Each student will be assigned a section of the novel Green Grass Running Water (pages will be divided by the number of students). The task at hand is to first discover as many allusions as you can to historical references (people and events), literary references (characters and authors), mythical references (symbols and metaphors).

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The occupation of Wounded Knee was in its second month (55)

The reference to Wounded Knee alludes to two significant events that took place in the hamlet of Wounded Knee within the Lakota Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, US. The first event is the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890, where 300 members of the Sioux tribe were killed in a confrontation with American soldiers. The second event, which Lionel finds himself involved, is the Wounded Knee Incident in 1973,  where many Indigenous people occupied Wounded Knee for 71 days in protest of the 371 treaties broken by the American government. The first event shapes the second event because the selection of Wounded Knee as the site of protest was due to its historic and symbolic value. The second event in particular highlights the conflict between state interests and tribal interests where the tribal president, Richard Wilson, seems to be working for the benefit of the government, the FBI, white settlers, and himself rather than for the best interests of the people he is suppose to represent. The tribal president’s shifting identity, no doubt, forces an examination of Lionel’s conflicting identity as employee of the Department of Indian Affairs and as a member of the reserve in Blossom. Has Lionel sold out the people that he is suppose to represent?

He was to give his talk on “The History of Cultural Pluralism in Canada’s Boarding Schools” (56)

This is a brilliant example of white-washing by Lionel, substantiating accusations from Norma that he thinks like a white man and does not defend his own culture. What we refer to today as “residential schools” are called instead “boarding school”, evoking a sense of culture of prestige and civility for something that was far from civilized. His use of the term “cultural pluralism” goes against the grain of the current conventional understanding about what actually happened in these schools, which the current government has finally decided to describe as cultural genocide.

Massasoit was the Indian who greeted the Europeans at Plymouth Rock (58)

Massasoit first encountered the pilgrims of the Mayflower in 1620. His diplomacy with the pilgrims secured peace between his tribe and the colonists for his entire life. He formed alliance with the pilgrims through treaties that ensured the safety of the pilgrims, while ensuring the support of the colonists in the case of warfare against enemy tribes. Perhaps the mention of his name invites the juxtaposition of his ideal leadership against that of Richard Wilson and Lionel. After hearing this name, Lionel reacts by saying that he is Canadian, which implies that he does not consider the first contact between the colonists and the Indigenous  to be of any relevance to his personal narrative, and therefore, can excuse himself of the responsibility to engage with it.

American Indian Movement (59)

The American Indian Movement (AIM) is an advocacy group established since 1968 to bring public awareness to violations of Indigenous treaties by the US government through organized demonstrations. It is the AIM activists that make up a significant portion of the dissidents at Wounded Knee.

Battle of the Little Bighorn (61)

The Battle of the Little Bighorn took place in 1876, which witnessed the conflict between the Indigenous forces and the US Army. Contrary to the other conflicts mentioned above, the victors of this battle were the Indigenous people. By bringing this battle into the narrative, King brings about the irony of glorifying this event within a luxurious hotel predominated by affluent white visitors, as well as insuating its broader implication of how the Indigenous’ struggle for freedom may be trivialized, rather than aided, by its depiction within popular culture and within art.

“I’m Tom, and this is Gerry”/Chip and Dale (63)

The first pair of names are the main characters of the television show Tom and Jerry. The second pair of names are the main characters of the television show Chip and Dale. It should be noted that these humorous allusions are both examples of MGM shorts, among which there are often cartoon depictions of stereotypical Indigenous characters. Their popular portrayal informs the public perception of Indigenous identity and motivation, and perhaps also affect Lionel’s perception. By using these names to describe the two hotel staff, King is poking fun of Hollywood’s of  giving exotic names to its Indigenous characters by giving his two characters names derived from animals.

Works Cited

“1973: Siege at Wounded Knee.” libcom.org. libcom.org group. 19 Sept 2006. Web. 12 June 2015. <https://libcom.org/history/1973-siege-at-wounded-knee>

Johnson, Caleb. “Massasoit Ousemequin.” MayflowerHistory.com. N.p. N.d. Web. 12 July 2015. <http://mayflowerhistory.com/massasoit/>

“Massacre At Wounded Knee, 1890.” EyeWitness to History, Ibis Communications, Inc. 1998. Web. 12 July 2015. <http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/knee.htm>

“MGM Shorts.” doctormarco.com. N.p. N.d. Web. 12 July 2015. <http://www.doctormacro.com/movie%20summaries/m/mgm%20shorts.htm>

“The Battle of the Little Bighorn.” EyeWitness to History, Ibis Communications, Inc. N.d. Web. 12 July 2015. <http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/custer.htm>

“The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada: Interim Report.” TRC. Truth and Reconcilliation Commission of Canada. 2 June 2015. Web. 12 July 2015. <http://www.trc.ca/websites/trcinstitution/index.php?p=580>

“The UK’s best boy’s and girl’s public school.” UK Boarding Schools. UK Boarding Schools Metroplis Business Publishing. N.d. Web. 12 July 2015. <http://www.ukboardingschools.com/>

Wittstock, Laura W., Elaine J. Salinas. “A Brief History of the American Indian Movement.” American Indian Movement. American Indian Movement. N.d. Web. 12 July 2015. <http://www.aimovement.org/ggc/history.html>

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?

