Thomas King’s novel, Green Grass, Running Water, begins with the sentence “[i]n the beginning, there was nothing. Just the water” (6). While upon first reading the opening, a reader may be expected to believe that King is talking just about the creation of everything. However, once the initial reading of the novel is dealt with, and a reader goes back to the beginning, this sentence takes on new meaning.

Much of King’s novel is a work of allusion; many of the characters are caricatures of actual people – sometimes one person is split into multiple. What is therefore interesting about restarting King’s novel and rereading his opening line is that it feels almost as if it is an allusion to the events that happen near the end of the novel (spoiler: the dam breaks and water goes everywhere – though if you’re paying attention in class, you should know this by now). It isn’t just that this is a tale about the beginning of creation, but it is also the tale of new beginnings for characters such as Lionel, Alberta, and Charlie – sorry Eli.

June-Ann Greeley, an associate professor at Sacred Heart University in Religious and Theology studies, describes the sacred nature of water in Indigenous culture and how it is “a relentless force of enormous power that . . . [is] an instrument of purging and cleansing and thus renewal” (Greeley 159). King’s novel most definitely uses water in such a way as Greeley describes as we see through the epic conclusion to Eli’s story and hardship fighting against the courts about the dam that threatens his home. Though the bursting of the dam ends the conflicts that surrounded it by making them all moot points, there is also new hope that comes from it in Norma’s determination to spend her time living in the valley that Eli occupied.

Though less dramatic, the character Charlie is also given a new beginning through water, for it is rain that perturbs him from leaving his hotel room. This new beginning comes in the form of reconnection with his father.

Alberta also gets a renewal from the rain as she spends some time standing in the it outside the Dead Dog Café, ending up drenched. This is a seemingly cathartic moment for her, as seen in the next scene where she retells the story we readers have just read to Latisha (King 353). It is also in this scene where we get the first indication that Alberta has gotten her wish of becoming pregnant without the help of a man (King 352).

Greeley seems to summarize perfectly what King’s novel portrays. That “[w]ater symbolizes the origin of life, the assurance of fertility” (Greeley 159), as seen in Alberta’s case, as well as “be a quixotic agent of hardship and death” (Greeley 159) as seen in Eli’s.

“Honour Water” by Canadian Métis artist, Christi Belcourt.

Works Cited

Belcourt, Christi. Honour Water. christibelcourt, September 15, 2014, http://christibelcourt.com

/water/honour-water/. Accessed March 19, 2021.

CanLit Guides Editorial Team, The. “Green Grass, Running Water by Thomas King.” CanLit Guides, November 22, 2013, https://canlitguides.ca/canlit-guides-editorial-team/green-grass-running-water-by-thomas-king/. Accessed March 19, 2021.

Greeley, June-Ann. “Water in Native American Spirituality: Liquid Life – Blood of the Earth and Life of the Community.” Green Humanities, 2017, pp 156 – 179, https://digitalcommons.sacredheart.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1124&context=rel_fac. Accessed March 19, 2021.

King, Thomas. Green Grass, Running Water. Harper Perennial, 2012, eBook edition.

The various renditions of Thomas King’s ‘Green Grass, Running Water’ throughout the years. I am particularly intrigued by the centre artwork and I wonder what others think of the cover art. What one do you like the best?

One of the first things I noticed about Thomas King’s storytelling in Green Grass, Running Water was the way that the four goddesses, Coyote and “I” spoke. Most of the storytelling that happens when any of these characters are “on screen” is done through their interactions with each other or other characters who might happen along in the story. It is interesting when you think about how King was inspired by Harry Robinson to tell these stories; they come off as is they are oral stories being told because there is not much description of the world around the characters besides what the characters describe themselves. Much like in Robinson’s “Coyote Makes a Deal with the King of England,” the conversation is what drives the story. Though, what is important in both King’s and Robinson’s narratives is the conversations between characters as it is the connections between the people or characters in the stories that is the important aspect and not whether or not those characters are standing somewhere in Florida or in Blossom, Alberta.

In the conversations that King writes, it is easy to see the influence of Harry Robinson’s own form of “written orality” through the short, straight to the point sentence structure. The entirety of Robinson’s Coyote story is in short, almost grammatically confusing sentences that, as discussed by my fellow classmates in previous blog postings, seem to force the reader to say the sentences out loud in order to gain their meaning. In King’s novel, there is a replica of this kind of writing in the dialogue throughout the novel and not just with the above-mentioned characters. It can sometimes seem that two characters, engaged in conversation, are talking about two completely different topics. For example, in Part One of King’s novel, the character Lionel seems to experience this the most whenever he begins to talk about his future with Bill Bursum:

“I’m looking for someone to replace [Charlie].”

