As gracefully spoken by Anishnaabeg scholar Gerald Vizenor, “there isn’t any centre to the world but a story” (32). However, storytelling isn’t an analytical framework that is popularly used; Due to systemically-ingrained tropes of European colonization that have shaped the modern landscape both physically and ideologically, any use of academic alternatives by the colonized is consequently erased. Nonetheless, Indigenous scholars have been reasserting their intellectual autonomy through literature; Thomas King’s The Truth About Stories is an act of literary decolonization that acts to shed light on Indigenous methodologies, the importance of valuing subjectivity within storytelling, and elements of history that may have been obscured by supposedly
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Before the recent resurgence of indigenous politics, histories of assimilation, oppression, and genocide, permitted colonizers to dictate and shape narratives of indigenous peoples. Incidentally, because of the sheer accessibility of storytelling, it has acted as an important tool for oppressed individuals to voice their discontent in a manner that might not be possible under stricter and more authoritative structures. However, historical structures of colonialism have also utilized indigenous peoples as a scapegoat for their own storytelling ventures, and have constructed their image in accordance with imperial interests. King focuses on this throughout the narrative; “for those of us who are Indians, [the] disjunction between reality and imagination is akin to life and death. For to be seen as “real”, for people to ‘imagine’ us as Indians, we must be ‘authentic’” (76). As mentioned, because of these false representations, a large discrepancy has been created between popular perceptions of ‘authentic’ indigenous peoples, and how they view themselves. King says that he is constantly reminded “of how hard it is to break free from the parochial and paradoxical considerations of identity and authenticity” (44); it is this consequent immobility of identity that is indicative of the aforementioned colonial pursuits to position the indigenous person as inferior, elevating the status of the colonizer. Due to how ingrained these systems of belief are, indigenous peoples are forced to “argue against the rather lopsided and ethnocentric view of Indians that novelists and historians had created” (102). During critical historical periods when new territories were being discovered and settled, systems of oppression were being created in which indigenous people acted as a platform upon which Europeans could assert
Before the recent resurgence of indigenous politics, histories of assimilation, oppression, and genocide, permitted colonizers to dictate and shape narratives of indigenous peoples. Incidentally, because of the sheer accessibility of storytelling, it has acted as an important tool for oppressed individuals to voice their discontent in a manner that might not be possible under stricter and more authoritative structures. However, historical structures of colonialism have also utilized indigenous peoples as a scapegoat for their own storytelling ventures, and have constructed their image in accordance with imperial interests. King focuses on this throughout the narrative; “for those of us who are Indians, [the] disjunction between reality and imagination is akin to life and death. For to be seen as “real”, for people to ‘imagine’ us as Indians, we must be ‘authentic’” (76). As mentioned, because of these false representations, a large discrepancy has been created between popular perceptions of ‘authentic’ indigenous peoples, and how they view themselves. King says that he is constantly reminded “of how hard it is to break free from the parochial and paradoxical considerations of identity and authenticity” (44); it is this consequent immobility of identity that is indicative of the aforementioned colonial pursuits to position the indigenous person as inferior, elevating the status of the colonizer. Due to how ingrained these systems of belief are, indigenous peoples are forced to “argue against the rather lopsided and ethnocentric view of Indians that novelists and historians had created” (102). During critical historical periods when new territories were being discovered and settled, systems of oppression were being created in which indigenous people acted as a platform upon which Europeans could assert