Charlotte's ENGL 470 Blog

For this assignment, I chose to analyze pages 187-199 of Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water because of the rich allusions to literary and historical figures seen throughout. These segments engage intertextually with key literary figures and authors, drawing attention to the practice of constructing narrative that we see throughout King’s work. Additionally, we get scenes of engagement between creation stories, re-writing various narratives of dominance, and King’s classic ability to question which stories our culture promotes by offering alternative points of view and giving voice to minor characters.  I’ve decided to approach these analyses chronologically rather than categorically so that it is easier for anyone reading this to follow along in their own copy, and because King so cleverly rejects traditional linear structure that approaching it in any other manner seemed ineffectual. King invites us along on the journey as he writes it, and in this sense, I’m following directions.

Bill Bursum complains about titles and naming: As Jane Flick demonstrates, Bill Bursum’s name refers to two historical figures who shared a detestation for Indigenous people in what is now the United States: Holm Bursum, who proposed the Bursum Bill that divested land in order to give it to non-Indigenous peoples for development, and Buffalo Bill Cody, who exploited Indigenous people through Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West and served as a Union scout to fight against the Kiowa and Comanche. These allusions highlight King’s concern with media, narrative, and stereotyping. The character himself engages in simplistic thinking around Indigenous issues; he refers to Indigenous peoples as Indians, which itself comes from colonial history and Cristopher Columbus’s mistakenly thinking he had arrived in India when he arrives in North America. He also complains that you can no longer use the term Indian, and “when some smart college professor did come up with a really good name like Amerindian, the Indians didn’t like it;” this may be a reference to controversial activist Ward Churchill and others involved with the American Indian Movement. Bill Bursum even goes so far as to say Lionel and Charlie “aren’t really Indians any more”

That nut in Montreal: The direct reference here is unclear, but given the timing of the novel’s publication in 1993, this could be a reference to the mass shooting of 14 women studying engineering at École Polytechnique in 1989, the Concordia University massacre in 1992, or potentially an indirect reference to various events in the Oka Crisis, which involved land disputes between the Mohawk people and the Canadian government and Montreal Mayor bringing in Canadian police forces to fight against the Mohawk people.

The Mysterious Warrior and Monument Valley: Jane Flick writes that this is a composite of key Western movies and actors combined to allude to The Mystic Warrior, whose source material caused controversy due to its misrepresentation of indigenous people. This allusion is reinforced by writings about a film shot across monument valley, which Flick elucidates is a reference to Stagecoach, which placed John Wayne on the map as a Western film star.

George Wears the Fringed Leather Jacket: We know from Jane Flick that George’s name refers indirectly to George Armstrong Custer, a general in the Civil War and American Indian Wars, where he took part in massacres and attacks against the Cheyenne and Lakota Sioux in particular. The jacket he wears alludes to a photo mentioned earlier in the novel where Custer poses in a fringed jacket. George even states that the jacket and matching gloves “belonged to one of [his] relatives,” and tells Latisha, “Most old things are worthless. This is history,” heightening the allusion. The violence George commits against Latisha in this jacket evokes the violence General Custer enacted against Indigenous people, particularly as Latisha herself is Indigenous.

“Mom, is this the one where the cavalry comes over the hill and kills the Indians?”: Likely another reference to General Custer and his role in the seventh cavalry in particular. 

Changing Woman, the White Whale, and the White Canoe: The white whale is a clear reference to Herman Melville’s novel Moby Dick and the white whale its main character hunts throughout the novel. By referencing this book, King brings forth another key literary force about violence, dominance, and competition. Changing Woman mentions the white canoe seen in previous chapters, which alluded to Noah’s Ark; placing this in the context of the hunted whale puts the Christian story under attack.

The Pequod: As Jane Flick mentions, the Pequod is both the name of the ship Ahab captains in Moby Dick, and closely resembles the name of the Indigenous Pequot tribe.

Ishmael and Queequeg: “Call me Ishmael” is the opening line of Moby Dick, and Queequeg is an indigenous character within Moby Dick. Queequeg is an explorer and is the first person Ishmael encounters in the novel. They develop a friendship; however, Queequeg is also a wild, unpredictable, tattooed cannibal. Melville attempts to incorporate a ship-based democracy in Moby Dick, incorporating Queequeg into its inner workings. A coffin Queequeg builds for himself acts as a life preserver for Ishmael (For a full analysis of Queequeg’s character, see here or find reference below for Vanderbeke); King seems to manipulate the representation of Native people as savage and as serving white men when the Changing Woman takes on this role.

Coyote’s Favourite Months: Coyote says he likes the months April and July, but doesn’t like November. New coyote pups emerge in April, gain independence and begin exploring in July, and November is a popular month for humans to hunt coyotes as their fur coat grows thicker; this brings forth the imagery of white men hunting indigenous people just as their trickster figure is hunted, reinforced by the hunting narrative of Moby Dick that is prominent in this section.

Whaleswhaleswhalesbians and Blackwhaleblackwhaleblackwhalesbians: not necessarily a direct reference, but the incorporation of the hunted whale as black, female, and apparently lesbian evokes the attack of white men and majorities against minority people. In this way, King highlights how the narratives of white, often male, dominance have evolved to attack modern-day minorities, but have not progressed to equality. As Moby-Jane says, “he always comes back.” Placing Changing Woman in the role of Queequeg, but having her refuse to attack the whale and swim with it instead of becoming a harpooner, creates a narrative in which Indigenous people support other minorities and live collectively, rather than combatively.

Moby-Dick the White Whale and Moby-Jane the Black Whale: The use of Moby-Dick and Moby-Jane could be seen as alluding the childhood basal textbook series Dick and Jane, popular in the 1930s onwards. Basal textbooks are designed to teach children manners, customs, and how to engage in the world, along with teaching skills like reading and writing. Dick and Jane books became iconic in America by the 1950s, and now hold a place of both nostalgia and criticism from many for being misogynistic and lacking diversity. Manipulating these traditionally white, privileged, instructional children’s names into a tale of revolution against the dominant power structures suggests an entirely different kind of education and teaching. King uses a narrative used to teach children about the world into one that teaches resistance, collaboration, and uprooting power structures.

An excerpt from a Dick and Jane book, retrieved from the “Reading with and without Dick and Jane” Rare Book School Exhibit 

Works Cited

“Buffalo Bill Cody.” Biography, 27 April 2017, biography.com/people/buffalo-bill-cody-9252268. Accessed 17 Mar 2019.

