Good Friday 470;

As I read my way through your blogs I like to capture some of your passages that strike me as particularly interesting or insightful, passionate or provocative.

Kent Monkman. 2016.

Take note of the excellent hyperlinking in this quote: “A nation brought together through myth- terra nullius, empty wilderness, the Canadian Pacific Railway, a national government imposed to diminish and disappear already functioning systems of Indigenous governance, a nation imposed to bring civility to those perceived as savage through strategies such as the Indian Act, residential schools, the 60s scoop, the ongoing crises of Indigenous youth in care, away from their communities and cultures (see work by Cindy Blackstock). Indigenous communities and cultures, which, today, are still diminished and discriminated against by the RCMP, the Supreme Court of Canada, provincial education systems, Justin Trudeau, Gerald Stanley, the manager at McDonald’s, Brayden Bushby, and that nice white lady who taught you (a convoluted and flawed) history in second grade.

“Moments of silence and stillness in the face of epic beauty, offer a homecoming of sorts. A remembrance of the interconnectedness of all life and form. My being, in all its complication and simplicity, was and is part of the big play – Life, Earth, Death, Universe, Sun, Moon, everything, nothing.”

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You preface your question withe statement “we are all our own people”. I am not sure this is completely accurate. I believe that we have free will but that it is far less absolute than many of assume. As you suggested, our culture, upbringing, experiences (not to mention personality) all remain strong determinants of our general worldview and the choices we will make. In my opinion, for better or for worse, western culture is heavily influenced by individualist, capitalist, materialist understandings of the world. That worldview , I believe, is passed on through the education system, media, and society in general. This , in turn, tends to highlight and grow certain human traits that, unless one is very self aware and works consciously to overcome, will naturally manifest in their thoughts and actions. This , I believe, is the legacy of the Colonists. I grew up in a world where those racist, selfish and dangerous ideas were able to flourish and now I must work at uprooting them (not only from the education system and media around me ) but also from my thoughts and perspectives within.

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King acknowledges that he spends more time focusing on the Earth Diver story, largely because the majority of the audience is not working from a place of existing knowledge of this creation story. However, in approaching it this way, King also draws the audience’s attention to the fact that they do know the story of Genesis. Regardless of their own religious beliefs, King makes the audience question how the Genesis story became so pervasively known within our culture. Without directly asking the audience this question, King demonstrates an alternative by choosing to examine the Earth Diver story more thoroughly. King chooses which story to privilege, modeling his argument regarding how the dichotomous representation of the stories necessitates declaring one as sacred and one as secular. As King writes, “we are suspicious of complexities, distrustful of contradictions, fearful of enigmas.” Dichotomies are easy. Choosing is easy. Challenging the dichotomy is hard, and changing your mind is even harder.

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The asado stayed in South America until my grandfather brought it to Belgium. It was the only time his father ever said he was proud of him. He then showed his sons and son-in-law how to make an asado with steaks and merguez from Spain. There was never a need for salad, maybe the occasional tomato. My father then brought it to Canada. A land where the soul of the animal was destroyed by gas BBQs. As the indigenous people of the land, my father knew the power of wood and smoke. We began to use North American cuts and Italian sausages that we covered in curry sauce, blending cultures but holding onto what is sacred. The coals and the people.

Asado. It’s where we talk for hours about food, throw in some sociopolitical discourse, drink, dance, tell dirty jokes, and unite our friends from all over the world. The asado is my home.

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“”The idea that the violent , destructive, and shameful history of Colonial history in the Americas could be understood through the story  of a disordered and morally corrupt younger brother , in my mind, opened up the possibility of compassion for the mistakes of our past rather less useful emotions such as  anger or bitterness (or worst, guilt).

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“Or Robinson’s direct engagement with the listener, through questions or assertions which, maybe with Wickwire, were responded to with nods or gesture. He asks, “do you know what the Angel was? Do you know? The Angel, God’s Angel, you know,” (Robinson). And, admittedly, I don’t know. This is a loss from reading his story in a book. In person I might’ve furrowed my brow, and Robinson would’ve known to elaborate. Or maybe he would’ve left me to fill the details.”

To Home and Back

I can’t help but to reflect on this line “To me, home is IN my heart. I carry my home with me through my experiences and the relationships I have with the people who have shaped me. My home is in me.”

“ — which is so beautifully expressed throughout your blog – while this is such a loving and uplifting expression of home, in context  with our course this makes me think about the contagious suicide rate among young First Nation’s in Canada. I can’t help but to contrast this with and their experiences of homelessness, that extends to entire communities, indeed – entire Nations. As described in my link, at the root of First Nations’ suicide rates lies: “a condition characterized by long-lasting feelings of intense sadness and hopelessness” (Brandy Joe, Suicide: A permanent solution to a temporary problem).

