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.

My favourite tea mug along side Indigenous author Louis Erdrich’s book, “Tracks”, which I highly recommend if you haven’t read it already. This story is an excellent one that deals with the loss of heritage and land through the eyes of fictional Ojibwe peoples.

Greetings and salutations! Welcome to my first ever blog, which is bound to be a rich source of my inner mind as I navigate through English 372 99C.

A little about me: I’m an English Literature major with a minor in Medieval Studies. My pathway at UBC has been an interesting one to say the least. With the mix of my major and minor, I have elicited the opportunity to take a lot of courses studying cultures around the world through their history as well as their literature. Funny enough, I didn’t think to look into my own backyard until my final year as an Undergrad. This is my second course that has a focus on Indigenous literature, and my first that focuses mainly on Canadian literature.

I have been introduced to Thomas King previously through his non-fictive book titled The Inconvenient Indian. While my previous professor, Dr. Dory Nason, only had us read the first few chapters, my impression of King’s book is that it is a good resource to understand the history of Indigenous people within North America. Though like any history book, the book itself has its strong points and its weak points; part of the reason why Dr. Nason had us read other Indigenous writers on Indigenous women.

Beyond that of written literature, Alanis Obomsawin, and Indigenous documentarian, has some interesting short films and documentaries on the Nation Film Board of Canada website (found here: NFB). Obomsawin was another source I was introduced to through my previous Indigenous literature studies course. While I have not watched all of Obomsawin’s work, the few that I have were really enlightening. In particular her documentary titled Hi Ho Mistahey! is an excellent piece documenting the troubles of schooling on Indigenous reserves and the fight for funding started by the late Shannen Koostachin.

Based on my previous exploits into Indigenous literature, I have some ideas as to what to expect for ENGL 372. However, I recognize that this course is taking a different approach. Where my previous experience delved more into the non-fictive literature – there was some fiction such as Louis Erdrich’s Tracks, another highly recommended text – I expect this course to deal more with the fictive stories written by Canadian Indigenous authors.

The fun thing about literature is that you never know how a story is going to affect you until you’ve read it. You never know what ideas will stem from one sentence that will lead you down the research rabbit hole. So, join me by grabbing your steaming cup of tea and let’s dive in!

Works Cited

“The Inconvenient Indian.” CBC.ca. CBC Books, 2017.  https://www.cbc.ca/books/the-inconvenient-indian-1.3972080. Accessed 16 January 2021.

“Alanis Obosawin.” NFB.ca. Directors, 2021. https://www.nfb.ca/directors/alanis-obomsawin/ Accessed 16 January 2021.