The question in the lesson that interested me the most was the one that discussed the reasons why we have limited understandings about first nation stories.
The professor discusses that the first reason why we have problems understanding first nation stories is because “the social process of the telling is disconnected from the story and this creates obvious problems for ascribing meaningfulness” (Paterson). I totally agree with as I believe that when an oral story is written down on paper it often ends up being watered-down and is not as meaningful or impactful as it was intended to be originally. When researching about aboriginal stories I found a website that said “in some cultures, if a story is written down it is degraded” (Indigenous corporate training), and I feel like this is the case for some of the indigenous stories as when they get written down the whole oral performance of the story is lost.
Next the professor explains that First Nation children being taken away from their families and put into residential schools have “disrupted the continuity and credibility of ascribing land ownership through stories” (Paterson). I also agree with this point as it is widely known that residential schools “[contributed] to a general loss of language and culture” (Indigenous foundations) , this is because the residential schools took the First Nation children away from their families and this caused the children to not learn the stories and to be unable to pass them down.
Another reason why it is hard to understand the full meaning of First Nation stories is explained in the introduction of the book Living by Stories: A Journey of Landscape and Memory by Harry Robinson. Wendy Wickwire explains that after hearing the story from Harry she went to look at “oral narrative collections for this region to see how Harry’s forebears had depicted Coyote” (Robsinson, introduction) and she found multiple versions of Harry’s Coyote story but the problem was that the “extensive variations among them made it impossible to find anything close to a single storyline” (Robsinson, introduction). Therefore, another limitation for having a deeper understanding of First Nation stories is that there is no single story line because of the many variations of a single story, and it is hard to understand the deeper meaning as these variations conflict with each other, lack detail, and are missing important parts (Robinson, Introduction).
Erika, Paterson. “Lesson 2:2.” English 372 99C Canadian Studies, blogs.ubc.ca/engl372-99c-2019wc/unit-2/lesson-2-2/.
Joseph, Bob. “11 Things You Should Know about Aboriginal Oral Traditions.” 11 Things You Should Know about Aboriginal Oral Traditions, www.ictinc.ca/blog/11-things-you-should-know-about-aboriginal-oral-traditions.
Robinson, Harry, and Wendy C. Wickwire. Living by Stories: a Journey of Landscape and Memory. Talonbooks, 2005.
“The Residential School System.” Indigenousfoundations, indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/the_residential_school_system/.
Hi! Thanks for your post Sidney! I just wanted to comment a bit on it. Your three main ideas/reasons that you used to answer your question were clear and understandable, but your points felt short and disconnected from each other. Though they are good and researched, I’d suggest you expand on them, give more insight to your thoughts of the ideas you presented. Such as your first point, you say that it’s because things are lost in the translation of oral to written stories, and maybe you can expand on what is lost, is it the feeling that is lost? The tradition? In my own opinion I would suggest that it’s similar to reading a play, and watching it being preformed. Plays have an element of music, ironic comedy done with juxtaposing what the actors are doing verses what they are saying, etc. It’s a much different experience reading a play and seeing to done.
For your last point about how the different versions of stories contribute to our inability to understand them, I found the point to be really good. As for stories to spread there is usually one or two version of the story that gets widely popular and they adhere to a general story line. But I’d love it if you’d expand on the idea. For me it reminds me that many European plays or short stories that have deep histories are often retold by different artists, and are often depicted in different works but retain the same moral/theme with the same main characters. An example I can use is Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, his stories are often a version of tales already told or known. Such as The Merchant’s Tale, where an older version of the story arrived in Europe through One Thousand and One Nights, and he uses various other popular Italian love stories in his novel. But he can only do this through the singularity of a story that is widely popular and known to many and they come together and form the myth of that story.
A few questions I can ask you is, what you think we can do to overcome this problem? Do you think that writing contributes to the creation of a singularity of a story?
As a side note, I’m not sure if I’m completely correct or not, but I do believe that our blog posts should be minimum 500 words as stated on the blogging guidelines on the course site: https://blogs.ubc.ca/engl372-99c-2019wc/assignment-web-blogs/
Sorry if you already know, but I didn’t want to let you continue the course without realizing it if you didn’t know already!
Hey Nargiza! Thanks for the comment! In the instructions for the question the professor came up with the first two reasons why people have a difficult time making meaningfulness from first stories and then asked us to elaborate on her two reasons and then come up with our own reason from Wickwires’s introduction to Living stories. I elaborated on the instructors reasons only a little bit because I wanted to focus more on the last reason which is the reason that I found in Wickwires’s introduction. But, I totally agree with your point and I really should have linked together the instructors reasons to my reason better and I will take that into consideration when I write my next blog post. Furthermore, I wanted to thank you for pointing out that my blog post was 100 words under the word limit I will be much more aware of my word count next time.
