Thomas King's A Short History Of Indians In Canada

Alienating and Suppressing the Wild
Thomas King’s A Short History of Indians in Canada introduces the effects of colonialism and bias established on indigenous peoples’ reputation through satire. King’s play on major metaphors and animal depiction of indigenous people paints an image of an abhorrent and gruesome history. Through moments of humour, King makes references to racial profiling, stereotypes and mistreatment as historically true. Thomas King utilizes industrialization versus the natural world to incorporate the effects of colonialism and how representing indigenous people as birds made them the spectacle of the civilized world. The colonizer dominance and power imbalance is evident and demonstrated often in the short story through

The indigenous people are literally crashing into the buildings produced by the colonizing culture, “Look out! Bob shouts. There are Indians flying into the skyscrapers and falling on the sidewalk.” (King 63) and it adequately represents the lack of adaptability of the Native Canadians. Thomas King taps again into the effects of colonialism and notions the indigenous people as uneducated and an untamed species. Likewise, the bird metaphor and Native Canadians symbolize nature whereas the buildings and concrete stand in the way of nature which suggests the destruction of the Native way of life due to the western society and its industrialized world. To further develop the bird metaphor, Thomas King uses “How can you tell? By the feathers, says Bill. We got a book.” (King 63) to make the demise of the Native Canadians deemed as entertainment to the colonizing community. The death of the indigenous people is partaken as a bird watching activity. It is presumed by the settler population that the only classifying component of the different tribes and clans of the Native culture are feathers. Once again, Thomas King pokes at