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If stories are the vehicle through which we navigate conflicts to reach a point of a more stable stasis, where does this resolution come from, how does it manifest itself in relation to what has happened, and why is it so powerful? In order to answer this week’s question, I approached it not by thinking about the starting point at once, but by looking at the destination to make sense of the beginning in the context of the whole narrative trajectory. Why is the beginning written as it is, constructed by the author as a point of departure from which the characters and other forces diverge and converge?

First of all, we must study the peculiar structure of this story. The story is written in four parts and consists of a multitude of characters whose lives are set on very different courses and directed by diverse personal philosophies. Eli has chosen to relinquish his comfortable status to fight for a cause charged with moral conviction, while his nephew Lionel seeks to improve his social status and is a helpless puppet in the current of events that swirl about him. Alberta seeks to live a life of complete autonomy and control, while the forces operating at the backdrop of the story seem to be continuously pulling the characters ever closer towards the sundance, whether or not they are willing participants. In other words, they must confront their sense of community and individualism and engage in a precarious balancing act of convergence and divergence. Because of the way King seems to unravel his novel into several yarns of narrative, the novel can easily be mistaken as a collection of short stories told simultaneously, if it were not for some unifying element. The creation story might possibly serve as the unifying element to make sense of their point of departure and provide hints to their ultimate destination, but King doesn’t need to use the creation story to tie these characters together. These main characters are of Native descent, and their common ground could easily have been their heritage. Furthermore, all the characters are connected in a genealogical web with familial links and a history of correspondence, so the creation story, in my opinion, is not the necessary basis for connecting the characters themselves.

I suspect that the creation story plays an elemental role in this narrative because King hopes to engage the reader with his story. It is difficult for an Aboriginal writer to tell an Aboriginal story to a non-Aboriginal audience . How does an Aboriginal writer even begin to convince the reader that the story is worth listening to, that it’s not just some mythical legend that has little in the way of instructing our 21st scientific worldview? King does so with the creation story, because that way the non-Aboriginal audience has some footing, or even a stake in the story. At the point of creation there are no boundaries separating the Natives and the Europeans. The nexus between the reader and the stories that he is confronted with becomes a locus that has been decolonized by first removing the authoritative tone of the European voice (with the effect emphasized by entitling the Christian God as Dog). As we proceed in King’s novel after this partial erasure of preconceived notions, we are encouraged by this narrative device to disarm our sensors for veracity and expose ourselves to the ambiguity of literature and of life itself, where absolute answers begin to blur and we begin to approach, albeit cautiously, the subjective nature of truth. This seemingly dangerous philosophical quagmire is actually the only possible point of story creation, because new stories can only be told once past stories are displaced through distortion, deconstruction, and destruction. However, the process of revitalizing old stories can ultimately create a more inclusive and intimate space for the accommodation of all cultures.

Happy Canada Day. The four flags show the different layers of stories that are relevant to the ground on which I stand, and as a Canadian citizen I am automatically inducted to the national narrative, whether or not I believe and support it.

I will end this entry with a lighter analogy: spending Canada Day 5000 kilometers away from home in Moncton, New Brunswick. What makes this city figuratively closer to home (or home itself) then 40 km south of Richmond across the US border? My connection to home in Moncton begins with the creation story of Canada 148 years ago, when places of disparate histories and impossibly vast distances converged in a single document, and today we continue to observe the ways in which Canadian cities and its people incessantly moving farther from and closer to one another as the forces and agents act upon one another. There is no objective truth in the Canada national narrative, but we can certainly trace our point of origin and I hope that it might inform us of our direction as we head into the future.

WORKS CITED

Choi, Timothy. “Four Flags.” 2015. JPEG file.

“Sun Dance” Native Americans Online. N.p. N.d. Web. 3 July 2015. <http://www.native-americans-online.com/native-american-sun-dance.html>

1] The Quebec Act of 1774, and the BNA act of 1867 each document the historical ability of Britain, as colonial authority, to accommodate two founding nations in the interest of confederation. Shortly after confederation of the eastern provinces, in 1869, the Metis Nation of Manitoba created a provisional government and attempted to negotiate directly with the new government of the confederationto establish their territories as a province under their leadership. In the end, their leader, Louis Riel was charged with treason – as the CanLit guide puts it, “Canada at the time was not willing to accommodate more than two founding nations.”For this blog assignment, I would like you to outline the reasons why colonial authorities could not conceive of accepting the Metis as a third founding nation. Use the CanLit guide and the summary of Coleman’s argument on the literary project of white civility to substantiate your observations. You might also find part of your answer in The Bush Garden. You should also take into consideration past discussions on ‘the civilizing mission’ of colonialism in Unit 2. Louis Riel also appears in Green Grass Running Water, and accordingly it is worthwhile to do a little outside research around Riel’s provisional government and its attempts to negiciate with the new Canadian government.

