Question: 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.

In this lesson we explore first stories. In Dr. Paterson’s blog, she talks about two obstacles faced when trying to understand the meaning in these stories. The first is how the social process of the telling is disconnected from the story, creating problems ascribing meaningfulness. When stories that have been passed on orally through generations are then taken, translated and put into print, the meaning is quite literally lost in translation; not only with regards to language, but also with the transfer from oral story telling to written language. Emphasis on certain details given orally, may not be as clear once transferred onto paper, thus potentially jeopardizing underlying themes, meanings, and morals to the story.

The second obstacle faced is the act of criminalizing telling stories that was put onto Indigenous peoples with the Indian Act between 1880 and 1951, as well as the residential school system which took children from their homes and put them into English speaking, catholic schools which prohibited the use of their native languages and cultures. Not only were children forced to adopt the culture, religion, and language imposed by the residential schools, they were taken from their families during this time, giving them no way to learn about their histories or listen to and learn their peoples stories. As Dr. Paterson says in the Instructors blog, “the first stories created the “link of ownership between people and the places.” (Paterson: 1) When this link is taken away, there becomes a disconnect between generations regarding the meaning taken from these stories, as well as the ability to hear, know, and share these stories.

Through my reading of the Introduction to Harry Robinson’s Living By Stories: A Journey of Landscape and Memory, I discovered a third reason for this difficulty in ascribing meaningfulness from stories. Wickwire quotes Robinson saying “And think and look and try and look ahead and look around at the stories. Then you can see the difference between the white and the Indian. But if I tell you, you may not understand. I try to tell you many times But I know you didn’t got ’em… So hear these stories of the old times. And think about it.” (Robinson: 18) With this quote as well as other comments and points throughout the introduction, I realized that it is how one goes into a story that affects their perception of it and ability to ascribe meaningfulness. By this I mean not only with what perspective they have when hearing these stories, but also with what they expect it to be. Lutz talks about contact stories being dialogues being spoken across cultural divides. He discusses contact stories and the perceptions of each party involved, he talks about the spiritual roots that guide each parties perceptions. For example, the European stories often speak about how they were treated and seen as gods in the eyes of the Indigenous peoples. However, from the other side, they did not believe in gods therefore they could not see them as such, but they did associate them with spiritual beings and power. This same story as seen from the two different perspectives has quite the cultural divide Lutz refers to. I see it similar to looking at a painting. If someone were to say to a group of people, “look at this painting, it depicts man encountering a spiritual being,” each person would approach that painting with a certain set of expectations. Much like when we listen to stories, we have a certain expectation of what it will be that is based on the angle and perspective in which we are approaching it from. Now, going back to the painting, some might see the spiritual being as God, some may see some sort of other spiritual entity that is part of a larger group of governing forces. My bottom line is, when you go into a story with preconceived notions about what that type of story should be, your reaction to it will differ from the next person to hear it and the meaning you see will be different, if not nonexistent, as well. Bringing it back to first stories, specifically Wickwire’s discussion on them, if one goes into a story thinking it is a myth, they will have a hard time finding the same types of meaning as a story told from a point of view that is closer in line with their own. Wickwire talks about her surprise when the mentions of Europeans came up in Robinson’s stories and initially wrote it off as an anomaly. Perhaps she was not expecting these stories to have points in history that lined up with colonial histories, expecting these stories to be pre-historic accounts. However, upon further research and reflection, Wickwire concluded that these stories were not simply the prehistoric tales that most people think. Therefore, if you go into it expecting a prehistoric myth that is not rooted in the history that you know, you will not see the same meanings and miss the relevance to today’s issues and realities.

My question for you is, do you think it would ever be possible for one to listen to a story with complete objectiveness, or do you think it is impossible to separate ourselves entirely from what we know and what we go into stories expecting?

Works Cited

Hanson, Erin. “The Indian Act.” Indigenous Foundations UBC. University of British Columbia. n.d. Web. June 17, 2016. <http://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/home/government-policy/the-indian-act.html>

Paterson, Erika. “First Stories.” ENGL 470A Canadian Studies: Canadian Literary Genres May 2016. University of British Columbia. n.d. Web. June 17, 2016. <https://blogs.ubc.ca/courseblogsis_ubc_engl_470a_99c_2014wc_44216-sis_ubc_engl_470a_99c_2014wc_44216_2517104_1/unit-2/lesson-2-2/>

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