Selected Internet Resources

The Green Grass Textual Network:

Literary, Filmic, Mythic, Religious, & Storytelling References:

• First Woman, Changing Woman, Thought Woman, Old Woman (Crossroads Project, U of Virginia)
• Coyote (Wikipedia)
• The Hebrew and Christian Bibles
  • The Book of Genesis (The Judeo-Christian creation story; Adam & Eve in the Garden of Eden; Noah and the Ark)
    • "West to the Garden: The New World as Symbol and Myth" (part of the Virgin Land hypertext project at the University of Virginia)
  • The Annunciation (Luke 21)
  • Christ Walking on the Water
• The "fourfold model of Biblical exegesis" alluded to by Dr. Hovaugh on p. 430 ("literal, metaphorical, tropological, anagogic"). See also "The Four Senses of Scripture" (alternate explanation 1) | alternate explanation 2).
• Tonto: sidekick of the title character of the radio & television series The Lone Ranger
• Robinson Crusoe (Wikipedia): protagonist of the novel Robinson Crusoe by 17th-century English writer Daniel DeFoe
  • "Variations of Robinson Crusoe" (George Landow, National University of Singapore)
• Hawkeye (one of the nicknames of Natty Bumppo, a/k/a Leatherstocking, The Deerslayer, and The Pathfinder): protagonist of the series of novels collectively known as The Leatherstocking Tales by 19th-century American writer James Fenimore Cooper
  • 19th-Century Romanticism: James Fenimore Cooper (Paul Reuben, CSU-Stanislaus)
  • "Romancing the Indian: Sentimentalizing and Demonizing in Cooper and Twain" (Adriana Rissetto, U-VA) (Introduction, "Cooper's Indians" and "More Indians" are most pertinent)
• Ishmael: participant-narrator of the novel Moby Dick by 19th-century American writer Herman Melville
• Babo, Captain Ben Cereno and Patrolman Jimmy Delano: principal characters of "Benito Cereno," a novella also by Herman Melville, based on an 1839-40 slave rebellion aboard the Amistad
• Internet Movie Database: How the West Was Won with John Wayne and Richard Widmark, The Searchers with John Wayne and Natalie Wood, and Rio Grande with John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara. Trailers are available for the first two films. There are no actual films called The Mysterious Warrior (supposedly starring Wayne, Widmark, and O'Hara) or Massacre at Sand Creek (with Wayne, Widmark, and John Chivington--the latter a historical figure, not an actor). There is, however, a film called The Sand Creek Massacre (which starred John Derek, not John Wayne), and information on the historical Sand Creek massacre can be found at "Native American Atrocities" and PBS.org
  • Peter Flynn, "The Silent Western as Mythmaker" (Images 6)
  • "The Silent Western: Early Movie Myths of the American West" (part of the Virgin Land hypertext project at the University of Virginia)
• The Dime Novel and The Dime Western (Wikipedia)
• The Shagganappi, a romance novel by turn-of-the-century Native American writer E. Pauline Johnson

Historical References:

• "Plains Indian Drawings, 1865-1935" (Exhibit mounted by the Drawing Center, New York City; includes drawings by prisoners held at Fort Marion, Florida in the 1870s)
• Henry L. Dawes, 19th-century U.S. legislator and author of the "Dawes Act" of 1887
• Mary Rowlandson and Hannah Duston, 17th-century colonial American authors of autobiographical captivity narratives
• Elaine Goodale, 19th-century American Indian rights advocate and educator
• John Collier, Commissioner of Indian Affairs under Franklin Roosevelt
• John Eliot, 17th-century missionary and translator
• Clifford Sifton, 19th-century Canadian politician
• The Bursum Bill of 1922
• General George Armstrong Custer, "Son of the Morning Star"
  • Sitting Bull and "A Good Day to Die"
• Sand Creek massacre: "Native American Atrocities" and PBS.org
  • John Chivington (a/k/a "The Butcher of Sand Creek")
• Manifest Destiny and American Exceptionalism (Wikipedia)
• The Guswhenta (Two Row Wampum Treaty), which marked the so-called "Covenant Chain" begun in 1692 between the Iroquois Confederacy and the British Colonies in North America. (See also Degiya' göh Resources.) This was perhaps the first treaty to use the words "as long as the waters flow [and]...the grass grows green" to indicate its purported duration. Similar phrases later appeared in many other treaties, including the 1795 "Treaty of Peace and Friendship" with the United States (see "Indian Magna Carta writ in wampum belts," New York Times 7 June 1925).