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For this assignment, I think the best way for me to explore the reasons why colonial authorities did not receive the Metis as a third founding nation is to group my observations within three broad categories, allowing me to contextualize the diverse influences driving policy in Canada at that time. Although I have studied social studies within the Canadian school system (and received 99% on the provincial exam), and have done a lot of research in composing this article, I am wary that I might be repeating common fallacies and stereotypes as taught to me in school or learned through some other medium. Please correct me if that is the case, and I will be happy to make editions to improve everyone’s knowledge about colonialism.

1. There was no tradition of including Indigenous populations within the government of the colonizers or settlers.

To examine this issue, we must attempt to put ourselves within the the shifting cultural milieu over 200 years that operated in tangent with the written policies, the latter having surviving much better in the archives and much more approachable.  We have to remember that colonizing powers were not out to make friends with the natives; they were out to make money. In the course of British Empire’s conquest of the world, the local populations of the colonies are always seen as subordinates in Australia, India, and South Africa. The power of the stories about us vs. them are so ingrained in the minds of the public and intellectuals alike that it was more than just about race; even the Irish, who like the Englishmen has white skin and common heritage, were in a sense a colony of the British Empire. However, we must remember that not all colonial powers approached integration of native populations the same way. The French Empire seems to be a remarkable forerunner in racial inclusion, having granted natives of the Four Communes of Senegal full French citizenship and granted the colony deputy representation within the French parliament as early as 1848. These revolutionary ideas about colonization makes us question the difference between Anglo-Saxon and Gallic attitudes, and how Canada might have evolved as a nation if the victors of the Battle of the Plains of Abraham were French. This segues neatly into my second reason.

2. The accommodation of French  Canadians wasn’t done in accordance to moral principle; it was a political necessity.

Having successfully driven the French military forces from once and for all, the authorities still have to reconcile the defeat of the French settlers with the reality that the settlers are still here. Since British forces were overextending their limited resources , notions of cultural superiority were superseded by the exigency of maintaining order with minimal military intervention. Appeasing the French settlers by promising them equal status as citizens without renouncing their culture imposed some protection to this significant minority. If there had been more British settlers, I am inclined to believe that the authorities would have denied the French settlers to claims of a founding nation, if they were indeed considered a founding nation. CanLit Guides suggests that the 19th idea of being Canadian to people outside French or British heritage was to assimilate into the British culture, not the French.  It took many years before Stephen Harper finally recognized Quebec as a “distinct nation within a unified Canada” in 2006, and even that admission, some would argue, is rather toothless.

3. It was imperative to limit the definition of nationhood so that it can still be meaningful to the young nation and its people.

At the time, Canada was a young nation. Louis Riel’s protest happened in the backdrop of much political uncertainty and turmoil. The United States had just emerged from a civil war five years before Canada’s Confederation. It would not be a wise move for the colonial authorities to mark further divisions along racial lines within the young nation. How many Aboriginal groups would argue that they should be a founding nation if Riel’s provisional government succeeded? Would the  authorities then need to grant the Mi’kmaq, the Inuit,  the Iroquois, the Coast Salish, and the Haida founding nation statuses and dilute the English and French hegemony? It would have been an improbable proposition in the formative years of an infant nation.

Works cited

Brett, Matthew. “Reflection on the Quebec nation.” Canadian Dimension. Canadian Dimension, 23 June 2010. Web. 26 June 2015. <https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/web-exclusive-reflections-on-the-quebec-nation>

“Reading and Writing in Canada, A Classroom Guide to Nationalism.” CanLit Guides. Canadian Literature, n.d. Web. 26 June 2015.<http://canlitguides.ca/>

4] In the last lesson I ask some of you, “what is your first response to Robinson’s story about the white and black twins in context with our course theme of investigating intersections where story and literature meet.” I asked, what do you make of this “stolen piece of paper”? Now that we have contextualized that story with some historical narratives and explored ideas about questions of authenticity and the necessity to “get the story right” – how have your insights into that story changed?

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Seeing that I had chosen to write about my first response to Robinson’s story last week, I decided to tackle this question of answering how my response has changed. I invite you to read my previous post to observe the evolution of my thoughts.

It was striking to me that Robinson was fastidiously obsessed in recounting the story accurately especially towards the second half, when he was trying to pinpoint the year that the document was sent overseas, or when he was trying to recall the name of the Indian man who had seen the document, but in many other aspects it seems like he takes much liberty and allocates space for invention. That is why I am a little confused about what it means to “get the story right,” because other parts in the story seem to be the product of the imagination.

The only thing that lands on her head today are pigeons and their droppings.

The part of the story where Britain’s monarch was selected by letting a flying thing land on the chosen head was, quite frankly, ludicrous, and I have reason to suspect that its inclusion by Robinson was not accidental. Why would he choose to take this farcical turn in his story, and perhaps risk losing the audience’s faith in the authenticity of his story?. I then realize that within the Bible there are many ludicrous stories of miracles and divine intervention that, if told alone, nobody would believe them, except such stories are bounded up in a book with other ludicrous tales and somehow that makes them all equally legitimate. The difficulty in believing Aboriginal stories, I would argue, is not primarily due to the fact that the stories do not exist in a written form, but because we cannot consume it in a systematic manner that allows us to create a solid mental framework, accommodating all the experiences in the life of not just yourself, but of all humans.

