Brendan Ha's Adventure Into Canadian Literature
Hey, guys!
Thanks for following my blog entries and for complementing my thoughts with your incredible insights. My group site is situated here, where my research has been focused into the topic of “orality and literacy.” I hope you find my team’s research enlightening, and if you will, please join in the on-going dialogue about Canadian literature!
Thank you again.
Write a blog that hyper-links your research on the characters in GGRW according to the pages assigned to you. Be sure to make use of Jane Flicks’ GGRW reading notes on your reading list.
PAGES 217 – 229, 1993 Edition / Pages 259 – 274, 2007 Edition
Elijah Harper
Eli Stands Alone
“… Elijah had come to enjoy the small pleasures of resistance, knowing that each time Duplessis opened the gates a little too much or turned on the light a little too late, it was because he was there.” (King 260)
Within the novel, Eli is the main opponent of the Balene Dam’s construction and completion. His real-life counterpart is Elijah Harper, an Oji-Cree politician who fought against the Meech Lake Constitutional Accord of 1990 with the softest of “no”s. With a lifted eagle feather, he initiated a filibuster by voting against “a debate that did not allow full consultation with the First Nations” (Flick 150).
Flick also believes that the name may have come from the Pete Standing Alone, narrator of Circle of the Sun (150). This documentary is the first recording of a Southern Albertan Aboriginal tribe’s Sun Dance which allowed by the tribal leaders out of fear for the potential extinction of their tradition.
The novel’s Eli echoes both figures. His opposition towards the “damn thing” (King 259) alludes to Elijah Harper’s solitary stance against the Meech Lake Accord. The reference to Pete Standing Alone and the documentary he narrates fits with the tensions in the novel regarding the dam’s threatening of the Blackfoot traditions which include the natural course of the waterway and the Sun Dance.
Maurice Duplessis
Duplessis International Associates
“Along with the injunction that forbade Duplessis from raising or lowering the level of the river beyond a certain point…” (King 260)
Although the “Duplessis International Associates” is not a character, but a construction firm, the characters and narrator of King’s novel refer to the organization as if it were a living, breathing person. Eli refers to Duplessis as “[turning] on the [floodlight] a little too late” (King 260), and Bursum refers to Duplessis having provided the topographical map for Parliament Lake to him, personifying the company’s actions. The elimination of the latter part of the firm’s title leaves “Duplessis,” which creates the effect of being a character’s name.
King’s selective cutting is intentional. According to Flick, Duplessis “invokes both duplicity and the political corruption of the Duplessis régime in Québec” (151).
Sir Clifford Sifton
Clifford Sifton
“… Sifton told [Eli] that they were going to tear the cabin down.” (King 262)
Eli discusses the floodlights with the dam’s engineer Sifton, whose name alludes to Sir Clifford Sifton (1861-1929). Under Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier’s government, Sifton assumed the position of Federal minister of the Interior as well as Superintendent of Indian Affairs from 1896 (Flick 150). He was responsible for the Prarie West movement, specifically encouraging immigrants from east-central European countries to adapt the lands into agrarian plots. This came at the expense of categorizing immigrants who did not fit those moulds (such as Asians, Jews and Blacks) as undesirable. More pertinent to the tension of Eli’s potential deracination within the novel, the real-life counterpart to Sifton’s character was also responsible for the mass displacement of First Nations populations in the prairie west.
Holm O. Bursum
Bill Bursum
“… Bursum had looked at the topgraphical map that Duplessis provided and picked out the best piece of property on the lake.” (King 266)
Flick writes that Bursum is a combination of “two men famous for their hostility to Indians” (148).
The first of which is Holm O. Bursum, a senator from New Mexico who proposed the Bursum Bill of 1921 which was seen as a furtive attempt to seize Pueblo lands. This calculating maneuver resonates in the GGRW Bursum’s purchase of Parliament Lake land. Bursum’s acquisition of the lakefront property is a covert attempt to take advantage of the financial benefits of owning such a lot. The description of the land, coloured by Bursum’s greed demonstrates his concealed intentions: “Secluded. Exclusive. Valuable” (266).
The second part to his name refers to William R. Cody who manipulated Indians for the purposes of entertainment. The Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show exploited the white settler’s romantic notions of conquest, and tragically took advantage of the Aboriginal peoples of Nebraska.
Thought Woman
“Thought Woman floats around in that ocean for a long time…” (King 269)
Thought Woman becomes the main subject of discussion between the narrator and Coyote, and is part of a creation story that aims to elaborate upon the abundance of water—an apt theme in regards to the novel’s main conflict. Flick writes that she is a creation figure of Navajo mythology who, like her namesake, thinks the world into existence (159).
Furthermore, Thought Woman also appears in Ceremony, a novel by Leslie Marmon Silko that explores the oral cultures of the Navajo and the Pueblo people.
A. A. Gabriel, Canadian Security and Intelligence Service
“Thought Woman, says Thought Woman. Mary, says A. A. Gabriel. And he writes that down.” (King 270)
A. Gabriel refers to the biblical figure of Archangel Gabriel who announces to Virgin Mary that she will conceive the Son of God. King’s character is a bureaucrat of the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service. His refusal to recognize Thought Woman’s Indian name by renaming her as Mary. Historically, First Nations had their names changed, with the majority of them being baptismal names.
A. Gabriel shouts to Thought Woman as she departs: “We can always find another [Mary], you know” (King 272), perhaps implying that he will simply force the name upon someone else.
The Motif of Geography and Land Ownership
In this passage, many of these characters (both within the novel and in historical contexts) appear to be linked and grounded by the underlying motif of geography land ownership. Eli is awakened by the invasive floodlight of the dam and the unnatural ebb and flow of the contained water within his solitary cabin by the Balene Dam. Duplessis International Associates, referred to by only as “Duplessis,” looms ominously over Eli’s existence, taunting him with the petty play of the floodlights as they attempt to enforce dominion over Parliament Lake’s waters and surrounding lands. Sifton, the dam’s engineer says to Eli that the safety of the dam is not for him, but “ours” (259), referring to the security of his workers. This selfish quip echoes Sir Clifford Sifton’s ignorance of the land’s original owners and traditions present within his Prairie West movement. Bursum uses a Duplessis map—a symbol of the white settler’s false claims onto Aboriginal property—and seizes land for financial gain as elaborated above.
