-Photo by Jags Brown, Skang Gwaii, Haida Gwaii, 2015, copyright.

“Write a summary of three significant points that you find most interesting in the final chapter of “If This is Your Land, Where are Your Stories?”, by J. Edward Chamberlain.”

The first significant point in the final chapter of If this is your land, Where are your Stories?, is the Gitksan’s legendary story of the grizzly and Stekyooden (the sacred mountain situated in the village of Temlaxam). This legend struck me because it demonstrates that different cultures which comprise of entirely opposing belief systems can possess similar underlying stories that compliment one another.

For example, the Gitksan Nation (along with almost any other Native American Nation around the world) have a history encompassing traditional stories through oral history, while Canadian culture base their history through methods of recording and documenting past historical events. Not only does Canadian culture and society record their history through documented evidence, they also strongly rely on scientific methods to back-up historical evidence. In addition, Canadian culture uses science in many other faucets of modern Canadian society, thus science is a major pillar of Canadian society.

Several years ago, while the Gitskan people were in court claiming their ancestral presence on the land, they used their traditional methods of story telling to prove they lived on the land for thousands of year. They told the legend of the grizzly and Stekyooden. The Gitskan also backed-up their story, by using geological scientific evidence which coincided with the legend of the grizzly bear. This created an intersection between two different cultural approaches of proving an actual historical event occurred.

An intersection of beliefs systems that draw upon the same event, but are seen through different perspectives aided the Gitskan in the courts to gain more proof about an actual event that happened in history. Even though two methods of claiming history were used, both methods proved the same result: that the Gitskan had been situated on the land for thousands of years. To the Gitskan, story telling is a completely accurate means of depicting true historical events. To Canadian culture and society, scientific evidence is an accurate way of proving a historical story to be accurate [Chamberlain, p.220-221]. Both methods of drawing upon history are accurate, but are seen as arbitrary to one another. Interestingly enough, both methods coincide with each other, and intersect in their realities to point to the same reasoning.

The second significant point in the book lies upon the same notions of contradictory truths. A great example J. Edward Chamberlain uses, is the scenario of two impressionist painters, painting a still life of a ship while the sun is setting. One of the painters possesses more knowledge about the infrastructure of the ship, thus depicts the ship in her painting with the accuracy of the ship’s structure. The second painter is just as precise as the first painter, depicting the ship on a canvas as he sees it, but adding different tones of colour due to the sun setting, and the time of day in which the still life had been captured with a paintbrush. Though both paintings are different, they are also both accurate in terms of different perspectives. Both paintings are of the same subject, but tackle a different approach drawing upon different styles. Several factors could be the reason as to why both paintings are different; both the painters draw upon varying types of knowledge, experience, methods and perspectives [p. 221]. All the while, both paintings could be seen as false depictions when taken out of context [p.222]. The fact of the matter points towards contradictory truths; whether these truths are false or not, both perspectives approach the same scenario with a unique standpoint.

Breaking through cultural dichotomies is the third significant point in the final chapter of “If This is Your Land, Where are Your Stories?”. Chamberlain refers to moving beyond cultural borders, and finding no difference between the “Us and Them”. He states that art, such as paintings, poems, and performances, in other cultures than our own, may leave the viewers confused or stuck on the edge of understanding the messages that these art forms intend to portray. Perhaps viewing art from a perspective unfamiliar than our own leaves room to misconstrue the true intentions of these forms of art. Chamberlain claims that this can be a problem because viewers cannot see past their own subjective realities of how they perceive different cultured art, thus metaphorically are left at the border of the art form, and not being able to fully penetrate and understand it [p.222]. He claims that “it is deadly dangerous to misinterpret the message”, because misunderstanding the true message of an art form creates a false new meaning for the viewer. The viewer can get caught in a new meaning, being blindsided or disillusioned, and attacking the strangeness or uniqueness of the art. Essentially, by breaking through this so called “border’, the viewer sees no difference or strangeness between themselves and the art forms. By being aware of these borders and dichotomies, they can be broken down in an easier manner, and can be applied to all sorts of other borders humans create between themselves. For instance, as Chamberlain puts it, the  “Us and Them” gets deconstructed once borders are broken through. He claims that “the line between “yours” and “mine” “, disappears, and that there are no differences between juxtaposing perspectives or contradictory cultural realities.

Works Cited

1) AustralianArtillery. Two sides of the same story. 2009. Web. 21 May 2015. <http://australianartillery.org/an-essay-example-on-two-sides-of-the-same-story.php>

2) Chamberlain, J Edward. If this is your land, where are your stories? Toronto: Vintage Canada, 2004. Print.

3) Brown, Jags. Facebook. “Ninstints”. 2015. Image.
<https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1000494926635953&set=a.994481213903991.1073746934.100000263657339&type=1&theater>

4) Peace and Environment News. The Peace and Environment Resource Centre. Athena. October 2001. Web. 21 May 2015. <http://207.112.105.217/PEN/1991-06/york.html>