Month: February 2020

This week  I chose question #2 to respond to. Here it is framed for your reference:

“For this blog assignment, I would like you to research and summarize one of the state or governing activities, such as The Royal Proclamation 1763, the Indian Act 1876, Immigration Act 1910, or the Multiculturalism Act 1989 – you choose the legislation or policy or commission you find most interesting. Write a blog about your findings and in your conclusion comment on whether or not your findings support Coleman’s argument about the project of white civility.”

I am choosing the Immigration act of 1910. I honestly couldn’t help myself with choosing this act to comment on. I am first generation Canadian as I have expressed before, my parents immigrated to Canada from Ghana. As a minority in Canada, as a black woman in Canada I must convince myself that I am safe in order to be free and have peace of mind. The truth is, that I am not. In Julius Caesar, Shakespeare begins his play at the Lupercalia  festival. Twins Romulus and Remus were suckled and saved by the she-wolf Lupa.  Romulus ends up killing his brother Remus in order to be the sole ruler of Rome and thus the cycle for the fight of tyrannical rule in the western world begins (Browne). How a nation begins, seems to determine how it will continue to be. Around 100 years ago the Immigration act of 1910 would have likely prohibited my parents from coming to Canada, as they would be deemed “unsuited to the climate requirements of Canada”(1800’s-1950’s).

So what exactly was the benevolent Immigration act of 1910.  In 1910 William Scott, the superintendent of Immigration yearned to sift “the wheat from the chaff” (Lyster). What the sifting entailed was giving the Canadian cabinet  the power to deny prohibited classes of individuals like, idiots, the diseased, the dumb, the blind or physically defective, felons, prostitutes, professional beggars and “Asiatic immigrants” (1800’s-1950’s).

On the surface, the Immigration act of 1910 denied people to ensure that they could secure employment in Canada and contribute to Canadian society (Van Dyk),  but what it turned out to be  was  a law that kept out non-whites. The Canadian government offered land grants to hey offered land British, Scandinavian, Icelandic, Doukhobor, Mennonite, and Ukrainian farmers (1800’s-1950’s). These laws were written by white people for white people and it was not until the 1960’s that changes to the immigration policies finally opened the borders to non-European immigrants (1960’s onwards).

I bet you are expecting me to conclude with a decisive affirmation, that my findings support Coleman’s argument about white civility.  White civility according to Coleman is the literary pursuit to create and establish a  form of Canadian whiteness based off of the British model of civility. What I found was much more ambiguous than my interpretation of my research. You see, although white people can be thief’s, idiots, felons and prostitutes, the real purpose of the Immigration act was to keep out non-whites. Non-whites were not able to uphold the ideals of  British white civility and required assimilation (1800’s-1950’s). The specific form of whiteness that formed in Canada was heavily influenced by Britishness and this was not explicit in my findings on the Immigration act of 1910.  I saw it for myself.

Till next time,

Sarah Afful

Works Cited

Browne, Alex. “Origins of Rome :The Myth of Romulus and Remus.” Web. 26 April 2018. www.historyhit.com/origins-of-rome-the-myth-of-romulus-and-remus/. Accessed 28 February 2018.

CanLit Guides. “Reading and Writing in Canada, A Classroom Guide to Nationalism.” Canadian Literature. Web. 4 April 2013.

Lyster, Caroline. “Canada Enacts ‘Immigration Act 1910.”  Web. 20 December 2014. www.eugenicsarchive.ca/discover/timeline/5495c2414dcf0b0000000001. Accessed 28 February 2020.

Van Dyk, Lyndsey. “Canadian Immigration Acts and Legislation.” Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21. Web. 2020. www.pier21.ca/research/immigration-history/canadian-immigration-acts-and-legislation. Accessed 28 February 2020.

Erika Paterson asked “In the last lesson I ask some of you, “what is your first response to Robinson’s story about the white and black twins in context with our course theme of investigating intersections where story and literature meet.” I asked, what do you make of this “stolen piece of paper”? Now that we have contextualized that story with some historical narratives and explored ideas about questions of authenticity and the necessity to “get the story right” – how have your insights into that story changed?”

My first response to Harry Robinson’s story about the white and black twins and the stealing of the paper became more clear to me after reading fellow student Gaby Rienhart’s post 2:4 Interpretation of the Black and White Twins. Gaby wrote:

“Although White people originally stole from Indigenous people and harmed them, they were given a chance to make things right by sharing again. However, when the White Twin’s ancestors came back to the Americas, instead of sharing the contents of the document which both parties had a right to, they kept it for themselves. This could represent a refusal to do the right thing and the unfair taking of something that was equally a birthright of Indigenous people. The White Twin’s stealing of the document and the White ancestors’ refusal to share something that equally belonged to Indigenous people represents unnecessary greed and selfishness.” (emphasis added).

In addition to the interpretation of the white ancestors refusal to do the right thing, which would have been “sharing something that equally belonged to the ancestors” (Rienhart) of the black twin, I saw the stealing of the paper as the theft of literacy itself. The white twin stole literal literacy from the black twin when he took the paper. I couldn’t help but comment on Gaby’s post and I wrote:

“I agree that the stealing of the paper by the white twin represents unnecessary greed and selfishness. I also see the paper as representing another type of language, the written language that also belongs to everyone.  [Today] [t]he English language morphs and is constantly in flux and contradiction because it now belongs to anyone who who speaks it. I see the stealing of the paper as an attempt to own language, but a piece of paper can easily be multiplied, dyed and re-written upon right?”