“I’ll probably go back to school.”

. . . “You know, in a good year Charlie would make thirty-five, forty thousand dollars . . .”

“Sure.”

“I think I’ve got a jacket that’ll fit you.”

“Probably go back to school.” (King 78 – 79)

A similar exchange can be read a little further between Lionel and his father, where while Lionel discusses his options about either going to school or working for Mr. Bursum, Lionel’s father goes on about needing help around the house. While King’s approach to dialogue is perhaps less confusing than Robinson because his sentences follow grammatical rules, he does play with the “hard to follow” element that Robinson’s text embodies by the disjunction between characters in their conversations.

Both King’s and Robinson’s texts deal with creationism in some sense. While King’s story focuses on the creating of the world through the four goddesses, Robinson’s text discusses about the creation of the Indian Law or “The Black and White” (Robinson 108). In both texts, the author’s play with the character of God, however, each version of God in the texts has a distinct characteristic that more or less gives the reader a good sense of their character. In Robinson’s text, God is not completely present as they instead send an Angel to speak to Coyote in order to get him to do their bidding. This version of God is seemingly all powerful and omnipotent, seeing that they understand that sending Coyote to the King of England won’t produce the Indian Law until much later, when a Queen finally takes the throne. On the other hand, King’s God is very childish and tantrum-y. They do not come off as being an all powerful being as most of their screen time in the story has them fighting with First Woman who doesn’t understand the “Christian rules” (King 67). God comes off as a comical character rather than the great and knowing one from Christian texts.

Works Cited

CanLit Guides Editorial Team, The. “Green Grass, Running Water by Thomas King.” CanLit Guides, November 22, 2013, https://canlitguides.ca/canlit-guides-editorial-team/green-grass-running-water-by-thomas-king/key-themes/. Accessed March 12, 2021.

“Harry Robinson.” TalonBooks, https://talonbooks.com/authors/harry-robinson. Accessed March 12, 2021.

King, Thomas. Green Grass, Running Water. Harper Perennial, 2012, eBook edition.

Robinson, Harry. “Coyote Makes a Deal with the King of England.” Living by Stories. Talonbooks, 2005, eBook edition. Pp 93 – 115.

“Thomas King.” HarperCollins, https://www.harpercollins.ca/author/cr-100072/thomas-king/. Accessed March 12, 2021.

Thinking back on the banishment of the younger twin from Robinson’s story, the “written document” feels almost like the apple (i.e. forbidden knowledge) from the Garden of Eden story from the Bible. Before I continue, I must preface these thoughts with the fact that I am not a religious person; I have never read anything associated with the Bible, all my knowledge comes from pop culture, and mostly satire at that.

To refresh your memory, in Robinson’s story,  “the young twin stole a written document . . . he had been warned not to touch” (14) leading to his sudden and abrupt banishment that left “[t]he elder twin . . . in his place of origin” (14). Reading this segment, I cannot help but think that this banishment caused for the younger twin to lose his connection to the land that the elder twin, the representation of Indigenous peoples, maintains. While studying Indigenous history and their stories, the theme of spirituality and a connection to the land is often brought up; this connection is somewhat lost on those of European descent.

Coyote the Trickster by coyoteflutesong on DeviantArt

If we look at the written document that Robinson describes the younger twin to have stolen and read as being a forbidden knowledge, much like the apple that Eve and Adam ate of, perhaps it can be thought of as somehow disconnecting people from the land. Descendants of the younger twin in Robinson’s story continue to “[conceal] the contents of the ‘paper’” (14) when eventually they land back on North American soil. Therefore, it seems that by reading the document, those that descended from Coyote (the elder twin) would lose the relationship of “stewardship . . . for the land (and sea) and all of the creatures that inhabit the land with them” (“First Nation Relationship to the Land”).

I would be interested to know when Robison’s story was first told. We are told in the Introduction to “Living by Stories” that when the “whites had landed on the moon, [Robinson] immediately incorporated this detail into his story” (57) of another one about Coyote. I cannot help but wonder about other incorporations as Lutz speaks about how Indigenous peoples of the past weren’t “interested in replacing their own spiritual beliefs and powers with Christian ones. [Rather t]hey sought to add the spirit powers of the whites to their own” (“Frist Contact” 44). This suggests to me that Robinson’s story is influenced by the Bible (whether from his own creation, or from past storytellers that he learned from).

