A long time ago, before civilization, before agriculture, before evil, before history, some young witches were having a sleepover. These were from a tribe of the earliest witches, and they wanted to find the most terrifying thing–to scare the bejeezus out of some wizards. As competition breeds innovation, they decided to have a contest. They gathered their materials, and brought them to a nearby cave. At the foot of it, they settled down; partly because they were too nervous to enter, but also because beautiful paintings from inside seemed to jump out in the starlight.

Thus, the contest began. “Bubble, bubble, soil and rubble,” one sang while stirring a potion, “Leaves swirl and cauldron bub—“

“Oh my goodness! What are you doing? It’s not going to be scary,” said another right by her ear.

“Shut up! I’m invoking the sublimate of the world. Doesn’t it scare you sometimes?” she replied.

“Yeah, but it’s more exhilarating,” countered the other, eyes narrowing.  “You don’t even have a fire going.”

“I’m carbonating it!”

Everyone stared. All of a sudden, more arrived, dragging dead animals to the fore. Progress, they hoped.

“What is this?” said the frustrated witch, whose love for potions got her jittery.

“We thought that we could jump into some animal skins and scare ‘em,” said the leader of the group that just came in. He looked puzzled as to why they weren’t excited. Saber-tooth tigers and bears are scary, right?

“I don’t want to get into bloody pulp and fur,” said the cynical witch who narrows her eyes.

“We’ll line ‘em, of course.”

“So we’re going dress as animals that they hunt… with wands?” said the first witch, growing more frustrated by the minute. The wizards had irked her – she had to get them back. Meanwhile, the cynical witch’s eyes widened – she started to like her.

“This is going nowhere!” cried the witch who threw the party.

“Not SO fast! I will conjure a spell of my own creation!” cried someone out of nowhere, holding her wand high—and majestically, chanting, “Witches of the blair, bring terror in the air.” She thrust the wand downwards, and BANG! Sparks flew, a fire roared, and soot blew into the sky!

It was kind of scary. But any fear gave way to enjoyment of the heat—it was getting chilly—or concern for the little girl—face painted with charcoal. The first witch saw the opportunity to bring her cauldron towards the fire. Bringing out cobalt goblets, she poured out some of her brew for everyone. “Tastes like tea,” said someone, surprised.

“The best kind of potion,” she replied. She was having a caffeine crash. Now, hands around her warm goblet, she could hear each bubble pop. It felt so serene.

“What the heck was that?” Everyone turned. It was the mother whose lair they were supposed to be sleeping at. She would have said “Hell,” but that did not exist then. Remember, this was a time before evil. There was no murder. No rape. No alcohol. Everyone looked to their cups, as if embarrassed. “You know that’s going to keep you up all night, right?” said the astute witch, recognizing the smell. “Ahh… gimme some. Now, what are you doing?”

They explained that they were trying to find the scariest thing, so they could spook the wizards. A glaze went over her eyes, as if clairvoyant, but they thought it was just the fire.

“I’ll tell you what’s scary. A story,” and without warning, she launched into one:

One day, a little girl was running by a lake. She had light brown skin, and dark black hair. When the grass underneath turned to a stone-beach, she jumped from rock to rock to the shore. She picked up a smooth flat rock, and threw it in the water; she laughed as it skipped twice. Then, she looked around, and saw a blonde man in the shade. His pale white skin seemed to penetrate the darkness he was in. She picked up another stone, and seeing that he was watching, turned back around and threw it as high she could, watching with glee as it came down. It burst through the surface, leaving behind ripples that spread far and wide, and the way it sank sparked her curiosity. Looking over her shoulder, smiling, she decided to pick a whole bunch of little stones and throw them in. The pebbles came down with a woosh, and little droplets splashed in the air. From the corner of her eye, she saw a turtle swim into view. It had a rock on its back, and it looked like a globe. What was a minute seemed like an hour, as time almost stopped. Each time the globe turned around unsteadily, she felt a rush. But the orb never fell off the turtle’s back, and the turtle never swam away. All of a sudden, the man appeared beside her, and skipped a rock towards the turtle. It hit the turtle’s shell and—startled—the turtle let the world fall. Laughing, the man looked at the girl who was crying. She felt like her own child was drowning. He picked her up—

A sob broke the mother’s concentration. Looking around, she saw a stunned audience…

“I think I get it,” said someone after awhile. “In the future, we’re judged based on our skin. That girl was light brown, and he was white. That rock represented her world—but also her home—that he took from her.”

Everyone looked at each other. Sure enough, they had different colour skin, but they had thought that made them distinct, not different. The fire illuminated their skin, but its warmth was gone. It was a strange fire, going without tinder.

“Not us,” said the mother confidently, “mere humans. We know that skin is only skin deep, what’s underneath is the same.”

“What about men and women?” another asked.

“They will not be equal. Men will have more power, but too much.”

“Sometimes wizards beat us at games. I never thought they’d hurt us,” said a witch, looking at her tea going flat.

“Not us,” said the mother, growing less sure.

“What about us?” a small voice said.

“We’re burned at the stake.” Glaze went over her eyes.

