This post responds to Question 3 of Lesson 2.2. Is it fair for Lutz to assume that it is more difficult for a European to understand Indigenous performances than the other way around?
First of all, I do think Lutz is assuming that his audience is of the European persuasion, especially as he goes on to say that “we” are too close to our own worldview and the worldview of our ancestors to perceive their performances (32). Although, it is surprisingly difficult to find anything about Lutz’s personal identification, a factor many Indigenous scholars see value in making explicit. Does anyone know about Lutz’s own position?
As for the rest, my initial reaction to the above question was yes – it seems reasonable that Indigenous people could understand European performance better than European people could understand Indigenous performance. Maybe Indigenous peoples and Europeans would have been on an equal playing field, in their ability to understand each other’s performances, at first contact. Lutz starts by describing the intent from both sides, at points of early first contact, and the performances that “ensured that the misunderstandings did not cause offence” (Lutz, 31). Indigenous peoples and European strangers saw each other in sometimes very similar ways.
In our current European settler perspective, though, I thought initially that it could be very true that Indigenous people are better able to understand European performances than the other way around. For many generations Indigenous peoples have been in a minority situation, in a dominant European society. In a very loose comparison, Canadians generally know a lot more about American culture, history, geography, than Americans know about Canada. It would make sense that Indigenous people know more about the dominant culture that has been pressed on them from all directions, than mainstream settler Canadians know about Indigenous cultures that they have collectively learned very little about.
But I don’t think this is quite the difference that Lutz is assuming. In the passage in question,
“One of the most obvious difficulties is comprehending the performances of the [I]ndigenous participants. One must of necessity enter into a world that is distant in time and alien in culture, attempting to perceive [I]ndigenous performance through their eyes as well as those of the Europeans” (32)
Lutz is saying that it’s very challenging to see Indigenous performances through both the eyes of Indigenous peoples and of our European ancestors. And it’s even more challenging, a less obvious difficulty, to see the performances of our European ancestors as “alien” and “mythic” (32). I don’t think that Lutz is claiming it is more difficult for Europeans to understand Indigenous performances than for Indigenous people to understand European performances, but rather that it’s more difficult for Europeans to understand European performance as performance. We have the natural inclination to see alien, unfamiliar Indigenous gestures and ceremonies as performance, but find it difficult to understand that European gestures and ceremonies are anything other than normal, just the way things are done.
Lutz continues to elaborate on the central place of spirituality in both Indigenous and European performances at first contact. Spirituality in European actions is very difficult for us to acknowledge, he explains, because of our worldview based on logic and rationality and our separation between spiritual and not. “Indigenous rationality rested on the transformer myths as European rationality and assumed superiority rested on Christian mythology” (41). Different generations of European scholars have exposed the spirituality of Indigenous peoples, but we continue to separate our own sense of rationality and the spirituality of the other. Lutz concludes by reminding us that both Indigenous and European people, in those earlier times, saw each other through merged spiritual and rational lenses (45).
I’ll leave you with a thought from Lutz’s introduction to this book, which might be a clue as to why it’s easier for us to see our ancestors’ performances as plain history rather than mythic and spiritual. The artifice of performance “is not just to deceive, as Chamberlin reminds us, but to deceive to tell the truth. We are all familiar with the notion that fiction can sometimes be truer than a recitation of facts.” (Lutz, Contact Over and Over Again, 9)
Works Cited
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: University of British Columbia Press, 2007. 30-45. Print.
Lutz, John. “Contact Over and Over Again.” Myth and Memory: Rethinking Stories of Indignenous- European Contact. Ed. Lutz. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2007. 1-15. Print.
Lutz, John Sutton. “John Lutz’s Web.” University of Victoria, n.d. Web. 12 June 2015. http://web.uvic.ca/~jlutz/index.html
Sanchez, Luis. “Positionality.” Encyclopaedia of Geography. Sage Publications, 2010. Web. 12 June 2015. http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/10.4135/9781412939591.n913
Image taken by me in 2005.
Hi Kaitie! Your question on which position Lutz stands for on the subject between these two cultures is a great start to consider. I tried searching for more bios about himself but couldn’t come up with much besides his UVic page http://www.uvic.ca/humanities/history/people/faculty/lutzjohn.php where he shares his interest in defining “home” much like we have been in this course. I’d really like to know his actual assumptions for this case since his writing regarding this theme seems a bit confusing and contradictory, trying to dive into both histories of Europeans and Indigenous without much luck in the end, I find. But your comparison between Europeans and Indigenous and Canadian and the American is a really great example. Such as myself, I do know more about American history and politics or even trivial facts compared to what I know about Canada. Just because America’s background is more exposed than Canada’s, much like the European’s history has been shared and told many times. I also agree with your take on the question of assumption – that it’s not harder for Europeans to understand Indigenous performances but it’s more about comprehending the performance itself. We’re more likely to believe the familiar – religion and ceremonies of such just because we’ve been exposed to them, whether we believe it or not. But the Indigenous performances that hold their own cultural meaning unique to them is something we’ll find more difficult to grasp, mostly because it’s unfamiliar and new. And like Lutz concludes, it will take some time to get used to.
Thanks for a great take on our reading! You have really great insights.
-Angela Olivares
Angela,
Thanks for your comments!
You reminded me of Chamberlin’s statements on belief. He says that we always have to believe and not believe stories (34). If we don’t do both at once, things can get dangerous, being dismissive of other people’s stories or taking our own stories too seriously. As you say, “we’re more likely to believe the familiar.” In this case, we may be seeing European performances not as performances, or stories, but as fact, and at the same time seeing Aboriginal performances as not worthy of believing.
Thanks!
Kaitie
Works Cited
Chamberlin, Edward. If This is Your Land, Where are Your Stories? Finding Common Ground. Mississauga, Ontario: Random House of Canada, 2004. Print.
🙂
Hi Kaitie,
I think the points that you mentioned definitely allowed me to have a greater insight into the Lutz article. I really liked how you mentioned that we don’t see or understand our own performances, because we associate performance with non-rationality. We are socialized to see our traditions as the norm, but it is apparent that compared to other cultures, our traditions are alien and non-rational. For example, the weddings that we see in Canada differ greatly compared to the rest of the world. In traditional Zulu weddings the bride and the groom wear vibrant colors, and the grooms family kills a cow to welcome the wife into the family. I think that by viewing our performance as strange we will have a better means of understanding and appreciating the performances of other groups.
-Sarah
Hi Sarah,
Sorry I didn’t see your comment until now!!
Thank you for your thoughts. Great example of how our traditions are the norm and others’ seem alien. I was trying to explain this idea to a friend and used Lutz’s example of an Aboriginal man, captured by European explorers, using his own urine to protect himself from evil. But I realized in using that example that I have so many more to use, that are much more familiar to me. As you said, looking at our own performances as strange is a super effective way of understand that other traditions come from the same mould. Just take a look at our traditional weddings!!
Thanks again,
Kaitie
🙂