Chavers, Dean. “5 Fake Indians: Checking a Box Doesn’t Make You Native.” Indian Country Today, 15 Oct 2014, newsmaven.io/indiancountrytoday/archive/5-fake-indians-checking-a-box-doesn-t-make-you-native-Z9mn2ErpHEWl5BDNU9LJRw/. Accessed 17 Mar 2019.

“Custer and 7th Cavalry attacked by Indians.” This Day in History, HISTORY, 25 Feb 2019, history.com/this-day-in-history/custer-and-7th-cavalry-attacked-by-indians. Accessed 17 Mar 2019.

Flick, Jane. “Reading Notes for Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water.” Canadian Literature 161/162 (1999). Web. 15 Mar. 2019

“Furbearer Management Guidelines.” British Columbia Wildlife, env.gov.bc.ca/fw/wildlife/trapping/docs/coyote.pdf. Accessed 16 Mar 2019.

“George Armstrong Custer.” HISTORY, 21 Aug 2018, history.com/topics/native-american-history/george-armstrong-custer. Accessed 18 Mar 2019.

King, Thomas. Green Grass, Running Water. Toronto: HarperCollins Publishers, 1993. pp. 187-199. Print.

Lejtenyi, Patrick. “The Toxic Masculinity Behind One of Canada’s First University Shootings.” VICE, 6 April 2017, vice.com/en_ca/article/gve754/the-toxic-masculinity-behind-one-of-canadas-first-university-shootings. Accessed 16 Mar 2019.

Martinez, Matthew. “All Indian Pueblo Council and the Bursum Bill.” New Mexico History.Org, newmexicohistory.org/people/all-indian-pueblo-council-and-the-bursum-bill. Accessed 17 Mar 2019.

Melville, Herman. Moby Dick. Edited by Will Eisner, NBM, 2001.

“Montreal Massacre: Legacy of Pain.”  CBC’s The Fifth Estate, 1 Dec 1999, cbc.ca/fifth/episodes/40-years-of-the-fifth-estate/montreal-massacre-a-legacy-of-pain. Accessed 18 Mar 2019.

MovieClips Classic Trailers. “Stagecoach (1939) Official Trailer – John Wayne, John Ford Western Movie HD.” YouTube, 26 Jun 2014, youtu.be/gK645_7TA6c. Accessed 18 Mar 2019.

“The Oka Crisis.” CBC Digital Archives, 2018, cbc.ca/archives/topic/the-oka-crisis. 18 Mar 2019.

Shermer, Elizabeth. “Reading with and withoutDick and Jane. The politics of literacy in c20 America.” Rare Book School, Nov 1 2003, rarebookschool.org/2005/exhibitions/dickandjane.shtml. Accessed 18 Mar 2019.

Vanderbeke, Dirk. “Queequeg’s Voice: Or, Can Melville’s Savages Speak?” Leviathan, vol. 13, no. 1, 2011, pp. 59-73.

Wallenfeldt, Jeff. “Pequot: History, War, 7 Facts.” Encyclopedia Britannica, 6 Dec 2018, britannica.com/topic/Pequot. Accessed 17 Mar 2019.

Ward, Jervette. “In Search of Diversity: Dick and Jane and Their Black Playmates.” ACADEMIA, academia.edu/1943895/_In_Search_of_Diversity_Dick_and_Jane_and_Their_Black_Playmates_. Accessed 17 Mar 2019.

“William F. Cody: Buffalo Bill.” New Perspectives on The West, 2001, pbs.org/weta/thewest/people/a_c/buffalobill.htm. Accessed 16 Mar 2019.

1. In order to tell us the story of a stereo salesman, Lionel Red Deer (whose past mistakes continue to live on in his present), a high school teacher, Alberta Frank (who wants to have a child free of the hassle of wedlock—or even, apparently, the hassle of heterosex!), and a retired professor, Eli Stands Alone (who wants to stop a dam from flooding his homeland), King must go back to the beginning of creation. Why do you think this is so?

In reading the novel, I was struck by the ways in which King uses the structure of his work to disorient the reader from their traditional styles of analysis and interpretation. The non-linear format relies heavily on seemingly disconnected stories, jumping location, narration, and chronology frequently; this challenges the reader to immediately disregard the conventions of storytelling they are used to, creating a space where King pushes the boundaries of Western narrative forms and therefore asking the readers to embrace and consider alternative narratives. With this context, his decision to return to the creation story is unusual in that it grounds the narrative within a fixed point: the beginning. This creates a central focus around which the seemingly conflicted narratives all share a developmental arc, and, given that the stories of Alberta Frank, Eli Stands Alone, and Lionel Red Deer are eventually connected, creates a sense of the individual stories as bound in a shared universe that is interconnected through its stories and their shared beginning.

Additionally, King seems to use the creation stories to challenge our predetermined inclinations to view the world in binary terms; we get interactions between characters from Indigenous belief systems and those from Christian systems, presenting the idea of a world that has space for multiple belief systems to coexist in a legitimate, interconnected way. Although much of King’s writing about the Judeo-Christian narrative involves irony and tongue-in-cheek expressions, the dialogue existing between God and Coyote shows a shared understanding of the duplicity of religious beliefs and worldviews. King creates a dialogue that shows alternate views of creation, tied together in one initial moment. They are not necessarily in competition, but rather both existing in a similar experience of the world (even if at times King uses the Judeo-Christian God as a criticism or caricature of this worldview). The novel is also set in primarily Blackfoot territory, and the Blackfoot have a variety of creation stories involved in their own worldview; King’s choice is therefore not insignificant in the way it interplays with the other characters and other creation stories.

Map of Traditional Blackfoot Territory, Retrieved from the Glenbow Museum 

Indigenous worldviews rely heavily on a perspective of interconnection, which views the world and the living and non-living creatures within it as fundamentally connected through their actions, narratives, and shared use of the land. A fundamental element of this interconnected worldview comes from the belief in a shared story of creation, which, as we have discussed in past lessons, itself relies on communication and collaboration between animals, people, and sometimes the land itself. I am thinking in particular of the story of The Woman Who Fell From the Sky, wherein creation involves not only the woman herself, the birds who help break her fall, the turtle arising from the water to give her a place to sit, the otters and muskrats who dive to get the mud to form the earth, and the twins she births, who create a balance between light, darkness, order, and chaos in the world. This worldview is holistic, finding a balance in all elements of the world; King shows a similar representation of seemingly unrelated events as fundamentally connected not only through the novel’s conclusion but also through the importance of creation in his storytelling. Although King uses the Coyote myth, the fundamental balance between different forces and the interconnection fundamental to many indigenous worldviews is still essential in his writing.