Why is it that many within the Western culture can easily believe in the Bible despite its awkward divergence from reality, or at least in comparison to 21st century consciousness? Why do we readily believe our politicians, preachers, and professors, who do most of their communication by speaking to us and are convincing insofar as we believe that they speak the truth? Western civilization too has high regard for the spoken word, even though it is mutable and (until recent history) impossible to capture. Many cases heard in our courts rely on witnesses testifying under oath to build arguments. The greatest orators and speechmakers in society are most likely to scale the ladder to the apex of our democratic hierarchy because they know how to stir the hearts of people from all walks of life. The Christian God, before having laid down the Ten Commandments in stone tablets, first and foremost created the world simply through speaking (“Let there be light”). In pursuing this connection, I am reminded of the  first part of John 1, which declares: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.  Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.” The Christian God can be summed up not with words, but with the Word, which is approximated within the physical world through letters and sounds but properly exists through interpretation with our minds, where it exists as meaning and significance . All of this is so distant from our experience of the world, where reality is defined more by material than what we hear and think. So why is one of the most respected texts in Western literature so persuasive when it is so remote?  I think what makes the Bible convincing is that there is a cyclical veracity that legitimizes the entirety, which in turn legitimizes the individual parts themselves. Story A corroborates story B, while story B corroborates story A. Except in the case of the Bible, we are talking about thousands of stories, each one in some way linked to another that ultimately results in a disorderly web of sensation and images dependent upon one another for confirmation. The more that I think about this, the more I am convinced our reality is really constructed by the great repository of stories we call the mind, at times gently tugging and other times violently impelling us to truth.

Alas, so many ideas, yet so little space and time! I think the best way to distill that rhapsodic episode of thoughts and turn our thoughts back to Robinson’s story is to conclude that Robinson is indeed aware of the incredulous nature of his stories. The selection of the queen is a reminder that our capacity to believe what we cannot observe is not contingent upon empirical facts, but rather in the active association to other narratives. By urging the publication within bound volumes, he knows that the stories he tells will work together to create a believable whole, in the same way that the Bible acquires authority, and in turn lend authority back to the individual stories themselves. If authenticity is but an illusion, then we are captured prey in the web of that great magician who can conjure it: the storyteller.

Works Cited

Choi, Timothy. “Victoria Statue.” 2014. JPEG file.

Robinson, Harry. Living by Stories: a Journey of Landscape and Memory. Ed. Wendy Wickwire. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2005. Print.

New International Version. Bible Gateway. Web. 25 Oct.2012. <https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+1>

5. “If Europeans were not from the land of the dead, or the sky, alternative explanations which were consistent with indigenous cosmologies quickly developed” (“First Contact”43). Robinson gives us one of those alternative explanations in his stories about how Coyote’s twin brother stole the “written document” and when he denied stealing the paper, he was “banished to a distant land across a large body of water” (9). We are going to return to this story, but for now – what is your first response to this story? In context with our course theme of investigating intersections where story and literature meet, what do you make of this stolen piece of paper? This is an open-ended question and you should feel free to explore your first thoughts.

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A not-too-sharp photo of the Rosetta Stone taken on my first day in Europe.

This story of the two twins presents a perplexing a challenge to what is arguably the most powerful embodiment of Western civilization: the written word. The most famous artifact housed in the British Museum, the Rosetta Stone, contains the key to understanding an entire civilization. It is through the written word that Hammurabi manages to assert control over his newly conquered dominion. The writings of Greek philosophers like Plato and Aristotle survive to this day and continue to be studied by scholars the world over, championed as the fountainhead of Western thought. Latin, though a dead language, continues to thrive on paper and weaves together the various cultures of Europe into the singular conglomerate, a European mega-cultural complex. The Bible binds billions of believers to a common faith for millennia with a text that has remained relatively unchanged since AD 325. The written word and its promulgation is responsible for stasis and change, power and dissension, belief and disbelief. Does the suggestion that all written word is somehow insidious, that it is somehow inferior to the spoken word, undermine the legitimacy of Western culture as a civilization?

It is unmistakeable that Robinson’s narrative mirrors the Biblical account of Adam and Eve: there exists a forbidden truth that, once discovered, can bring harm into the world. Furthermore, it is through disobedience that the dissenters are exiled from Eden, reinterpreted as North America in Robinson’s story. It is ironic that this story, which attempts to cast Western written tradition in a critical and negative limelight, inevitably references one of the most influential texts in Western culture. It is also important to note that in this Indigenous account of good and evil, Robinson has positioned his people as the good guys, much in the same way that Christian settlers see themselves as the morally upright race ordained to educate the heathens. Yet what makes his story different is that his Eden was not left barren; the Indian people continue to live in paradise. They are the unfallen people. Perhaps Robinson wants to provoke the audience to re-examine the basis and legitimacy of the story that serves as the moral beacon of the Western world.

