Monthly Archives: February 2016

Question:

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.

There are many reasons why those listening to first stories in 2016 have limited capacity for understanding or making meaningfulness from them. The two reasons that Professor Paterson discusses in English 470A notes include the fact that the social process of the telling of the story is disconnected from the story  and the 75 year gap in families and community storytelling as children from 5-15 were removed to non-native residential schools.  Professor Wendy Wickwire, in the introduction to Living by Stories: A Journey of Landscape and Memory, further explores our limitations to hear the stories, and suggests that they are related to our narrow perspectives shaped by the colonial and imperial “official”1 written narrative histories of power and dominance. This blog will discuss the support cited for the three reasons identified above.

Separation of the social process of telling the story from the story creates a problem in attributing relevance and meaning. The stories were often told at a potlatch in a ceremony where laws are prescribed through the telling of the story.  As important to the telling of the story in this ceremony, is the presence of a listener who is able to witness the telling of the story, and inscribe the laws by repeating them.  Hearing the story in absence of the song and ceremony and multi-sensory aspects of the potlatch can render the story confusing and meaningless.  If the story is written down and read without the words and songs of the storyteller they can be misinterpreted.  If the reader or listener is unfamiliar with the context of the telling and his responsibility of the listening, it will not be understood or repeated properly.

When Indigenous children were removed from their families and communities, the listeners were removed, and thus the next generations’ storytellers. While in the residential schools the Indigenous children were told different stories bythe non-native administrators and communities.  They were punished for use of their own languages, so even if they did tell ancestors stories that they remembered later, the language was often lost and interpretation distorted by non-native narrative.  Many children and their stories died because of abuse, negligence, or exposure to disease in larger communities.  The later listeners of the surviving stories had often lost the language and the ability to hear the story and understand the potlatch ceremony.

Wickwire explains that the listeners of Indigenous stories today cannot hear their message because they have embraced the history as written in the text books and captured by early anthropologists. This history includes Cook’s official1 account of the “discovery” of the west coast of Canada.  Cook was sent to make claim on the land for a European imperial power during the Age of Enlightenment.  He scientifically remapped and renamed all of the places and told his story (which was edited further by officials in England who did not even observe things first hand).  The listener of an Indigenous story today carries many preconceived concepts and histories and finds too many disparate views to his own understanding to listen openly and hear them as the storyteller intended.

Wickwire discusses the impact of one of the 20^th Century’s prominent anthropologists, Franz Boas, in limiting our ability to hear the stories of the Indigenous.  Boas “collected” some Indigenous stories.  They were short and “lifeless” according to Wickwire. Boas and other collectors had edited stories for broad consumption, eliminated community and individual names, and even combined stories.  Words like “gun” were removed to transition stories to pre-contact myths.  Wickwire claims that because Boas focused on gathering ancient anthropological “myths” of the Indigenous and did not hear or document their stories of land, generations of readers and writers dismissed these stories as unimportant.  The desire was to “collect” a static myth set in prehistoric times.  Therefore, many of the stories that were captured to maintain some of the oral histories despite the devastation of the Indigenous because of the removal of the children from their communities, the stories of change and current life were lost or muddled.  Boas’ own inability to understand Indigenous  storytelling tradition across time and space led him to dismiss many of the stories as “nonsense”. The anthropological collectors dismissing, rewriting and reframing Indigenous stories limited generations of readers’ and listeners’ (and even subsequent documenters of storytellers such as Wickwire) ability to hear what is really being said.

Wickwire and Paterson provide compelling arguments as to why we cannot understand the first stories. The necessary continuity of oral ceremonial communication from storyteller to responsible listener was severely interrupted by removing generations of children from communities and families and outlawing their ceremonies.  Anthropologists such as Boas and explorers such as Cook told imperial stories and edited Indigenous stories that have been embedded in our consciousness for generations post contact, limiting our ability to hear the real stories.

[1] J. C. Beaglehole, ed., The Journals of Captain Cook on His Voyages of Discovery, Vol. I: The Voyage of the Endeavour 1768-1771 (Cambridge: at the University Press, published for the Hakluyt Society), cxxxvi.

Works Cited:

Cook, James. The Journals of Captain Cook on His Voyages of Discovery, Vol. I: The Voyage of the Endeavour 1768-1771,  ed.  J. C. Beaglehole.  Cambridge: University Press, published for the Hakluyt Society, 1955. Print.

Clayton, Daniel. W. Islands of Truth: The Imperial Fashioning of Vancouver Island. University of British Columbia Press, 1999. Web.  15 February. 2015.

Paterson, Erika. “Lesson 2.2.” ENGL 470A Canadian Studies: Canadian Literary Genres. University of British Columbia, 2013. Web. 16 Feb. 2016.

