Question 2:

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.

Before I begin responding to the above question I would like to make a quick point.  You’ll see that the title I have given this assignment includes the word ‘our’ along with a question mark.  This is because I am confused as to whether or not it is appropriate for me to call the history of  those who inhabited this land long before i did MY history.  As mentioned in my previous post my definition of a Canadian is someone who holds Canadian citizenship.  I was born in Canada and I am Canadian but is the history of this land mine.  My ancestors originate in Britain but I know little more than that.  I know more about Canada’s history and the history of this land before it was known as Canada but I am not considered to be a native person by many.  If I am not of First Nations origin is it okay to call their history my own?

Speaking first to the two points mentioned in the question about why is is difficult to make meaningfulness of the first stories today.  First we have the disruption of the modern storytelling process in contrast to how the stories were meant to have been told, orally and in public.  We now know, having read the required readings for this assignment, that these “stories” were far from being meaningless and that they were in fact a political act (Thom, 9).  Just as we would discuss (and document) land ownership is a court of law today, the First Nations peoples of the time would assert their ownership by way of storytelling.  Ownership not in the sense we may think of today but in a way that expressed the culture and land uses of the day.  A story for those who knew the importance the land played in terms of survival.  For a person to make sense of such a story today would require extensive knowledge of the lives and culture of the First Nations people who were doing the telling.  And as each village had its own tradition concerning the origin of the world this would likely prove an impossible task, even for anthropologists (Thom, 7).

The second point mentioned was the extended period of time for which such storytelling was disallowed by the non-indigenous people of Canada.  Story-telling is such an integral component to the history of First Nations peoples that to forcibly eliminate it was akin to cultural genocide.  It would be equivalent to destroying all of the knowledge a given society had accumulated over time.  And it not only eliminated the past but the present and future as such story-telling practices were not allowed to continue for such a long time that the process itself has been largely forgotten.

For my third point I will elaborate more on the forced cultural changes that occurred when First Nations children were forbidden from being exposed to the oral history culture.  Children are sponges.  Young people have the ability to absorb knowledge at an astonishing rate even if that knowledge is not related to their own culture.  My point is that by teaching these children that their way or story-telling is wrong and that written history is the way to go, they not only missed out on hearing stories while away at residential schools but also any chance of being able to acquire knowledge this way in the future.  And they would continue to pass on what they learned to their children, and their children to the next generation and so on, essentially destroying the oral historical component of the First Nations peoples.

References:

Paterson, Erika. “Lesson 2.2.” ENGL 470A Canadian Studies: Canadian Literary Genres. University of British Columbia, 2013. Web. Feb. 18, 2016.

Thom, Brian. “The Anthropology of Northwest Coast Oral Traditions.” Arctic Anthropology 40.1 (2003): 1-28. Web. Feb. 18, 2016.

Wickwire, Wendy. “The Grizzly Gave Them the Song: James Teit and Franz Boas Interpret Twin Ritual in Aboriginal British Columbia, 1897-1920”. American Indian Quarterly 25.3 (2001): 431–452. Web. Feb 18, 2016.