Robinson’s adoption of the forbidden tree narrative demonstrates that the boundaries delineating oral and written tradition is rather porous and allows for the osmotic interchange of ideas and genres. Just as Western anthropologists attempt to crystallize the Aboriginal oral tradition into static anthologies rendered understandable and palatable to the Western audience, Robinson does the reverse by thawing the Biblical narrative of evil entering the word and contextualizing it in an Aboriginal perspective, giving prestige to the Aboriginals and employing the narrative as a defence to justify their claims of belonging to this land. We can learn a lot about this repurposing and repackaging of narratives if we investigate the underlying motives involved in their appropriation.

Salisbury Cathedral: home of one of the four (and the best preserved) surviving manuscripts of the Magna Carta. How do institutions like the church exert power through the written word?

Robinson’s story challenges the ways in which laws are crafted and which laws are seen as just. Since the first laws were codified, the people of Western civilization have subjected themselves to the written word. The triumph of the people over the absolute monarch, and the (re)birth of democracy in Europe with Magna Carta is really the enslavement of all men under a common constitution, under which they can all be given a limited form of freedom. Free men must subject themselves to those who are most able to interpret the law and the most convincing of speakers able to move the judge or jury. Therefore, a society bound together by a piece of paper (or volumes of it) is susceptible to exploitation and tyranny from an elite few, armed with rhetoric to tip the scale in their favour. By attaching connotations of “lies” and “stolen” to the written word, Robinson highlights the weaknesses and vulnerability of depending on written contracts and obscure documents to govern a living and evolving society. Could Robinson’s challenge suggest the necessity of enacting alternative forms of legislature and re-defining justice outside the monolithic behemoth that we call the Canadian legal system?

Works Cited

Choi, Timothy. “Rosetta Stone.” 2014. JPEG file.

Choi, Timothy. “Salisbury Cathedral.” 2014. JPEG file.

Robinson, Harry. Living by Stories: a Journey of Landscape and Memory. Compiled and edited by Wendy Wickwire. Vancouver: Talon Books2005. (9-10)

Read at least 3 students blog short stories about ‘home’ and make a list of the common shared assumptions, values and stories that you find. Post this list on your blog with some commentary about what you discovered.

The blogs that I have chosen for this assignment are Tai Amy’s eng oh canada,  Heidi’s sine loco, and Alishae’s ENGL 470 A: Canadian Studies.

Common features:

-people: this is the most salient similarity, and as a result, compelled me to select these three blogs, despite the different life circumstances of the writers. They place home at the heart of the interaction that happens between people and above that of locality. Home might be a boyfriend, or a best friend, or family. Heidi describes that person in her life as someone who is both her place of refuge and joy. Home is still considered a vessel that contains the things one desires in life, but it often takes the form of a person.

-feelings: For Tai Amy, home is a happy word. Naturally, all the events that were described in the three blogs were largely positive. I have to wonder, though a home is suppose to give us comfort, there are tragic events in life that we might perhaps map onto the edifice which we call our home. Can we really divorce the negative emotions from the experience of home? For me, I might think of my bedroom, which is such a integral part of my definition of home, as a place where I might laugh hysterically at youtube videos, but it functions at the same time as the place where I go to in great sadness, to hide my face in blankets as I weep uncontrollably. It is the place where I daydream and smile on fond memories as I lay carefree on a fine sunny morning, but also the place where, late at night, I despair over and ponder life’s greatest mysteries.  If anything, I think that those hurtful feelings actually reinforcing the notion of home as a place of healing and growth.

-chronology:  Tai Amy talks about home as a place that must morph and does not remain stagnant. A chronology of pleasant events that qualify for home is the way Alishae has described her sense of home. All of these observations are immersed in a sense of past, present, and future. The home has served some function in the past which gives us faith in its current security, and also in thinking about the future in how we may choose to embrace or reject this home. Moreover, a house can document a past life and bring back memories, which serves importantly as a time capsule for its inhabitant(s).

-place: it seems necessary that after all of the radical revisions of the definition of home, it must return to a discussion of home as a place. This does make sense, because people can only meet together, exchange ideas, and form connections within physical and/or virtual space. In this way, all of the above themes are contingent on this aspect. For all three authors they have never stayed in a single place, so home becomes a multiplicity. It seems that the more mobile we are, the less inclined we are to define home as a physical dwelling, because how potent is our connection to a place if we can pack our bags the very next day and create a new home out of an unknown place? Humans have proved time and time again that we can do so.

Works Cited:

Abeed, Alishae. “Home Is A Feeling.” ENG 470A: Canadian Studies. UBC Blogs. 05 June 2015. Web. 08 June 2015.

Grauman, Tai Amy. “Home?” eng oh canada. UBC Blogs. 06 June 2015. Web. 08 June 2015.

Yolande, Heidi. “Lesson 2:2.” sine loco. UBCBlogs. 06 June 2015. Web. 08 June 2015.