Works Cited

Ashliman, D.L. “Blackfoot Creation and Origin Myths.” FolkTexts, 4 Jan 2003, pitt.edu/~dash/blkftcreation.html. Accessed 7 Mar 2019.

Blackfoot Traditional Territory Map. Glenbow Museum online, glenbow.org/blackfoot/maps/traditional_territory_map.htm. Accessed 7 Mar 2019.

“Interconnectedness.” First Nations Pedagogy Online, 2009, firstnationspedagogy.ca/interconnect.html. Accessed 7 Mar 2019.

King, Thomas. Green Grass, Running Water. Toronto: Harper Collins, 1993. Print.

“Traditional Stories.” Niitsitapiisini: Our Way of Life, Glenbow Museum Online, 2019, glenbow.org/blackfoot/EN/html/traditional_stories.htm. Accessed 7 Mar 2019.

“Woman Who Fell From The Sky.” Myths Encyclopedia, 2019, mythencyclopedia.com/Wa-Z/Woman-Who-Fell-From-the-Sky.html. Accessed 7 Mar 2019.

 

2. In this lesson I say that it should be clear that the discourse on nationalism is also about ethnicity and ideologies of “race.” If you trace the historical overview of nationalism in Canada in the CanLit guide, you will find many examples of state legislation and policies that excluded and discriminated against certain peoples based on ideas about racial inferiority and capacities to assimilate. – and in turn, state legislation and policies that worked to try to rectify early policies of exclusion and racial discrimination. As the guide points out, the nation is an imagined community, whereas the state is a “governed group of people.” For this blog assignment, I would like you to research and summarize one of the state or governing activities, such as The Royal Proclamation 1763, the Indian Act 1876, Immigration Act 1910, or the Multiculturalism Act 1989 – you choose the legislation or policy or commission you find most interesting. Write a blog about your findings and in your conclusion comment on whether or not your findings support Coleman’s argument about the project of white civility.

For this assignment, I decided to investigate the 1989 Canadian Multiculturalism Act. I was intrigued by this policy in particular because the BNA Act, Indian Act, and Immigration Act were all produced in a comparatively distant time period, which, although it does not lessen the horror of their implications and approaches, can seem cognitively distant enough that individuals attempt to tell themselves the governments that enacted those policies do not resemble ours and were more malicious than ours, which to me becomes dangerously close to the attitude of “that couldn’t happen here” or “that couldn’t happen now” that leads to individuals becoming complacent within their own democracies. In contrast, the Multiculturalism Act is relatively recent (occurring within the past 50 years), and at least on the surface level, seems far more positive in its approach to crafting a national identity than the BNA Act or the Indian Act, who explicitly attempt to control non-white groups and embrace colonial settlers as the dominant group.

The Canadian Multiculturalism Act of 1989 emerged in response to shifting social policies and opinions that worked to recognize the rights of various minority groups; in the 1960’s and 1970’s, this social movement included social forces like the Civil Rights movements in Canada and the US, the first and second wave feminist movements, and within Canada, Quebec’s Quiet Revolution. By 1989, an increasingly diverse Canadian population that grew with the help of immigration reform prioritizing skilled labour over country of origin began to fight for recognition by the Canadian government. Although general attitudes were becoming more inclusive, there was still little to no legal framework entrenching multiculturalism as a national value or as a legal framework through which to guide lawmakers and businesses.

However, while entrenching multiculturalism may initially seem like a positive action, recently questions have been raised about whether this action instead just identifies a sense of culturalism that relegates individual’s to their country or culture of origin, their observable heritage, or their families ethnic and cultural roots. This not only has the potential to emphasize cultural differences instead of similarities and empathy but also fails to identify the intersections or complexities of an individual’s upbringing. For example, how do you classify the culture of someone who had one parent grow up in France, the other in Kenya, both of whom then attended post-secondary in, say, England, before moving to Canada and raising a child together? (For an excellent discussion on this topic, and an alternative to asking ‘where are you from?’, see this video). There are many ways cultures intersect and diverge from the country of origin, and many cultures whose worldview does not center around borders, like the Indigenous people of Canada, whose presence in this land precedes even the concept of the nation-state.

Within the context of Coleman’s argument about creating a narrative of white civility, the fact that existing documentation was founded on a view of Canadian identity that was primarily limited to English and French in its recognition demonstrates the ways in which systematic frameworks were designed with whiteness as the priority. Similarly, the modifications to encourage diversity and inclusion through the Multiculturalism Act shows the disparities existing in the way minority and majority groups were treated; an explicit program to encourage diversity is necessary only in the backdrop of discrimination, and the ways in which this act identified minority groups further solidified this divide.

Library and Archives Canada. Statutes of Canada. An Act for the Preservation and Enhancement of Multiculturalism in Canada, 1988, SC 36-37 Elizabeth II, Volume I, Chapter 31. Retrieved from “Canadian Multiculturalism Act, 1988”.

Works Cited

“Canadian Multiculturalism Act, 1988.” Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21, 2019, pier21.ca/research/immigration-history/canadian-multiculturalism-act-1988. Accesed 26 Feb 2019.

Dirks, Gerald. “Immigration Policy in Canada.” The Canadian Encyclopedia, 29 Jun 2017, thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/immigration-policy. Accessed 27 Feb 2019.

“Nationalism, 1960s onwards: Multiculturalism.” CanLit Guides, Canadian Literature Quarterly, 4 Oct 2016, canlitguides.ca/canlit-guides-editorial-team/nationalism-1960s-onwards-multiculturalism/. Accessed 26 Feb 2019.

“The Quiet Revolution.” Canada History, 2013, canadahistory.com/sections/eras/cold%20war/Quiet%20Revolution.html. Accessed Feb 26 2019.

Selasi, Taiye. “Don’t ask where I’m from, ask where I’m a local.” TEDGlobal, 2014, ted.com/talks/taiye_selasi_don_t_ask_where_i_m_from_ask_where_i_m_a_local/details?referrer=playlist-what_is_home&language=en. 26 Feb 2019.