Now I will answer the question you asked me regarding the different versions of a single story causing our inability to understand them. You specifically asked me “what you think we can do to over come this problem?” First I want to start off by saying that I do not feel that having multiple versions of the same story is a problem. I feel that oral stories are meant to be fluid and are supposed to shift and change through time and once you write down a story you are committing to this one single version and one single truth. For people wanting to learn and research oral stories there is no easy way around it they are just going to have to accept that there is no single story. This is because all oral stories are bound to change slightly as they are changed to fit the context of different communities and are changed as they are translated thought different dialects and languages. On a final note I would like to say that there are dangers in a single story and that when studying Indigenous oral stories one should not disregard the fact that their are multiple versions of each story and each version has a connection to a group of people.
Hi Sidney, great to connect with you again. I found your first link very interesting, notably the third point that said “enactment keeps ancient stories alive” (Indigenous corporate training), referring to the personal dramatic flair a storyteller could add to their story. Like Dr. Paterson says in Lesson 1.2, stories evolve each time they are told and each telling is connected to its time and place. Coupled with different tellers putting their own spin on it and the myriad ways each telling of the story impacts an individual or group of listeners (some of whom may also become tellers of the story), each time the tale is told truly allows it to evolve in a way that only that telling could.
Going off of how each version of a story can impact different listeners differently, would you say that writing a story down and essentially halting the evolution of its content and voice necessarily also hinders the story’s potential impact? Just as stories are connected to the time place teller listeners of their telling, I think the act of reading a story off paper or a screen on one’s own can be quite meditative. This is especially true if a story is thought-provoking and inspires introspection. In any case, the reading of a story by a human is also connected to their life at the time: their state of mind, tasks they have to handle, and conflicts they have to resolve, among other things. Having said that, I would thus argue that while writing a story down hinders its evolution, the solitary activity of reading and reflecting on a written story can be equally impactful on the reader as listening to the story is to a listener. What are your thoughts?
Yes I agree with you that reading a story off of a paper is quiet meditative but like you said writing a story down does hinder the evolution of a story. Once a story is written down we are committing to that version of the story and we can no longer change anything about it. Furthermore, when you write a story down you loose the performance, intonation, tone, hand gestures, facial expression and much more.
Hi Sidney! I enjoyed reading your blog post.
I agree with your final point about how different versions of stories can make it difficult to find the through-line of a narrative. I think Wickwire comments multiple times on this during her introduction; she mentions that some of Harry’s stories were hard to find on any record and didn’t match up to stories she had heard before. While I enjoyed your point, I want to challenge you to expand a little bit.
In particular, I want to ask why you think there are multiple versions of stories out there when it comes to Indigenous First Stories? Why do you think some records don’t show stories that Harry clearly knew, believed, and was taught by his elders? I touch on my theory in my blog post, where I speak extensively about residential schools wiping out decades of storytellers and their stories, if you want to give that a read here: https://blogs.ubc.ca/chasethomsonengl372/2020/02/07/assignment-24-familiar-discomfort/ .
Excited to hear your insights!
Yes I totally agree with you that residential schools were the cause of a bunch of stories being lost and never being recorded. But in my opinion the reason why there were multiple versions of stories is because a lot of the stories most likely were changed because they were never written down therefore these stories orally evolved every time they were told maybe they were told a little bit different. Furthermore, stories most likely travelled from different communities and each community may have had their own rendition of the story… they might of changed the story slightly to make more sense in the context of their own community.
Hello!
I completely agree with the statement you put up that involves the way stories can be passed down and how they lose their impact when written down. In my head when I try to relate this to something comparable in my life I think of when something really funny happens around me and when I try to re-tell it to someone who wasn’t there it is one of those “you had to be there” moments. I know it might seem silly to relate it to this but I think that it has the same sort of idea. That when you try and write down indigenous stories that you have to be in the moment to hear and get the full emotion of it, it isn’t the same.
That is such a good analogy! I have never thought about it in that way! It is totally true though as with indigenous stories Sometimes there are certain conditions that have to be met in order for the story to be told (Knopf). I was thinking this is maybe because if the proper ceremony cannot be performed and the conditions are not met the story cannot be properly understood. Just like your analogy if the conditions are not met you will not be able to make meaning of the joke that was told.
Knopf, Alfred.“If this is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories?” The Writer’s Cafe, 2003, http://writerscafe.ca/book_blogs/writers/j-edward-chamberlin_if-this-is-your-land-where-are-your-stories.html. Accessed 16 Jan. 2020.