Thought Woman and A. A. Gabriel have their connections to “geography” less apparent than the others I have discussed, yet we can discover the themes of ownership and control within their first meeting and the card’s song. A. A. Gabriel shows to Thought Woman the side of his business card that details his affiliation to a security service which prompts her to ask whether his line of work deals with insurance or burglar alarms (King 269). “Insurance” and “burglar alarms” introduces the concepts of government, money and policing with land, and the potential authority—no matter how arbitrary it may be—that accompanies such elements. A. A. Gabriel seems to embody that authority, dressed in the attire of government officials. He flips the card to announce his status as Heavenly Host, and the card sings: “Hosanna da.” Coyote naturally believes the song to then be of biblical origins, but the unknown narrator corrects the trickster figure, and says the song goes “Hosanna da, our home on Natives’ land” (270) instead. A twist upon the Canadian national anthem, the lyrical change to the possessive evokes the themes of land ownership and perhaps criticizes the notion of the anthem. Anthems are meant to eulogize the country’s history, but the lack of the possessive and moreover, the lack in capitalization of “native” in the original verse seems to ignore the original owners of Canadian land.
Works Cited
Flick, Jane. “Reading Notes for Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water.” Canadian Literature 161-162 (1999): 140-172. Web. 28 March 2016.
King, Thomas. Green Grass Running Water. Toronto: Harper Collins, 2007. Print.
1. Find three examples of names that need to be spoken aloud in order to catch the allusion. Discuss the examples as well as the reading technique that requires you to read aloud in order to make connections. Why does King want us to read aloud?
Dr. Joseph Hovaugh — The doctor is introduced to us on page sixteen, his full name laid bare and unassumingly against the eggshell white of the page. At first, I skimmed past it, treating the man’s two names as separate, the jet of air we ‘express’ when pronouncing the strident ‘ph’ in our mindspace cutting cleanly between “Joseph” and “Hovaugh.” However, something seemed suspicious with the entrance of Mary and the reference to Dr. John on the next page. Biblical references and names filled these pages, but still, I did not realize the allusion of the doctor’s name. Only when I read the exchange between Dr. John Eliot and Dr. Joseph Hovaugh did the allusion become clear to me. In dialogue they say:
“Yellowstone,” said Dr. Hovaugh.
“Joe . . . Joe, we’ve talked about this.”
“It’s in the book,” said Dr. Hovaugh… (King 46)
Finding myself subconsciously mouthing their conversation and the subsequent dialogue tags, I discovered that the doctor’s name sounded similar to “Jehovah,” the name of God in the Hebrew Bible. The repetition of “Joe” juxtaposed against the doctor’s surname clarified the sound. Through my hushed utterances that soon scaled to firm declarations I found the connection. The character’s first name may also come from the name of the biblical Mary’s husband, but seems to be a red herring written within the bounds of the religious motif (although Dr. Joseph Hovaugh does interact with Mary first in the novel). And indeed, the doctor speaks to Mary about the garden, referring to the Edenic paradise of Genesis, and with an air of authority muses upon “[getting] a pair of peacocks” (King 17). The pairing of animals was never mentioned in the biblical creation story, but was a prominent feature of the great flood narrative. This borrowing from various places of the bible alongside the duality of references in the doctor’s first name indicates a thoughtful teasing and reimagining of the Christian mythos for the purposes of creating a new narrative.
Louie, Ray, and Al — Latisha takes orders from three men from Manitoba in the final section of the novel. Similar to the previous allusion I’ve found, when these characters are introduced, the names are divided. The introductions, peppered with both narrative and dialogical description, separate the names, but when Latisha brings them together and strings them cleanly by saying “Louie, Ray, Al” (King 334), the pun is summoned to life. Their names are a reference to Louis Riel, Métis leader and a controversial figure in Canadian history. The famous—or infamous—rebel of the Red River Colony (and here, King continues the allusion geographically, as this colony is situated in what is now called Manitoba and the men are from the same province) seems to come alive within Louie’s response to the prohibition on fishing on Parliament Lake. In a mocking tone, he prods fun at the court order, saying “boy, you guys really take your fishing serious out here” (336). Louis Riel’s distaste of the Canadian government seems to revive itself within the sarcastic jeer of this customer.
Polly Hantos — I’ve discussed Pocahontas in my previous blog entries and naturally, when I came across this name I made the connection to the daughter of Chief Powhatan with ease. Reciting the name affirmed the allusion, but it was the context that truly brought this allusion to life. Her name is catalogued with others such as “Sally Jo Weyha” (Sacagawea) to illustrate a “tight community of Mexicans, Italians, Greeks, along with a few Indians, some Asians and whites, all waiting in the shadows of the major studios, working as extras, fighting for bit parts in Westerns, playing Indians again and again and again” (King 182). Pocahontas in particular is infamous for being a romanticized figure, conjured into a Disney fantasy in the social consciousness of the white settler. In other words, she’s written as an ideal stereotype of the Indigenous people, and ultimately becomes a shallow depiction of the Indigenous culture. This is reflected in Polly Hontas’ inability to break into bigger parts, forever playing Indians—we do not even know if Polly Hontas is Indigenous or not and the misnamed role of ‘Indians’ highlights a tension between white settler perspectives and Indigenous identity—in Westerns which are infamous for their stereotypical depictions of the Indigenous. Furthermore, the passage ends with the repetition of “again,” perhaps referring to the vicious and relentless cycle of stereotyping that passes down from generation to generation, like a curse controlled by the “major studios” or the dominant force of the industry—of society.
King wants us to read aloud to collapse that troublesome distinction of written culture versus oral culture, to destroy the boundaries of written and spoken word. The novel makes great use of dialogue, colored with the voices of a myriad of characters that converse across the many pages of King’s tome. With so much dialogue, I can notice an interesting phenomenon while I read. I am constantly perceiving these stories has written but simultaneously, I am constantly engaging with the language as something spoken. King’s courting of the language’s sound requires then, for us to participate with the orality of his text. To ignore such an element would mean a failure to access complete comprehension of King’s narrative. The referential discourse of Green Grass Running Water would lose its ties to the extratextual realm without that bridge of orality, and their meanings would lack completion, fullness, and ultimately effectiveness. Some may argue this potentiality for failure is a weakness on King’s part, but I disagree wholly. It shows a weakness on our part: our laziness and inability to bring those two realms of narration together.
