Following Carlson’s discussions on literacy as “part of a broader genre of transformation” (61), try to explain what he means when he says that transformation is an “act of literacy.” Extract an explanation for conceptualizing transformations as writing and as readable.

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“Transformation is an act of literacy,” says Carlson, in his article that examines the role of literacy in Salish oral stories. He gives us an example.

He tells of certain Stó:lō histories, which talk about Transformer characters called Xexá:ls who travelled around the land, performing transformative feats. They would transform people and things, and by doing so, create the world we recognize today. One of their transformations was punitive – three chiefs who refused to teach their people how to write were turned into stone (Carlson, 46 – 47).

Transforming them into stone was an act of literacy, according to Carlson and he stresses that the transformer who did it was “engaged in the act of writing himself” (62).

This was a very eye-opening statement for me. When I think about literacy, the first thing that comes to mind is its dictionary definition. Reading printed words. Writing them down on a page. But this article by Carlson offered me another, less rigid way to think about literacy: simply as an act of creating a sense of permanence and also as the act of making meaning.

We can see this in the story about the Xexá:ls, where the chiefs are turned to stone.

Carlson says, “the Transformers leave their mark on the world through transformations…” (61)

By turning the chiefs into stone, they create something of permanence. They change the landscape. (One really can equate this to writing – when you’re filling a blank page or an empty screen with words, you are physically transforming it, appearance-wise. It’s also a transformation because you’re creating something that wasn’t there before.) Perhaps it also offers a sense of permanence because the act of transformation is memorable. Chiefs turning to stone. People who hear this story are more likely to remember it and re-tell it, ensuring its preservation.

These transformations the Xexá:ls have made, Carlson adds are “then understood and known through the stories describing that act (61).” In other words, the act of making meaning. (One really can equate this to reading as well – if you’re reading this, in a way you are transforming these letters into meaning. It goes back to what Chamberlin was saying about C-A-T. It’s not a cat. But to most of us, it means a cat.)

By conceptualizing transformations into reading and writing this way, I think it challenges a number of biases and assumptions that still persist about Aboriginal culture and literacy.

First off, it reveals that literacy is not as black and white a concept as it is assumed to be. Western civilizations have claimed literacy as their defining characteristic, Carlson points out (63). But literacy can be interpreted in a different way and this challenges the binary way of thinking about literacy and orality. There can be literacy in an ‘oral culture’.

It also challenges the idea that literacy is a result of newcomer influences or European encounters. The Salish transformer stories are ‘beginning of time’ narratives that show that literacy was not a concept handed to them but rather something of their own. As Carlson puts it, literacy can no longer be seen “as something imposed on or introduced to Aboriginal people as part of colonization” (45). He emphasizes this through etymology – suggesting that the Stó:lō did not borrow English or French words for literacy (as they did for things the newcomers introduced to them). They had a word for it of their own.

WORKS CITED

Carlson, Keith Thor. “Orality and Literacy: The ‘Black and White’ of Salish History.” Orality & Literacy: Reflectins Across Disciplines. Ed. Carlson, Kristina Fagna, & Natalia Khamemko-Frieson. Toronto: Uof Toronto P, 2011. 43-72.

“S’ólh Téméxw – The Story of the Stó:lō People.”Poco Heritage. The Port Coquitlam Heritage and Cultural Society, n.d. Web. 13 Feb. 2015.