{"id":27,"date":"2015-06-12T14:25:39","date_gmt":"2015-06-12T18:25:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/canadianstories\/?p=27"},"modified":"2015-06-22T12:11:51","modified_gmt":"2015-06-22T16:11:51","slug":"performance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/canadianstories\/2015\/06\/12\/performance\/","title":{"rendered":"Performance"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post responds to Question 3<\/a> 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?<\/p>\n

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 \u201cwe\u201d 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<\/a>\u2019s personal identification, a factor many Indigenous scholars see value in making explicit. Does anyone know about Lutz\u2019s own position<\/a>?<\/p>\n

As for the rest, my initial reaction to the above question was yes \u2013 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\u2019s performances, at first contact. Lutz starts by describing the intent from both sides, at points of early first contact, and the performances that \u201censured that the misunderstandings did not cause offence\u201d (Lutz, 31). Indigenous peoples and European strangers saw each other in sometimes very similar ways.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

But I don\u2019t think this is quite the difference that Lutz is assuming. In the passage in question,<\/p>\n

\u201cOne 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\u201d (32)<\/p>\n

Lutz is saying that it\u2019s very challenging to see Indigenous performances through both the eyes of Indigenous peoples and of our European ancestors. And it\u2019s even more challenging, a less obvious difficulty, to see the performances of our European ancestors as \u201calien\u201d and \u201cmythic\u201d (32). I don\u2019t 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\u2019s more difficult for Europeans to understand European performance as<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n

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. \u201cIndigenous rationality rested on the transformer myths as European rationality and assumed superiority rested on Christian mythology\u201d (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).<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll leave you with a thought from Lutz\u2019s introduction to this book, which might be a clue as to why it\u2019s easier for us to see our ancestors\u2019 performances as plain history rather than mythic and spiritual. The artifice of performance \u201cis 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.\u201d (Lutz, Contact Over and Over Again, 9)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Works Cited<\/strong><\/p>\n

Lutz, John. \u201cFirst Contact as a Spiritual Performance: Aboriginal \u2014 Non-Aboriginal Encounters on the North American West Coast.<\/a>\u201d Myth and Memory: Rethinking Stories of Indigenous-European Contact<\/em>. Ed. Lutz. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2007. 30-45. Print.<\/p>\n

Lutz, John. \u201cContact Over and Over Again.\u201d<\/a> Myth and Memory: Rethinking Stories of Indignenous- European Contact<\/em>. Ed. Lutz. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2007. 1-15. Print.<\/p>\n

Lutz, John Sutton. \u201cJohn Lutz\u2019s Web.\u201d University of Victoria<\/em>, n.d. Web. 12 June 2015. http:\/\/web.uvic.ca\/~jlutz\/index.html<\/a><\/p>\n

Sanchez, Luis. \u201cPositionality.\u201d Encyclopaedia of Geography<\/em>. Sage Publications, 2010. Web. 12 June 2015. http:\/\/dx.doi.org.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca\/10.4135\/9781412939591.n913<\/a><\/p>\n

Image taken by me in 2005.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23319,"featured_media":35,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1237257],"class_list":["post-27","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-lesson-22-assignment-24","post-thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/canadianstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/canadianstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/canadianstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/canadianstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23319"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/canadianstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/canadianstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/canadianstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27\/revisions\/37"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/canadianstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/canadianstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/canadianstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/canadianstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}