Works Cited:
King, Thomas. Green Grass Running Water. Toronto: Harper Collins, 2007. Print.
“Louis Riel.” Louis Riel. Historica Canada, n.d. Web. 20 Mar. 2016.
“Oral Traditions.” Oral Traditions. First Nations Studies Program, 2009. Web. 20 Mar. 2016. <http://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/home/culture/oral-traditions.html>.
“The Riel Rebellion: Background.” The Riel Rebellion: Background. Goldi Productions Ltd, 2007. Web. 21 Mar. 2016. <http://firstpeoplesofcanada.com/fp_metis/fp_metis_background.html>.
2] In this lesson I say that it should be clear that the discourse on nationalism is also about ethnicity and ideologies of “race.” If you trace the historical overview of nationalism in Canada in the CanLit guide, you will find many examples of state legislation and policies that excluded and discriminated against certain peoples based on ideas about racial inferiority and capacities to assimilate. – and in turn, state legislation and policies that worked to try to rectify early policies of exclusion and racial discrimination. As the guide points out, the nation is an imagined community, whereas the state is a “governed group of people.” 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.
“This provision of the Indian Act was in place for close to 75 years and what that did was it prevented the passing down of our oral history. It prevented the passing down of our values. It meant an interruption of the respected forms of government that we used to have, and we did have forms of government be they oral and not in writing before any of the Europeans came to this country.” — Judge Alfred Scow (qtd. in Hanson)
As summarized by Dr. Paterson, Daniel Coleman’s introduction to White Civility: The Literary Project of English Canada discusses the “necessary forgetfulness required to hold” together the fiction of nation-building. In particular, the building of a white nation, and a ‘natural community’ that represents forcibly and inadequately a variety of peoples.
My research into the Indian Act of 1876 helped me encounter the quote pasted above from the first Aboriginal appointed to BC Provincial Court, Judge Alfred Scow (“Alfred Snow”). Above, he speaks of the Indian Act’s aim to assimilate the Aboriginal peoples, the law introducing the “residential school system among other initiatives that sought to eradicate cultural differences” (“Reading and Writing”), but focuses on the legislation’s role as a cultural dam, preventing the passage of oral tradition from one generation to the next. And this is significant in regards to Coleman’s discussion of intended forgetfulness. Why? It comes down to the importance of memory for orality. I want to recall my previous blog entry and the discussion of Salish orators. For the Salish, the authenticity of their stories largely depended on the collective memory that kept them alive and the quality of their conveyance. The Indian Act destroys the possibility for remembrance and bars listeners from being graced by the telling of those stories. By intercepting this transferal of stories with residential schools and their cultural assimilation, the government has prevented the repetition of those stories and consequently weakens or destroys the possibility for remembering those oral traditions.
This repeated severance of connection to orality then echoes Coleman, as he writes that white civility helps to construct Canadian identity through “regularly repeated literary personifications for the Canadian nation” (qtd. in Paterson). Therefore, due to the establishment of residential schools thanks to the Indian Act, there springs two ‘forgettings.’ One is the forgetting of Aboriginal oral traditions. Second then, would be the subsequent forgetting of the horrors of the residential school. Due to this forced assimilation, many Aboriginal peoples and their cultures suffered the loss of “cultural practices, traditions, and oral history” (Hanson) under the red herring of bringing together the ‘natural community’ of white civility. Later this ‘whiteness’ would materialize into the ‘White Paper‘ under Pierre Trudeau’s government in 1969. The Prime Minister attempted to relinquish the Aboriginal people of their status and to complete the assimilation of their group as ‘normal’ Canadian citizens. (“Indian Act”). However, the White Paper was swiftly discarded, but it is a clear example of the Canadian government trying to forget the immediate history of the Aboriginal peoples, their special treatment and their lands in order to force the Aboriginal people into the ‘normalcy’ of a ‘white nation’.
I believe that my findings support Coleman’s argument of white civility. The Indian Act of 1879 destroyed the culture of the Aboriginal people by breaking the chain of storytelling, installing residential schools to force cultural integration into a singular, white shade. By doing so, they hindered the collective memory and the passing of memory in regards to these oral traditions and instead, replaced them with narratives of their own for the purpose of assimilation.
I can find a connection between this and modern day Japan. Japan touts itself as a homogeneous country. The emphasis on a monoculture is accompanied with the notion that if you are either Japanese or not in that country. However, that largely ignores the variety of minority groups within Japan and the Okinawans who often view themselves as separate from the mainland Japanese, creating tensions that possess a long history.
Hopefully, we will not forget the horror of the residential schools. Memory is a powerful tool, and like oral traditions, if we can remember the disastrous Indian Act of 1876 together, we will continue to fight against further injustices committed against the Aboriginal peoples.
Works Cited:
“Alfred Scow.” Indspire: Indingeous Education, Canada’s Future. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Mar. 2016.
CanLit Guides. “Reading and Writing in Canada, A Classroom Guide to Nationalism.” Canadian Literature. Web. April 4th 2013.
Hanson, Erin. “The Indian Act.” The Indian Act. N.p., 2009. Web. 11 Mar. 2016.
“Indian Act.” The Canadian Encyclopedia. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Mar. 2016. <http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/indian-act/>.
Paterson, Erika. “Lesson 3.1.” ENGL 470A Canadian Studies: Canadian Literary Genres – 99C Jan 2016. UBC Blogs, n.d. Web. 11 Mar. 2016. <https://blogs.ubc.ca/courseblogsis_ubc_engl_470a_99c_2014wc_44216-sis_ubc_engl_470a_99c_2014wc_44216_2517104_1/unit-3/lesson-3-1/>
6] Carlson writes:
“Harry Robinson’s account of literacy being stolen from Coyote by his white twin conform to all the standard criteria associated with a genre of Salish narratives commonly referred to by outsiders as legend or mythology with one exception – they appear to contain post-contact content” (Carlson 56).