 

3] In order to address this question you will need to refer to Sparke’s article, “A Map that Roared and an Original Atlas: Canada, Cartography, and the Narration of Nation.” You can easily find this article online. Read the section titled: “Contrapuntal Cartographies” (468 – 470). Write a blog that explains Sparke’s analysis of what Judge McEachern might have meant by this statement: “We’ll call this the map that roared.”

In his article “A Map that Roared and an Original Atlas: Canada, Cartography, and the Narration of Nation” Matthew Sparke outlines the ways in which different physical representations of Canadian geographical history, the map and the Atlas, have communicated information about ownership and sovereignty over the Canadian landscape. Matthew Sparke highlights two case studies in examining this work: The 1997 Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en case against the government of British Columbia, and the first volume of The Historical Atlas of Canada. Matthew Sparke suggests that both these cases were landmarks in attempting to define a national, unified narrative of land ownership and entitlement to said land, and in placing this definition within a national and historically colonial context.

In the section “Contrapuntal Cartographies” (Sparke 468-470) Sparke outlines the Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en use of maps and cartography as a form of resistance and protest against a primarily Eurocentric and preferentially colonialist approach. Sparke suggests that both the results of the legal case of Delgamuukw v the Queen and The Historical Atlas of Canada  engage in an attempt to create a Canadian “nation-state” identity that encompasses “demographic, economic, cultural, governmental, and social” (468) relationships collectively’ this necessitates a shared vision of land, history, and Canadian future which often does not listen to, or even tolerate, differential and minority viewpoints as legitimate. Sparke highlights the inherent ethnocentrism present in both the case’s proceedings and Judge Mceachern’s decision on it, which was condemned by the United Nations because of Judge McEachern’s discrimination. Sparke looks particularly at the role of cartography, which historically embedded Europeans as the owners and “discoverers” of North America, and in doing so suggests that the ways in which the Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en nations utilize this same power in challenging this Eurocentric view through a language or modality that is shared between them (the map).

John Mitchell’s rendition of North America prior to the Seven Years War, designed to denote the British as having more territory and therefore a stronger likelihood of success than they had in actuality (Mitchell; Dugre).

 In calling the Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en use of a map that rejects and refuses confinement by existing systems of utilities and systems embedded in colonial establishment a “map that roared,” Judge McEachern recognizes the resistance in this act. This map does not just function as a visual representation of the Indigenous perspective on their land; it is a direct, targeted response to colonial claims of their land in the same language that was used to assert this claim. It is a response in the language of the colonizer that rejects the systems used to confine it and encompass it. In saying it “roared,” the Judge, who would eventually decide against recognizing Indigenous land claims, revealed a recognition of the Indigenous argument as powerful, meaningful, and challenging. It roars in defense of its people, its perspective, and its point: you cannot use a map to lay claim to a land and its history. By recognizing this roar and then dismissing the case, Judge Mceachern could also be seen as inherently recognizing the inability of other cartographies to act as evidence, which relates to its later role in the Delgamuukw v. British Columbia appeal case, which was taken to the Supreme Court of Canada.

In calling this section “Contrapuntal” Sparke also brings forth images of duality, as contrapuntal is traditionally a word used to refer to musical scores comprising  two melodic lines. Melodic lines are also usually the most prominent, narrative part of a musical composition in that they are the most identifiable and emotion-laden part of the musical piece. In this context, referring to the ongoing negotiations in perspectives on who “owns” Canada, and which narratives are “correct”, the imagery of two interrelated voices that rely on each other in their engagement seems to mirror the ways in which the Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en peoples engaged with both the Canadian legal system and its relation to colonial history, and their relationship to the maps and cartographies they used in this case. Challenging the Canadian narrative as it exists cannot occur in a void; the colonial Canadian perspective relies on negating the Indigenous one, just as the Indigenous perspective for this case relies on challenging the existing narrative. Both narratives are independent versions of the events of history, but they rely on each other for context and authority, just as melodies stand alone or operate contrapuntally. Similarly, a map or cartography is embedded with a narrative in that it necessarily operates as a simplified representation of the truth, and in this case, the Gitxsan engage with the cartographic form as a means through which to challenge one narrative (or melody) through another: the form is related, but the story it communicates is different, just as a contrapuntal melody uses a similar form to tell related, but independent, musical stories. In this sense, “The Map that Roared” is related again through sound and story to its functioning as a challenge to existing narratives.

Works Cited

“The Delgamuuk Court Action.” Gitxsan, Gitxsan, 2013, www.gitxsan.com/community/news/the-delgamuukw-court-action. Accessed 19 Feb 2019.

Dugre, Neal. “Maps and the Beginnings of Colonial North America.” Digital Collections for the Classroom, The Newberry, 05 Sep 2017,  dcc.newberry.org/collections/maps-and-the-beginnings-of-colonial-north-america. Accessed 19 Feb 2019.

Kurjata, Andrew. “20 years ago, this court case changed the way Canadians understood Indigenous rights.”  CBC News British Columbia, CBC News, 11 Dec 2017, www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/delgamuukw-vs-british-columbia-20-years-rights-titles-1.4440703. Accessed 19 Feb 2019.

Mitchell, John. “Map of the British and French Dominions.” Map. Scale not given. “Maps and the Beginnings of Colonial North America.” Digital Collections for the Classroom, The Newberry, 05 Sep 2017,  dcc.newberry.org/collections/maps-and-the-beginnings-of-colonial-north-america. Accessed 19 Feb 2019.

Sparke, Matthew. “A Map that Roared and an Original Atlas: Canada, Cartography, and the Narration of Nation.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, vol. 88, no. 3, 2010, pp. 463-495

“What is Counterpoint?” Music of Yesterday, 2019, musicofyesterday.com/historical-music-theory/what-is-counterpoint/. Accessed 19 Feb 2019.

1. In The Truth about Stories, King tells us two creation stories; one about how Charm falls from the sky pregnant with twins and creates the world out of a bit of mud with the help of all the water animals, and another about God creating heaven and earth with his words, and then Adam and Eve and the Garden. King provides us with a neat analysis of how each story reflects a distinct worldview. “The Earth Diver” story reflects a world created through collaboration, the “Genesis” story reflects a world created through a single will and an imposed hierarchical order of things: God, man, animals, plants. The differences all seem to come down to co-operation or competition — a nice clean-cut satisfying dichotomy. However, a choice must be made: you can only believe ONE of the stories is the true story of creation – right? That’s the thing about creation stories; only one can be sacred and the others are just stories. Strangely, this analysis reflects the kind of binary thinking that Chamberlin, and so many others, including King himself, would caution us to stop and examine. So, why does King create dichotomies for us to examine these two creation stories? Why does he emphasize the believability of one story over the other — as he says, he purposefully tells us the “Genesis” story with an authoritative voice, and “The Earth Diver” story with a storyteller’s voice. Why does King give us this analysis that depends on pairing up oppositions into a tidy row of dichotomies? What is he trying to show us?

