{"id":14,"date":"2015-05-22T15:30:18","date_gmt":"2015-05-22T22:30:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/coasttocoast\/?p=14"},"modified":"2015-05-22T15:30:18","modified_gmt":"2015-05-22T22:30:18","slug":"lesson-12","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/coasttocoast\/2015\/05\/22\/lesson-12\/","title":{"rendered":"Lesson 1:2"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Figuring out this place called home is a problem (87).\u00a0 Why? Why is it so problematic to figure out this place we call home: Canada? Consider this question in context with Chamberlin\u2019s discussion on imagination and reality; belief and truth (use the index).Chamberlin says, \u201cthe sad fact is, the history of settlement around the world is the history of displacing other people from their lands, of discounting their livelihoods and destroying their languages\u201d (78).\u00a0 Chamberlin goes on to \u201cput this differently\u201d (Para. 3). Explain that \u201cdifferent way\u201d of looking at this, and discuss what you think of the differences and possible consequences of these \u201ctwo ways\u201d of understanding the history of settlement in Canada.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

It is hard to agree on a definition of home for people from different walks of life with many different experiences and circumstances. How does a person living in one place for his\/her\u00a0entire lives experience the sense of belonging as compared to an itinerant person, or one who moves from place to place because of their job? Moreover, even if that person has had one home for all their life, how would he\/she interpret homeland if his\/her ancestors came from another land? These are all questions that complicate the definition of home, and therefore, makes it difficult to talk about the range of feelings and thoughts that we attach to the word. However, I do think that it is relevant to broach this topic, even if is only an abstract concept that exists in our imagination, since discussions surrounding the word spring up frequently within Western literature and in the stories of all cultures of the world.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

In his book If This is Your Land, Where are Your Stories? Finding Common Ground<\/em>, Chamberlin quotes W. E. H. Stanner’s observation that the word “home” in English is not heavy with meaning\u00a0like 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\u00a0the 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\u00a0or even reject reality, and so in one way or another, refer to the physical reality of where this sense of home is mapped.<\/p>\n

If home is a sense of belonging, then its meaning must embody more than its locality.\u00a0This discussion of home reminds me of a passage in The Wanderer<\/a>\u00a0about how sense of belonging is derived, in which the speaker tells the audience how his wandering has not found him a new home:<\/p>\n

“wretched, from there\/\u00a0travelled 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)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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\u00a0a 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\u00a0and 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\u00a0stories 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.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0way to connect to one another in the country, but\u00a0our history is one of displacing the\u00a0Aboriginals 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\u00a0born\u00a0just 150 years ago<\/a>, spending millions of dollars to remind\u00a0citizens of the contributions of Canadians in military exploits and the battles we have fought abroad. This limiting definition\u00a0of 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\u00a0talking about the experiences of living in this land in the past, in the present, and in the future.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Works Cited:<\/p>\n

“Canada 150”\u00a0Government of Canada. <\/em>N.p. n.d. Web. 22 May 2015.<\/p>\n

Chamberlin, J. Edward.\u00a0If This Is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories? Finding Common Ground.\u00a0<\/em>Toronto: Vintage Canada, 2003. Print.<\/span><\/p>\n

“The Wanderer.” Anglo-Saxons.net. N.p. N.d. Web. 22 May 2015.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Figuring out this place called home is a problem (87).\u00a0 Why? Why is it so problematic to figure out this place we call home: Canada? Consider this question in context with Chamberlin\u2019s discussion on imagination and reality; belief and truth (use the index).Chamberlin says, \u201cthe sad fact is, the history of settlement around the world […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31833,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/coasttocoast\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/coasttocoast\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/coasttocoast\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/coasttocoast\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/31833"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/coasttocoast\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/coasttocoast\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/coasttocoast\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14\/revisions\/16"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/coasttocoast\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/coasttocoast\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/coasttocoast\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}