Thomas King

Thomas King (born April 24, 1943) is an American-born Canadian writer and broadcast presenter who most often writes about First Nations. Though he previously said that he was of partial Cherokee descent, King accepted findings by genealogists in 2025 that he has no Indigenous ancestry.

Early life and education

Thomas Hunt King was born in Roseville, California, on April 24, 1943. He is of Greek and German descent. According to King, until 2025 he believed he had Indigenous ancestry because he had been told by his mother that his estranged father was part-Cherokee. In 2025, genealogical research into King's family history by the Tribal Alliance Against Frauds (TAAF) determined that King has no Cherokee or other Indigenous ancestry. King himself also pursued investigations into his ancestry, the results of which confirmed the TAAF's findings.

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.

As a child, King attended grammar school in Roseville, California, and both private Catholic and public high schools. After failing out of Sacramento State University, he joined the US Navy briefly before receiving a medical discharge for a knee injury.

King eventually completed bachelor's and master's degrees from Chico State University in California. He moved to Utah, where he worked as a counselor for Native American students before completing a PhD program in English at the University of Utah. His 1971 MA thesis was on film studies. His 1986 PhD dissertation was on Native American studies, one of the earliest works to explore the oral storytelling tradition as literature.

Teaching

After moving to Canada in 1980, King taught Native studies at the University of Lethbridge (Alberta) in the early 1980s. He also served as a faculty member of the University of Minnesota's American Indian studies department. As of 2020, King was listed as Professor (retired) and Professor Emeritus in the School of English and Theatre Studies at the University of Guelph (Ontario).

Activism

King has criticized policies and programs of both the United States and Canadian governments in many interviews and books. He is worried about Aboriginal prospects and rights in North America. He says that he fears that Aboriginal culture, and specifically Aboriginal land, will continue to be taken away from Aboriginal peoples until there is nothing left for them at all. In his 2013 book The Inconvenient Indian, King says, "The issue has always been land. It will always be land, until there isn't a square foot of land left in North America that is controlled by Native people."

King also discusses policies regarding Aboriginal status. He noted that legislatures in the 1800s in the United States and Canada withdrew Aboriginal status from persons who graduated from university or joined the army. King has also worked to identify North American laws that make it complicated to claim status in the first place, for example, the US Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990 or Canada's 1985 Bill C-31. Bill C-31 amended the Indian Act in 1985 to allow Aboriginal women and their children to reclaim status, which the Act had previously withdrawn if the woman married a non-status man. King claims that the amended act, though progressive for women who had lost their status, threatens the status of future generations because of its limitations.

Writings

King has been writing novels, children's books, and collections of stories since the 1980s. His notable works include A Coyote Columbus Story (1992) and Green Grass, Running Water (1993) – both of which were nominated for a Governor General's Award (the former for children's literature, and the latter for fiction – and The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America (2012), which won the 2014 RBC Taylor Prize. King's novel, Indians on Vacation (2020), won the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour in 2021.

King was chosen to deliver the 2003 Massey Lectures, entitled The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative. King was the first Massey lecturer of self-identifying aboriginal descent. King explored the Native experience in oral stories, literature, history, religion and politics, popular culture and social protest in order to make sense of North America's relationship with its aboriginal peoples.

King's writing style incorporates oral storytelling structures with traditional Western narrative. He writes in a conversational tone; for example, in Green Grass, Running Water, the narrator argues with some of the characters. In The Truth About Stories, King addresses the reader as if in a conversation with responses. King uses a variety of anecdotes and humorous narratives while maintaining a serious message in a way that has been compared to the style of trickster legends in Native American culture. Within this story, King also integrates the recently popularized idea of turtles all the way down in an anecdote introducing this narrative, calling into the relevancy of this ideology in American and Native American history.

Politics

In April 2007 King announced that he would seek the New Democratic Party (NDP) nomination for federal electoral district of Guelph. On March 30, 2007, he was named the NDP candidate. NDP leader Jack Layton was present at the nomination meeting. A by-election was called in the riding due to the resignation of incumbent Liberal Member of Parliament Brenda Chamberlain, effective April 7, 2008. Scheduled for September 8, 2008, the by-election was cancelled with the calling of the October 14, 2008, federal general election. King finished fourth behind Liberal candidate Frank Valeriote, Conservative candidate Gloria Kovach, and Green candidate Mike Nagy.