Assignment 2:4 — Assumptions and Areas

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.