” I think that we are already in a time where we can achieve ME across Indigenous and Western cultures. There has already been a shift in psychology where researchers realize that most studies are done with a WIERD demographic. WIERD = Western, Industrialized, Educated, Rich, and Democratic. This is still a huge problem, but I think that research is slowly heading in the right direction.”

What a powerful expression of your feelings toward living on Stolen Land – thank you for an insightful read this morning, and your excellent engagement with our course.

 “I will repeat what nearly all of us have said: home is very difficult to define, and it is going to be different for each and every one of us. As a Canadian of European descent, it is especially difficult. The truth is, if I am to use the more general of definition of home (“the place where I come from”), I have to tell people that my home is a stolen land. I have my home because people stole it from others. I was not responsible for these actions, and growing up as a child who knew little of our country’s harsh past, I had no reason not to proudly say, “My home is Canada”, in the same way that a child riding in a car that was, unbeknownst to the child, stolen by her parents, would proudly say, “This is my car”. I did not choose my past. I did not choose the country in which I was born. But here I am. And now it is my responsibility to be an Indigenous ally and to make amends for the actions of those who came before me, so that I can make Canada a place that my children can say- with deserved pride- is their home.

• Thank you. When I was growing up in the 60’s it was common to hear people say and write – “The only good Indian is a dead Indian” – and, of course we even sang a nursery rhythm: “one little, two little, three little Indians ….. they all end up dying. So, it is uplifting to experience such a shift in perspective that your generation is (finally) bringing to bare on reality.

“However, this assumption is rather fair, as there are several stark differences between European and Indigenous culture. Personally, I take Lutz’s assumption as an indicator that there was a strong belief that Indigenous cultures would willingly adapt well to European ways of life, as implied in the sense that he believes it is harder for it to be the other way around.”

• An excellent succinct and on the nail answer to my question!

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So, while I would argue that the meaning behind Judge McEachern’s comment is that it was one of disdain, belittlement, fear, or ignorance, I am choosing to value and bolster Don Monet’s interpretation of the roaring map and experience it as a metaphor for the Wet’suwet’en and Gitxsan peoples determination, grit, and integrity in manipulating a colonialist system and winning (even though it took a disgustingly long time for the government to accept and honour their land claims).

I was really interested in this subject and looked into what the Wet’suwet’en and Gitxsan Nations look like today, and if there have been more conflicts around land claims as a result of economic expansion in BC, and I found some interesting articles related to the TransCanada Corp.’s Coastal GasLink pipeline project and how it’s challenging both Western and Indigenous law and dividing Wet’suwet’en leaders. The conflict highlights tensions within Indigenous groups, where “painful trade-offs between economic development and ancient obligations of land stewardship” must be discussed (Hunter et al.).

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“When King places the Native story and Christian story in binary opposition, he is not polarizing us vs. them; he is making it possible for the reader to get a sense of someone else’s culture. King mentions that “creation stories are relationships that help to define the nature of the universe and how cultures understand the world in which they exist.” (King 10). The Christian story causes us the view ourselves as detached from the world and better than other creatures. The Native story gives us a sense that we are part of nature and that animals share similar souls to our own. The Native story seems to have a better outcome for the environment, but King doesn’t dismiss the Christian story altogether because we can learn it’s authoritative rhetoric and why it has influenced so many cultures. By contrasting two stories in a way that is easy to understand, he shows us that there are different ways to view our world and that these beliefs affect our behaviour and culture. It doesn’t seem that he is saying one story is better than the other, but that viewing the world from one belief system can normalize a lot of destructive behaviour. After all, “a person who knows only one country knows no countries,” Seymour Lipset.” https://blogs.ubc.ca/nolanjanssens470/

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Hello 470;

I have been reading through our blogs all week, and it is indeed a delightful and enlightening read. I want to thank you for your responses to my question.

can you see what is wrong with the following phrase:   “… the Western perspective and the aboriginal perspective are equally valid.”

This is the answer I was looking for:

Aboriginal is not capitalized whereas Western is which implies the former is lesser in some way to the latter.

And, what follows is a most insightful dialogue.

In my opinion, what is wrong with this sentence is that valid as an adjective is not measurable, you cannot put an adverb or a quantifier in front of “valid”.

Cassie Lumsden Hi Dana, I think your opinion definitely makes sense! The word valid probably is not the best way to compare two different things since how valid something truly is can be very subjective. I also think that there is more than one issue with this sentence, in particular I noticed that the word “Western” is capitalized while “aboriginal” is not.

“aboriginal” is a western term, originating from latin language and imposed upon Indigenous peoples. This is not what Indigenous peoples call themselves. So there is something inherently colonizing about this terminology.

I see this statement also reinforcing a narrative that places the West and Aboriginal people in opposition of each other . There is an implicit, and false, dichotomy expressed between the lines.