Why is it, according to Carlson or/and Wickwire, that Aboriginal stories that are influenced or informed by post-contact European events and issues are “discarded to the dustbin of scholarly interest”? (56).
According to Keith Thor Carlson and Wendy Wickwire, it is authenticity that condemns Aboriginal stories that are shaped by post-contact European events and issues. However, I want to clarify that I want to point toward a falsified notion of authenticity. Here, I am speaking about the “authenticity” we cast upon a culture, assumptions that guide our perceptions to believe misleadingly how a certain group of people must behave, must live, and in further relevance to the topic at hand, how their narratives must be. For something to be “authentic” it needs to fit our criteria for authenticity, and our subjective perspectives can often fail to consider the possibility that our hardened expectations do not equal fact.
“A detail from Benjamin West’s heroic, neoclassical history painting, The Death of General Wolfe (1771), depicting an idealized Native American.”
An example of such a misstep can be read in Wickwire’s introduction to Living By Stories: A Journey of Landscape and Memory. She discusses the 1990s Boasian research project that aimed to collect and record numerous oral narratives of the Aboriginal people. The project was criticized by a number of anthropologists such as Michael Harkin. The selective mindset of the project was derived from what Harkin described as a desire to preserve “some overarching, static, ideal type of culture, detached from its pragmatic and socially positioned moorings among real people” (qtd. in Wickwire 22). Another apt mirror to this issue comes from the same Wickwire introduction, this time in regards to Claude Lévi-Strauss’ theories of mythic societies. Late anthropologist Terence Turner criticized the man’s analytical process as narrow-minded, saying that “to conclude that the culture as a whole is in the mythic phase, lacking a concept of history, may reflect a lack in the investigative procedure more than a lack in the culture” (qtd. in Wickwire 22). Both of these criticisms illustrate how we may be predisposed to believe in a certain ideal of a culture, and in the case of conjuring up an “ideal” Aboriginal culture, that imagination’s rosy-tinted appearance is easily believed in. To those outside looking in, that imagined Aboriginal culture is romantic, pervaded by pictures of Pocahontas, of singing trees and other spiritual “anomalies” that are charming from a potentially condescending perspective. Thoughts that run along this vein have stemmed from the 18th-century with Rousseau’s concept of the noble savage.
Therefore, the presence of post-contact European ideals, events and issues in Aboriginal stories break this illusion and thus render these narratives to some academic eyes as tainted. Carlson writes of the inability to reconcile both sides of Aboriginal narrative and post-contact European culture by writing that “we have grown so accustomed to associating Aboriginal culture with pre-contact temporal dimensions that we have dismissed Native stories that do not meet our historical purity” (56). Further, he writes that Indigenous cultures (in particular, the Salish) have different criteria for the importance of their stories, and while the authenticity of their narratives is a significant element of these narratives, the difference lies in the way that they are assessed. Salish orators have the authenticity of their stories based on the quality of their conveyance and their presence in the social memory of their people. On the other hand for Westerners “historical accuracy is measured in relation to verifiable evidence” (57), necessitating the existence of footnotes and works cited pages.
“CALM SUNSET — PALETTE KNIFE Oil Painting On Canvas By Leonid Afremov.”
However, this reminds me of the notion of contradictory truths as relayed by J. Edward Chamberlin. His analogy of the two painters, situated on either sides of a harbour painting a ship is an adept illustration for this particular issue of authenticity. One painter colors his or her canvas according to its objective and empirical statistics of the ship, knowing that the ship has twenty-seven portholes and is grey. However, “the other, working in an equally creditable tradition” (221) paints the ship with seven portholes because that’s what the painter can see in the twilight. “He knows it’s wrong, but he also knows it’s right,” (221) Chamberlin writes. If we can remove that academic arrogance of presupposition, perhaps we may be allowed a broader and more comprehensive understanding of Aboriginal cultures. We must remove the superiority complex of the settlers’ science and now, with careful and open ears, re-learn what we thought we used to know.
Works Cited:
Afremov, Leonid. Calm Sunset. Digital image. N.p., n.d. Web. 8 Mar. 2016. <https://afremov.com/CALM-SUNSET-PALETTE-KNIFE-Oil-Painting-On-Canvas-By-Leonid-Afremov-Size-30-X36.html>.
Carlson, Keith Thor. “Orality and Literacy: The ‘Black and White’ of Salish History.” Orality & Literacy: Reflections Across Disciplines. 43-72. Print.
Chamberlin, J. Edward. If This Is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories?: Finding Common Ground. Toronto: Vintage Canada, 2004. Print.
Gardner, Helen. “Explainer: The Myth of the Noble Savage.” The Conversation. The Conversation, 24 Feb. 2016. Web. 28 Feb. 2016. <http://theconversation.com/explainer-the-myth-of-the-noble-savage-55316>.
Greenwood, Davydd J. “Cultural “Authenticity”” Cultural Survival Quarterly6.3 (1982): n. pag. Cultural Survival. 09 Feb. 2010. Web. 28 Feb. 2016. <https://www.culturalsurvival.org/ourpublications/csq/article/cultural-authenticity>.
Robinson, Harry. Living by Stories: A Journey of Landscape and Memory. Ed. Wendy Wickwire. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2005. Print.
West, Benjamin. The Death of General Wolfe. Digital image. N.p., n.d. Web. 8 Mar. 2016. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_savage#/media/File:Benjamin_west_Death_wolfe_noble_savage.jpg>.
3. We began this unit by discussing assumptions and differences that we carry into our class. In “First Contact as Spiritual Performance,” Lutz makes an assumption about his readers (Lutz, “First Contact” 32). He asks us to begin with the assumption that comprehending the performances of the Indigenous participants is “one of the most obvious difficulties.” He explains that this is so because “one must of necessity enter a world that is distant in time and alien in culture, attempting to perceive indigenous performance through their eyes as well as those of the Europeans.” Here, Lutz is assuming either that his readers belong to the European tradition, or he is assuming that it is more difficult for a European to understand Indigenous performances – than the other way around. What do you make of this reading? Am I being fair when I point to this assumption? If so, is Lutz being fair when he makes this assumption?
