The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative

The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative is a 2003 nonfiction book written by American Canadian novelist Thomas King. King describes the roles storytelling plays in the Native American tradition, his own life, and the world in general. He argues that the stories we all tell really are all that we are as people, and that Native American storytelling has too often been seen as primitive because of the power dynamic between whites and indigenous people.

With the exception of the Afterwords, each chapter begins and ends the same way. The first paragraphs discuss a story about the origins of the universe and the planet Earth resting on the back of a giant turtle who is in turn atop another turtle who is in turn atop another turtle and so on. In each chapter he recounts some slight variation in telling the story to a different audience, but the story always ends the same, with King noting that “it’s turtles all the way down” (2). Similarly, each chapter, including the Afterwords, ends with King repeating the same lines about the reader making what they will of the story King just told. This cyclical and repetitive structure occurs in other small ways throughout the book, with King suggesting that all stories are necessarily repetitive.

In each chapter King tells stories about his own life while also quoting historical and literary sources to provide a rich understanding of how Native Americans have been imagined by white people and what impact such perceptions have had on his and other Indians’ identities.

In Chapter 1 King discusses his attempts to find the father who abandoned him and his brother when they were children. He intermixes this story with two different creation myths—one from a Native American tradition and one from the Bible. Though he admits it is a clichéd question, he ponders what the world would look like if people believed in the Native American creation myth instead of the Judeo-Christian one. He ultimately argues that stories control us.

In Chapter 2 King describes his project to photograph Native American artists as they are. He discusses the historical project of Edward Sheriff Curtis, a photographer who dressed Indians to look more like the fictional Native Americans he imagined existed based on popular legend and books such as those by James Fenimore Cooper. Through a discussion of Curtis, Cooper, and the film actor and comedian Will Rogers, King argues that Native American identity is caught between the reality few recognize and the fiction everyone knows.

In Chapter 3 King discusses the idea that Indian storytellers are imagined to be entertainers only and not scholars. He then recounts historical interactions between whites and Native Americans, and points out the juxtaposition that whites have both vilified and celebrated Indians but that neither conceptualization is rooted in reality. King suggests that being mere entertainment is how Native Americans have survived.

In Chapter 4 King discusses his move to Canada from the United States and the ways that white culture has separated written stories from oral stories. He notes that most writers who have written about Native American life have looked to the imagined past, but that Native American writers typically write of the present and future. He concludes the chapter by arguing that what stories one believes and repeats are the ones that determine survival.

In Chapter 5 King discusses the Indian story of the coyote and the duck as a metaphor for the relationship between Native Americans and the governments of Canada and the United States. He discusses the laws that have been made to define who or what an Indian is and what rights Native Americans have, a process that has pitted Indians against each other. King discusses racism and the idea that whites will always dislike Native Americans simply because they have something that whites want, whether it be land, traditions, benefits, or something else entirely.

Finally, in the Afterwords, King discusses the difference between public and private stories by recounting the story of some friends who have a child with developmental disorders. King laments that it is easier for him to tell the story about his failures to help them than it was to actually help them in real life. He concludes that stories are who we are, but they do not give us the strength needed to improve our world.