I agree with the previous responders about the grammatical use of “Western” and “aboriginal”. Additionally, I think it suggests that these are the only two ways of thinking. Canada has many First Nations communities, and these communities do not all share the same perspectives. One current issue that really speaks to this is the Trans Mountain pipeline; it is easy to assume that all First Nations people are opposed to it, but we must recognize that there is not simply one “Aboriginal” perspective. https://www.google.ca/…/we-are-first-nations-that-suppo…/amp

Along with what everyone else has already said, I think this statement is too optimistic. It is true that both perspectives are valid, or at least should be. But in reality and practice, this is just not the case. The western perspective dominates over the aboriginal perspective with only slight considerations. We see this in land claims/disputes all the time. If indeed the perspectives are equally valid, than the government wouldn’t force aboriginals off their land so that they can build pipelines or fish farms. They should be equal, but in practice are not.

Thank-you Ross, this is a very strong point.
Especially when you consider that the Canadian federal government issued official apologies to Indigenous peoples for Canada’s history of residential schools in 2018. But at the same time as this speech was being made -the Canadian government was continuing its years-long and brutally unrelenting legal battles against Indigenous peoples over land claims.It is readily apparent that despite statements of respecting Indigenous autonomy, in legal practice: Canadian government is still championed over the self-governing which Indigenous people had used for thousands of years before we settler-colonizers came to the land.Our western government is discriminative in laws and practices against Indigenous peoples. This is a good source about how the Indian Act was used to take away status and rights from Indigenous women: https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/…/native-womens…And as you mentioned, the land claim disputes prove that legal discrimination and injustice is still present against Indigenous peoples today.But many still make problematically optimistic statements of equitable treatment, which are problematic for the precise fact that respect for Indigenous autonomy and self-government are being said and not practiced.There are also more complications to this problem, but this is the obvious one.

Indigenous Women’s Issues in Canada | The Canadian…

I agree with others who say that the way this phrase is worded and capitalized make it seem like there’s a superior perspective. Also the word Aboriginal should change to Indigenous peoples, which encompasses First Nations, Inuit and Metis. The other problem is, you can’t lump western and aboriginal perspectives as two distinct groups having opposing views. There are a myriad of individual perspectives within the both supposedly differing perspectives. Good resource:

ICTINC.CA

Indigenous Peoples Worldviews vs Western Worldviews

Understanding the differences between Indigenous Peoples worldviews vs Western worldviews is foundational to understanding Indigenous Peoples. Learn more in this short article.

Hello 470;

The contradiction that Chamberlin identifies at the heart of ‘home’ aptly speaks to the feeling of unease held by many Canadians of European heritage. How am I, as a Canadian of European descent able to reconcile the fact that my narrative of home, in all the ways in which it has come to define me, is implicated in the erasure of the home narratives of others? Querying narratives

 “And so evil, through untrue-true acts and words, was unleashed onto the world forever.” Telling the Canadian Story

“There was a time where I would have been silenced, but today I make noise for myself, for my peers and for my ancestors before me. Like many people who are considered as minorities or intersectionality-oppressed individuals, speaking our truth can feel far too vulnerable to share in the pressures of the public. The internet has created an accessible space for our voices, so in response, we “flood the feed”. I welcome you to that space, where I will be writing and curating stories of intersecting national and personal identity. Thank you for respecting, and most of all, listening.” Swamp Mama  

 The time has come to tell your story. Lesson 2:1 asks you to explore and express your values and the stories you use to connect yourself to your sense of home. Remember what Thomas Kings says, “we are the stories we tell ourselves.” Remember what Edward Chamberlain says, “stories give meaning and value to the places we call home.”  And, take some time to reflect on the stories you grew up with that shaped how you value your home, reflect on the how these stories have shaped your sense of belonging, or not – to your home and your homeland.

In the introduction to Lesson 2:1, I speak about examining our common assumptions and our diverse backgrounds in an effort to create an environment for learning and exploring difficult topics — together. My hope is that you will enjoy this process and that as a class we will create a more comfortable space to explore difficult questions with the knowledge that we do not all have the same perspectives because we do not all have the same stories. At the same time, we will discover some commonalties that will surprise us; and that always delight me. Write your story for your peers. Include the usual two hyperlinks and feel free to use visuals as well.

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I have passed a wonderful week reading our blogs and following links. You have provided some good links and some good answers to my questions and the growing dialogue via our comment boxes is excellent. Thank you all.

One of the wonderful elements of working online is that you can go back and correct typos and small errors that you did not see while composing, and even better, I do not stop to evaluate your blogs until mid-term, so you have the opportunity to make these corrections before “official evaluation” occurs.

Midterm occurs at the end of Unit 2. At that time, you will select your favourite three blogs for evaluation. You are ‘allowed’ to rewrite and edit to your heart’s content between now and midterm time.

My Instructor’s blog is responsive: I read your work and respond.