In 1984, as the Okanagan storyteller Harry Robinson approached the end of his life, he said to Wendy Wickwire that he was “going to disappear and there will be no more telling stories” (29). At
Wendy Wickwire and Harry Robinson
first, Wickwire was confused, believing that he referred to the loss of his stories but upon further reflection, she realized that the storyteller was speaking about the “process of storytelling” (29). However, Wickwire focuses on a particular aspect of the man’s attempts to translate his stories into English. She pins down the importance of the receivers of stories, the “listeners who spoke little or no Okanagan” (29). A story doesn’t work without an audience, and likewise John Sutton Lutz’s article requires its readers.
And not just any reader. Stories and articles have target demographics, and although they are open to be listened by any ear, their contents are directed toward a specific group. While the published stories of Harry Robinson were meant for the speaker of the common vernacular, Lutz’s article is seemingly tailored towards an academic audience interested in learning more about the indigenous tradition and seeks to some extent to open the dialogue of the “first contact” to include the perspectives of the native people. Therefore, to some extent, Lutz is assuming that his readers belong to the European tradition or at least, are reading it within the contexts and settings of a “western” country. After all, his book is published by the University of the British Columbia Press, and will certainly find an audience with a “European” crowd first.
But I would like to recognize that Lutz writes in a fashion that positions himself outside of the dichotomy of the “European” and the “native,” and speaks like an overseer, able to examine both sides of the cultural divide with an objective tone. Lutz writes: “but they also, I argue, performed their spirituality – their mythology – for each other” (“First Contact” 31). Lutz’ usage of the third person plural personal pronouns creates a distance between him, us and the European-native perspectives. And this maneuver is helpful for us to understand the revelation that European settlers also brought with them spiritual performances of their own for communication. Furthermore, this may be a way to include readers outside of European backgrounds, considering the international reach of the academic community.
However, I do believe it is fair to say that there is an assumption made by Lutz that indicates that Europeans have difficulty in comprehending Indigenous performances. Lutz writes that the spirituality of both cultures causes this discord in understanding, and focuses on the theatrics of charades in an attempt to illustrate how these different mythologies create tension. However, he also points toward a reason for this dissonance within geographical terms in his discussion of the “contact zone”: “we can think of the contact zone as first, a space across which one could map a moving wave of first contacts… we could also expand the notion to include the zone of discourse where stories of first contact play out” (“Contact Over and Over Again” 4). By introducing the element of place, Lutz brings about the debate of origin and territory. European settlers with the “supremacy” of their science, religion and mythology provided them with the perspective to use as a “marker of European superiority over indigenous mythology and superstition, and part of the larger rational for colonization” (“Contact Over and Over Again” 14). Canadian anthropologist, Niobe Thompson writes of the difference between Russian northern settlers and the natives of the area, saying that “native belonging is situated in practical skills of land use” and that Russian settlers have a “purported lack of connection to the land” (10). He extends the severance of connection to Europeans in general, calling them “aliens to the tundra” (10). Likewise, we see the same dynamics of land ownership, usage and connection present in Lutz’s essays.
If native identity is so strongly intertwined with the land, so much in fact that creation stories such as the Similkameen stories that orate how the “Old One, or Chief, made the earth out of a woman” (Wickwire 25) how can people of European heritage, so steeped with a history of colonization, easily understand the significance of such for the native peoples? After all, Harry Robinson wanted to illustrate that if a broader audience understood that “stumps could turn into chipmunks and that chipmunks could turn into ‘grandfathers,’ they would cultivate a very different relationship to the land” (Wickwire 29).
That is not to say that it will be impossible for the reader of European heritage to understand the native perspective. Recent initiatives to return to local eating, agrarian lifestyles and a re-connection to “nature,” have inspired many to rediscover the lands they live in. But perhaps most importantly, the medium of the story will be the one to truly convey the spirit of the Indigenous and their land. Their worlds are created, even governed through story, and if we can tap into these narratives and embrace them as equivalent realities to our own, then Robinson’s dream may very well come true. Through storytelling we may develop a different relationship to the land, and reap the fruits of that wonderful comprehension.
Works Cited:
Cancalosi, John. An Eastern Chipmunk, Tamias Striatus, on a Tree Stump, Eating a Caterpillar. Digital image. Gettyimages. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Feb. 2016. <http://www.gettyimages.ca/detail/photo/an-eastern-chipmunk-tamias-striatus-on-a-high-res-stock-photography/536980079>.
Lutz, John. “First Contact as a Spiritual Performance: Aboriginal — Non-Aboriginal Encounters on the North American West Coast.” Myth and Memory: Rethinking Stories of Indigenous-European Contact. Ed. Lutz. Vancouver: U of British Columbia P, 2007. 30-45. 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.
Robinson, Harry. Living by Stories: a Journey of Landscape and Memory. Compiled and edited by Wendy Wickwire. Vancouver: Talon Books, 2005. (1-30)
Semeniuk, Robert. Photo of Wendy Wickwire with Harry Robinson. Digital image. Abcbookworld. Talonbooks, n.d. Web. 18 Feb. 2016. <http://www.abcbookworld.com/view_author.php?id=4730>.
Smith, Andrea. “Indigeneity, Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy.” – Centre for World Dialogue. N.p., Summer 2010. Web. 19 Feb. 2016. <http://www.worlddialogue.org/content.php?id=488>.
Thompson, Niobe. “Introduction.” Introduction. Settlers on the Edge: Identity and Modernization on Russia’s Arctic Frontier. Vancouver: UBC, 2008. 3-34. Print.
Nature Family History/Tradition/Inheritance Work/Labour |
I have read several blogs—which were amazing by the way! To read everyone’s stories about home was not only touching, but incredibly insightful. As a sentimental loser, I enjoyed the emotion and passion behind your narratives and somehow, reading them inflicted me with the case of the homesick even though I’m ‘home’ anyway. Certainly, this is a grand testament to how powerful language can be, and considering how much we have discussed in regards to the power of stories, I think we can attest to such a force. We may not be professional writers (or at least, most of us I would assume), but through the simple act of communication, we can still impact each other in thoughtful, eye-opening ways.
Anyways with that aside, in order to focus this entry, I’ve drawn the commonalities from three wonderful posts: Cherie’s, Andrea’s, and Karen’s.