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In telling the “Earth Diver” and “Genesis” creation stories, King uses dichotomy in a multitude of ways to highlight the methods through which the stories we believe and embrace are essentially our own choice. In presenting the stories as a dichotomy, King reminds us that “you have to be careful with the stories you tell and you have to watch out for the stories that you are told”; by presenting the stories as incompatible and contrasting, King actually challenges the reader or listener to consider if this dichotomy is necessary, and if so, how we have been conditioned to accept one story as sacred and the other as secular. King acknowledges that he spends more time focusing on the Earth Diver story, largely because the majority of the audience is not working from a place of existing knowledge of this creation story. However, in approaching it this way, King also draws the audience’s attention to the fact that they do know the story of Genesis. Regardless of their own religious beliefs, King makes the audience question how the Genesis story became so pervasively known within our culture. Without directly asking the audience this question, King demonstrates an alternative by choosing to examine the Earth Diver story more thoroughly. King chooses which story to privilege, modeling his argument regarding how the dichotomous representation of the stories necessitates declaring one as sacred and one as secular. As King writes, “we are suspicious of complexities, distrustful of contradictions, fearful of enigmas.” Dichotomies are easy. Choosing is easy. Challenging the dichotomy is hard, and changing your mind is even harder.

By using an authoritative voice when describing the Genesis story, King highlights how prominent this narrative is in Western culture. He can shorten the story because most of his audience already knows it. He can explain the story from an assumption of the audience’s knowledge. Comparatively, when King tells the Earth Diver story, he crafts it cooperatively and collaboratively. King can assume the audience is coming from a shared place of not-knowing. Just as King challenges the way the Christian Genesis narrative creates a sense of hierarchy by crafting God, then the world, then animals, then man, and finally woman, he challenges the hierarchy with which Christianity asserts its authority by presenting the collaborative Earth Diver creation story from a place of assumed equality. Telling the Genesis story by assuming others know it already creates a hierarchy between “knowers” and “non-knowers,” Christians and non-christians, members and non-members, in-group and outgroup. Telling the Earth Diver story in completeness, with humour and questions to the audience, makes the storytelling process collaborative and functions by assuming the audience is coming from a place of sameness: of not knowing, but being curious, much like the tenacious curiosity of Charm in the story. He creates togetherness. King also makes this storytelling process a bonding experience; unlike the often punitive doctrine of Christianity, Native storytelling is meant to involve laughter, joking, and flaws. Listening to the story and laughing together is part of the experience.

Much like King, I don’t wish to imply that a punitive and isolating experience of Christianity is the only way of engaging with that religion and its stories. There are many Christians who embrace messages of openness, acceptance, tolerance, generosity, and kindness, and whose experiences with religion have involved community, curiosity, and the creation of a social network. Many Indigenous people in Canada also identify as Christian and see benefit, importance, and significance in doing so. However, I think it is arguable that in the larger picture of colonialism, and particularly in how Christianity was brought to Canada, fear and autocracy has been a prominent feature in Christianity’s spread, particularly within the First Nations communities of which King speaks. He is using dichotomy to show us the ways a dominant narrative eradicates or diminishes the value of alternatives. He is challenging us to consider our own agency in the stories we interact with, put faith in, tell to others, and have told to us. I believe this strategy is an attempt to get the audience to consider when and how they came to know the Genesis story instead of the Earth Diver, and how complicit, complacent, or agent they are in assigning one more importance than the other. When King says, “Take Charm’s story, for instance. It’s yours. Do with it what you will. Tell it to friends. Turn it into a television movie. Forget it. But don’t say in the years to come that you would have lived your life differently if only you had heard this story,” he is giving the audience the option to change their relationship to the world and to take agency in their decisions. It is not good enough to say you would have done differently if you had only known of the alternatives: he has presented the alternatives, and the choice is now left in the hands of the audience.

Thomas, J.B. The Birth Story of Creation. 2001, oil painting on canvas. Accessed from www.takentheseries.com/the-great-beginning-of-turtle-island/

 

Works Cited

Belshaw, John Douglas. “4.7: Canada and Catholicism.” Canadian History: Pre-Confederation,  opentextbc.ca/preconfederation/chapter/4-7-canada-and-catholicism/. Accessed 7 Feb 2019.

Marley, Karin. “Majority of indigenous Canadians remain Christians despite residential schools.” The Current, CBC, 1 April 2016, www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/the-current-for-april-1-2016-1.3516122/majority-of-indigenous-canadians-remain-christians-despite-residential-schools-1.3516132. Accessed 7 Feb 2019.

“The Role of the Churches.” Stolen Lives: The Indigenous Peoples of Canada and the Indian Residential Schools, Facing History and Ourselves, www.facinghistory.org/stolen-lives-indigenous-peoples-canada-and-indian-residential-schools/chapter-3/role-churches. Accessed 7 Feb 2019.

Ziervogel, Katarina. “The Birth Story of Creation by JB Thomas.“ 2001, oil painting on canvas.  The Beginning of Turtle Island, TAKEN The Series, 6 July 2018, www.takentheseries.com/the-great-beginning-of-turtle-island/.

The view from the plane when I travel between my original home and my current home.

In reading my classmates’ blogs, I was struck by the amount of uniqueness in an individual’s definition of home. While many people referenced a sense of belonging and comfort, what produced that feeling often escaped definition; indeed, it seemed difficult to assign a name to the feeling of home that encapsulated what fully produced this sense of belonging. It’s easy to say that home is family or your house or being with your friends, but this definition doesn’t hold up for everyone. For many people, family is complicated. Many of my classmates referenced the complex dynamics of growing up with divorced parents, or of struggling through conflict with their parents and siblings. Even with the definition of home as family, who we consider to be family extends and contracts as we meet new friends, start new relationships, and (in the case of some of my classmates, although not myself), have children.