Reading through all your blogs can take a long while  because your hypertext and send me off to all sorts of interesting places where I learn about new ideas and endeavours and have all sorts of new and wonderful insights to add to what I think I already know.

After reading through all your blogs I have a few technical notes and general suggestions for you:

• In the future, link in your sources in your works cited when they are available online.
• Also, delete the sample page to clean up your blog
• Paste the question you are answering at the top of the post – and you are free to make introductory comments on why you chose this question
•  If you have any questions or comments about this lesson or the assignments in the next lesson, please do post on our FaceBook page
• If you can find the same article in pdf form – that is the best way to link
•  In order to encourage comments, it is a good idea to end your blog assignments with a question.
• Use MLA style for your citations: This is a great style guide: OWL

BE SURE TO READ THE GUIDELINES FOR BLOGGING AND HYPERLINKING IN THE SIDEBAR!

One more note, that I will probably make many times in different ways:

• can you see what is wrong with the following phrase:   “… the Western perspective and the aboriginal perspective are equally valid.”
• Please make a note on Facebook when you see what is wrong with the above sentence.

I want to encourage you to explore different blogs this week, even though you may have made a connection with someone you easily identify with, for the first couple of Units it will be more interesting if we explore beyond our comfort zones and engage with each other as widely as possible. Thanks.

I am enjoying reading all the different ways that Evil Came into this World and am very much looking forward to reading your stories about home. If you haven’t already done so – be sure to read this post: Taking the Story out of the Story …

Good Monday Morning 470;

I am happy begin a new semester of 470; the last time my course was offered online was the 2016/W section, accordingly there will be new resources to discover and hyperlinks to replace as we work our way along the course.

I hope you have enjoyed exploring our website and getting a feel for the course requirements and content. I will be spending the week reading your Blogs and getting to know you all through your introductions and comments, I look forward to my reading.

Be sure to respond promptly to all the comments you receive — even if you only have time to read and say thank you. This is a good time to double check to make sure your comment settings allow for comments without moderation.

I hope you enjoy the challenge of my questions for this week, and I look forward to reading your comments and your responses. Enjoy, and please do not hesitate to ask your questions on our Facebook page – or share interesting links. It is a good idea to post on Facebook each time you post a new blog – this will help stimulate dialogue as well. Thank you and enjoy

Hello 470 and welcome to our course of studies together.

Please begin with the welcome page where you will find a general overview of course expectations. You can also take a look at the Student Blog page, where you will find a random sample of student blogs and web conference sites to give you an initial impression of expectations. And, I have made a video for you that will talk your through the course syllabus – you can follow along.

Please also take the time to cruise through the course site and get a sense of how you will need to schedule yourselves  — this is an interactive online course and timeliness is essential in order to fully engage with the course. The Course schedule page is a quick reference to due dates.

This is a challenging course that asks you to explore literature in a different context than the average English literature course, and requires assignments that are likewise “different’ than what most of you will be acustomed  to expecting in a Literature course. I hope you will enjoy the challenges and make good use of our Group FaceBook page to ask your questions and assist each other with answers.

Thank you, we will talk soon.

Conference Presentations will be graded as a project and team members will divide the grade amongst themselves. For example, the conference presentation is worth 30 points. If a project created by 4 members receives a grade of 26/30 – than the total grade will be 4 x 26 = 104. Which means the team will have 104 points to divide between themselves. You should divide points according to effort. So, you will have to discuss and agree on a point distribution.

I am working on evaluating your conference presentations today and hope to have evaluation sheets out to each team by mid-week. This is a priority because as a team you need to discuss and decide how to distribute the grade you receive. I will provide you with detailed feedback to assist you with re-distributing your points, and I will rely on you to work together and be fair about the distribution of points. It is up to each of you to claim the points that are yours, and to ensure you do not accept points because your team members want to be ‘nice’. I count on your sense of fairness for this process to work to its best potential.

Thank you.

How does the Annotated Bibliography page work? 

Format your team bibliography just like you always would a normal bibliography.

Do NOT number your entires, do not sign your entries – format the Annotated Bibliography according to MLA or APA formatting style; alphabetical. For some reason, this seems to be one of the most difficult instruction to follow ?

Here is a good explanation of what is expected in an annotated bibliography. However, most of your annotations will probably be longer than 150 words, more likely 250  to 500 words with 3 to 6 hyperlinks, depending on the importance and relevance of the source.

Annotated Bibliography

DIALOGUE: 

ALL Comments belong on the Annotated Bibliography page comment box.

Each student will comment at least twice on the team Bibliography

As a TEAM, you will select ONE other TEAM to engage with in dialogue on their Annotated Bibliography page and each student will comment twice on that team’s Annotated Bibliography

Example of Dialogue;

Dialogue

Good Day 470;

I have completed all of you midterm evaluations – and what a read it has been. You have taken me on some interesting hyperlink journeys and provided some wonderful new insights to ponder, thank you. I am particularly pleased with the amount and quality of dialogue this class is producing – wonderful.