Robinson, Harry. Living by Stories : A Journey of Landscape and Memory. Talonbooks, 2005. Web. 19 Feb. 2016.

Wickwire, Wendy. “The Grizzly Gave Them the Song: James Teit and Franz Boas Interpret Twin Ritual in Aboriginal British Columbia, 1897-1920”. American Indian Quarterly 25.3 (2001): 431–452. Web  2 Feb. 2016.

While there are certainly some common elements of “home” for our class, I found that there were some unique concepts as well. Although we have a lot in common in our lives in that we are UBC students connected with Vancouver, it is obvious to me that our concepts of home, like many aspects of our thinking, depend upon our histories and where we have been.  While several people commented on their connection to land and feeling at home with nature, others spoke much more of emotional spaces and connections as “home”, with no mention of a connection to a place.  Sometimes the connection with nature and stimulus from remembered interactions with nature evoked emotional memories of family and home.  The change and evolution of nature was tied with the changing concept of home (and decay to some extent).  While family was often associated with home and a strong emotional space, most spoke of immediate, living family.  A few people spoke of ancestors (in fact Beatrice mentioned 32 generations!) and heritage, but this was less common.

Most people saw home as possible to be multiple places, and change over time. Some saw it as anchored to where family or a physical home was, while others described it solely in the abstract – almost a state of mind.  For one person, it was a place of strength and advantage, but also a safe, protected place, behind a mask.

Chamberlin’s idea that the homeless of the world continue to displace others was reflected in the observations of several of the group. There was a sense of dismay that we had an oblivious perception of Canada as the immigrants’ for the taking.  The immigrant story of coming to Canada and leaving home and being displaced because of wars and poverty was told several times.  The sense of being the “other” in an adopted home because of skin colour, language, or names was repeated.  Despite our differences, we meet in these common spaces.

Works Cited:

Chamberlin, Edward. If This is Your Land, Where are Your Stories? Finding Common Ground. Toronto: AA. Knopf, 2003. Print.

The cover from the community book for Lac Brule, Quebec, which documents the history of my husband’s family and those who settled (in their vacation homes) around the lake.

“Home may be in another time and place, and yet it holds us in its power here and now.  Home is like our language, compelling us to think and feel in certain ways and giving us the freedom to imagine other ways and other places.  It is who we are and where we belong.  Home both binds us and liberates us” (Chamberlin 76).

My story of home begins with my parents’ homes.  My father was born in Port Alice and grew up in Port Hardy where First Nations are 35% of the population in a home in the Kwakiutl traditional territory on the water.  His parents fished for salmon alongside First Nations after coming from a farm in Idaho.  My aunt married a mixed race First Nations man in the 1960’s when interracial marriage was not common.  My father left school and went into the woods at age sixteen to work and then joined the Canadian Air Force to escape a difficult home. As a young girl visiting my grandparents I would see First Nations in hand carved canoes on the beach beside us. I loved the beach, with the strong tides, amazing sea life, the smell of the ocean, and the whales in the harbor.  My mother considered Port Hardy remote and backward and our visits were fewer over time.

My mother grew up in Port Alberni next to the traditional territories of the Tseshaht and Hupacasath.  Her parents had a more traditional European immigrant story.  My grandfather was an impoverished Swede arriving on the boat from Finland in Canada to take free farm land to settle Canada.  When Winnipeg proved too harsh he moved west and anglicized his name to avoid discrimination.   My Swedish grandmother, an orphan at three, began work in a fancy house in Shaughnessy as a downstairs maid, having little English.  She and her twin sister saved everything they made to eventually buy a rooming house and a bakery.   When my grandfather and grandmother married, he left for the woods to log while she managed the farm and family restaurant.  Canada provided middle class prosperity and safety from the second world war in Europe that killed most of their siblings.  My grandmother remarried just before I was born when the hard labour of the woods killed my grandfather at age fifty and she moved to Nanaimo, traditional territory of the Snuneymuxw.  I loved the farm in Nanaimo on the river, where I learned to swim, and loved the fields, the woods, and the clear fresh water.  We had idyllic visits harvesting the fruit and vegetables and consuming my grandmother’s fresh baking under the warm sunny skies.

My family lived all over Canada, so my grandmother’s farm was my real home.  While we moved to dreary houses in different provinces, I could still return there to the thread of my life.    My parents had set out from Vancouver Island to explore Canada when still in their teens and were looking for the perfect small town together.  The Canadian Air Force took our family to Biloxi, Mississippi in 1964 where we witnessed first-hand the “beach wade-ins” to protest school racial segregation.  After my father left the Canadian Air Force he worked for the “telephone companies” building the infrastructure for modern communication for Canada.  My home was Prince George, Cape Breton, small town Ontario, and finally Richmond….  The houses and the towns were transitory, but home was going back to the farm in Nanaimo and the beach in Port Hardy.  The story of my grandparents’ home kept us “sane and steady” (Chamberlin, 78) from our unhappier story – one of parents who had married far too young in order to escape their small towns and never found that perfect small town together.