For others, ancestry and lineage played a much stronger role in their sense of home than it did for myself. Many people spoke of the ties to their family’s ancestral history, and even if they themselves had not lived in whichever nations and cultures held significance for them, were tied to that ancestry trough language, food, and practice. Many individuals wrote of beautiful sensory experiences that held strong memories for them, like cooking family recipes with their parents, or the feeling of being hugged by someone they love, or laughing with friends.

Others found their sense of home to be more internal, relying more on a sense of comfort within themselves; this was a feeling I loved reading about from others, because I’ve often found myself aspiring to a stronger sense of self. In the times where I’ve spent extended periods away from Canada, or at times where my life has undergone great transitions, I always find myself feeling a little ungrounded or uncertain, and I love knowing that for others, it is full and expansive simply to exist as oneself, no matter the location. That being said, many others identified a sense of dividedness with considering home that resonated strongly with me, whether that be due to geographical relocation, a family that is far away, or a deeper sense of misidentification with the location they reside in. Alternatively, others expressed a divided self in the sense of feeling at home in many places and with many different people, which, as someone who has done their undergrad degree away from their hometown and who has extended friends and family spread across the country, is a feeling that resonated with me.

Something I’ve noticed particularly with Canadians, which was echoed in the posts my classmates made, was a sense of connection to the geography and landscape of Canada; whether this was the Vancouver ocean, the rocky mountains, or the great lakes, many people identified natural spaces as contributing to their sense of home. Considering being in nature can elicit positive feelings, this seems to be somewhat biologically engrained in us; however, it wasn’t just identification with the memories of these places that produced a sense of home, but the spaces themselves (for example, while some people may love the beach because they spent a lot of time there with their family, others love the ocean who never grew up near the ocean and encounter it for the first time without a strong emotional background). Given the nature of our course, many people pointed out the complicated questions of entitlement and ownership that arise alongside this sense of identification with the land, given it is arguably not ours in the first place. It has left me with much to consider as we continue to disentangle these complicated questions.

I want to offer special thanks to Suzanne, Andrea, Ryan, Tamara, Kevin, and Anna, whose blog posts provided the thought-provoking contrasts and considerations here, and to everyone else who shared a little vulnerability in this assignment.

 

Works Cited

Harris, R. Cole. “Regionalism.” The Canadian Encyclopedia, 28 Oct 2015, www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/regionalism. Accessed 1 Feb 2019.

Williams, Florence. “How Just 15 Minutes of Nature Can Make You Happier.” TIME, 7 Feb 2017, time.com/4662650/nature-happiness-stress/. Accessed 1 Feb 2019.

 

 

I am three years old, and home is a big red house. Home is the purple bedroom where my brother and I play games and read stories before bed. Home is being the one who gets to sprinkle cheese on every time we make pizza. Home is hide and seek and putting my brother in the laundry hamper. Home is eating rhubarb on the porch and waving when the garbage men come on Tuesdays. Sometimes home is tantrums and time-outs, but feeling safe after.

When I am seven years old, home is reading Harry Potter with my mom at bedtime. Home is playing with my brother, combining his train sets and my dollhouse to make huge scenes in the basement. Home is staying late at the playground after school, and jumping into my mother’s arms when she comes to pick us up. Home is playing soccer twice a week even though I don’t want to, because my friends are doing soccer too. In winter, it’s sledding in the park and building quinzees in the backyard.

At Christmas, home is my family in Ontario. Home is sitting by the fireplace and drinking hot chocolate and laughing when my grandmother tells us sugar isn’t good for you, but brings cake to every meal. Home is getting to open one present on Christmas Eve this year because that’s what my cousins do. Home is listening to my mom sing while her brother plays the guitar. Home is music and

In the summer, home is the East Coast. We stay with my grandparents and run through red sand. Our cousins play games and we race through farmer’s fields across the street and look for foxes when the sun is setting. My grandmother shows me how to cook. Home is big family dinners, home is little silly games my Aunt (A beloved teacher) invents on the spot and commits to. Home is having a room specially decorated for when we arrive, and it’s crying when it’s time to leave. Home is knowing we’ll go back every year.

When I’m ten, home isn’t the big red house anymore. When we move, I hug each wall in the house and say thank you to it (Marie Kondo’s got nothing on me!). Now, home’s a big blue house with lots of windows and my own room. Home is expanding. Home is being able to run across the street to the neighbours and playing in the park nearby. Home is “Come home when the street lights come on” and “make sure you stay together.” Home is bouncing on the trampoline 500 times because that seemed like an impossible feat. It is the kid across the street with bright red hair and freckles, and her little sister that follows us when we go to get Slurpees. It is coming home when I feel awkward in a new school, taking off the uniform, and telling my mom about my day. It is an awful haircut and braces.

In high school, home is still the big blue house, but home is also evenings spent joking with friends and planning everywhere we’ll travel to when we have enough money. Home is sitting in pyjamas until noon on Saturdays while my family and I read, but it is also eating lunch each day with the same people and writing inside jokes back and forth when we don’t want to pay attention in class. Home is rereading Harry Potter on bad days. Home is the smell of chlorine from work. In twelfth grade, home is splitting apart as my friends scatter around the country and I drive to Vancouver. Home is the big mountains I leave behind.

In Vancouver, at the start, home is far away. Home is not my dorm room. Home is not the beautiful forests and mild climate. Home has -30 windchill and I’ve never missed it until now. Home is short phone calls and big care packages, and home is distance. In Vancouver, the only place that feels like home is the ocean. Over the years, this changes. Home is still across the Rocky Mountains, and I migrate back each summer like a bird. But slowly, home is also a quiet friend in my second-year courses, home is my double major and the group of people I volunteer with, and roommates that make me. Watch bad TV. Home is bonfires at wreck beach and late nights at IKB. Home is two places, sometimes even more.

Six months from now, home is a mystery. I do not know where I will be or where my friends will be, or what I’ll be doing. But I will have the ocean, and phone calls, and inside jokes and future plans. Home is an opportunity.

A photo from my most recent drive to Vancouver.

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I realized while writing this that Home doesn’t have a specific meaning to me right now. I tried to write it in a vignetted style to match my own fragmented definition, so I hope people will bear with me on this slightly experimental approach. I am excited to delve further into this topic!

 

Works Cited

“How to Build a Quinzee Snow Shelter.” Boy’s Life, boyslife.org/outdoors/outdoorarticles/2992/how-to-build-a-quinzee-snow-shelter/. Accessed 27 Jan 2019.