In the next ten days or so, you will get yourselves organized into Conference Teams and set up your team websites. Once your website is ready, please post the link on our FaceBook page and I will add the url to our course page. Be sure to include a name for your team.

I have, as usual, posted some interesting excerpts from my readings – enjoy.

This is such an interesting documentary about Boas and his research, well worth the watch. It contains fantastic video from the past. Pay particular attention to the Copper – which was a form of currency. The important point is that currency was valued by how much you could give away to the tribe. The more Coppers you gave, the more you contributed, the richer you were considered. Wealth was not measured by what a person  accumulated, but rather by the power to give. The richest family, was the family who gave away the most at the Potlatch.

We are beginning to show respect for Indigenous story-telling, and I look forward to the day when Bible stories will be taught in school—not as literal and factual, but like myths, fairy tales, and Indigenous stories—full of truth—yet full of mystery. Bible stories and Indigenous stories of North America (and many other cultural stories) are full of wonder and truth, and should be celebrated and passed on. Searching For Meaning

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Thomas King’s “Godzilla VS. Post-Colonial” opened my eyes to how I was initially reading Robinson’s stories: incorrectly.  As King states, “Assumptions are a dangerous thing” (183) and I was playing into that by assuming that if something was written in a language that I understood, I should be able to read it in my own way and understand it as it was meant to be understood.  I was not able to really see my naiveté until I read the story out loud as Robinson intended. King points out that Robinson is able to defeat readers’ efforts to read the stories silently (186); Robinson is intentionally owning his tradition of oral literature and using it to protest against colonialism. As Keith Thor Carlson expresses in “Orality about Literacy: The ‘Black and White’ of Salish History” there is the assumption that literacy had been considered as either a gift of enlightenment bestowed upon North American Aboriginal people or as a colonial tool of assimilation imposed upon those same people” (45). I think that Robinson is responding to that in a very clever way: forcing non-Indigenous readers to open their minds and adopt a new way of thinking and understanding story.  While historically we often understand written literature to be a more superior form of storytelling, Robinson shows his readers that not only is that assumption wrong, but orality is offering something completely different- something that can’t be tainted by colonialism.   Reading Differently: Assignment 2:6

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So, why does King insist that his readers participate in dichotomous thinking?

In fact, King’s is utilizing a clever rhetorical tactic: first, he illustrates the pitfalls inherent in dichotomous thinking. When King asks his readers to choose Charm or Genesis, he seems to undermine his own position, but in actuality he has simply primed his audience to fully recognize the absurdity inherent in this dichotomy, this decision. In this sense, king has “shown” rather than “told”; he has not relied simply upon informing his readers that dichotomies are irrational, and problematic as a result. Rather, King positions his readers in such a way that they are required to actively engage with the subject at hand, to experience and interact with dichotomous thinking and experience this irrationality for themselves. This method of engaging the audience is, in the end result, a much more impactful and efficacious method of communication and education. 2.6 King’s Dichotomous Dilemma

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When Chief Justice Allan McEachern reacted to a map dictating Wet’suwet’en and Gitxsan territory with the words, “we’ll call it the map that roared,” (Sparke 468) it illustrated a beautifully tragic metaphor.  The roar could interchangeably be one of turmoil or triumph, depending on the two interpretations that Sparke offers.  One reflecting the tumultuous anachronism of the situation, and one of a fiery resistance.  Seeing as how Chief Justice rejected Wet’suwet’en and Gitxsan claims, perhaps he perceived the roar as one of futility – that of a dying wild animal, tired from its fight, yet persistent in its frustration.

The resistance – a fight worth fighting!  The roar is a pledge of non-compliance, of sovereignty and self-governance, of independence as a society.  The roar is a shaming of Chief Justice and his decisive blows to an entire population of people attempting merely to reclaim what was rightfully theirs.  2:6 “We’ll call this the map that roared”

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What an amazing experience to be able to read all of my peers’ stories of home! I feel a great sense of gratitude that so many of you were so incredibly honest and open in your story sharing. Thank you for allowing your readers and your classmates to envision your personal sense of ‘home’ and how you define it.