Assignment 2.2:

Write a short story (600 – 1000 words) that describes your sense of home; write about the values and the stories that you use to connect yourself to, and to identify your sense of home.

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“Excuse me, may I sit here”

I turned from an enthralling game of Candy Crush to a shaggy form with his dirty hands hauling a transparent plastic bag stuffed full of cans and juice boxes. I didn’t bother looking at his face; I shrugged as I moved my bag between my legs on, doing so ever so passive aggressively to challenge why he must sit here of all places when there are so many seats on this bus.

“Where are you going?”

“Home” I muttered. I was eyeing longingly for some other seats on the bus.

“And where’s that?”

Are we really going to do this? “Richmond” I said calmly. Who is this creep?

“Well yes, that is where you live, in the sense that you go there every night to shower, eat, sleep, eat again, and head out the door. But where is home?”

I guess Dvorak’s New World Symphony will have to wait. I removed my headphones and looked up. A man of about fifty years of age with a pair of worn but gentle brown eyes met my gaze. “I don’t understand what you mean.”

“I mean you have a place that you go back to daily, but it is just a recharging station, no? You fill up, you get cleaned up, and you get back on the road again. It’s all very mechanical. What makes that place your home?”

“That’s where my family is, and that’s where I invite friends over to play video games and watch movies.” I paused and thought before I continued. “It’s a place of comfort, a place that shields me from the insecurity of the world.”

“Very interesting and insightful.” He exclaimed, with a hint of irony bubbling underneath the surface of his tone. “Now couldn’t you have done all that in a hotel room? In fact I bet you they have plushier rooms and sofas.”

“For one thing it’s all free at home.” I chuckled. “And also I know my home well, there are no surprises because everything is familiar to me.”

“Oh really,” he challenged. “Now tell me, do you have a carpet in your living room?”

“Yes, a rug my mom bought at Ikea.”

“What colour is it?”

Beige? Peach? Wait, no, there are designs on it. But what’s the colour of the details? “I don’t know, something mild and bland I think. I didn’t buy it.”

“That’s fair that you don’t know. It’s not as though you spend time there.” But I do, every day in fact. He quizzed me again. “What colour are the curtains of the master bedroom?”

Do my parents even have curtains in their room? “I’m sorry, I really don’t know. I’m not a very visual person and that’s not a part of the house I frequent.”

“Ah, I see, so there are places and aspects of the house that are not familiar to you.”

“Well duh, isn’t it only the parts of our house that matter to us that should count?”

“And there are other places in your life that do count.” He declared. “Like UBC. I bet that since you’re going home at such a late hour, you must spend at least half your day there.”

“Yes I do, in fact I was here since 8am”

“And you know where all the buildings are, and how the classrooms look. Heck, with your long daily commute, you probably know this bus better than your house. “ He spoke excitedly. “You know the configuration of all the seats and their colour. You know which seats are your favourites. You know whom to stand beside when the bus is full because you know who’s always going to get off before Cambie. It sounds like you probably know these places better. It sounds like home to me!”

“Hmm.” I uttered unconsciously. I had nothing to offer.

“But of course, it isn’t.” He sighed.

“So,” I began hesitantly. “Where’s home for you?”

He stared straight ahead, searching in his mind for a couple seconds before turning suddenly to me, eyes aglow with confidence. “You know, the Polynesians were the best navigators of the sea in the ancient world. They braved thousands of kilometers across the barren stretches of the southern Pacific ocean to reach far flung islands by studying the stars, the wave patterns, the seasonal winds, the ocean currents, and even the migratory bird formations. They settled in the Solomon Islands; Samoa; Tahiti; Hawaii; Easter Island. There was not a speck of land in that ocean that was beyond their reach. And you know why? When they travelled they always considered themselves as the centre, and their destination would always move towards them. The world was not a static place to them. That is why they have no words for directions like north and south, because they don’t leave a place; it moves away from them, and a new place moves to them. Speaking of destination, my destination has arrived.” He heaved his bag on his shoulder and made his way to the door.

“Wait, what’s your name?” I inquired.

He smiled at me softly, his wrinkled face erupting into a coy expression. “Why does it matter? I have no name. I know who I am, and therefore, I have a home.

Works Cited:

“Introduction.” Never Lost: Polynesian Navigation. Exploratorium, n.p. n.d. Web. 5 June 2015. <https://www.exploratorium.edu/neverlost/#/home>

Libera Official. “Going Home.” Online video clip. Youtube. Youtube, 14 Jan 2015. Web. 5 June 2015. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvThHk-wMRk>

Have you ever wondered how religions can possibly reconcile the fact that their deity is omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient, and yet they are not responsible for evil? This is my answer to you.

The universe is governed by two forces, the Seer and the Mover. They have always existed and will continue to exist forever, for they are indestructible and eternal. The Seer remembers all that happened in the past and knows all that will happen. To Her, all events stretch out in an unalterable and static sequence extending ad infinitum to the past and future. However, She is deaf, and she is without any power to change this sequence of events or carry out that which she sees. The Mover, however, does not have memory, cannot foretell the future, and is mute, but He has limitless power to create and destroy. The Seer commands the Mover in every action, and the Mover invariably obeys.