Cherie and Karen’s stories are steeped wonderfully in the broth of Asian culture. More specifically, they’ve written their tales in accordance with the Chinese New Year and while I am not of Chinese heritage, I can relate intimately with many of the themes they’ve brewed within their entries. There’s a reason I’ve made many puns (and I apologize for the many eye-rolls that I’ve provoked with such a linguistic maneuver) about food. Their stories alongside mine connect food with familiarity, family and community. With food comes assembly, marking special occasion with collective memory. As a Korean boy (or do I call myself a man? Sometimes I wonder if I’m also suffering from a case of Peter-Pan perpetuity), I’ve always been reminded of the importance of my culture’s food. In particular, kimchi is a precious food for my culture, and rather than taking the spotlight as a main dish, this spicy pickled cabbage represents Korean cuisine through the seemingly humble role of the side-dish.
However, the side-dish, or banchan in Korean, holds significant power on the dinner table, facilitating the sharing of food and it is these personal transactions across the table that remind me of home. The creation of many Asian foods is communal as well, remarked by Karen in her commentary that follows her work. Not only do we eat together, but in order to reach that family meal, we cook together as well. Indeed, side-dishes in many Asian cultures possess these qualities of kinship which I have made sure to highlight in my story through the inverse of dysfunction, but also through the strict observance of tradition. The home anchors tradition for us, becoming a place that follows carefully, a culture of rules and observances that stabilize the identity or the idea of the ‘home.’ Lijun’s household is strict, and his inability to seize the last piece of fish, although originally intended for sharing among his kin, is snatched away by patriarchal tradition. Likewise, in Karen and Cherie’s stories, food and other observed behaviours occur through tradition. Every Chinese New Years, this and this happens. Such and such happens. Repetition creates the story, canonizes events in their lives and is promised to replicate itself again the same time next year.
Closely aligned with tradition is history and this particular idea is prominent in Andrea’s story. While my story hints toward history and inheritance subtly, Andrea’s narrative bursts at the seams with wonderful descriptions of her home’s roots. Her fine tracing which leads back to Port Alberni and even further, toward the times of the Tseshaht and Hupacasath territories reminds me that the past truly does inform the present and is the idea of the home exempt from such a connection? Certainly not. What’s wonderful about her story is that she links history and memory with nature, and that element of the home is something I’ve featured heavily in my own narrative. Andrea writes of an intimate connection of the landscape around her and of her conception of home, and such a theme resonates within the Abbotsfordian blood of my veins. Surrounded by nature and the idyllic views of the countryside, I cannot separate my idea of home from the physical beauty of the world around me. The natural world, like for Andrea, provides me with my bearings and allows me to realize how much of my home extends the borders of my room walls and outside into the wonderful expanse of nature. Where we live is a significant element of ‘home.’
The telling of these stories which are all so personal to us reminds me of a line from Thomas King’s book where he justifies his habit of retelling three particular stories. He calls them “saving stories… stories that help keep me alive” (119). Our stories of home not only keep our unique ideas of ‘home’ alive to us, but also breathe personal colour to our identities. We’ve told our stories once here. When will be the next time we speak of home?
Works Cited:
Beck, Julie. “The Psychology of Home: Why Where You Live Means So Much.” The Atlantic. N.p., 30 Dec. 2011. Web. 11 Feb. 2016. <http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2011/12/the-psychology-of-home-why-where-you-live-means-so-much/249800/>.
Chung, Sung-Jun. Kimjang or the making of kimchi. Digital image. Getty Images News, n.d. Web. 12 Feb. 2016. <http://data.en.koreaportal.com/data/images/full/60/kimchi-making-jpg.jpg?w=600>.
Han, Jeon, and Yoon Sojung. “UNESCO Recognizes Kimjang, Korean Culture of Sharing.” Korea.net. N.p., 11 Dec. 2013. Web. 11 Feb. 2016. <http://www.korea.net/NewsFocus/Culture/view?articleId=116173>.
King, Thomas. The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative. Toronto: Anansi Press. 2003. Print.
Outside the home, Lijun walked underneath the black canvas of a late winter evening. Above, the full moon shone. He was always entranced by the full moon. It was always so complete, so whole. So beautiful. His family had the congenital myth that if you bundled your one strongest desire, your one innermost wish, put it into a firework and shot it at the doll-faced saucer in the sky, it would come true. They didn’t believe in silly stories anymore, but Lijun’s blood came from an earlier time. He had already decided he would make a wish tonight and for what? He’d find that out eventually.
The clanging of the dinner bell summoned him and as he set his small box of toy-firecrackers to the side and dumped his day’s profits into a small jar, he shook his sandals off and stepped inside. So accustomed to the shelter his straw hat provided him while he sold his wares, he forgot to untie the chin strap, keeping the duoli upon his head. Everyone had already piled in between each other around the round table that had been filled with grilled fish, fried tofu, and pickled vegetables. A wholesome meal to share.
“Hurry up,” one of his aunts said, “it’s not polite to keep people waiting.”
Picking up his chopsticks and a bowl of rice, Lijun struggled to squeeze in between two bulky arms, extending his chopsticks towards the side dishes through the flurry of carried food. His douli slipped askew on his head as he was bumped by another thick arm, and his chopsticks barely remained parallel in his trembling hand. It was only now that he realized that his knees had been marked red. Everyone else had been sitting on thin cushions. His eyes loomed over towards the grilled fish. Only one slab of white meat clung to its thin bones and as he reached for it, his chopsticks were slapped out of his hand.
“Oi, whaddya think yer doin’? Damn, ya really don’t get it do ya? Last piece always goes to father. Why doesn’t that get through your thick head? Maybe it’s ‘cause ya wear that hat so much ya do stupid things like this,” one of his relatives said.
“But, I just want…”
“Did I say y’could speak, idiot? Don’t talk back!”
Someone grabbed his hat and flung it towards the entrance of their home. The sound of his chin strap’s fabric being torn out of place like the cries of an abandoned animal pierced Lijun’s ears. Dropping his bowl of rice, he ran towards his hat. Without stopping, he picked his mangled hat up, put it on his head, sandaled his feet and met the night again.