Having said that, the multi-cultural Canada does make me feel at home in the way in which this country opens up for cultural diversities. Take languages for example. I still remember the degree to which I was shocked by the trilingual characteristics of YVR airport when I arrived at Vancouver on day one. Although I personally do not feel right about the Chinese language being paralleled with the two official languages of Canada in public properties, I cannot deny the fact that the appearance of my home language does make me feel closer to home and in part leads to my decision of settling down in Vancouver permanently. That may also be the reason why a growing number of Chinese middle-class families, who have been to many places around the world, are making the same decision building up their new homes in here. The other moment which made me feel more identified with my Canada home is when I heard the broadcasters saying “ngo gwok”, meaning “my/our country” in Cantonese which is my mother tongue, when they mentioned Canada in a news programme at a local Cantonese TV station. For example, “’Ngo gwok’ athletes won another two gold medals today at Rio Olympics.” Then I found myself celebrating not only the Chinese Olympics team’s success but Team Canada’s, with two homes living in harmony in my heart via the language that speaks the best to it. Canada is My HOME And Not

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“I want to begin by thanking my classmates for sharing their stories of home.  After reading many of them, I’ve quickly realized that many shared very personal experiences–as one would imagine when talking about their home.  However, I am stunned that such authenticity in regards to personal life can be shared and discussed in an academic environment.  It was an honor to read your stories; I am humbled.”

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Wickwire speaks of “a living Coyote linked to Harry by generations of storytellers” (Wickwire, p.8). This sort of connection cannot be replicated by modern (white) retellings of first stories, as evidenced by how writers’ terms for Coyote were fundamentally different than how a First Nations storyteller would describe him (Wickwire, p.8). Words like “trickster” were used in the written versions of Coyote’s story, but never by the storytellers. Modern written stories simply lacked the “detail, dialogue and colour” (Wickwire, p.8) of the oral stories. Wickwire also makes mention of how we erase things that give context and meaning to these stories, such as removing the names of the original storytellers, locations, and the communities where these stories were told in written editions (Wickwire, p.8). These omissions disturb the narrative of the story (Wickwire, p.8).

Wickwire also talks about how the Boasian tradition ignored recent stories from First Nations, instead focusing on past, mythic stories “set in prehistorical times” (Wickwire, p.22). She quotes Harkin, who says their “goal was to document ‘some overarching, static, ideal type of culture, detached from its pragmatic and socially positioned mooring among real people’” and “‘systematically suppressed…all evidence of history and change’” (Wickwire, p.22). Just as we have suppressed First Nations culture during the period of cultural genocide, so too have academics who seem to have had a preconceived notion about what stories were important to understanding First Nations people, history, and culture. It’s another way in which we undermine our ability to make meaning of First Nations stories by refusing to examine equally important modern stories that First Nations have used to make sense of their position in the world in the 1920s and beyond.

Finally, Harry Robinson speaks on the importance of “living by stories” (Wickwire, p.29). These stories needed to be passed down through generations because they give meaning and help First Nations understand the importance of the land, their culture, and their history (Wickwire, p.29). This is something that has been diminished, deprived, and nearly destroyed during the age of residential schools, the 60’s scoop, etc. I would like to leave you with several links I found while reading about residential schools.  Living By Stories

Monday Oct 17;

Hello 470

We are coming to the end of Unit 2 and this means it is almost time to decide which of your three blogs you would like me to read for evaluation. You need to select your three favourite blog assignments and post the urls on our Face Book page please. You should have those links to me by Friday the 21st, which is when I will begin the evaluation process. Be sure to have all your comments completed by that time as well.

I have once again enjoyed a week of reading through your responses and dialogues and once again, here is a small selection of some intriguing, insightful and well expressed answers and thoughts for my questions. Thank you and enjoy.

Sparke and others, such as Don Monet through his artwork above, also provide an alternative analysis to this statement, as the concept of a roaring map also evokes ideas of resistance (Sparke 468) and potentially new stories being told loudly and clearly. To expand, by its “roaring refusal of the orientation systems, the trap lines, the property lines, the electricity lines, the pipelines, the logging roads, the clear-cuts, and all the other accoutrements of Canadian colonialism on native land” (Sparke 468), this map challenged assumptions of map objectivity and plotted another story of the land, one that had gone mostly unrecognized by mainstream colonial maps. In this way, the maps that the Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en worked to create and brought to the courtroom, not only challenged the Canadian legal “game” (Sparke 471), but, like Thomas King’s contrast of creation stories, showed that another “story” could be used to narrate a place that had had another story imposed on it.

However, maps tell stories (Fotiadis 6) and mapping is now also being used to offer alternative perspectives, stories, and understandings of place, and different kinds of maps, such as story and oral maps, are also contributing to these re-imagined mappings. For example, while some may argue that the maps created by the Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en for the 1987 court case did not result in the reaching the desired objective, these maps still helped to articulate their “claim to their territories in a way the judge might understand” (Sparke 472) and provided a powerful alternative to the barren seeming colonial maps, presenting “a landscape rich with the historical geographies of Wet’suwet’en and Gitxsan names and meanings” (Sparke 474). Another example of this re-imaging of maps is the Mapping Indigenous LA project which is using storymaps to “uncover and highlight the multiple layers of indigenous Los Angeles” while making “the rich Indigenous identities and histories that are often hidden … yet deeply embedded in the history of Los Angeles” more visible (“About Our Project”). Among other things, these maps are helping to re-story the landscape and bring forward the layers and presences on the land that often remain hidden in Western cartography. Creating Connections