I wonder about how incorporating Christianity into Indigenous culture may have gone if left to the people to decide rather than have it forced upon them by European colonists. I found an interesting, yet short read, about the rise in Christian Indigenous peoples in Canada according to the 2011 National Household Survey. Looking at the graphic representing the Indigenous populations religious beliefs, I cannot help but feel disheartened. While I recognize a lot of these conversions more than likely didn’t happen on the friendliest of terms, to hear that they are rising brings up concerns that I feel were expressed by Robinson about the disappearance of proper story tellers (i.e. those learned in the ways of Indigenous culture).

Work Cited

coyoteflutesong. Coyote the Trickster. DeviantArt, Jan 6, 2011. https://www.deviantart.com/coyoteflutesong/art/Coyote-the-Trickster-192406629. Accessed Feb 22, 2021.

“First Nation Relationship to the Land.” Indigenous Corporate Training Inc., May 7, 2015. https://www.ictinc.ca/blog/first-nation-relationship-to-the-land. Accessed Feb 22, 2021.

Lutz, John. “First Contact as a Spiritual Performance: 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.

Robinson, Harry. “Introduction.” Living by Stories edited by Wendy Wickwire. Talonbooks, 2005. 8 – 62. eBook.

Todd, Douglas. “Indigenous Christianity on the rise in Vancouver and beyond.” Vancouver Sun, Dec 11, 2017. https://vancouversun.com/news/staff-blogs/indigenous-christianity-on-the-rise-in-vancouver-and-beyond. Accessed Fed 22, 2021.

Reading through my fellow students’ blogs, I wasn’t that surprised to find that a majority of those I selected to read associated Home with a sense of security. A few I read also brought in the aspect of a pet that brings a sense of Home to them. Another common theme was family; family dinners; memories tied to extended family members. I feel like these are all safely assumed similarities I had before starting this assignment and reading others’ stories just confirmed in my mind what I already felt I knew.

The sense of security that Home brings was present in a few blogs, though not all. I feel like this has to do with the questioning of Home these blogs brought up.

What was complicated to me was the fact that every blog that I read questioned where “Home” was. Nearly everyone that I read had moved from either a different Canadian province or from a completely different country. Granted most of these moves generally happened at a young age, some of them seemed to be more recent, happening in the blogger’s adulthood.

It is such a strange concept to me to question where Home is, but then again I’ve been lucky. I currently am typing this assignment up from my childhood home; my parents are downstairs talking about something lively; their voices are traveling up the stairway. The only difference being that my childhood has been somewhat erased through the years.

Perhaps the easiest eraser to explain is the paint on the walls of the room I am residing in. It was once the playroom for my brother and me. I had drawn on the walls with a pen my dad gave me when I was six or so, being caught by my mother and instantly breaking out into tears. In the past eight years I’ve painted it, twice. It became my room after my brother moved out as it was much bigger than my childhood bedroom.

The bigger eraser, that is a little more difficult to talk about for me, has to do with the renovations that happened of the result of a house fire in 2015. All the drywall had to be replaced (the excepting being the playroom as the door was closed and escaped smoke damage) so not even the scars of playtime with my brother remain.

Despite these changes to the house, it will always be Home because of the familiarity of the layout. Even the few years I spent living with an ex-partner, every time I walked through the front door of my parents’ place, it just felt right. It was, and always will be, Home.

“Weekend at the Mountain Lodge” by Anita Skinner. Puzzle by Stand Out Puzzles from West Kelowna, BC. Picture taken by myself from the ‘puzzle corner’ in my childhood home. I felt it was a good embodiment of more elements I consider of home. Puzzling; the Canadian Flag; camping; fresh water source. The list goes on.

Blogs Cited

Collins, Zac. “Blog 2:2 :: Where the Heart Is.” Englitwithzac, 2020, https://blogs.ubc.ca/englitwithzac/. Accessed Feb 15, 2020.

McConnell, Aiden. “Assignment 2:2 – There’s No Place Like Home.” Canadian Literature Blog, 2020, https://blogs.ubc.ca/engl372aidan/2021/02/10/assignment-22-theres-no-place-like-home/. Accessed Feb 15, 2020.