He reached an old plum blossom tree nearby, its trunk burly and its branches, although in tangled chaos, were serenely grouped. Quickly, his hands scraped out the mound of dirt at its base, unearthing a modest missile, painted with a turtle, a dragon god and a boy on its sides. He climbed to the top, legs straddling tight around a bare branch, lit a match from his pockets and set flame to the wick.
The tears streaming down his face felt hotter than the flickering wick flailing by his hands. Closing his stinging eyes once before opening them again, he muttered some words, and threw. The rocket spiraled a few times, soaring through the sky in celebratory arches, going further and further away until it was a small black dot eclipsed by the moon. It burst into whites and coral reds illuminating Lijun’s quivering lips before casting him in darkness in the ensuing silence. He stayed there that night. The round moon offered him a company his home never could.
—-
As a note, I wrote this short drabble to take place in some sort of unspecified Asian setting, the period being completely ambiguous if not entirely fictional. There’s a mixture of a various of East Asian cultures here, but with many images drawn from Chinese backgrounds.
I tried to compose this story with several antitheses of the idea of ‘home’ like the hostile family that refuses to provide for Lijun. Elements of what constitute ‘home’ for me are strewn across the piece too. The strong presence of nature recalls my own setting of agrarian Abbotsford, the communal dinner table conveys the importance of eating with the family and sharing ‘banchan’ (side-dishes) in my Korean household, and the thread of filial piety stem from my personal experiences and intersections with Korean culture.
Furthermore, I wanted to string the motif of the moon through the passages until the very end, comparing the full moon to the round dinner table before returning to the sphere once more. In regards to the second hyperlink, that tale has been one that has stuck with me since a young age. Though didactic, meaning to warn children against disobedience, I find myself touched by the tragedy of losing home and of the inability to say goodbye to one’s family. The places we live in aren’t simply constructed by the landscape or its buildings, but the people we share them with and the disconnect Taro experiences with the stranger at the end of the tale emphasize such a truth.
Works Cited:
Moss, Laura. “What’s the Big Deal about Eating Alone?” Mother Nature Network. N.p., 05 June 2014. Web. 06 Feb. 2016. <http://www.mnn.com/food/healthy-eating/stories/whats-the-big-deal-about-eating-alone>.
Ozaki, Yei Theodora. “The Story of Urashima Taro, the Fisher Lad.”Japanese Fairy Tales. Lit2Go Edition. 1908. Web. <http://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/72/japanese-fairy-tales/4881/the-story-of-urashima-taro-the-fisher-lad/>. February 07, 2016.
Ronderick. A view of the moon through the branches. Digital image. Halfway to NoWhere: Ranting and Complaints of Life in Taiwan. N.p., 12 Mar. 2011. Web. 11 Feb. 2016. <https://ronderick.wordpress.com/2011/03/12/sakura-trees-in-wu-lin-farm/>.
I have a great story to tell you.
You know those cave paintings? Rock art dating back to Prehistoric times—maybe even further, since the beginning, red and black swathes crafted carefully into bulls or aurochs, magical vignettes of hunting and stenciled-in hands, dotting those cavern walls with points of history. This parietal art paved the way for many wonderful things, the world breathed into life through contest and competition. Yes, these paintings helped shape our world—and brought evil into it. This is the story of how evil came into the world.
Once a year, when the season was cold, the moon a musty yellow, artists from around the globe would travel to the caves. Many imaginative minds came to those hallowed caverns, their wrinkled hands itching to peck into the walls, art that looked the most alive. It was a contest to create life in a way. Some artists drew from the wildlife, stroking into existence plump pigs with the ends of their charred torches, etching black into snouts and caudal coils. Others found the intimacy of the human body to be the thing that looked most alive, to compare one’s self with the pigment on the wall like a stone cold mirror.
But one artist noticed through the luminescence of the torches everyone used, the flickering of shadows. And that artist came to realize, like how we as kids realize, how vivid these quivering contours of doppelganger shape looked. How vividly scary. So scary in fact, that the artist gasped at the sight of her own crooked hand, and heard her sudden breath echo across the wide, endless expanse of the cave. An idea was lit into the artist’s mind, burned bright with the flame of inspiration. And she went to work.
Finally, the artist finished, without placing paint to the wall, but before that wall was a torch, brilliantly lit. When her fellow colleagues came to her station, assembling curiously before the blank wall, the artist began to work her magic. And she started like this:
“I have a great story to tell you.”
Using her hands, she crafted horrible shadows. Inspired by the frightening shapes she had made earlier, she spoke of marvelous monsters, crafted crime after crime and spoke with a booming echo that seemed to shake the walls. Her story spoke of crude sin, of double toil and trouble, and by the bright light of the flame, her words came to life.
By the end, everyone agreed that her art was the most alive and applauded her efforts. But, they said:
“Okay you win, but what you said just now—it isn’t so funny. It doesn’t sound so good. We are doing okay without it. We can get along without that kind of thing. Take it back. Call that story back.”
But, of course, it was too late. For once a story is told, it cannot be called back. Once told, it is loose in the world. So, be careful of the stories you tell, and the stories you listen to.
—
I told this story to a friend, who looked at me oddly because he was wondering why I was interrupting him during a rather heated game of League of Legends. Thankfully, I waited for him to finish to tell him my version of how evil came into the world. The opening line was magical, actually. Like a “once upon a time” or the “OH!” of olden days, I could tell he was curious from the get-go. What made this story so great? What made this story one worth telling?
He asked me what “caves” the artists went to, but I refused to answer. I wanted to keep that level of ambiguity, to keep that bit of detail a secret. While written fiction (especially short stories) does well with specificity, I think with the art of oration, a little bit of mystery can go a long way to help the narrative be catchy. And indeed, it was to him! At least, in that moment. To be honest, it was difficult to learn the whole story by heart, but with a script printed out I did okay! I made sure to use alliteration to help me get into some memorable rhythms among some other techniques, so performing the little tale was pretty fun.
—
Works Cited:
Cave Painting, Artwork. Digital image. All Posters. N.p., n.d. Web. 31 Jan. 2016. <http://www.allposters.com/-sp/Cave-Painting-Artwork-Posters_i10230211_.htm>.