I’m particularly curious about how art serves as this outlet in expressing and paving a movement for certain paths, and how there may also be drawbacks when it comes to a mutual understanding, a reconciliation of sorts. While art can provoke questions and start movements, “when metaphor invades decolonization, it kills the very possibility of decolonization; it recenters whiteness, it resettles theory, it extends innocence to the settler, it entertains a settler future” (Tuck, 3). While Robinson’s metaphor does not entertain any certain future, are there dangers to character implications, and does this do more hurting than helping the situation at hand? Tuck claims that an “easy adoption of decolonization as a metaphor…is a premature attempt at reconciliation” (9). I wonder how much walking on eggshells needs to be properly done to establish similar goals and an equal perspective, without being misleading of details, assumptions, or biases. I think I can understand how metaphors themselves cannot serve as part of the bigger picture, but can only point to specific points. For instance, Robinson’s story overall, points to the establishment of the colonizers as unfair. Insights

I wanted to learn more about the symbolism of Coyote and I came across a short film called Meet Coyote, an Aboriginal “Legend.” Coyote is described as many things including: a base, a legend that governs a perception of the world, a trickster, a healer, a fixer, and a being that created a safe place for humans and animals to coexist. Listening to different stories of Coyote and learning about the tradition and spirituality behind him was an exceptional experience for me. Spoken Word to Written Word

This similarity is initially seen in the unifying aspect of Harry’s (the storyteller’s) two characters being twins, binding the two figures with the sacredness of kinship. A blood bond exists between twins, Here the storyteller highlights the common humanity that persists (but so often in silence) during first contact. It is also a moment of humility as both twin’s perceptions originate simultaneously with their tasks for creating the world. The younger twin, the thief, can be dismissed as evil or can be accepted as a part of all heritage as even the Aboriginals feuded and stole lands. This initial unity, I think, may be the most powerful moral message taken from the short, summarized version of the story. 2:4 Twins in This Canadian Land

During Wickwire’s introduction, we feel how much power Robinson assigned to his stories. As he alludes, ‘whites’ will always miss the true meaning behind First Stories, as we need to organise these accounts and describe them on paper. As Robinson says, ‘For Indians, power was located in their hearts and heads; for whites, it was located on paper” (16). Due to this difference, we are unable to comprehend the total meaning of First Stories. Assignment 2.4 – Question 2

Thomas King presents two creation stories in the either/or scenario, suggesting that one is more believable over the other. He sets up the dichotomy of the collaboration-focused ‘The Earth Diver’ and the hierarchical ‘Genesis’ tales, operating under the idea that one must choose which story to believe in to make his point.

King presents his readers with this choice to illustrate the fundamental difference between European and Native cultures:due to the nature of oral storytelling, Indigenous stories are generally more subjective and adaptable, with an emphasis on collaboration, while European stories are based almost entirely on this hierarchical structure, reflecting and justifying their societal values. He also uses the correspondingly anticipated voice to tell each of the creation myths, the storyteller voice for ‘The Earth Diver’ and the authoritative voice for ‘Genesis.’ These different voices accentuate the oral tradition and rationalistic values of the respective cultures. 2:4 CREATIONS AND HIERARCHIES

I think that King has created these dichotomies for us to examine the two creation stories because he wants to emphasize the importance of telling and the importance of the audience. He gives us this option of the more story-like creation story with Charm, or the story of Genesis which is told with authority. He is asking us to contrast the ways in which these particular stories are told, in an effort to help the reader understand how stories can vary depending on several factors. This analysis that he gives us pairs up these two opposing believes and asks the reader to think about ‘what makes them different?’ and ‘how are they similar?’ maybe even ‘whyare they different?’ Are they different because they are told differently or are we listening to them differently? Are we understanding these stories in a particular light because of our own upbringing and understanding? I believe that King is trying to show us the possibilities of change within a story – and in the telling of it. King’s Dichotomies | Assignment 2:4

Good Monday 470;

It has been a great week of reading for me; one of the pleasures of this course is coming to see the material we read and the ideas we share from different perspectives; all interesting and insightful.

Following are some responses to my question about Lutz’s and his “assumptions’ ; the following excerpts from your responses illuminate different perspectives and approaches to the question, and to Lutz; an interesting read indeed.

