Assignment 2:4 – Familiar Discomfort

Hello again everyone! I am back with another blog post, this time for assignment 2:4. For this assignment, I have decided to answer question two, which I will paste down below:

2. In this lesson I say that our capacity for understanding or making meaningfulness from the first stories is seriously limited for numerous reasons and I briefly offer two reasons why this is so: 1) the social process of the telling is disconnected from the story and this creates obvious problems for ascribing meaningfulness, and 2) the extended time of criminal prohibitions against Indigenous peoples telling stories combined with the act of taking all the children between 5 – 15 away from their families and communities. In Wickwire’s introduction to Living Stories, find a  third reason why, according to Robinson, our abilities to make meaning from first stories and encounters is so seriously limited. To be complete, your answer should begin with a brief discussion on the two reasons I present and then proceed to introduce and explain your third reason from Wickwire’s introduction.

I’m going to be honest, the lecture for this lesson left me shell-shocked. I knew some of the atrocities faced by Indigenous people in residential schools, but I had no idea that the last one didn’t close until 1996. It baffles my mind that these things were happening to children for such a long period of time. Before I dive into my response to this question, I must admit that I am honestly disappointed in myself for not educating myself on this issue. I have lived 22 years of my life on these people’s lands, and it is my responsibility to educate myself on what my  ancestors  have done to them historically.

As for my response to the question, I suppose above is my response to the point made of lost generations and stories (the second reason why we can’t fully understand first stories.) Upon my realization above, I took it upon myself to read some stories of residential school survivors–not necessarily first stories but I felt the theme of storytelling in this course was echoed through my exploration of these very traumatic tales of actual genocide of Indigenous people. I particularly was struck by this one here, by Mary Carpenter.

It was hard for me to understand the first point made in question two in regards to the social process of telling a story reducing the ability to make meaning out of it. However, when I read Robinson’s Living by Stories: a Journey of Landscape and Memory, it made a lot more sense. The story in particular about the laws that Coyote travelled to England to put in place helped me realize that these weren’t just stories as we know them. I feel like stories in a modern sense are a sort of fluff term that often bring to mind fictional, unreal situations. This is not what first stories are–first stories tell of myths and legends that portray actual laws, rules, and traditions and explain why Indigenous people adhere to them today. They are far more educated and historic tales than I ever gave them credit for.

As for a third reason, I think to my own reaction to reading this introduction: an unfamiliarity with the subject matter. I think in Wickwire’s story of how she met and frequently spent time with Harry, she goes into depth on how unfamiliar she was with some of his stories: “At last I could see some tangible parallels between these stories and those that I had surveyed in the published records. However, just as I began to relax in this timeless zone of relative familiarity, Harry suddenly shifted back to the historical period,” (Robinson, 13). Wickwire comments that she spent time looking at all of the published historical myths and legends of Indigenous people, however, when Harry’s stories stray from what is on record, she is slightly taken aback. I think this is one of the reasons that we can’t fully understand or put meaning into first stories because we have preconceptions of what they are already going to be. We have records that have been put into place, but are those recorded stories really authentic? Have they been modified or changed due to the generations of lost voices in residential schools? I’m not completely sure, but Wickwire’s response to Harry’s stories has me thinking this could be the case.

This lesson really challenged me to think outside of my own preconceptions and areas of familiarity when reading about Wickwire and Harry. I realized that I, too, need to check my own expectations of first stories at the door. Beyond that, this lesson has really taught me that I need to do more research to understand the atrocities that took place for Indigenous people and youth as recent as twenty-four years ago. I do not have the right to live on their land without fully understanding the genocide that took place.

Works Cited

Robinson, Harry. Living by Stories: a Journey of Landscape and Memory. Compiled and edited by Wendy Wickwire. Vancouver: Talon Books2005. (1-30)

Carpenter, Mary. Lost Generations. Canada History, https://www.canadashistory.ca/explore/
first-nations-inuit-metis/lost-generations. Retrieved on 7 Feb 2020.

Miller, J.R. Residential Schools in Canada.  The Canadian Encyclopedia, https://www.
thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/residential-schools. Retrieved on 7 Feb 2020.