I was further drawn in to the story of the stolen paper after reading the article “Orality about Literacy: The Black and White of Salish History”, by Thor Carlson. Carlson claims that “literacy pre-dat[es] colonization as the spirit world wanted the Indigenous peoples to be literate (43).  The white twin may have stolen literacy form the black twin and claimed it as his own. This claim sits well with me and to go even deeper, we may ask ourselves what is literacy? If literacy is  in part the printed word, than literacy was/is with the Salish people who’s prophets printed word revealed the coming of the white ancestors (Carlson 54). The Enlightenment story is not the only story and is not to be taken for the only truth.  Now to answer Erika’s question as to how my insights into the story of the stolen paper have changed with our contextual readings,  I’d say that once again I am ready to continue the process of dismantling the “facts” that I have been fed through the western education system. I can’t help but desire to discard the facts and start again. I can’t help but to look at what I have been told about being African by the “fact tellers” and start again, but mostly what I see is that when we steal from our twin their must be  justice for our twin.

 

Works Cited

“A Brief History of Literacy”. University of Arlington Texas Online. 9 September 2015. www.academicpartnerships.uta.edu/articles/education/brief-history-of-literacy.aspx. Accessed 19 February 2020.

Carlson, Keith Thor. Orality about Literacy: The black and White of Salish History. Ed. Carlson, Kristina Fagna, & Natalia Khamemko-Frieson. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2011.

“Cartoon Thief Clipart Image”. Clker.com.  31 December 2017. www.clker.com/clipart-508384.html. Accessed 19 February 2020.

Newsday.  BBC News World Service. 25 October 2109. www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07s0cgd. Accessed 19 February 2020.

Reinhart, Gaby. “2:4 Interpretation of the Black and White Twins.” Explorer Gaby’s Blog. 7 February 2020. www.blogs.ubc.ca/gabyliteratureexplorer/2020/02/10/24-interpretation-of-the-black-and-white-twins/?fbclid=IwAR34BkDTtwLolhwCPA2LO0tN7pwnVgB72Oy92CCWSTvc6Dfeqs4gKthsyR4. Accessed  19 February 2020.

Robinson, Harry. Living by Stories: a Journey of Landscape and Memory. Compiled and edited by Wendy Wickwire. Vancouver: Talon Books2005.

“A Brief History of Literacy”. University of Arlington Texas Online. 9 September 2015. www.academicpartnerships.uta.edu/articles/education/brief-history-of-literacy.aspx. Accessed 19 February 2020.

Let me start by telling you a story. A long time ago a white woman named Amuwata fell from the sky in my fathers village in Ghana. As the people gathered around her, they thought she must have been sent from the god’s, as she did fall from the sky. They allowed her into their village and gave her sustenance. Over time Amuwata began making love to the men and bearing children. Her bright skin was passed on through the generations and that is why on my fathers side we have lighter skin.

Good story right? It explains the Dutch and British colonization in a way that takes fact and fantasy and turns it into a story. Amuwata could have been in a plane crash, could have simply been a visitor, or could have been from a ship.  Regardless of the pesky details, I propose to you reader, to think of  which “reality” is more interesting to read and which “reality” is more believable; the woman falling from the sky or the colonizer.

Thomas King creates creates dichotomies with his two creation stories in The Truth About Stories, “one about how Charm falls from the sky pregnant with twins and creates the world out of a bit of mud with the help of all the water animals, and another about God creating heaven and earth with his words, and then Adam and Eve and the Garden” (Erikah Patterson 2:2). The biblical story is emphasized in Kings book and “The Earth Diver” story is made to be a fun story with possibly less import. We are pushed to believe the creation story that aligns with the colonizers personality. It is almost as if we are not given a choice as to what to believe, but driven by the Eurocentric way of telling stories deeply embedded in our Western culture. As Erikah  our professor writes in the overview for lesson 2:2, “who is collecting the story and why?” The collection of the the biblical creation story has been anyone who has been touched by European colonization, other creation stories have not. The why in collecting those stories is to save us from eternal damnation by reforming us in His image. The importance and seriousness of one Man wielding power over the entire Universe has been ingrained into the very fibre of every aspect of Western culture. Our ‘gaze’ aligns with the biblical creation story and the biblical creation story has created our ‘gaze’.  We are programmed in Western culture to believe a certain type of story. Drawing from parts of John Lutz’s introduction in Myth Understanding: First Contact, over and over Again, the biblical creation stories currency lies in the power dynamic it creates (being a hierarchical one), it’s performance in it’s  a serious import and delivery, and it’s power in the character who speaks it, the colonizer. (7-14).

Going back to the question as to why King creates dichotomies for us, I believe it is to display the differences in the creation story, highlighting our nurtured bias towards the hierarchical one. Who created the world? One Man or all beings? I am from a colonized nation, Ghana. My Ghanaian culture is super religious the story of Christ was brought to us by the Dutch and the English. I was raised in the church and so I am too a part of this bias. As I recount the story of Amuwata, the white woman who fell from the sky and the generosity given her by the people of my fathers village I begin to believe that stories function on many, many levels.

Until next time,

Sarah Afful

Works Cited

Eliedonweb. “African Night Sky Timelapse Video.” (Image) YouTube, 1 October 2013 www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAEwwgCY_jY. Accessed 7 February 2020.

HomeTeam History. “How Ghana was Colonized.” YouTube, 26 March 2019. www.youtube.com/watch?v=8p0HvG8RweI. Accessed 7 February 2020.

King, Thomas. The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative. Peterbough:Anansi Press. 2003. Print.

Lutz, John. “Contact Over and Over Again.” Myth and Memory: Rethinking Stories of Indignenous- European Contact. Ed. Lutz. Vancouver: U of British Columbia P, 2007. 1-15. Print.

“The Trinity.” BBC, www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/christianity/beliefs/trinity_1.shtml. 21 June 2011. Accessed 7 February 2020.