King, Thomas. The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative. Toronto: Anansi Press. 2003. Print.
Milton, John. “Paradise Lost: Book 1.” Paradise Lost: Book 1. Ed. Thomas H. Luxon. Trustees of Dartmouth College, n.d. Web. 01 Feb. 2016.
Shastry, Vaibhav. “Storytelling through Shadows.” The Times of India. TNN, 27 Aug. 2012. Web. 01 Feb. 2016.
Marie Ponsot. Image cited below.
Question 3:
In an interview piece appropriately named “Between Riddle and Charm,” Anna Ross quotes American poet Marie Ponsot as a connoisseur of poems that use “whatever we can find in our language to catch the world and offer it to each other.” Implicit in her poetic tableau of terrene transaction, is the implication that language has the capacity to weave another realm, or at least, create pockets of reality that is then shared. In an apt parallel, J. Edward Chamberlin in his introduction to If This Is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories? Finding Common Ground, writes that stories “bring us close to the world we live in by taking us into a world of words” (1). Although differing slightly in their descriptions of the power of language and exposition, both writers indicate a common thread: language as a vehicle for understanding the “wider world” (162) C.S. Lewis failed to consider.
Like Ross and Ponsot, Chamberlin narrows in on the topic of framing the world through the mystical lenses of rhyme (riddle) and charm. Rhymes adhere to a quizzical vein, artfully playing with language to court contradiction. However, charms seek to breathe new life into our realities, and provide platforms for a common blood for our experiences. As Chamberlin describes in regards to their differences: “either language or the world has to give—and in a riddle, language gives” (180). There is a reason why I’ve riddled my explanation of rhyme and charms with the language of vītālitās and of the sanguine. Words seem to harness of a life of their own, able to evolve if not metamorphose in contingency to the world of the speaker. And that world is often like the rhyme, a contradictory hodgepodge or gallimaufry of personal experience. These experiences will undoubtedly differ from orator to orator and culture to culture, and in an example Chamberlin illustrates through onions and roses, what may be a symbol of love for one society will incredibly differ for another. This is the “world of words” Chamberlin elaborates upon within his insightful tome.
As mentioned above, rhymes in particular reflect the contradiction of the multiplicity of human experience, and how we as inquisitive animals search for meaning through arbitrary sounds and alphabets in the vast expanse of our realities. There may be a clever coincidence as to why a single elimination of the letter ‘L’ from “world” transforms the term into “word.” With stories it may be safe to say that the world is not created through atomic assembly. Instead, the world is spoken into life through the fundamental units of language: words. Chamberlin depicts this in his explanation of early linguists:
Linguists used to say that every word was once a
metaphor, embodying the wonder of an encounter with some-
thing strange; this wonder was then represented in a word, and
when the word was repeated, the encounter was experienced
again in all its surprising strangeness. (163)
One rhyme may embody the startling representation of a concept or object to one generation, but for the next, may be rendered defunct. Likewise, rhymes often fail when passing cultural boundaries. However, they remain powerful for their respective orators, their apparent nonsense becomes “so familiar that it seems simply true” (162), reflecting Chamberlin’s observation that an education of reading and writing is akin to becoming “comfortable with a cat that is both there and not there” (132). Words may mean one thing for one person, but may be colored differently for another who has a completely different palette of experiences, while simultaneously representing something else entirely. And yet, these words bring us closer to our world by the hues of our personal, social, and cultural contexts thanks to their intimate reflection—or perhaps it would be better to say transformation—of our realities.
Unlike the rhyme, charms seem to have an easier time crossing borders. I believe that is due to their ability to resonate with core human values: “friendship, love and loyalty” (192). Stories and songs like Bony M’s “The Rivers of Babylon” re-frame the world in broader swathes, but with the same imagination of the rhyme. In regards to charms, Chamberlin more specifically writes that “it is only through the pressure of our imagination that we can resist the pressure of reality” (192), and these crafted words, sorted artfully into the soaring melodies of ballads, into the hums of Ponot’s poetry, or into compelling narratives both written and orated, tie us closer to the world we live in by attempting to orient us in response to the overwhelming vortex of human experience. When effective, these charms are canonized. Placed into tradition. We remember histories upon histories through the fabricated weave of story.
Perhaps, that is why it is so important to preserve the stories of the Indigenous. They represent whole other worlds. Worlds we may be oblivious to, but are homes to the voices of thousands. Stories, with their powerful words communicate to us, the outsider, the collective wealth of a culture’s traditions, way-of-life and reality. So, when we recall the horrendous severance of an entire people from their own language—the tools with which they create stories—by the cultural massacre committed by the residential school system or the injustice of the Kwakwaka’wakw potlatch‘s banning, we are also remembering the destruction of entire worlds.
While the Starkiller Base of Star Wars: The Force Awakens may destroy entire galaxies of planets, the death of languages destroys the ability to create and keep canonized, the stories of a culture’s world. To end, I hope that this course will inspire an awakening in me (and it already has), and help me discover Canadian literature like a Marie Ponsot, and find a little bit of world in every rhyme, every charm.
–
Works Cited
“Between Riddle and Charm.” Interview by Ann Ross. Guernica 15 July 2010: n. pag. Web. 19 Jan. 2016. <https://www.guernicamag.com/interviews/ponsot_7_15_10/>.
Bony M. “The Rivers of Babylon“. Lyrics. Metro Lyrics. Web. April 04 2013. <http://www.metrolyrics.com/rivers-of-babylon-lyrics-boney-m.html>.
Chamberlin, J. Edward. If This Is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories?: Finding Common Ground. Toronto: Vintage Canada, 2004. Print.
Churchill, Sarah. “English: It’s a Neologism Thang, Innit.” The Guardian. N.p., 9 May 2011. Web. 20 Jan. 2016. <http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/may/09/neologism-thang-
scrabble-abominations>.
Ross, Ann. Marie Ponsot. Digital image. Guernica / a Magazine of Art & Politics. N.p., 15 July 2010. Web. 19 Jan. 2016. <https://www.guernicamag.com/interviews/ponsot_7_15_10/>.
“The Story of the Masks.” The Story of the Masks. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Jan. 2016. <http://www.umista.ca/masks_story/en/ht/potlatch01.html>.