Stuever, Hank. “Marie Kondo brings something besides her famous tidying skills to reality TV: Gratitude.” The Washington Post, 30 Dec 2018, washingtonpost.com/entertainment/tv/marie-kondo-brings-something-besides-her-famous-tidying-skills-to-reality-tv-gratitude/2018/12/30/7f806e7a-0ad1-11e9-88e3-989a3e456820_story.html?utm_term=.a0a8aa322e97. Accessed 27 Jan 2019.

I have a great story to tell you about how evil was brought into the world of a young girl.

Little Girl once knew only one home. Her home was the valley, and the valley was safe. Her home was encapsulated on all sides, tucked into the landscape like a bowl. All around stretched tall, steep hills; too steep to climb, although many had tried. The valley provided all they needed; a clear, clean river, space to grow food and catch fish, with dozens of pink, purple, and red berry bushes, large trees for fruit and climbing, and tall grasses play in. The days were warm and mild, and the nights were punctuated only by the sounds of distant crickets and the quiet murmur of the river.

Each morning, as the sun peaked over the valley’s high walls, Little Girl’s mother took her by the hand and they walked barefoot along the river, collecting food for breakfast. They would walk as far as the Great Tunnel, where the river’s mouth met a long, dark hole in the mountain’s side that stretched endlessly far away into the dark. The village elders had covered the Great tunnel with leaves and branches, hiding it softly.

Each morning, when they arrived at the Great Tunnel, Little Girl would ask, “Mother, what’s on the other side of the tunnel?” and each morning her mother would say, “The tunnel leads to secrets and tricks. It is not safe, you must stay here.” Little Girl always nodded, and they ran together back home to share their breakfast.

One evening, when Little Girl wandered down the stream alone. Her mother was helping their neighbor, who had fallen that morning. She told Little Girl to collect some food for their supper and bring it back before dark, but Little Girl had gotten distracted, searching the river’s banks by the Great Tunnel for flowers to bring back with her. As the sun began to set, Little Girl reached down for a bright yellow flower and heard a soft voice on the wind.

“Hello” it said. Little Girl jumped up and looked around, but saw nothing. She began to run away, when the voice spoke again:

“Where are you going? I want to tell you three stories. Come and move these branches for me.” The voice whispered, and the leaves covering the tunnel brushed forward in the wind. Little Girl pulled the leaves aside and peered into the tunnel; she saw nothing.

“If you tell me a story, I can make it real. And then I will tell you a story, and you will make it real,” the voice said. Little Girl smiled. She told the voice about the flower bouquet she was picking for her neighbor, and the food she was sent to collect. With a gust of wind from the tunnel, the river reversed and a basket full of fruit, bread, and a bouquet of flowers floated towards her. Little Girl giggled. Then the voice took his turn and told of darkness and storms, which thundered over the valley. Little Girl was frightened, and told a story of fireflies that lit up the sky and pulled back the sun, and strong wind that blew the storms away; so it happened. The voice in the tunnel spoke about her neighbor and told a horrible story of injury and illness. Little Girl countered with a story of prosperity and watched as the river sent baskets of food to her village, as the trees grew bigger, and as she heard music coming from her village as they celebrated. The voice grew frustrated; he spoke of drought and sickness, of war, and fighting, and death; around her Little Girl saw the valley wither. The river sucked away dry. Armies rushed through the tunnel’s dry surface, charging and screaming and wielding weapons. Little Girl shouted, “It’s too scary! Take it back, take it back!” but the voice answered, “Once a story is told, it cannot be taken back. It is loose in the world.”

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I found this exercise surprisingly challenging. I used to enjoy creative writing when I had more time (although I would certainly never claim to have been particularly good at it), and returning to this assignment reminded me of how difficult it can be to communicate the thoughts in one’s head onto a page for others. I wanted to capture the way stories can be powerful and potentially dangerous, which is true even in the narratives we craft for and of ourselves, and for this theme to be clear in my writing and verbal telling of the story.

The author John Green is adamant in saying he believes that “Books belong to their readers“; similarly, I found myself wondering how my story would be interpreted on this blog, and even more so in my telling of it to others. I found telling the story to others to be multifaceted, and oddly insecurity-provoking; I wanted people to like my story, but I also wanted it to feel authentic. When there were parts my friends had questions about, I wondered if I should change the story or my telling when I told my next listener. It made the process feel both deeply personal, and oddly collaborative–which of course is how we learn from stories in the first place.  I am happy to have had the opportunity to write more, and imagine more, but am also interested in the way in which this process is collaborative with Thomas King, as well. So many ideas contribute to storytelling and inspirational, potentially even in ways we don’t recognize and understand (like the fallibility of our own memory). To imagine storytelling as anything less than collaborative seems incomplete.

Works Cited

Duncan, Suzanne. “The dark side of storytelling.” TED. 12 Jan 2016. Lecture. www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SUIiF-ifIM. Accessed Jan 22 2019.

Green, John (@johngreen). “Books belong to their readers.” Feb 1 2014, 6:03PM. Tweet.

King, Thomas. The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative (CBC Massey Lectures) . House of Anansi Press Inc. Kindle Edition.

Ludden, David. “Why You Can’t Trust Your Memory (Of Anything).” Psychology Today, 20 Mar 2016, www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/talking-apes/201603/why-you-cant-trust-your-memory-anything. Accessed Jan 23 2019.

Photograph of Valley of the Flowers. Wander the Himalayas, 5 Important things to consider before undertaking Valley Of Flowers Trek, 12 June 2016, https://wanderthehimalayas.com/2016/06/12/5-important-things-to-consider-before-undertaking-valley-of-flowers-trek/. Accessed Jan 23 2019.

Explain why the notion that cultures can be distinguished as either “oral culture” or “written culture” (19) is a mistaken understanding as to how culture works, according to Chamberlin and your reading of Courtney MacNeil’s article “Orality”.

To define cultures as either oral or written creates a false dichotomy in which the superior concept of communication is separated into two distinct forms, with written communication often perceived as more elite and legitimate than orality. Courtney MacNeil suggests this divide denies the “possibility for an equivalency between printed and spoken word,” distilling the roles of communication, storytelling, and dialogue into a simplistic categorization. This false hierarchy reduces the complexity of stories and their role in transmitting knowledge, identity, culture, and establishing/solidifying relationships. This divisive model is preceded by a history of Eurocentrism that diminished the value of oral-based cultures through insidious colonization and systemic eradication of oral cultures via forced education in European language systems, especially in English (within Canada, this is salient in discussions of residential schools and their strategies for eradicating indigenous language use). In this conceptualization, orality is reduced to an inferior form of communication instead of being acknowledged as one of the foundational tools for human experience, relationships, and knowledge-sharing, constantly interdependent and engaged with other forms of communication and with the written word.

