The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative

Reading Check and Short Answer Questions on key plot points are designed for guided reading assignments, in-class review, formative assessment, quizzes, and more.

Chapter 1

Reading Check

1. What does King say the world floats on?

2. What does King say is “all we are”?

3. What happens in the beginning of the Indigenous creation story that King tells?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. How does the storyteller answer the girl’s question about how many turtles there are?

2. Why was King’s mother the target of discrimination at work?

3. What different kinds of worlds does King say the Christian and Indigenous creation stories describe?

Paired Resource

“Earth on Turtle’s Back” and “The World on the Turtle's Back" Oral Storytelling Clip

• Two video versions of the creation story King tells in the beginning of his book, one 6 minutes and the other 4 minutes
• This content connects to the text’s theme of The Fluid Nature of Stories and Truth.
• King says that the small changes that happen when a story is repeated can tell the audience important things about the storyteller and the audience. What differences are there in these two versions of the same story? What might these differences tell us about the two storytellers? What does your own reaction to the differences tell you about yourself as an audience?

“Your Memory is like the Telephone Game” by Marla Paul

• Brief article on research conducted at Northwestern University explaining how recalling memories distorts them
• This content connects to the text’s theme of The Fluid Nature of Stories and Truth.
• How does this information about memory and neurology support King’s point about stories changing and not changing at the same time? How does this information support the idea that even memory is narrative? What implications does this have for King’s assertion that story is “all we are”?

Chapter 2

Reading Check

1. Whom did King begin to photograph in 1994?

2. How did photographers manipulate the image of Native people in the early 20th century?

3. What 1930s star does King use as an example of a Native person who did not fit the public image of what an Indian should look like?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. Who was Edward Sheriff Curtis?

2. How did American Romantics change the public perception of Native peoples?

3. What irony does King see in the relationship of stereotypical photographic images of Indians to the existence of living Native people?

Paired Resource

“These Candid Photos Tell the True Story of Young Native Americans” by Joanna Cresswell

• Article and slideshow about Maria Sturm’s photographs of Lumbee tribal subjects
• This content connects to the text’s theme of The Struggle Between Image and Reality.
• How does Sturm’s work reflect King’s discussion of photography, stereotypes, and Native identity? What did Sturm learn in the process of doing this work? How do you think King would respond to the final photograph, of Scottie? How does Sturm explain this image? How does this photograph relate to King’s earlier discussion of dichotomies?

Chapter 3

Reading Check

1. Where did the anthropologists take the man they called “Ishi”?

2. What does King say separated the Native and non-Native speakers at the Northern California college?

3. Whom does King say created negative stories about Native peoples in order to acquire their land?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. What is the “National Indian”?

2. What does the “National Indian” have to do with the Boston Tea Party?

3. What dichotomy does the reviewer of King’s radio show establish when he critiques King as a “bundle of contradictions”?

Paired Resource

“How to Write the Great American Indian Novel” by Sherman Alexie

• Poem by Spokane/Coeur d’Alene tribal member Sherman Alexie about the struggle with “authenticity” that Native authors face and the stereotypes held by non-Native authors and audiences
• This content connects to the text’s themes of The Power of Stories and The Struggle Between Image and Reality.
• What point is Alexie making about being a Native author? What point is he making about non-Indigenous authors’ and audiences’ perceptions of Native peoples? How do the final lines of the poem speak to the same point that King is making when he talks about the origins of the “National Indian” figure? Based on King’s commentary in this chapter, how would you guess he might react to this Alexie poem?

What is a Simulacrum? (Postmodern Philosophy)

• 8-minute video by Carneades.org explaining Baudrillard’s ideas of simulacra and hyperreality
• This content connects to the text’s themes of The Power of Stories, The Struggle Between Image and Reality, and The Fluid Nature of Stories and Truth.
• How are King’s ideas about photographs, in the previous chapter, and about the “National Indian,” in this chapter, similar to Baudrillard’s ideas of simulacra and hyperreality? How does Alexie’s poem “How to Write the Great American Indian Novel” reflect Baudrillard’s ideas? In what sense are all stories—including the ones authors such as King and Alexie tell—a part of the process of simulation? What evidence tells you whether King recognizes this point?

Chapter 4

Reading Check

1. What Native author does King share a memory of at the beginning of Chapter 4?

2. What N. Scott Momaday novel does King say began the modern era of Native literature?

3. What misinformation do the other basketball players believe about King in Chapter 4?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. What two mistaken ideas about oral versus written stories does King dispute in Chapter 4?

2. What dichotomy does King think James Fenimore Cooper created between white and Native thought?

3. What claim does King make throughout Chapter 4 about stories and his friend’s suicide?

Paired Resource

“Totem” by Thomas King

• Short story by Thomas King in which a museum tries to deal with a totem pole that has unexpectedly appeared
• This content connects to the text’s themes of The Power of Stories, The Struggle Between Image and Reality, and The Fluid Nature of Stories and Truth.
• What might the totem pole symbolize? How does King’s short story reflect his assertions about Native literature? Are there areas where the themes of “Totem” overlap with the themes of The Truth About Stories?

Chapter 5

Reading Check

1. What does the Coyote want from the Ducks in the story King tells in Chapter 5?

2. What 1887 Act divided reservations in the United States into individual parcels of land?

3. What job did King briefly hold in New Zealand?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. In the story about the Ducks and the Coyote, what lesson does Coyote teach the Ducks about humans?

2. What metaphorical meaning does King assign to the story about Coyote and the Ducks?

3. According to King, what is the main purpose of laws like Canada’s 1876 Indian Act?

Paired Resource

“So What Exactly Is 'Blood Quantum'?” by Kat Chow

• NPR article discussing the difficulty tribal peoples have in determining criteria for membership
• What are the complexities of legally determining “Indian” identity? Which of King’s ideas does this article support or contradict? How is King’s focus slightly different from the focus of this article? Why is this distinction important?

How a non-Indigenous man became a member of the Fort William First Nation

• CBC article profiling a non-Indigenous man who became a non-status member of a Canadian tribe
• This is the article referenced at the end of Kat Chow’s article. How does this article relate to Chow’s article? How does Damien Lee’s acceptance into the Fort Williams First Nation argue for a “cultural” rather than “genetic” definition of Indian identity? What do you imagine King would say about this development?

Afterwords

Reading Check

1. What recurring element of each chapter is missing from the beginning of the final section (“Afterwords: Private Stories”)?

2. From what condition does King’s friend’s child, Sam, suffer?

Short Answer

Answer each question in at least 1 complete sentence. Incorporate details from the text to support your response.

1. What does King say about the correspondence between public and private stories and whether those stories are written down?

2. What conclusion does King come to about himself now that he knows the outcome of John and his family’s story?

Recommended Next Reads

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• Ojibwe author Louise Erdrich’s novel in which two narrators recount the history of their tribe and family over a twelve-year period
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• Tracks on SuperSummary

I Hear the Train by Louis Owens

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• Ceremony on SuperSummary