copyright
A Short History of Indians in Canada
© 2005 by Dead Dog Café Productions Inc.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © JUNE 2010 ISBN: 978-1-443-40317-7
P.S. section © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2006
Published by Harper Perennial, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.
Originally published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd: 2005
Interview with Thomas King conducted by Margaret Atwood courtesy of Fine Print Media Services Inc., 2005
www.harpercollins.ca
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
King, Thomas, 1943-
A short history of Indians in Canada /Thomas King.-1st trade pbk ed.
1. Indians of North America-Canada-Fiction. I. Title.
PS8571.15298S46 2006 c813’.54 C2006-902432-4
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