Nikoo, Mia. “Where The Heart Is.” Literary Traveller, 2020, https://blogs.ubc.ca/mianikoo/. Accessed Feb 15, 2020.

Rance, Holly. “Coming Home.” Rediscovering a Nation: A Study of The Power of Stories, 2020, https://blogs.ubc.ca/hollyrance/. Accessed Feb 15, 2020.

Stewart, Samantha. “Jumping Waves.” Rocks, Tress, Water, 2020, https://blogs.ubc.ca/rockstreeswater/. Accessed Feb 15, 2020.

Yamanaka-Leclerc, Leo. “2:2: Home.” English 372 – Canadian Literature, 2020, https://blogs.ubc.ca/english372leoyamanakaleclerc/. Accessed Feb 15, 2020

Work Cited

Skinner, Anita. Weekend at the Mountain Lodge. Stand Out Puzzles, https://standoutpuzzles.com/product/weekend-at-the-mountain-lodge/?v=4326ce96e26c. Accessed Feb 15, 2020.

Waiting for Summer. The Summer that may never return. Yet that is hoped for. For what is time to a cat? Are we all cats now in our understanding of time and place? Bean credit to Toshinori, my cat.

Home.

Home is where the car is parked, and the doors left unlocked. Its where jeans are exchanged for pajamas. Where the make-up comes off and the hair is let down. Home is a sense of security; of peace of mind; of relaxation.

Home is where lifetime advice resides in the library of my parents’ minds.

Dad’s is filled with the practical. How to change your cars’ oil; the proper way to mow a lawn; when the right time to invest is the stock market is.

Mom’s is more spiritual, but still holds the same value. How to be true to yourself; follow your heart, but with a touch of brainpower mixed in; don’t cry for him, he doesn’t matter, what matters is your own happiness.

Home is where responsibility awakens.

In my younger years, it was in the form of pulling the smallest weeds from the garden. Making sure Mom’s plants got watered while she was busy at work. The responsibilities Mom gave were about the growth and addition of new life in the house. Dad’s were about its removal. The trash. Have you removed all the garbage from the upstairs? Take out the recycling. Take out the compost.

Being older, responsibilities have shifted. Barely. Its still weed the garden, water the plants, take out the trash, recycling, compost. But now it includes bills. Bills, bills, bills, bills, bills. Have you paid your car bill? Yes. Student loans? No. Electrical? Gas? Water? Life? Yes. No. No. Yes?

Home is where the love is.

Love in the form of fuzzy little bodies with cold little noses. The four-legged creature that cries when I’m not there, and cries again when I am. Who insists that the bed is entirely made for them, but will allow my presence as long as are cuddles included.

Yes, I fed you. Look! Your bowl is right there. Food! Eat it. No don’t cry at me; that’s all you’re getting. Okay fine. One treat. Maybe two. But that’s it! Maybe one more for the road.

Home is where the fun happens.

Mostly individual oriented. Novels read. Video games played. Cookies baked. Simple joys that can be shared either physically or spiritually through story telling.

Some are group oriented. Outdoor walks through the garden. Badminton on the front lawn. Marshmallow roasting over an open fire. Memories created together to last a lifetime.

Home is where school happens.

Where one rolls out of bed mere minutes before class starts, hair half a mess, pajamas on. There’s no webcam, so no one knows that a shower is desperately needed. What does it matter anyways? Days no longer exist as we are just existing; indefinitely.

Without the scheduled hours of class, time does not exist. Assignments still get completed, but the urgency is gone.

Perpetual relaxation.

Why be stressed when you never leave your house anyways? When truly nothing really matters when it comes down to it. It will get done. Eventually. When I feel like it.

If you had asked for a definition of Home a year ago, you may have gotten similar answers. Perhaps with the addition of where memories with loved ones are made. Home was a place of traditions fulfilled. Where the turkey was served. Where we would gather together to play board games until the wee hours of the morning before crashing on the couch, still half drunk from laughter and maybe too much wine.

But Home no longer has that laughter.

Home is more of a bunker now. It still holds the same value of safety, but it comes with a new sense of us versus them; uninfected versus infected; alive versus dead.

Home is where the disease isn’t.

Artwork by Jessica Somers. The interconnectivity of this piece I felt complimented what I was trying to do with my story. I was inspired to write this story from reading and listening to Thomas King tell “The Truth About Stories.”

In not quite the beginning of creation, nor not quite the end, a Being existed. Our Being. Like all other Beings, ours’ was formless; only conscious thought marked it as existing. And much like the other Beings, ours’ was determined to find where it fit into the rest of existence.

