Where Is the Voice Coming From? by Rudy Wiebe
"Where Is the Voice Coming From?" by Rudy Wiebe explores the complex interplay between historical truth and narrative interpretation through the lens of the 1897 events surrounding a young Cree man, Jean-Baptiste, known as Almighty Voice. The story delves into the challenges of objectivity faced by an author attempting to convey the realities of a past fraught with conflicting accounts. Almighty Voice, after being arrested for stealing a cow, escapes and subsequently becomes a fugitive after killing a police officer during his evasion. The narrative culminates in a dramatic standoff involving Almighty Voice and his companions against law enforcement, leading to a poignant death chant that resonates with themes of struggle and identity.
Wiebe's story raises questions about the nature of truth in storytelling, particularly when faced with diverse perspectives and incomplete records. The narrator grapples with understanding the essence of Almighty Voice as he confronts contradictory historical descriptions that complicate his interpretation. This exploration of voice—both literal and metaphorical—invites readers to reflect on the challenges of capturing lived experiences, especially from marginalized communities. Ultimately, the narrative challenges the reader to consider who truly speaks in history and what meanings are derived from those voices.
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Where Is the Voice Coming From? by Rudy Wiebe
First published: 1971
Type of plot: Historical, metafiction
Time of work: The 1890's
Locale: Prince Albert District, Saskatchewan Territory
Principal Characters:
The narrator , the story makerAlmighty Voice (Jean-Baptiste) , a young Cree Indian
The Story
"Where Is the Voice Coming From?" raises the question of how an author can make a story tell the truth when basing his or her work on so-called facts that do not agree. The story is written in the narrator's voice, which may well be taken as the author's own voice, as he ponders the various historical traces of an event that occurred more than one hundred years ago.
A young Cree Indian, Jean-Baptiste, best known as Almighty Voice, is arrested for stealing and killing a stray cow owned by the U.S. government. He is held in the police guardroom at Duck Lake, Saskatchewan Territory, in the charge of Constable R. C. Dickson. Somehow he manages to escape. Dickson is later cited for negligence and punished.
While being pursued, Almighty Voice shoots and kills Sergeant Colin Campbell near Prince Albert, after warning him three times not to advance. Almighty Voice becomes a much-wanted fugitive. Although a reward of five hundred dollars is offered for his capture, he succeeds in eluding his pursuers for more than eighteen months.
The escape ends in a standoff on May 27, 1897. On a poplar bluff near the Minnechinas Hills in the Prince Albert District, Almighty Voice and two friends face an armed force of more than one hundred police officers, civilians, and Prince Albert volunteers. With two Winchester rifles between them, the three fugitives manage to kill two police officers and one civilian volunteer, while, incredibly, holding the opposition at bay for three days and two nights. Then a voice rises from the bluff: "We have fought well. You have died like braves. I have worked hard and am hungry. Give me food." A crow falls out of the sky onto the bluff.
A short while later, an unforgettable voice rises over the exploding smoke and thunder of guns, "high and strong in its unending wordless cry." It is the death chant of the Almighty Voice, memorable in its beauty and in its "incomprehensible happiness."
It is a "wordless cry," explains the narrator, for he lacks a reliable interpreter who understands Cree. However, it is an understanding of Almighty Voice that the narrator is after and that eludes him here, for not all the records the narrator so assiduously investigates tell the same story. In the end, the very elements of the story run the story maker aground and shift him from his carefully controlled role as spectator of what has happened to a participant in the story. The element that impels this change is a picture of Almighty Voice himself. Two official descriptions accompany that picture. Besides some minor contradictions, one description accords his face a "feminine appearance." The narrator is stunned, for the face in the picture strikes him as devastatingly masculine, "a face like an axe" with a look in the eyes "that cannot be endured." It is this face, so different from the official description, that irresistibly draws the narrator into the drama of the event whose truth he tried to render impersonally. Now the question is, what really did happen here? Who was the real Almighty Voice? Where did his voice come from, and what did he really say?