Aboriginal Canada Revisited

HUMOROUS RESTORIFICATIONS: REWRITING HISTORY WITH HEALING LAUGHTER

Eva Gruber HUMOROUS RESTORIFICATIONS: REWRITING HISTORY WITH HEALING LAUGHTER There are only truths in the plural, and never one Truth; and there is rarely falseness per se,just others' truths. —Linda Hutcheon, "Histenographic Metafiction," 76 "There are no truths, Coyote/' I says. "Only stories." —Thomas King, Green Grass, RunningWater, 393 INTRODUCTION In Truth and Bright Water, a novel by Cherokee/Greek/German author Thomas King, trickster artist Monroe Swimmer makes a living by restoring old paintings: "One day,the Smithsonian called me in to handle aparticularly difficult painting. It was a painting of a lake at dawn, and everything was fine except that the paint along the shore had begun to fade, and images that weren't in the original painting were beginning to bleed through ... Sol 220 HUMOROUS RESTORIFICATIONS worked on the painting until it looked asgood asnew.... But something went wrong." "You messed up?" "The new paint wouldn't hold. Almost as soon as I finished, the images began to bleed through again.... Youknow what they were?" says Monroe. "What?" "Indians/' saysMonroe. "There was an Indian village on the lake, slowly coming up through the layers of paint. Clear as day."(King i999a,130) Monroe decides to put "the Indians back into the painting" (133) and starts to restore other paintings in like manner, eventually getting himself fired: "I don't think they wanted their Indians restored.... I think they liked their Indians where they couldn't see them" (247). King's metaphorical use of painting in Truth and Bright Water in many ways mimics the politics of Western historiography: mainstream North America has indeed tended to blot out or gloss over important aspects of its history has put its "Indians" where it does not seethem—at least not inwaysthat might discolour itsbright self-conceptualization. Yet, especially since the 19905, Canada's Indigenous "colours" have started to "bleed through," as increasing numbers of Native writers "paint" Native people back into the picture. This article explores one aspect of this development in particular, namely contemporary Nativewriters' use ofhumour in engagingwith Euro-Canadian history and historiography.Thathumour should be ameansbywhich Canada's Native population responds to a past that, in many respects is nothing short of tragic, still comes as a surprise to many readers, although the phenomenon has started to attract wider attention and recognition in recent years.1 Are genocide, relocation, residential schools, and forced conversion laughing matters? Hardly. Yetundoubtedly humour is a frequent response to past and 221 EVA GRUBER present oppression and discrimination.As the following discussionwill show, this is partly because of humour's ability to retain an essential optimism and its capacity to build a bridge of understanding between Canada's Native and Euro-Canadian population. CANADIAN HISTORY, HISTORIOGRAPHY, AND NATIVE HUMOUR Itiswidelyacknowledgedthat the colonizers,not thevictims,writethehistory. In situations ofpower imbalance, of conquest and the ensuing domination of a self-appointed centre over a marginalized "other/ historiography becomes an instrument of "sense-making/ an "apologetic enterprise" (Isernhagen 2001,169). For the Western nation states that have divided North America between them, it offers arevisionist version ofthe past that both substantiates current dominance and allows for a positive identification with the country's historical development and the national consciousnessbuilt on this collective memory. What implications does this have for Canada's Native people? Most obviously, knowing and venerating one's history are important factors in the cultural identity formation of a group. YetCanada has long denied its Native population a dignified history of its own. While Euro-Canadians are taught to take pride in their history,2 especially regarding the period of exploration and expansion with its fearless adventurers and pioneers, the Indigenous population in most historical accounts is reduced to an obstacle in the way of this development, a hindrance to the spread of civilization over yet another continent. The devastating consequences on Native cultural identity need not be detailed; yet the situation is more complex than that. As Scott Vickers observes, "Indian history since 1492 has been 'written' ... by white authority, [and] ... the author of history also assumes the power of the author of identity and the arbiter of authenticity" (Vickers 1998, 9). In other words, not only does Western historiographic discourse deprive Native people of a self-determinedhistorical identity (often by denying their presence altogether), but, in a hierarchical approach, it also imposesWestern academic standards ofwhat counts as history on Indigenous ways of relating the past, distinguishing between "legitimate...