{"id":61,"date":"2014-02-06T21:55:11","date_gmt":"2014-02-07T04:55:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/cristakoo\/?p=61"},"modified":"2014-02-07T12:21:18","modified_gmt":"2014-02-07T19:21:18","slug":"2-2-context-needed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/cristakoo\/2014\/02\/06\/2-2-context-needed\/","title":{"rendered":"2.2: Context Needed"},"content":{"rendered":"

My favourite movie is Avatar<\/a>. It can be summarized as what John Lutz writes, \u201center[ing] a world that is distant in time and alien in culture, attempting to perceive indigenous performance through their eyes as well as those of the [Earth]\u201d (32).<\/p>\n

And if you have watched the movie, it is quite literally as Lutz described; a white man, Jake Sully, seeing through the eyes of a genetically engineered body called the Avatar that is fused with the DNA of the Earth host and the DNA of the \u201cnatives\u201d. Confusing? I know.<\/p>\n

Although Jake sees through the eyes of his Avatar, his mind is still far and distant and attached to his body that travelled from Earth. He attempts to see and live like the Na\u2019vi and is eventually accepted as an Omaticaya. But he is always attached to that human body. The Avatar is but a vessel for his human-made mind.<\/p>\n

This is how I view Lutz\u2019s assumptions. He is speaking from his own European-made experiences. From his experiences, those who would normally read his writings would be from a European background \u2013 not an Indigenous one. To him, the world has advanced towards European beliefs, values, technologies, and culture. To Lutz, Indigenous culture is \u201cdistant in time and alien in culture\u201d.<\/p>\n

He then calls for readers to engage in this challenge and \u201cstep outside and see one\u2019s own culture as alien\u201d and that both European and Indigenous stories must be put under \u201cthe same ethnohistorical lens\u201d (Lutz 32).<\/p>\n

Lutz\u2019s assumptions are clear. The world looks through the lens of the European. The European must then look at themselves through the lens of another culture\u2019s in order to understand. It is clear in his writing that it was influenced by the Europeanized English-speaking and writing world.<\/p>\n

And exactly what is European? Often times, European becomes lumped with American and then extrapolated as white. Normally, when someone in North America says \u201cwhite\u201d, I assume they mean all people who had an ancestry from Europe \u2013 particularly British or French. Similarly, in his writings, Michael Ignatieff imagines Canada through myth. He compares the American myth, or the American Dream to that of Canada\u2019s, which is not a single myth, he says, but \u201cthree competing ones, English Canadian, French Canadian and Aboriginal\u201d (13). This is interesting in that Ignatieff, white himself in race, is able to differentiate between two different European cultural groups \u2013 but not Aboriginal.<\/p>\n

It seems the world has been dichotomized as either European\/white or not. Hari Kondabolu talks about a \u201cwhite minority\u201d in 2042.<\/a> He says race is is just a way to divide, to generalize, and to socially construct the world we live in. It seems white people are homogenized into one, as well as all minority groups.<\/p>\n

This goes back to J. Edward Chamerlin\u2019s notion of \u201cUs and Them\u201d. At least in North America and parts of Europe, \u201cUs\u201d is often equated with white. So in that when Lutz writes for \u201cus\u201d to challenge ourselves to think outside of European constructs, he is talking to the white version of \u201cUs\u201d. (Note that version <\/i>is not pluralized.)<\/p>\n

So the way I view Lutz\u2019s assumptions is with understanding \u2013 the understanding that he writes from a background that is dominated by European\/North American\/white mentality. It\u2019s the understanding that unless the character in a fictional novel is described otherwise, the character is most likely white. And even if the character is described with features that may indicate non-whiteness, the character can be still mistaken to be white unless explicitly<\/i> informed.<\/a><\/p>\n

In the same way, the first contact stories told by Indigenous people (described by Lutz) is oralized within the background of a variety of Indigenous cultures. Some scholars may decide to analyze stories and texts only linguistically \u2013 not taking into the account the contexts of which when the story was formed, where it came into being, or even by who imagined it into existence. However, I believe contextual background is important along with linguistic analysis. Without this acknowledgement, erasure of differences tends to happen. And so then groups becomes homogenized and with it, individuals become lost.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

References<\/p>\n

Chamberlin, Edward.\u00a0If This is Your Land, Where are Your Stories?: Finding Common Ground<\/i>. A. A. Knopf: Toronto, 2003.<\/p>\n

Ignatieff, Michael. “True Patriot Love.”\u00a0True Patriot Love: Four Generations in Search of Canada<\/i>. Toronto: Penguin, 2009. 1-30. Print.<\/p>\n

Kondabolu, Hari. “Hari Kondabolu- 2042 & the White Minority.” YouTube, 05 Feb. 2014. Web. 06 Feb. 2014. <https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=85fr6nbiMT4>.<\/p>\n

Lutz, John. \u201cFirst Contact as a Spiritual Performance: Aboriginal \u2014 Non-Aboriginal Encounters on the North American West Coast.\u201d\u00a0Myth and Memory: Rethinking Stories of Indigenous-European Contact<\/i>. Ed. Lutz. Vancouver: U of British Columbia P, 2007. 30-45.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My favourite movie is Avatar. It can be summarized as what John Lutz writes, \u201center[ing] a world that is distant in time and alien in culture, attempting to perceive indigenous performance through their eyes as well as those of the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22515,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/cristakoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/cristakoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/cristakoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/cristakoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22515"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/cristakoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/cristakoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/cristakoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61\/revisions\/71"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/cristakoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/cristakoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/cristakoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}