My mother was very proud of our working class roots.  We were descendants of workers who had created new lives with sweat and determination.  My desire to go to university (the first to earn a degree in my family) and study language, literature, and liberal ideas was to reject the values of my home.  Now I have lived in West Vancouver for twenty years with my husband and children and really don’t feel a sense of home in Richmond.  When my mother passed away, we sold the Richmond family home of thirty-five years and it was knocked down for redevelopment within weeks.  Like my ancestors, I am continuing the re-creation of home for what suits my family and my life style.   I can look out my kitchen window at U.B.C. and be up Cypress Mountain to cross country ski within fifteen minutes.  I love where we live, but now we have too big of a house for my husband and I, so we will likely move when my youngest daughter goes to university in 2017. My daughters, like most of their friends, feel a need to go away, and find their own home and experience.                    Cypress Mountain cross country skiing 2016.

By contrast, my husband has a great sense of history in his family.  They were originally from Scotland and have been in Quebec for many generations.  Their story is more typical of British immigrants.  They were successful professional people with education and summer homes.  In the 19^th century they had architects build wonderful summer homes and ski chalets with tennis courts on Lac Brule in the Laurentian mountains.  “Many well-off city men buy themselves farms at a certain stage of their careers… its understood they can now afford to indulge: a hankering to make contact with the land” (Gordimer 22).  There are stories of a leisure class taking horse drawn carriages from the train station to reconnect with the earth with wonderful gardens, tennis, and canoeing.  This land that my husband’s family made contact with has now replaced my grandmother’s farm as my home base.  We go every summer for the community regatta and every winter for the cross country ski loppet around the lake.  My daughters love our little cottage and speak of bringing their children there – it is understood that this is where our family history will continue.   They love the sense that their ancestors were there, that everyone returns from all over Canada and the U.S. for these bi-annual events, that there are books written about the community.  There is a sense of land, with raspberry patches and wild blueberries.  There are wide open fields for children to run free and a clear, clean lake for swimming, canoeing, and skating.

Did we take this home from someone else?  There is no sign of indigenous history there although research tells me there obviously is some.  The Quebec heritage web site talks of a land largely uninhabited when settlers arrived.  This is the narrative of the colonizer – of an empty Canada, ready for settling, mapping and (re)naming.  The indigenous peoples, the Weskarinis-Algonkians, wintered in our area for centuries before their defeat at the hands of the Iroquois in 1651. Then the francophone settlers came to farm the land to be replaced by the Montreal leisure class because of its beauty and proximity to the city.  Today the lake is still almost exclusively owned by Anglophones.  There is still an awkward sense of segregation as shop people and snow plow drivers are Francophones and part-time resident landowners are Anglophones.   My husband grew up in Anglophone Westmount during great political tension and left this idyllic home for the west coast as he graduated when Anglophones were limited professionally in Quebec.

So, I have this home in Vancouver that I love, but will leave, and my adopted home in Quebec that I hope to see my grandchildren inherit one day…. And, I travel a lot. I explore the world to learn about people and places. My family had an amazing trip to an indigenous community in a remote part of the Amazon after a long canoe ride past the foreign owned, smoking oil wells. We saw the homeless indigenous on the streets of Quito. I was in the theatre district in London during the Thatcher poll tax riots and in Paris during May Day protests with police in riot gear. For work, I have seen the optimism in Bangalore and the pessimism in St. Petersburg, Russia where my Russian hosts told me that Stalin was the greatest Russian leader of modern times. I left Manhattan early on September 12, 2001 after seeing the city attacked just blocks away from my investment banking meetings. I worked for B.C. Transmission Co. as they attempted to negotiate to develop transmission lines through First Nations traditional territory and participated in supporting the 2010 Olympics, where four First Nations welcomed the world to their traditional territory for the games. When I arrive at the airport home to Vancouver I am a little uncomfortable about the brand new highly varnished totem poles on display commissioned to attract tourists with the cultural richness of the spectacular land that we have colonized and settled. When I leave the airport and walk outside I breath in the cool, damp, clean air and it smells like home.

That is the story of my home. Although it is the story of an immigrant, of continually recreating the home story, it is a good home.

I do not have songs that remind me of home, or a home that is rich in music. Is music an important part of home for you?

Works cited:

“1990: Violence flares in poll tax demonstration.” BBC News – 1950 to 2005. 31 March 1990. Web 8 February 2016.

