Question: We began this unit by discussing assumptions and differences that we carry into our class. In “First Contact as Spiritual Performance,” Lutz makes an assumption about his readers (Lutz, “First Contact” 32). He asks us to begin with the assumption that comprehending the performances of the Indigenous participants is “one of the most obvious difficulties.” He explains that this is so because “one must of necessity enter 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 Europeans.” Here, Lutz is assuming either that his readers belong to the European tradition, or he is assuming that it is more difficult for a European to understand Indigenous performances – than the other way around. What do you make of this reading? Am I being fair when I point to this assumption? If so, is Lutz being fair when he makes this assumption?
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When Lutz asks in “First Contact as Spiritual Performance” for his readers to “enter a world that is distant in time and alien in culture” and work to “perceive indigenous performance through their eyes as well as those of the Europeans,” he is posing a complicated task. It is certainly a valid assumption for Dr. Paterson to point to as an obvious—perhaps unsubstantiated—assumption, but also, it is an assumption that is fair for Lutz to make. For students living in twenty-first century Vancouver (the majority of us at least), the assumption of that “perspective” is almost impossible to take on. In time, space, culture, and history, we are so far removed from that moment of “First Contact” that to look at it through the eyes of European settlers is a real challenge. I mean, that’s a given and I believe Lutz is fully aware of that when he makes this assumption.
The divide between our contemporary understanding of that moment and how the actual events occurred is indeed, as Lutz writes, something we must approach with “one of the most obvious difficulties.” After reading how he related the story of the first arrival of Europeans in British Columbia’s Northern coast in 1787, according to a 1916 version by Ts’msyen George McCauley, my experience as a reader was, for lack of a better word, surprised. My notion of what that “First Contact” must have been like is heavily influenced by the facts and names and dates and places. Reading in a textbook about Columbus landing in the Caribbean in 1492 and thinking about what that moment must have been like is really difficult; it is foreign on so many levels for me. Something like a painting, such as the American John Vanderlyn’s 1846 piece aptly-titled “Landing of Columbus,” which is probably immortalized in high school history books, has a profound influence on how I piece together the facts in my mind and envision them. And even that is far from accurate because Vanderlyn, similar to myself, is removed from that moment in the sense that he was not there so his painting is really just another interpretation—or, as Lutz might suggest, an assumption of the perspective of the earliest Europeans. My interpretation of “First Contact” is therefore challenged when I read the retelling of George McCauley. The details and the unfolding of events seem to be out of something closer to a work of fiction than an actual event. I was surprised reading that because, even in that little excerpt, I went in with the expectation that having that “primary evidence” (albeit not directly from the primary source) would clarify things for me and enable me to imagine “First Contact” in more concrete terms. If anything, the intimacy of the interactions between Settlers and Natives—exchanges made not as groups but as individuals—jarred my previous conception of how that history was/is.
So when Lutz asks his readers to assume the perspective of the European settler, I do not think it is his way of assuming that most of his readership belongs to the European tradition, or that it is more difficult for a European to understand Indigenous performances. I believe it is a comment that asks us to go back to what we are most familiar with about that moment of “First Contact.” For many, including myself, what is most familiar is what is written in the history books that are prevalent in Western, twenty-first century school systems. And oftentimes, the history offered in those books is primarily told through the perspective of the European. After we process that, we can acknowledge what we know, acknowledge the bias of what we know, and ready ourselves to realize that the perspective passed on to us in a textbook is not the perspective of the Settler, or the First Nations, or any party involved in that moment. The perspective of both parties at that moment of “First Contact” cannot be recreated or ever again fully realized in our imaginations, and because of this, it should not be limited to any single side or version. And the interesting thing about my own experiences reading these accounts of what happened is, as Lutz aptly predicts, I find myself identifying with the European side of the story because it is that much closer to my Western upbringing. I cannot stop myself from doing that. In Vanderlyn’s painting, the Europeans dominate the frame because for him, I can only imagine, that was the side of the story he was most familiar with.
I found Lutz’s writing this week to be really fascinating. Anytime somebody can ask you to focus so closely on the preconceptions you bring to anything really is an invitation to revise them. He echoes Chamberlin when he writes “myth and history, science and fiction are not exclusive but complementary and inseparable ways of knowing” (14). At this point in the course, I am still hung up on how neat it is that there does not have be a single side to any story for any of us to subscribe to. Rethinking my approach to relations with history and culture and race, as we are doing with this course, has shown me that, as Lutz writes, there is a great deal that is “alien.” One last thing I wanted to include in this post is a link to this great short film by the National Film Board from 1949, “How to Build an Igloo.” When I watched this several months ago, as with all documentaries, it was from a position of spectatorship and entertainment. But watching it again this week, I tried to imagine it from the perspective of the subjects of the film; the perspective that is “alien” to the narrator and “alien” to me. I can’t say I know any more the content of the film after this second viewing but I gained a sense of appreciation for the human aspect and beauty behind this documentary that I did not take away before.
Works Cited
Casper, Lukyen. Landing van Columbus op Hispaniola. 1706. Amsterdam Museum. Het Geheugen van Nederland. Web. 18 Feb 2016.
“How to Build an Igloo“. Dir. Douglas Wilkinson. 1949. Online video clip. National Film Board of Canada. 18 Feb 2016.
Lutz, John. “First Contact as a Spiritual Performance: Aboriginal — Non-Aboriginal Encounters on the North American West Coast.” Myth and Memory: Rethinking Stories of Indigenous-European Contact. Ed. Lutz. Vancouver: U of British Columbia P, 2007. 30-45. Print.
Lutz, John. “Contact Over and Over Again.” Myth and Memory: Rethinking Stories of Indignenous- European Contact. Ed. Lutz. Vancouver: U of British Columbia P, 2007. 1-15. Print.
Vanderlyn, John. Landing of Columbus. 1846. U.S. Capitol, Washington. Architect of the Capitol. Web. 18 Feb 2016.
