One of the key themes in Thomas King's Medicine River is the deconstruction of a dichotomy between the dominant aesthetic modes of non-Native versus Aboriginal cultures. The non-Native narrative aesthetic is represented by photography and embodied in the novel’s protagonist, Will Horse Capture. The contrasting Aboriginal narrative aesthetic of talk is embodied in the figure of Harlen Bigbear. King emulates the speech rhythms of Aboriginal talk and oral storytelling to both illustrate and call into question these aesthetic modes. The deconstruction of paradigms is an ever-present subtext of Medicine Hat and other works by King, and, today is central to contemporary Aboriginal studies.