Chamberlin, Edward. If This is Your Land, Where are Your Stories? Finding Common Ground. Toronto:  AA. Knopf, 2003. Print.

“FLQ Crisis.”  The Canadian Soldier in the 20^th Century.  Web.  8 February 2016.

Gordimer, Nadine.  The Conservationist.  Markham:  Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 1975.  Print.

Matas, Robert.  “Olympics were sweet and sour dish for first nations.”  The Globe and Mail.  11 February 2011.  Web. 8 February 2016.

Pollock, Diane and Moffat, Margaret.  A Sense of Community.  Ste. Agathe North: DiMar Publishing, 2001.

Stock, Sandra. “The Laurentians: A Very Concise History, Part 1.” Laurentian Heritage Web Magazine. Sherbrooke: Quebec Heritage Web, 2014. Web. 8 February 2016.

There is a story I know.  It is a story about how evil came into the world.

One winter Bear’s mother sent him on a great chunk of ice to find a new place for fish.  She looked at the moon to tell him a good place to go, but the moon forgot and Bear drifted for three moons through the sea.  After the third moon the sun was telling the bear to stop being silly and waiting for the moon to tell him anything because the moon is always falling asleep.  The sun decided to try to get Bear to stop his wandering by giving his chunk of ice back to the sea.  Bear was very hungry and trying to put his four paws on the little ice and still waiting to know where he should go for fish.  As the sea gobbled his ice he saw the fish swimming all around him laughing at seeing a big bear on a little piece of ice.  Finally, Bear bumped into a tree along the shore of the great lake, and the tree shook Squirrel from a branch on to Bear’s head to tell him to stop here.

Bear and Squirrel were soon running around together and were brothers, and everyone knew that they were the ones who played the tricks on humans and animals alike.  When the humans were putting their fish to dry in the sun, Bear would lay very still in the water pretending that he was one his tree friends who were laying in the water to cool off and helping him hide.  When the humans went to sing their songs to the moon, Bear would invite his friends to come and laugh at the fish and have a feast.  When it was time to store nuts for the winter, Squirrel would throw a big party and ask everyone to bring him a nut.  He wasn’t lazy, he just wanted to see all of his friends before the big winds and snow came.

One time Squirrel told all of his friends to join him for the party and make sure and bring their nuts.  The snakes and the old men came, and so did the horses and the children.  Squirrel was busy running up and down the tree putting the nuts in all of the best places in high branches as everyone arrived and gave him their nut gifts.  Meanwhile Bear was eating all the berries and fish that he could find and was busy night and day and forgot about Squirrel’s party.  The fish danced away from him in the water and laughed at Bear for forgetting about the party.  Bear knew that he was very late and did not have time to find nuts in the moonlight, so the fish told him to bring some smooth round rocks from the river so that Squirrel would think they were nuts in the dark.  Squirrel grabbed the rocks from Bear when he arrived and chattered away to him about coming to the party so late.  As he ran up the tree the rocks felt very heavy and they fell from his paws and landed very hard right on the head of the Bear.  The Bear was in such pain and so angry at his friend that he shook the tree very hard.  The Squirrel landed right on the bump on his sore head.  Bear was so angry that he took the squirrel in his hand and threw him and his nuts into the sky … where they remain today as a constellation and many bright stars in the sky, frozen and far away from Bear, who misses his mischievous friend Squirrel and wishes he would come back to the tree by the sea.

“But, of course, it was too late. For once a story is told, it cannot be called back. Once told, it is loose in the world. So, be careful of the stories you tell, and the stories you listen to” (King, 10).

ΩΩΩ ΩΩΩ

When I told this story to my daughter, she said that is not the way that she would tell the story.  Although I obviously made up the story I felt a sense of disappointment that she was rejecting “my” story, for my story had become a part of me.  She said that the story is silly.  I found myself remembering what King said that the “sober voice in a Christian story …creates a sense of veracity” (King, 23).  If a story is told with humour deemed silly by the listener does it also undermine the veracity for European readers?

Works Cited:

King, Thomas. The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative. Peterbough:Anansi Press. 2003. Print.

Miller,W., Schuster,S.C., Welch,A.J., Ratan,A., Bedoya-Reina,O.C., Zhao,F., Kim,H.L., Burhans,R.C., Drautz,D.I., Wittekindt,N.E. et al. (2012) Polar and brown bear genomes reveal ancient admixture and demographic footprints of past climate change. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science U.S.A., 109, E2382–2390.

Van der Merwe, M. Brown, J. & Kotler, B. (2014) Quantifying the future value of cacheable food using fox squirrels (sciurus niger), Israel Journal of Ecology & Evolution, 60:1, 1-10, DOI: 10.1080/15659801.2014.907974