In the story “what is it about us that you don’t like”, Thomas King tells a story about a coyote and ducks and how the coyote really likes the ducks feathers that he is willing to trick them into giving him most of their feathers but ends up not taking care of them and ends up having to throw them away because they got ugly but in this story the coyote is a lot like the government in how the coyote tricked the ducks into giving him half of their feathers and those feathers belong to the ducks and are apart of them and how the government took away things that belonged to the Indians, and how the government promised that things would get better and they ended up taking away more things that belonged to the Indians and usually got worse.
How the coyote tricked the ducks into giving them feathers is like how the government took children away from their families to go far away for school, but the government didn’t exactly trick them into giving up the kids the families didn’t really have a choice. In this story the children are like the feathers, how the coyote didn’t properly take care of the feathers and how the teachers and staff didn’t really take good care of the kids in not giving them the proper care they need, some got really sick and didn’t survive because they didn’t get the food they need, some didn’t return home and most didn’t return home the same in how they forgot their culture. That’s like the coyote returning the feathers back to the ducks after they’re all worn out, just completely different from how they were before.
Also that is like how they took land, culture and other stuff away from the Indians and promised them things would get better like how the coyote promised that he would help save the ducks but he was actually lying to the ducks and the ducks ended up with not much of their own feathers and how the Indians ended up not having much of their own stuff as well. The ducks were kind of forced into giving up their feathers because they were told the humans could of went after them is how the Indians were forced to pretty much give up everything, stuff were banned like their ceremonies most of their culture, hunting, not able to do anything on their own land and just stuff they’re used to doing everyday just all of a sudden prohibited.
What is also something like that is in our culture how the Chief hosts feasts and house helps put it up and same with the tribe. If it was just the Chief things wouldn’t probably go exactly how it is suppose to, but if the Chief wasn’t there it would be the same as if the rest of the tribe wasn’t there, things could be out of place and a bit slow and everything everywhere like how the coyote didn’t take care of the feathers, if he had help from someone he could of taken care of the feathers and they would be still the same but instead it was just him and the feathers ended up not being the same. It shows that even though it can be a Chief or the Nation they need support from the rest of their tribe to make sure everything turns out okay.