Thomas King's The truth about stories - Essay Example

The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative Thomas King shares many of his experiences and locates them in a personal and political narrative. He shows how one’s identity and culture are located in unequal material conditions and are represented in ways that denigrate, fictionalize, romanticize, and relegate native people to the past. I want you to respond to the main themes he lays out and consider how they relate to your own experiences of oppression and privilege. Here are some guiding questions: What are the main messages of this book? How do you respond to them – how do they affect you and relate (or do not) to your own experiences? What do they have to say about identity, oppression, diversity and representation more generally? What did you find interesting? What did it teach you? What do you imagine is King’s objective in writing this book, in this particular style? Why might it be important for anyone – especially social workers to read? Your reflection should be in an essay format of SIX PAGES, double-spaced, APA style, 12 pt. Font. Please keep a copy for your own records. Further information and tips about reading and writing strategies for this book refection will be discussed in class. In The Truth About Stories, Thomas King shares a Native perspective on Native issues. In fact, this sentence alone suggests some of the problems he deals with throughout his book. King's book covers topics as diverse as racism and stereotyping, basketball, and coping with life's sorrows, but it looks at all of these issues by exploring different narratives in the forms of stories that we tell ourselves and others. The book's main message is one that discusses the importance of seeing people for who they are, and not trying to classify them as one particular race or culture. I think this is a message that is especially important for social workers to keep in mind as they struggle to help those who are not a part of the dominant culture or socio-economic class. One thing that makes King's message so effective is the personal tone in which he tells all his stories. He frequently speaks to the reader and is not shy about telling us when he is aiming for a story-telling tone. In the first chapter he tells two different creation myths, one Christian and one Native. The tones he uses to tell them are very different, as he points out afterwards. “In the Native story”, he says, “I tried to recreate an oral storytelling voice and craft the story in terms of a performance for a general audience” (King, 2003, p.22). However, the Christian version, told with a less playful tone, used a “sober voice” which “makes for a formal recitation but creates a sense of veracity” (King, 2003, p.23). King's stories in the book usually use a mix of these two tones, and the result is one which speaks directly to people and seems realistic while still being engaging. Also, the storytelling tone is part of the problem King wishes to speak about, that Native people are never really taken seriously and understood from their own points of view, but instead have been lumped into one big category, Native, and viewed as a sort of childish un-advanced race of people. As he says of his Native creation myth, “the conversation voice tends to highlight the exuberance of the story but diminishes its authority” (King, 2003, p.22-23). This is a central theme throughout the book—usually evident among Native performers who had to struggle to figure out whether they were still Native Americans or something else entirely--along with the stereotyping that causes this main problem. King makes it very clear throughout that one of the big problems with “the Native problem” is unrealistic views of Native Americans handed down from the 18th century or even earlier in a few cases. He relates the story of Edward Sheriff Curtis, a photographer who went around the USA in 1900 taking pictures of various Native peoples (King, 2003, p.32). The problem with Curtis is that he was “looking for the literary Indian, the dying Indian, the imaginative construct”, so much so that he “took along boxes of 'Indian'” props to dress up people who did not fit that image (King, 2003, p.32). King compares this 'literary Indian' to the “Indian of Fact”, which are the real Native Americans who do not fit into people's expectations at all most of the time (King, 2003, p.32). The problem, then, is not who people are, but what others think they should be based on their own stereotypes. Identity is a malleable thing and is vulnerable to definition by outsiders. While we might like to assume this sort of thing does not continue to happen throughout history, King mentions a lot of current day examples, including ones that involve himself. He mentions some pointed questions he was made to answer when applying for a PhD grant from the USA government. These questions were “a kind of authenticity test, a racial-reality game that contemporary Native people are forced to play” (King, 2003, p.55). This game, even when it's started by other people who are themselves Natives, basically forces people into the roles created by this made-up 'literary Indian' that King talked about earlier. He notes that most people don't even bother asking questions, but instead “simply [look] at