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.
Hi Sarah,
Your blog was a very interesting read! I also wrote about my first reactions to the story about the white twin stealing the piece of paper, as Gaby did, for assignment 2.4. My idea was that the stolen piece of paper represented Indigenous cultures, beliefs, and stories, except that the theft of the piece of paper did not coincide temporally with the theft of Indigenous culture. Instead, the latter would occur as European settlers began to build a nation and attempted to assimilate the Natives into the settler population.
Here is my question: what would you say, would fairly constitute “justice” for Coyote and his descendants, given the atrocities committed against Indigenous peoples and the marginalization that they experience to this day?
Thank you,
Chino