Category Archives: Unit 1

Humans were once silent and shadowless. Those who walked in the light and produced darkness with their body were shunned for they had broken the sacred silence that kept the dark at bay; once a shadow is released, it can never be rescinded. There was one who had spoken, brave or stupid enough to want to see what would happen if he did so; he was driven mad by his dark passenger on the ground, following his every step and eventually, following him off a cliff. However, silence did not guarantee people a shadowless existence – there were those who said too much with their body, and though they noticed their mistake, there are traces of darkness that follow them everywhere.

Into this world, a child was birthed and abandoned, for her parents were poor and could not afford to feed her. Left in a forest, the child screamed and screamed until a passing bear found her. Though humans were silent, this was a time when animals could speak, for they did not fear the shadows and knew what the dark passenger represented. The bear raised the child as her own, and the child, growing up amongst the animals of the forest, learned to speak. As she grew older, she began to explore beyond the forest and one day came upon a village. Despite the animals’ warnings, she grew curious and decided to enter the village. The villagers, upon seeing her full-bodied shadow, captured what they thought was a madwoman and locked her up.

For three days she was held with little food or water; the girl tried to get the villagers to listen to her, to hear her explain that the dark follower was not fearsome at all. None stayed to listen so instead, she decided to tell her story. She spoke to no one in particular at first, but she was not deterred. She started with the story of her birth and abandonment, then she spoke of her Mother Bear and her Father Deer. She recounted the hilarious ventures of her Cousin Squirrel and his quest for a nut, and her Brother Rabbit, who constantly, but lovingly, complained about the sixteen mouths he had to feed. As she told these stories, more and more of the villagers gathered around her. They were wary of her shadow, but soon realized that it did them no harm, and they were far too fascinated by her stories to leave.

Suddenly a child stood up and though he did not speak – silence had muted spoken language for too long in the village – he mimed. He shared the story of his first time swimming that day, the anxiety he felt as he stared into the water’s bottomless depths, the fear as he jumped squeezing his eyes shut, and the relief as he broke through the surface of the water for air. Despite seeing the child’s shadow grow, the villagers all listened intently. Soon a pair of newly-weds stepped forward and together they danced, each step a show of their joy in their new life together – a story of love. More and more villagers stepped forward to tell their stories, and more and more shadows appeared. Some, seeing the many shadows, fell back into their usual misgivings and tried to take it all back, but the shadows could not be retracted. Others realized that their dark silhouettes were not evil nor were they to be feared. Shadows are the embodiment of stories – everyone has a story.  Some tales are taller than others, and some tales, like the shadow of the wind, can never be told. Sometimes they blend with the stories around them, just as shadows blend with the surrounding darkness, but they are always there. We are all followed by the stories we tell, “for once a story is told, it cannot be called back. Once told, it is loose in world.”

Source: http://www.tlc-systems.com/dsc01698_lzn.jpg

Author’s note:

I had written another story before this, a story about a tyrant who kept his slaves isolated from the world so that they would not know freedom existed elsewhere, but then a wandering traveler sneaks into the tyrant’s land and shares the stories of other places where people are free. These stories of liberty spread amongst the slaves who then revolt against their oppressive ruler and gain their freedom. That was the story I was going to post. A friend of mine changed my mind when he spoke of shadows and how, like stories, everyone has one. What immediately came to mind was Plato’s Cave, another story of realizing that one cannot go back after experiencing something (the allegory has little to do with my story though). I knew I wanted to include anthropomorphism in this new story (one of my favourite literary devices), but beyond that I didn’t really have a plan when I began writing. I was a little apprehensive as I wrote this – I wasn’t quite sure how it would turn out, or if it would make sense at all.

Telling this story was a different matter – I’m a horrible storyteller. My terrible memory makes it difficult for me to keep the sequence of events in order. I found myself constantly trying to give clarification for previous points or backtracking to fill in a plot hole. I told the story twice – once without the story in front of me and once with. Some people enjoyed the story and others thought the moral didn’t fit.

I don’t think this is my best story, but it was one I felt compelled to tell.

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For this week’s blog post, the class was asked to read Edward Chamberlin’s If This Land Was Your Land, Where Are Your Stories? We must then answer one of Dr. Paterson’s prepared questions in response to what we have read.

Question #6: 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?