you. If you don't look Indian, you aren't. If you don't look White, you're not” (King, 2003, p.56). One of the things that King is most worried about is not just racism or stereotyping, but how these play into government decisions. He points out that Northern American nations have not been very good about keeping up with the treaties they made with Native nations. King says that we like to: tell ourselves about injustices and atrocities and how most of them has happened in the past. We tell ourselves that, as we have progressed as a species, we have gotten smarter and more compassionate. … We know better now, and we won't make that mistake again. (King, 2003, p.127) Unfortunately, King says, this is not really true. Now, we just do it more politely. For instance, Native Americans are now dealt with through legislation, which King says has “two basic goals” for Native people: “One, to relieve us of our land, and two, to legalize us out of existence” (2003, p.130). The government does this because it is tired of giving Natives special benefits, or if you are less cynical and accept their logic, because they want there to be “not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic and there is no Indian question” (King, 2003, p.133). In other words, until the Native peoples have been able to assimilate into everyday society. The reason this worries King so much is because he sees it as a way for the government to get out of honouring its treaties and the commitment it should have been making the whole time to co-existing with Native peoples instead of just conquering them. As King puts it, “in fifty to seventy-five years … we'll still have the treaties and we'll still have treaty land held in trust for status Indians … we just won't have any Indians” (2003, p.144). He sees this as just part of the stereotyping and subconscious racism that even those trying to supposedly help Native people tend to fall into. To repeat what he said earlier, “If you don't look Indian, you aren't. If you don't look White, you're not” (King, 2003, p.56). As a Canadian citizen of Afghan background, I can definitely understand where King is coming from in his book. I have experienced similar racism and oppression where I work as a Client Service Representative. Despite my ideas, which are good ones that would probably help the company to make money, I am continually kept outside of the decision-making process because, I think, I am not White enough. The other eight employees where I work and my manager all have a sort of distance from me, and the first time I hear about important Client Service decisions is usually after they have been decided in a meeting that I was not invited to attend. Although nobody is trying to take away my land or deny me my cultural heritage, I do feel like I am being made a sort of second-class citizen. Perhaps because of my own personal experiences, I think the stories King tells in his book, and the way in which he chooses to tell them, have a powerful impact. The way his tone seems to change between that of a scholar and that of a story-teller, for instance, is useful as a way of thinking about how Native peoples can and do adapt and change, and would seem convincing to people who like to pretend that they are all just sitting around on a reservation being mystical and Indian. King's choices of stories are also convincing, whether they are from his own experience or whether they are the stories of other people, Native or not. Ultimately the book is a very useful one for those who want to find out more about the way stereotyping and exclusion work in society. I think The truth About Stories would be especially useful for social workers, and should probably be required reading. That seems like a strange opinion, because the book is not really about how to do social work or even necessarily about the socio-economic conditions that create a need for it. However, King's book is about what creates those conditions, at least in part. It is also about the dangers involved in classifying people at all. For instance, if a social worker were to go to someone's house who lives below the poverty line and take with them preconceptions about how that type of person lives, the social worker would be a lot less useful than someone who looked upon the person as a person, and did not make any judgments about them at all—or at least saved such judgements until they had actually met. It also reminds social workers that different cultures are a good thing, and that just forcing people to fit in with mainstream society is not always the right choice. It is important for social workers to keep an open mind and King's book helps drive this lesson home. All in all, the Truth About Stories is a useful study on how identity is shaped through generations and through various cultural and economic factors. It shows us that identity is malleable and vulnerable and open to exploitation. North America is not really the melting pot that it is sometimes said to be. There are different cultures and identities, some in the mainstream and some in the margins, all of which are seeking a voice and a way to represent themselves as they believe they truly are. References King, T. (2003). The truth about stories: A native narrative. Minneapolis, MN, USA: University of Minnesota Press. Read More