Ideas Podcast: Revisiting Thomas King Massey's Lectures

Thomas King, who was born in Sacramento, California, on April 24, 1943, self-identifies as being of Cherokee, German, and Greek descent. King is not enrolled in any of the three federally recognized Cherokee Nations, nor is recognized by any Cherokee family, kin, or clan. King says his father left the family when the boys were very young, and that they were raised almost entirely by their mother. In his series of Massey Lectures, eventually published as a book The Truth About Stories (2003), King tells that after their father's death, he and his brother learned that their father had two other families, neither of whom knew about the third.

Listen to all five of the lectures here:

1. Revisiting Thomas King’s Massey Lectures, Part One
   IDEAS revisits one of the best Massey Lectures, delivered by award-winning author Thomas King. He draws listeners in with his witty and colourful insights into the stories we tell each other. But as an Indigenous man, he knows their sinister capabilities, too.

2. Revisiting Thomas King’s Massey Lectures, Part Two
   In his second lecture, award-winning author Thomas King continues to look at the breadth and depth of Native experience and imagination. He focuses on Indigenous identity and he grounds it in tales of his youth in California, and from his own performative experiments with appearance.

3. Revisiting Thomas King’s Massey Lectures, Part Three
   Storytelling in all its forms is the focus of Thomas King’s 2003 Massey Lectures which IDEAS is revisiting this week. In his third talk, King looks at the ways Indigenous people have been seen and characterized by outsiders. Nations of real people, reduced at times to one archetype by the North American and European imagination.

4. Revisiting Thomas King’s Massey Lectures, Part Four
   In his fourth lecture, author Thomas King turns to the stories that Native people tell about themselves, both orally, and in print, and how these stories can be used to imagine a Native future.

5. Revisiting Thomas King’s Massey Lectures, Part Five

   For his fifth Massey Lecture, writer Thomas King turns to what he considers a major threat to the existence of Indigenous people. He analyzes how the Canadian and American governments have legislated Indigenous people to give up what is theirs, from treaty land and its resources, to Indigenous identity itself.