In the final chapter of this book, titled “Ceremonies,” the theme that Chamberlin clearly wants to establish is the “common ground” that can be found between groups with differing cultures and beliefs. From the points that Chamberlin uses to expound his theme, I have selected three that stood out to me, the first being the importance of believing: “We need to understand that it is in the act of believing in these stories and ceremonies rather than in the particular belief itself that we come together, and that this act of believing can provide the common ground across cultures that we long for” (Chamberlin 224). Though we may not completely understand the beliefs of other cultures, the recognition that the need to believe in something happens in all cultures is the beginning of breaking down the wall between Them and Us.

Source: http://dharmacomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/breaking-down-borders_web.png

The second point regarding common ground is the importance of ceremonies and the role they play in helping us recognize the border that divides “sense and nonsense…where strangeness disappears then reappears again in a new guise” (Chamberlin 223). Using the example of a play, Chamberlin depicts someone who crosses the border into the realm of sense as one who would shout out an actor’s real name rather than acknowledge the character they are portraying. On the other hand, those who remain on the imaginary side of the border shout out warnings to the character on stage, fully immersed in the story’s plot and forgetting that this is all an act. Not everyone recognizes the border, but ceremonies help us understand that it is there. In the example of the theatre, the director’s introduction of the play is a type of ceremony that inducts us into the play’s world while grounding us in the understanding that this is a work of fiction. The Holy Communion, which emulates Christ’s Last Supper, has a similar border, where disbelief is suspended because ceremony bridges the gap between what seems like “very strange table manners” (Chamberlin 225) and the faith the wine and bread are truly the body and blood of Christ. The importance of ceremonies for society, Chamberlin argues on page 226, is not so much that we carry out our own, but that we make an effort to understand the ceremonies of others: “Often, like table manners, these [ceremonies] seem silly to those of us who are not bound by them in belief. But like other nonsense…we need to recognize their claim on people’s hearts and minds.” In misunderstanding these ceremonies and the values that they exemplify, we deepen the rift between Us and Them and as such, issues like those that arise in treaties between Indigenous people and settler societies will continue to exist.

The final point is the power of storytelling and the common ground that this act creates across cultures. Everyone tells stories – the narrative and its form may be different, but we are essentially explaining our understanding of the world, and through our explanation, we also demonstrate our perception of stories. Though we may not recognize them immediately, we are always telling stories: “We call the old [stories] teaching, and the new ones research” (Chamberlin 234). On page 239, Chamberlin tells us that although the division of Them and Us is “inevitable”; the paradoxical power of stories is that although different cultures may not be able to understand the different narratives, thus creating a border,  the act connects us all in our attempt to balance reality with imagination. In other words, it is not the content of our stories or the nature of our beliefs that connects us all, but rather our shared understanding of “what is is to believe [and tell stories]” that creates common ground and mutual understanding.

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Here you are – here we are – at the start of a new journey through Canadian literature. My name is Bonny Bung and I’m in my fourth year finishing up a double major in Political Science and English Literature.

I look like I’m napping. I probably am.

I’m not particularly good at introducing myself and have decided that a sporadic spray of a few tidbits about me is the path to take. Apart from my borderline unhealthy obsession with television shows, I jog on occasion, volunteer at two non-profit organizations,  and tutor wee ones piano. Speaking of children, when I was 6-years-old I thought a brilliant way to catch birds was to build a nest in the middle of my lawn and wait for the birds to make it their new home (I thought nests in trees were just a coincidence). Total birds caught? Zero. Total time wasted waiting for gullible birds? None. I had built the nest, then promptly took off with my brother to pan for gold in a nearby puddle.

In this Canadian Literature course with Dr. Erika Paterson, we will “focus on the intersections and departures between European and Indigenous traditions of literature and orature.” This is a course that will delve into a range of literature and stories with the aim of uncovering historical cultural connections between Europeans, Indigenous people, and Canada. Being a distance education class, students are expected to not only engage with the professor and each other via multimedia, but also  consider technology’s role in “the future of [Canadian] literature” as the dominating medium of expression.

Last summer, I had the privilege of working at Union Gospel Mission; there I met several gentlemen, such as Alex, who shared with me their experiences in residential schools. It was then that I realized how woefully ignorant I was regarding Indigenous issues. My most recent encounter with Native fiction is Daniel Heath Justice’s Kynship: The Way of Thorn and Thunder, which was a required text from my English seminar course last term, and Grace Dillon’s introduction to her anthology of Indigenous science fiction. I am thankful for the opportunity to critically explore other works in this field and hope to develop a greater understanding of the impact that colonization and nation-building had on the true natives of Canada.

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