Our Being wandered. It wandered over grassy plains filled with field mice. It wandered through meadows full of dancing flowers. Until finally, at the edge of the meadow, it came to a river.

The river gurgled and sang as it flowed over rocks, happy as can be. But there was something missing, as beyond the flow of nature, our Being could not see any other life. Across the river our Being noticed another. It too was watching the river.

This other Being, much to ours’ surprise, seemed to be being drawn into the river; it crept closer and closer until all of a sudden, the Being exploded!

This was not a violent explosion as one might think. Rather it was more of a burst of energy; of excitement; of wonder. For the Being across from ours had burst into hundreds of fish to populate the river.

“Wait!” Cried out our Being to the one that was now Fish, “Wait! Please tell me how you knew you wanted to be fish!”

Just as our Being thought it would not get an answer, Fish swam up to it and eyed it from the riverbed. To flow is to be happy, Fish replied, telling our Being its story. In its uncreation this Being had enjoyed moving with the flow and thought such an existence would suit it just fine.

While flowing along sounded like a nice existence, our Being didn’t think it could enjoy it for all that long. Having had its answer, our Being thanked Fish and moved on.

Traveling further inland, our Being came across a dense forest with a game path cut through the middle. Wondering what kind of creatures would live in such a place, our Being entered the forest.

It wasn’t long before our Being came across the creature known as Bear. “Oh, Bear.” Wailed our Being, “Tell me what made you choose to live in the forest.”

To lumber is to be happy, Bear replied, telling our Being its story. In its uncreation this Being had enjoyed taking in the scenery at a slow pace, and thought to be a big burly creature, with all the time in the world, would suit it just fine.

Our Being didn’t think lumbering around slowly sounded like that much fun, so it thanked Bear for its answer and moved on.

Continuing down the path, our Being began to notice the tree were thinning out. They become so sparse that our Being could see just up ahead there was a clearing. In the middle of this clearing, there was a strange structure; it was like nothing our Being had ever seen in nature before. Curious beyond belief, our Being made its way up to the structure.

“Hello?” Cried out our Being, “What place is this?”

When no answer was returned, our Being entered through a largish opening. Within the structure was a room full of furniture made from branches woven together. The most notable of all was a large table in the middle of the room. Drawing closer, our Being noticed on top of this large table a smallish box sat.

Our Being crept closer, wondering what might be inside this box, unaware that the box was whispering to it, beckoning it closer, begging our Being to just crack the lid, if only for a moment.

“Stop!” a voice rang out from the opening of the structure, but our Being was much too drawn to the box and lifted the lid; just a crack.

But a crack was all it took.

From within, Beings, much darker than ours, escaped from the box. Our Being was shocked at the evil within these other Beings’ stories. They circulated the space within the structure, wailing and whining all the while. They promised to bring to the world violence, starvation and disease before finally escaping through the opening of the structure, and out into the world.

Our Being collapsed to the floor and began to cry. “Oh why! Why could I not leave the box alone?” It wept out of fear for what it had released unto the world.

“Please don’t cry,” spoke the voice from before. Our Being looked to see another, much like itself, nearby. “For though once you have told a story you can never take it back, I will work to tell more stories to outweigh those that bring you despair.” And with that the Being turned into a woman.

Our Being stared in wonder, and suddenly felt that all would be right in the world, if only it chose to stay with this Being. And so, our Being turned into a man. “We must be careful of the stories [we] tell, AND the stories [we] listen to, but I think spending eternity telling them with you would make for a nice existence.”

FIN

After I had written this story, I read it to my parents.

I first read it to my dad whose only comment was to say the ending was cute. He seemed to like it but through our conversation he didn’t seem to understand the point of the story. I don’t think he’s been read a story in a long time though.

Later, I read it to my mom. She too hasn’t had a story read to her in a long time and she commented that it was a different experience to have a story be told than to read it oneself. She understood that the story was supposed to contain a moral, but with me reading it to her, she was confused as to where exactly the moral was (I had prefaced the story by telling her it was the creation of evil). She became more stuck on what I considered little aspects (i.e. our Being turning into a man at the end — its just a fable, or a creation story in my mind; my thinking was that we as humans are storytellers, so what better way to combat evil but by telling stories that weren’t evil. In order to do so, one would need a voice, so my story ended with the creation of humans).