Through this chapter Lutz weaves interesting examples of first encounters, such as, the two Gitrhala fishermen who tried to protect themselves from ghosts as European explorers approached or an exchange of music that occurred between the Aboriginals and the Europeans while on a ship where the music was described as “a song that was by no means unpleasant to the ear.” A disease starts to develop as these stories are told with the realization that they are from the European point of view and as the European interpretation of these first experiences. These stories were written in journals and diaries and have since been published as fascinating histories and insights but are solely of a European point of view. As I read on, I was relieved to see an account of Squamish Andrew Paull’s account of when Captain Vancouver arrived and the Aboriginal belief that every seven years brought bad luck so they had to brace themselves from this visitor a story that must of been told and not written. But even this story is told to an audience that is assumed to be of European descent. This book, Myth and Memory: Rethinking Stories of Indigenous-European Contact, was published in 2007 by UBC Press and written by John Lutz a University of Victoria professor. Is it possible that style of writing within the discourse of university can create this limited scope and an assumption of audience? It should not be the case considering the culturally diverse student body but is a disturbing realization that this may be the case.   2:4 FIRST STORIES

Lutz’s assumption that Indigenous peoples understand performances of people of European descent better than vice versa is fair, but not completely thought out. The reason that Lutz gives is that the mythical identity of ‘the European’ in Indigenous cultures was force-ably shifted over a long period of time due to the implementation of European superiority over other cultures in Christian European spirituality. Meanwhile it is that same idea of superiority over other cultures that has kept those of European descent from understanding Indigenous spirituality and mythical performance such as contact zones fully.  The part of the his assumption that is not thought out is that he states that ALL people of European descent could not understand Indigenous performance fully. As people of European descent read his essay and understand it, they either begin or continue the process of decolonizing their outlooks. These outlooks make up part of their mythic identity as people whose ancestors were colonizers, and those mythic identities are shifted. Lutz undermines his own argument. Assumptions and Differences

Following is a great example of a most interesting ‘aside’ with excellent hyperlinks:

This brought to my mind a group of Canadian Indigenous artists who incorporate hiphop, electronic and traditional singing and drumming into their music, and who are becoming very popular: Tribe Called Red. One of their videos tells the story of how they collaborated with Black Bear (traditional drummer) to create the single “Stadium Pow Wow”. In the mini documentary, one of the members of TCR alludes to the Hopi prophecy that one day all of the tribes of Turtle Island (the americas) will be connected through a giant spider web (read: the internet!). This group encourages storytelling from the people who are the story, not from outsiders – they encourage pride in Indigenous roots, and they are catching on quickly. I see this music/video as a really powerful storytelling tool that combines old tradition with accessible modern day music through the internet – accessible for the youth, who need empowering role models they actually connect with. Zionism in Rastafarianism acknowledges connection between all displaced peoples

And, this is an insightful comment on how important the full range of stories are to understanding Robinson – and, of course, Coyote:

What fascinated me about the story of Coyote and the Paper was how it was introduced in different magnitudes of Robinson telling many versions and twists of other stories as well. Wickwire talked about how Robinson “wanted to show the cultural importance of maintaining a full range of stories” (29). And while there are storytellers, there are those who did not represent their stories well because they filtered a certain theme. Robinson included stories involving contemporary political issues as well, stories that showed that “Harry’s forebears were not strictly ‘mythtellers’ locked in their prehistorical past” (25). The story places the ancestor of the colonizers as the trickster who steals the paper, and of Coyote as the obedient twin. This paper would represent how the ‘evil’ twin’s descendants, “true to their original character” (10), would take advantage of their God-given blessing and law in colonizing and claiming the land as theirs.  A Stolen Piece of Paper

During Wickwire’s introduction, we feel how much power Robinson assigned to his stories. As he alludes, ‘whites’ will always miss the true meaning behind First Stories, as we need to organise these accounts and describe them on paper. As Robinson says, ‘For Indians, power was located in their hearts and heads; for whites, it was located on paper” (16). Due to this difference, we are unable to comprehend the total meaning of First Stories.  Assignment 2.4 – Question 2

Following is an insightful explanation of ways King tells the two creation stories:

King has spent this particular chapter of the book discussing the power and effect of stories, and this dichotomy between the authoritative Genesis and the more casual Earth Diver exemplifies the purchase that the mode of storytelling can have. As King says, “As for stories such as the Woman Who Fell from the Sky, well, we listen to them and then we forget them, for amidst the thunder of Christian monologues, they have neither purchase nor place” (21). The Christian creation story is almost invariably told with the same rigid tone that brooks no argument, while any Indigenous creation myth isn’t taken seriously outside of the tribe it is important to, as King quotes Basil Johnston (23). The way we tell a story almost always mirrors the values within the story itself. King contrasts and dichotomizes these two creation myths to show, rather than tell, the reader this lesson, while also subtly hinting at the subject of the next chapter, wherein he discusses the White Man’s Indian. The relationship here is in the absolute conviction in his beliefs, to the point of stupidity, of the white or European man. The Genesis tale and the Ideal Indian are both stories created and unwaveringly accepted by White Men, as both fictions uphold their sense of superiority and hierarchy, their place as close to the top as they can reach. 2:4 CREATIONS AND HIERARCHIES

Enjoy.