The Seer and the Mover, in fulfilling their destiny, gives birth to two twins: the girl they name Serena and the boy they name Chaos.  As children of their immortal parents, they inherit half of their traits from each of their parents. Serena is endowed the fine craftsmanship of her father and the pensive nature of her mother. She spends her time molding beautiful things and is ever at her mother’s side attending to her needs. Chaos takes after his father in his boundless energy and dynamism, while he is more like his mother in his intellectualism and awareness of past and future. He spends his time as an assistant to his father, running to and fro in an endless stream of errands.

At one point in time the Seer says to her daughter: “Serena, make a utopia, and let me perceive its perfection.”

Serena obeys, as she always does. She crafts a world within a single point, but inside it was untapped potential and ideal Forms. It was lifeless and perfect. All the parts contained within has no motion, and therefore it is in complete harmony. Her mother regarded it and saw that it was good.

Chaos approaches to see what his sister has created. “Let me see it!” He demanded. “Why, there is nothing moving in this?” Before his sister could protest, Chaos pulled the perfect world apart and released its potential. He gave motion and life to the world, the Big Bang.

“You’ve ruined it!” Serena exclaims. “Now that the world is in motion, it would move away from its perfect state and will degrade into complete disorder! Stars will be born; they will collide into one another, and they will explode or dwindle.  Living things will be born and they shall strive with one another and their world until they die. You have introduced evil to my world by giving it life, and there shall be discord in a universe that was once still and perfect.”

Serena knows that her ideal world is beyond repair. Chaos will prevail by consuming her perfect world until all things shall turn to dust, until every atom has been converted into useless energy. Chaos gives life and motion to all things, while Serena brings death and stillness to her creation; however, Chaos will ultimately win because the world can only become more disorderly. So, as you can see, every breath that we take is just Chaos directing the universe’s course to maximum entropy. To live and to give motion to things is to create discord in the countless forms of collision, competition, and consumption. Live is the verb for evil; it is no coincidence that the two words are composed of the same letters, only backwards.

A story cannot be captured in a instant, and must take place over some time interval to allow for change, for that is the nature of stories, a documentation of change. But stories can be mute, for all that story means is an interaction or an exchange between some given existents. The story of our universe is mute, and Chaos is the storyteller of our universe. And though we have only one possible ending, we must dwell in his and the Seer’s predetermined story, or fate, if you like that label better.

Be careful about the stories you tell and the stories you listen to  — because once a story is told it can never be taken back.

Works cited:

“Determinism.” The Information Philosopher. Informationphilsopher.com. N.p. N. d. Web. 29 May 2015. http://www.informationphilosopher.com/freedom/determinism.html

Lavender, Gemma. “What is Heat Death?” Space Answers. Spaceanswers.org. N.p. 17 May 2013. Web. 29 May 2015. http://www.spaceanswers.com/deep-space/what-is-heat-death/

“Plato and The Theory of Forms.” philosophical society.com. Philosophicalsociety.com. N.p. N.d. Web. 29 May 2015. http://www.philosophicalsociety.com/archives/plato%20and%20the%20theory%20of%20forms.htm

Van den Dungen, Wim. “Essay on Theodicy.” Philsoophy: Theodicy. SOFIATopia.org. N.p. N.d. Web. 29 May 2015. http://www.sofiatopia.org/equiaeon/theodicy.htm

In his book If This is Your Land, Where are Your Stories? Finding Common Ground, Chamberlin quotes W. E. H. Stanner’s observation that the word “home” in English is not heavy with meaning like the Aboriginal’s use of the word, which they tend to associate with cultural objects like hearth, totem place, and spirit centre (79). In thinking about land and home as one entity, one must negotiate the contradiction that home is imaginary and land is a reality. But our interpretation of reality is dependent on the way in which our mind synthesizes the physical objects felt through our senses together with the dreams, thoughts, hopes, motives, and expectations formed by our sense of past, present, and future. As a result, the way that we talk about land will inevitably invite the telling of stories about its historic exploitation, its present ownership, and future possibility; our discussion of home conversely must confirm or even reject reality, and so in one way or another, refer to the physical reality of where this sense of home is mapped.

If home is a sense of belonging, then its meaning must embody more than its locality. This discussion of home reminds me of a passage in The Wanderer about how sense of belonging is derived, in which the speaker tells the audience how his wandering has not found him a new home:

“wretched, from there/ travelled most sorrowfully/ over the frozen waves,/sought, sad at the lack of a hall,/ a giver of treasure,/ where I, far or near, might find/ one in the mead hall who/ knew my people, or wished to console/ the friendless one, me,/ entertain (me) with delights.” (24-29)

This poem reveals to us that in the stories we tell about belonging, it is often the people that we find in a place that figure most importantly, and the interactions that forge those emotional connections. Place is given a secondary importance in this definition of home, and while places actively shape the interactions that play out, one might imagine that those interactions, like giving gifts and providing consolation, are so universal that they could have taken place anywhere in the world. Our stories may be flavoured and accented by its locality, but the stories attempt to give significance to our innate and most basic human desires, that of making connecting ourselves to the external world and the people in it. Perhaps it is in appreciating and accepting the universality of the purpose of narratives and their common themes across cultures that we can learn to find common ground, as Chamberlin urges us to do so.