After this experience I would not consider myself a good storyteller based on the reactions of my parents. My mom commented that there was emotion in the story because of the way that I told it; I’m still unsure if the emotion I wanted to convey is the same one she felt.

This “Creation of Evil” story was originally told by Leslie Silko in “Ceremony” and later retold by Thomas King in “The Truth About Stories.“

Works Cited

King, Thomas. The Truth About Stories. House of Anansi Press, 2010.

Silko, Lesli. Ceremony. Penguin Publishing Group, 2006.

Somers, Jessica. Symbolism. Indigenous Art Collective of Canada, 14 Oct 2020, https://passthefeather.org/jessica-somers/. Accessed 3 Feb 2020.

I felt that this painting, by John Gadsby Chapman in 1840, is in general a good depiction of how society sometimes views Indigenous peoples as being uncivilized — a common interpretation in historic texts of European origin. In the painting, it can be observed that the Indigenous peoples are not watching the ceremony; one individual even standing in an aggressive position, indicating their uncivil nature as viewed by the artist. Those of European descent on the other hand are bathed in God’s light, including Pocahontas who is in the centre of the painting, indicating her transition to being civil.

The notion of “oral culture” versus “written culture” is a strange one to process. Communication in the modern age, as many of you reading this well know, involves a lot of texting and emailing – written communication. But what about phone or zoom calls? Do we not still communicate and make agreements through oral means?

Stuart Rudner talks about oral agreements in his opinion article “If it’s verbal, is it binding?”; a short but interesting read on the legality of oral agreements. In legal terms, Rudner points out that “[i]t doesn’t matter whether it is set out in a formal legal document . . . or communicated verbally” (2019) in regard to negotiating agreements between employee and employer. Despite the notion that is often put forward that Western culture is a “written culture,” as discussed in Courtney McNeil’s article, with orality being a secondary aspect, the legality of oral agreements seems to disagree with that fact. If orality did not hold any legal binding properties, then this discussion might be vastly different.

As McNeil points out in their article titled “orality” (2007), cultures that rely on oral record keeping are often seen as being less educated. This is not a new notion by any means. I would even suggest that such beliefs are tied to Medieval Europe, during which time, the culture shifted from oral record keeping to written. This opened a whole new can of worms – one of the more fascinating aspects being that people suddenly needed documents which lead to them relying on forgeries. These forgeries, however, were documents that were crafted in order to prove ownership and often were not entirely false as we might initially think when hearing the word ‘forgery’ today. (For more information on Medieval Forgeries I highly suggest taking UBCs Medieval Studies 310 with Courtney Booker if you ever get the chance.)

In order to read these new documents, one needed to be literate – meaning that education was key, which at the time of the shift, was often limited to the wealthy (i.e. nobility and the Church). Superiority then became tied to being educated and literate as it often opened doors for those that were, while closing doors to those that weren’t. I would suggest that this notion of superiority is still embedded in Western culture today despite the best efforts of historians and anthropologists.

Erin Hansen makes a very interesting point in their blog post titled “Oral Traditions” that “written documents tend to be received automatically as authorities . . . and what is written down is taken as fact” (2009) where as oral story telling, traditional to Indigenous cultures, are viewed as being easily manipulated and untruthful. However, as Justice David Vickers is quoted to have said by Hansen, “disrespect for Aboriginal people is a consistent theme in the historical documents” (2009) suggests to me that even written documents are not exactly Truth-with-a-capital-T as many like to believe.

When it comes to literature, English students are often tasked with trying to make their own interpretations and derive meaning from the texts they are presented with. In history courses, questions of biases and subjective viewpoints often arise when reading age old texts. As a student of both, I like to mix and match these questions and look at what the author of the text wants or is trying to make me believe. It is then left up to me to decide if I want to believe or continue to question.

Works Cited

Chapman, John Gadsby. Baptism of Pocahontas. 1840, Capital Rotunda.

Hansen, Erin. “Oral Traditions.” Indigenous Foundations.arts.ubc.ca, 2009. https://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/oral_traditions/. Accessed Jan 26, 2021.

MacNeil, Courtney. “orality.” The Chicago School of Media Theory, Winter 2007. https://lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/mediatheory/keywords/orality/. Accessed Jan 22, 2021.

Rudner, Stuart. “If it’s verbal, is it binding?” Canadian HRReporter, September 30, 2019. https://www.hrreporter.com/opinion/canadian-hr-law/if-its-verbal-is-it-binding/321022. Accessed Jan 26, 2021.