Cree children in a Saskatchewan residential school (“Language Loss” 2017).

Courtney MacNeil argues that our very definition of orality provides competing understandings of its function, existing both as a medium and as “existing in competition with other media forms.” She writes that the “framing of orality as a ‘preference’ or ‘tendency’ encourages its place within the paragon of the printed and spoken word, and suggests a single-sensory conception of media – that orality exists in a dialectical relationship with literacy, and that communication is a “competition between eye and ear,” drawing attention to the ways in which this viewpoint isolates communication forms instead of positioning them as interdependent upon each other.

To view orality and literacy accurately, we must instead begin to view them not as competitors, but as two components of the larger goal of communication. As Chamberlin writes, there is nothing inherent to spoken or written language that superposes one form over another; both are invented by humans, and are meaningless without the act of collective communities deciding to believe in them: “Building shape and meaning is what we do in our stories and songs. They are built on the arbitrariness of words and images, which is to say they are built on sand; but they are rock solid as long as we believe in them” (8). Chamberlin fundamentally argues that separating oral and written cultures is ineffective because it ignores their shared interest in beliefs, culture, and legacy. He points to the ways in which written language has been co-opted to try and remove the stories and voice of a collective people, as if “one could alter the way they thought and felt,” (18) and suggests that oral cultures “are imprisoned in the present…[and] understand the world in magical rather than scientific terms” (19). The view Chamberlin criticizes ignores the fact that oral cultures have engaged with symbolic representation through pictures, art, maps, woven cloth, beaded garments, hairstyles, clothing, and music throughout history (Chamberlin 19), just as MacNeil suggests modern technological advancements blur the line between dialogue and writing, and add new media to the way we capture stories, through video, radio, film, and, although not addressed by MacNeil, podcasts. These modalities transgress the dichotomy between writing and speech, and in doing so, redefine the way we understand storytelling.

Personally, when reading MacNeil and Chamberlin’s perspectives, I found myself considering podcasts and radio in terms of oral and written culture. Podcasts are a rising media form and walk the line between a very personal experience for the listener, where the story feels almost dialogic, and the necessity of podcasts to be written, edited, scripted and designed to be heard by multiple people. Moreso, many podcasts allow the listener to seek out multimedia forms on websites where individuals can expand on points with hyperlinks, images of featured guests, and discussion forums that allow for a sense of micro-community and expansive learning. I think multimedia forms and podcasts are a modern example of the “unclassifiable” communication forms referenced by Chamberlin and MacNeil.

Works Cited

Chamberlin, J. Edward. If This Is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories?: Finding Common Ground. Toronto, Vintage Canada, 2004.

Janke, Dwayne. “What Residential Schools Did to Aboriginal Languages.” Word Alive, Jan 2017, wordalive.wycliffe.ca/stories/what-residential-schools-did-to-aboriginal-languages. Accessed Jan 15 2019.

“Language Loss.” Stolen Lives: The Indigenous Peoples of Canada and the Indian Residential Schools, Facing History and Ourselves, www.facinghistory.org/stolen-lives-indigenous-peoples-canada-and-indian-residential-schools/chapter-4/language-loss. Accessed Jan 15 2019.

MacNeil, Courtney. “Orality.” Uchicagoedublogs, The Chicago School of Media Theory, 2007, lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/mediatheory/keywords/orality/.

Olamide, Ayedun. “Oral Traditions.” Academia, pp. 1-24,www.academia.edu/32464481/ORAL_TRADITIONS. Accessed Jan 14 2019.

Hi everyone!

My name is Charlotte and I’m in my graduating year in a double major in Psychology and English Literature. I’m looking forwards to working with all of you!

When I think about Canadian literature, I think of writing that is vast, diverse, and difficult to define. Even our most prolific writers, like Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro, Yann Martel, L.M. Montgomery, and Thomas King, explore a wide variety of topics, themes, and styles both within their own works and in comparison to each other. One criticism of Canadian Literature that I’ve heard in the past is that, as a consequence of our multicultural, geographically large country, there is not one congruent or consistent, identifiable genre within Canadian literature. One approach to this has been to study Canadian authors; however, this can even be further divided – we have Asian-Canadian writing, indigenous works, historically Canadian fiction, novels set in Canada, novels written by a Canadian but set elsewhere, among other classifications. I’m interested to see how our course approaches the ambiguity of who claims ownership to our land, stories, and literature when the boundaries are often so hard to define.

Our course seems to be tackling this notable challenge by focusing on the relationship between Canadian writing, Canadian space, place, and land, and the  association between stories and literature. I’m excited to explore, in particular, some of the ways place and history impact ownership of stories – particularly through our focus on indigenous writings and the corresponding transition between story mediums.

I expect the course to be an integrative, innovative, and collaborative way of exploring not only the content of Canadian literature and stories, but also the modalities, contexts, and methodology through which they are communicated and transcribed. I’m hoping the course will be an opportunity to open myself up to authors I may not have previously read and to provide a space to learn more about indigenous works and how individuals are working to reclaim what it means to study and write Canadian Literature in new contexts. I’m also hoping to expand my understanding of how Canada’s cultural and sociological histories have decided whose stories we have favoured as legitimate Canadian literature, and what can be done to diversify this understanding in the future.

I’ve included a photo I took Calgary below; Calgary is the first place I learned to understand what it means to be Canadian and the first place I learned to identify as “home”; I’m excited to continue broadening this understanding with all of you.

Works Cited:

“What Makes Canadian Literature Canadian?” Research and Innovation, University of Toronto, 11 Nov. 2009, www.research.utoronto.ca/what-makes-canadian-literature-canadian/. Accessed 9 Jan 2019.

Smith, Russell. “Why do we struggle with what makes Canadian Literature?” The Globe and Mail, 11 May 2018, www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/why-do-we-struggle-with-what-makes-canadian-literature/article15536056/. Accessed 9 Jan 2019.

Whitehead, Joshua. “mâwacinikân: Moving Indigenous literature to the front in 2018.” CBC Arts, 19 Jan 2018, www.cbc.ca/arts/mawacinikan-moving-indigenous-literature-to-the-front-in-2018-1.4493517. Accessed 9 Jan 2019.