Hello, reader!
I’m Mattias Martens, a student of English 470A, Canadian Literary Genres. I was born to a first-generation German mother and a Mennonite father whose ancestors had fled to Canada for fear of the Bolshevik Revolution, and I now study topics of interest at UBC with a nominal major in Computer Science. In this course, I intend to learn about significant works of Canadian literature and how the stories they present are intertwined with the colonial history of this country.
Though I was born in Swift Current on the Saskatchewan prairie, in many ways I feel myself to be a newcomer. When I was younger, on a trip to my mother’s hometown, it struck me how much one could feel a sense of history there. The castles, town, and cobblestone roads had been there for centuries, some even for millennia. They stood as if one with the earth. Canada, by contrast, was a land of tin shanties and log cabins – it had scant history. Slowly I have come to understand that this sense of infancy hangs on the erasure of a vast pre-existing legacy, an erasure demanded by colonialism, and that it is this alone that makes our country appear an orphan of history.
I hope to learn more about this legacy and its tragedies under the colonial hegemony, as well as the new voices emerging from a Canadian consciousness that is more deeply and equitably aware of its past. In particular, I look forward to reading more Thomas King – I loved Green Grass, Running Water when I read it a few years ago. Where I grew up in Yukon Territory, there was a museum dedicated to a story I found particularly inspiring: George Johnston, the Tlingit man who had a car shipped into his village before there were roads, and who bought a camera to capture the life and traditions of his community.
George Johnston.
I feel that George’s life demonstrates beautifully that for the indigenous peoples of Canada, the sometimes-constructed dichotomy between heritage and change is a false one. It also shows the power that technology and culture have to complement each other.
Cheers, and I look forward to learning with you all!
Works Cited
Anderson, Alan. “Mennonite Settlements.” The Encyclopedia of Saskatchewan. Canadian Plains Research Center, University of Regina. n.d. Web. May 14, 2015. <http://esask.uregina.ca/entry/mennonite_settlements.html>.
“George Johnston.” George Johnston Museum. George Johnston Museum. n.d. Web. May 14, 2015. <http://www.gjmuseum.yk.net/gjohnston.html>.
Picturing a People: George Johnston, Tlingit Photographer. Dir. Carol Geddes. Nutaaq Media, 1997. DVD.
Hello Mattias, and welcome to our course of studies together, and thanks for a great introduction. I am looking forward to our work together this summer; your blog looks great. Thanls. Erika
This is a very powerful introduction.
My grandpa was a first generation immigrant from London, which he left to escape a hierarchical class system that put so much weight on the family one’s born in. There, it was better to be unsuccessful but from a prestigious family than be “nouveau riche.” He was constantly being judged based on his lower class accent, despite being a very bright young man with lots of potential.
So, while it may be an “erasure demanded by colonialism” to some, it was a new start for others. The idea of the “American Dream” very much extends to Canada. However, like you say, that Dream was pursued at the expense of others. The First Nations fought against being swept aside.
The literature we will be reading is an example of that fortitude, and I am sure you are just as excited about that as I am. The “we beat them” mentality in US textbooks is frankly disgusting (the Natives were almost wiped out by a plague before Columbus arrived), and I am excited to be in a course that celebrates First Nations’ stories.
The last bit about George Johnston is fitting, as new technologies can be looked at “new beginnings,” but it’s not like the past is gone. This is the first online course for many of us, but the internet has become such an integral part of our society. I love how you said, “the sometimes-constructed dichotomy between heritage and change is a false one,” and was wondering if you could elaborate on that.
🙂
Hi Evan, thank you for your thoughtful comment. Your grandfather’s story raises an interesting point: a fresh start was often precisely what settlers and immigrants wanted from the New World, sometimes to escape persecution and prejudice. In fact, I think one could make a strong case that the early innovations of American culture owed much to its distance from Europe and its entrenched ways of thinking. Erasure and tabula rasa; an interesting duality.
The “heritage and change” dichotomy is something I’ve heard about pretty often in discussions about Indigenous rights, particularly self-government. The argument goes that Indigenous people must choose between the “old” and the “new,” the “old” being traditional beliefs and lifestyles and the “new” being those of a capitalist, consumerist, European-based democracy. By that logic, making use of cameras and cars is to let go of the old, one’s heritage, and side with the new.
But Tlingit culture, like any Indigenous culture – indeed, like any culture at all – is capable of fluidly adapting to new conditions. World history is full of examples of peoples who adapted foreign technologies to their own ways of life rather than the reverse. I think the community where I grew up, isolated as it was from the rest of Canada, is an excellent example. It was only after the Alaska Highway came through that it began to suffer from the problems faced by so many other First Nations: loss of livelihood, loss of identity, loss of community.
Hello Mattias!
I enjoyed reading your first blog post. I like the language you use and the observations you make about Canadian land and history. Describing it “scant,” an “orphan”. That’s interesting and true: we often forget that written, recorded history about Canada is from a western (Colonial) perspective. When you describe visiting your mother’s hometown and feeling the history everywhere, it strikes a note with me. My family are immigrants from the former Soviet Union and hearing my parents speak about the places they called home is completely different than the way I found myself relating to my surroundings in Canada. It is as though some link is broken somewhere. Often I have found myself longing to live in a place with a history that belongs to me (although I don’t even know what that means).
So when you say
“Slowly I have come to understand that this sense of infancy hangs on the erasure of a vast pre-existing legacy, an erasure demanded by colonialism, and that it is this alone that makes our country appear an orphan of history”
I am reminded that along with “belonging,” what I want is understanding of this history, and like you say, “erasure” of!
Very nice to meet you
Hi Nadya, thanks! It’s interesting to hear that you’ve had similar thoughts. Nice to meet you too.