With this in mind, let us re-examine the significance of home in the Canadian context. If stories of home are suppose to give us a way to connect to one another in the country, but our history is one of displacing the Aboriginals and putting them in reserves, these stories are at odds with one another. The current Conservative government is actively promoting the story that Canada was born just 150 years ago, spending millions of dollars to remind citizens of the contributions of Canadians in military exploits and the battles we have fought abroad. This limiting definition of nationhood betray a sense of disunity when these stories are hardly relevant to newcomers and all those who did not participate in the war, and have tenuous links to the land in which we live. Yet the Aboriginal stories focus on stories about the land in such a way that anybody can experience and relate to, because all Canadians live on this land. They use local animals we can see to tell stories of morality and purpose, of how they too give gifts and provide consolation to one another. They use landscapes to talk about the history and future of the place in which we live. The common ground that we want to pursue may lie in talking about the experiences of living in this land in the past, in the present, and in the future.

Works Cited:

“Canada 150” Government of Canada. N.p. n.d. Web. 22 May 2015.

Chamberlin, J. Edward. If This Is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories? Finding Common Ground. Toronto: Vintage Canada, 2003. Print.

“The Wanderer.” Anglo-Saxons.net. N.p. N.d. Web. 22 May 2015.

Hi there! My name is Timothy Choi and I have just wrapped up my third year of studies at the University of British Columbia with a double major in piano performance and English Literature. I am doing this blog as partial fulfillment of the course requirements for English 470, Canadian Studies. In this course we will uncover the ways in which we can intervene in the development and attitudes surrounding Canadian literature, while analyzing the ways in which stories are told as well as which stories we hear and do not hear.

I will be honest; the sole reason why I am taking Canadian Studies is because it is mandatory for the completion of my English Literature major requirements. I have not read many works by Canadian authors, and I had done so only because it was required of me in one of my first year classes. It isn’t that I hold anything against Canadian literature; it’s just that there is nothing particular that strikes me as interesting about what people have to say about Canada. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not as though I haven’t tried. In fact, I think I have tried harder than most people in this country to make sense of Canadian identity and to expose myself to all the experiences this country has to offer in hopes of uncovering its core attributes. When I was 15, I participated in Encounters with Canada, a program that allows youth to connect and meet from all across Canada in Ottawa for a week to learn and discuss a specific theme (my week was International Affairs). In the summer before entering university, I participated in the Explore program, where I spent five beautiful weeks in Jonquiere, Quebec learning French in the intensely Francophone environment. Both attempts at understanding Canadian identity more or less failed for me, but this summer I will embark on my third (and perhaps most ambitious) attempt. Paired with what I will learn and experience from this course, I will spend five weeks in Moncton with Explore and use this opportunity to experience the culture of the Maritime provinces. Following the end of the program in August, I will take a coast-to-coast train ride back to Vancouver, stopping in major cities along the way and passing through the varied and spectacular landscapes Canada has to offer. If I don’t feel any more Canadian after this summer, I don’t think anything could change me.

Stories of nationhood: fables to beguile young men to their early graves?

I am constantly skeptical towards the ideas that justify nationalism, and my background no doubt has something to do with this belief. Born a British citizen while Hong Kong was still a colony of the UK and never having received a Chinese passport, I became a Canadian citizen when I moved to Vancouver at age seven. Nationality seems to me like a mere title; when I visited UK for the first time last summer, it certainly did not feel like home, even though on paper I am, before I was ever anything else, a citizen of the UK. Even more odd and ironic is the fact that I am an ethnic Han Chinese who is not recognized as such on paper, even though anyone who looks at me can see that I am Chinese. The political reality of Canada feels to me like another remnant of colonialism from one and a half centuries ago. The fact that we continue to create stories for ourselves about how we are one nation feels to me like we are trying to preserve the legacy of colonialism, while failing or unwilling to acknowledge that our country is simply too diverse and dissimilar to justify or even validate the existence of a national identity. I already foresee myself playing the role of devil’s advocate in the class discussions, but I think it will enrich my understanding of what is Canada and challenge the beliefs of my peers, so we will all get something good out of my cynicism. I look forward to some lively and stimulating debates from my classmates!

Thanks for reading.

WORKS CITED

Choi, Timothy. “Timothy goes to Europe”. Timothy9. Travellerspoint. N.p. 2 Jan. 2014. Web. 14 May 2015.

Choi, Timothy. “Tyne Cot.” 2014. JPEG.

“Explore” Explore. N.p. n. d. Web. 14 May 2015.

“Home” Encounters with Canada. N.p. n.d. Web. 14 May 2015.

“Toronto-Vancouver Train”  Via Rail. N.p. n.d. Web. 14 May 2015.