“Stop! Please make it stop!” cried her daughter.

But… it was too late. For once a story is told, it cannot be called back. Once told, it is loose in the world.

I told the story to my mom, who predictably interrupted to offer criticism. I told her to shut up, and pretend she was a child listening to a story. Once I got going, she was lost in the tale, laughing and falling into deep thought whenever I wanted her too. I felt so much power as a storyteller. Being able to change the dialogue to make it more visual the second go-around was nice. I found that I could start with ‘she said’ before rather than after, to make things more clear. Then, after I was done, she offered more criticism…

We talked about the transition from the story to the stunned audience. She said it was like she was the child–stopped from screaming–which I found really interesting. I cut off the story to leave it open to interpretation, because it could be that the girl was kidnapped, or thrown in the lake to drown, but it could also be that he picked her up to comfort her. The muffled scream was an element I didn’t even consider.

Lacking listeners, I told the story to my best friend over the phone. I could hear her breathing the whole time, too nervous to laugh ’cause she wanted me to keep going. After I finished, she said, “I have one question: If evil didn’t exist, how could fear?”

Works Cited:

 Linder, Douglas. “A Brief History of Witchcraft Persecutions before Salem.” Famous Trials: Salem Witchcraft Trials. University of Missori-Kansas City, 2005. Web. 28 May 2015.

“Double, Double, Toil and Trouble: Annotations for the Witches’ Chants (4.1.1-47 [of Macbeth]).” Shakespeare-Online. Amanda Mabillard, 18 May 2014. Web. 28 May 2015.

“Mature cataract.” Flickr. Bob Griffen, 2006. Web. 28 May 2015.

“The Ojibwe Creation Story of Turtle Island.” Native Drums. Department of Canadian Heritage, n.d. Web. 29 May 2015.

Prompt: Explain why the notion that cultures can be distinguished as either “oral culture” or “written culture” (19) is a mistaken understanding as to how culture works, according to Chamberlin and your reading of Courtney MacNeil’s article “Orality.”

Memory is rhetorical. That is why a speech can be so powerful, whether it is spoken by a politician, priest, or activist. Being able to practice, and then change words on a whim according to the audience, is the driving force behind any great speech. Someone may say, “How are they coming up with all this now?” They are not.

Considering the intersection between an impassioned sermon, and the holy books on a preacher’s mind, it is hard to believe the ‘binary’ between orality and literacy. The former is often considered primitive compared to the latter, because it denotes an inability to read or write. In other words, the written word is “absolutely necessary for the development not only of science but also of history, philosophy, explicative understanding of literature and of any art, and indeed of language itself,” whereas oral tradition is the marker of “tribal man” (Ong 15; McLuhan 26).This false dichotomy espoused by the Toronto School of Communication is what Foley calls the “Great Divide” (Macneil).

As the perceived difference between orality and literature is framed as ‘the key to evolutionary progress,’ it is fitting to note another ‘Great Divide’–the one between science and religion. From the inception of the Scientific Revolution, science was deemed blasphemous by religious folk. Galileo was imprisoned for his advocacy of a heliocentric universe – with the sun at the center. However, the thing that shook the world the most was probably Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. Upon hearing about Darwin’s theories, the wife of the Bishop of Worchester said, “Descended from apes! My dear, let us hope that is not true, but if it is, let us pray that it does not become generally known” (Soma).

Nonetheless, it was not necessarily his belief that we descended from apes that was the most insulting (although that was certainly up there) but that he insisted evolution was a “blind process,” and therefore divorced from God’s plan–according to other interpretations. “Survival of the fittest” was coined not by Darwin, but by Herbert Spencer, who assumed there was an end goal… which sounded a lot like upper class Europeans (Soma). This is important to know, because it reinforced the ethnocentrism used to justify colonialism.

There are other big, well-known conceptualized binaries–mind vs. body; nature vs. nurture–which are often resolved in a not-so-exciting way: “They are both right, you cannot consider one without the other.” It is like the one Chamberlin draws on: “civilized” vs. “barbaric”; Us vs. Them; Somebodies vs. Nobodies. The Greeks called Persians “barbaric” because they didn’t speak Greek, but they both had language (9-12). Not ‘people’ under law, the Gitskan were told that their land was being claimed, and countered: “If this is your land, where are your stories?” (1).

Beowulf is the most famous Old English epic poem, and it celebrates the power of storytelling as much as it does the feats of its titular character. The only existing manuscript is very Christian; before then, it was memorized by bards and recited, and was probably entirely pagan. Whether the pagan or Christian predominates is an interesting discussion in of itself, but suffice to say, both are needed to understand the story.

Chamberlin often references the Odyssey and Iliad, and this is well-taken, because it wasn’t until the 20th century that it was recognized as a part of oral tradition. It was just assumed that they were written by Homer. But in order to have as much knowledge of Mycenean culture as he did, Homer relied on oral tradition rather than Linear B tablets, a script that went out-of-date hundreds of years before his time. Like Beowulf, they use stanza, repetition, dramatic pauses, and rhythmic meter to aid memorization and the power of oration. That power is palpable in one’s inner voice.