Contemporary Social and Cultural Context:

• Hydroelectric Projects and the James Bay Cree:
  • "Cree Vote Yes on Quebec Deal" (Robert Taylor, Indian Country Today 8 February 2002) (Related stories at NationalGeographic.com and Ottertooth.com)
• Nunavut (Wikipedia)
• Blackfoot Indians and Blackfoot Confederacy
• The Sun Dance (Wikipedia)

Other texts by and/or about Thomas King:

• Biography (Northwest Passages: Canadian Literature Online)
• Marie Dickieson, "A Writer Without Reservations" (profile of King in @Guelph, 19 January 2000, U of Guelph, Ontario)
• "The Dead Dog Cafe Comedy Hour" homepage (King's weekly radio show on the CBC, now on hiatus)
• Profile of All My Relations: An Anthology of Native Canadian Writing, edited by King (David Harris, Queens U, Belfast)
• Study Guide for King's 2001 novel, Truth and Bright Water (HarperCollins Canada; includes an interview with King) (pdf format)
• Thomas King, "The One About Coyote Going West." One Good Story, That One. Toronto: HarperPerennial, 1993. 65-80.
• Thomas King, from The Truth About Stories (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota Press, 2007):
  • Lecture 1: "'You'll Never Believe What Happened' Is Always a Great Way to Start" (if you're pressed for time, begin reading at page 10, where King juxtaposes two creation stories, "The Woman Who Fell From the Sky" and the book of Genesis.)
  • From Lecture 3, "A Million Porcupines Crying in the Dark": King comments on the Native past as represented in history and fiction
  • (The Truth About Stories is the print version of a series of talks that King gave in 2003 for Canada's prestigious "Massey Lectures." The Massey Lectures web page includes a link to a radio interview that King did with the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation).)
    
    
• Sharon M. Bailey, "The Arbitrary Nature of the Story: Poking Fun at Oral and Written Authority in Thomas King's Green Grass, Running Water" (World Literature Today 73:1 [Winter 1999])
• James H. Cox, "'All This Water Imagery Must Mean Something': Thomas King's Revisions of Narratives of Domination and Conquest in Green Grass, Running Water" (Amiercan Indian Quarterly 24:2 [Spring 2000])
• Clare Gill, "'Ecological Imperialism' and Thomas King's Green Grass, Running Water" (The Imperial Archive)
• Patricia Linton, "'And Here's How it happened': Trickster Discourse in Thomas King's Green Grass, Running Water" (Modern Fiction Studies 45.1 [1999])
• Darrell Jesse Peters, "Beyond the Frame: Tom King's Narratives of Resistment" (Studies in Native American Literature 11:2 [Summer 1999])
• Robin Ridington, "Coyote's Cannon: Sharing Stories with Thomas King" (American Indian Quarterly 22:3 [1998]) (draft version)
• Carlton Smith, "Coyote, Contingency, and Community: Thomas King's Green Grass, Running Water and Postmodern Trickster" (from Coyote Kills John Wayne: Postmodernism and Contemporary Fictions of the Transcultural Frontier [Lincoln: UP of Nebraska, 2000])
• G. Turcotte, "Re-Marking on History, or, Playing Basketball with Godzilla: Thomas King's Monstrous Post-colonial Gesture"
• Jessica Wegmann-Sanchez, "Canadian Versus American State Discourse on Racial Categorization in Gerald Vizenor's Bearheart and Thomas King's Green Grass, Running Water" (Culture + The State 3, University of Alberta)

Leslie Marmon Silko

• Biographies: Wikipedia | Voices from the Gaps
• Interviews:
  • With Thomas Irmer (Alt-X Berlin):  Part 1 | Part 2
  • With Michael Silverblatt (KCRW)
  • SAIL [Studies in American Indian Literatures] 10:3 (1998): Special Issue on Almanac of the Dead. Includes Ellen Arnold, "Listening to the Spirits: An Interview with Leslie Marmon Silko"; Annette Van Dyke, "From Big Green Fly to the Stone Serpent: Following the Dark Vision in Silko's Almanac of the Dead"; Deborah Horvitz, "Freud, Marx, and Chiapas in Leslie Marmon Silko's Almanac of the Dead"; and Yvonne Reineke, "Overturning the (New World) Order: Of Space, Time, Writing, and Prophecy in Leslie Marmon Silko's Almanac of the Dead"
• Selected works available online:
  • "Border Patrol" (Tucson Weekly September 26, 1996)
• Pueblo Culture (Laura Arnold, Reed College)
• Maya Codices (Wikipedia | FAMSI.org)
• Geronimo and the Apache Wars
• The CIA and Central American drug trafficking
• Zapatista Army of National Liberation
• David Owen, "Survival of the Fitted" (The New Yorker 26 September 2011): The rise of bulletproof couture in Columbia
• "Risks to the Glen Canyon Dam" (Wikipedia)
• "The Fourth World" (Wikipedia)
• Center for World Indigenous Studies
• Walter Benjamin, "Theses on the Philosophy of History" (see esp. Thesis IX, "The Angel of History")