“Hector, tamer of horses…”

As Chamberlin says, “speech and writing are so entangled with each other in our various forms and performance of language that we are like Penelope, weaving them together during the day and unweaving them at night” (151 qf. Paterson). This reminds me of two words–tulku and tjukurrpa; ‘song’ and ‘dreaming’–not known, but understood by those strangers (13-14). Dreams may be just random pieces of memory, but one thing is clear: Each and every night we tell ourselves stories; we weave at day, unweave at night.

Works Cited:

Chamberlin, Edward J. If This Is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories? Finding Common Ground. Toronto: Vintage Ground. 2004. Print.

Chamberlin, Edward J. “A New History of Reading: Hunting, Tracking, and Reading.” For the Geography of a Soul: Emerging Perspectives on Kamau Braithwaite. Ed. Timothy J. Reiss., 145-164. Trenton: Africa World Press, 2001. 151 qf. Erika Paterson’s “Lesson 1:2.”  2015. Web. 22 May 2015.

 Macneil, Courtney. “Orality.” The Chicago School of Media Theory. Uchicagoedublogs. 2007. Web. 22 May 2015.

McLuhan, Marshall. “Playboy Interview,” 26 qf. Courtney Macneil’s “Orality.” 2007. Web. 22 May 2015.

Ong, Walter J. Orality and Literacy, 15 qf. Courtney Macneil’s “Orality.” 2007. Web. 22 May 2015.

Soma, Kiran. “Human Behavior 2.” University of British Columbia. West Mall, Vancouver, BC. 1 Apr. 2015. Lecture.

“Minoans and Myceneans: Overview of Greek History.” UCSB.edu. Web. 22 May 2015.

Tietjen, Mary C. Wilson. “God, Fate, and the Hero of ‘Beowulf’.” The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 74.2. (1975): 159-171. Web. 22 May 2015.

Last summer, I went to Uganda, as part of my Psychology in Developing Countries course and through International Service Learning. I worked at Good Samaritan School for the Deaf, which meant so much to me, because I was born profoundly deaf. I could not hear until I got a cochlear implant – a truly miraculous piece of technology unavailable to them. Upon my first day there, I was greeted by a few students and one teacher–all deaf–who wanted to give me a sign name. Receiving a sign name is very interesting–they scrutinize you, and brainstorm ideas, often honing in on your most distinct–or embarrassing–features. I became uncomfortably aware that they could use my cochlear implant, an emblem of my own deafness, which exacerbated my realization that I had all but forgotten sign language. However, they settled on my prominent Adam’s apple – just a tap on it. That remains a part of my identity; just like a “normal” name, it becomes part of you.

To give you an idea of sign names, and how happy these children are, here is a video I made:

My partner and I visited 11 families, with the Head Master of the school serving as a translator. Unfortunately, only a few had sufficiently learned sign language. Many of the students live at the school almost all year round, making it harder for the parents to practice. Some did not even bother, saying that they are busy and that their child can speak enough Luganda–which was surprising: We only saw them signing, showing that it is an identity they chose for themselves. Nonetheless, each and every family member got excited, overjoyed, when we asked their sign names.

However, if their parents only knew Luganda, why were the students only taught English? I was reminded by how First Nations children were forced into residential schools. I was reminded by how my parents were going to enroll me in Jericho Hill, and found out it was shut down for endemic abuse. While school is supposed to create bright futures, it has been exploited for oppression, sexual abuse, and forced assimilation. Africans and Indigenous Canadians share a similar colonial history, where a rich oral tradition is superseded by the need to read and write English, disrupting ties between generations.

This blog is for English 470A: Canadian Studies, or what Instructor Erika Paterson likes to call, ‘Oh Canada: Our Home and Native Land?’ I wanted to begin with my unexpected, visceral reminder of “home” to welcome readers to my blog. In this course, we will be talking about the power of stories, and the intersection of story and literature for First Nations peoples.

In many ways, the power of storytelling is like one tale being told by different people: It is bound to change; with stories being put to print, the “magic is gone.” Rote memorization being encouraged by education systems does not help either. Nonetheless, literature being put in libraries is akin to stories being passed down generation to generation. There is power in mastering the language of your ancestors’ oppressors, and inserting your own native style, as writers like Tomson Highway, Joseph Boyden, and Thomas King have.

I expect that naming will become important, as names have different associations, meanings, and symbolic value to different peoples.

Works Cited:

McLintock, Barbara. “Reading the Signs of Sexual Abuse.” The Tyee. The Tyee, 13 Apr. 2015. Web. 15 May 2015.

Franey, Evan. “Good Samaritan School for the Deaf.” Youtube. Evan Franey, 28 Oct. 2014. Web. 15 May 2015.

“International Service Learning.” Student Services. UBC, 2015. Web. 15 May 2015.

 “Good Samaritan School for the Deaf.” WordPress. Good Samaritan, n.d. Web. 15 May 2015.

“Cochlear Implants.” National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD). National Institute of Health, Aug. 2014. Web. 15 May 2015.

“A history of residential schools in Canada.” CBCnews. CBC, 07 Jan. 2014. Web. 15 May 2015.