Prompt: 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?
I found the Lutz readings very interesting. They challenged my beliefs, and supplemented some of what I already knew (or thought I knew) about “first contact.” He makes a few assumptions–including the one above–but that is a natural fallacy of the human condition. In stating that “one of necessary 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,” he is not necessarily assuming that the reader is European in heritage, as he acknowledges that people have different worldviews, especially in different times, or even over time.
However, he does seem to assume that it was exceedingly more difficult for Europeans to understand the greeting performances of Indigenous people than it was for the other way around. Nonetheless, in the context of his argument, that is a pretty intriguing assumption to make. He’s challenging us to be mindful of our own assumptions–be aware of our imagination. As he points out, “The hidden, and so more rarely engaged challenge, is to step outside and see one’s own culture as alien and to discern the mythic in the performances of one’s own histories” (32).
Although saying, “Native people lived in a world where there was no firm divide between the natural and the spirit world” seems to gloss things over, he qualifies that by saying, “a closer look at the Europeans shows that their rational behaviour was determined in part, by their non-rational spiritual beliefs” (32). In his notes, he clarifies his use of the word ‘spiritual’:
“Admittedly, the word ‘spiritual’ fits imperfectly, since the distinction between the spiritual and non-spiritual world probably did not exist in indigenous thinking, nor would it have for many Europeans at the time; it is an approximation, referring to the more ‘immaterial’ features of their world views” (n. 180).
Keep in mind, Lutz is not trying to undersell the strangeness of the Europeans to Indigenous people; but rather, emphasize that ‘spirituality’ contours the lens one looks at the world through.
In “Myth Understandings: First Contact, Over and Over Again,” Lutz points out that when “comparing indigenous and explorer accounts… we are asked to evaluate written versus oral traditions and then even more challenging, to decide between explanations based on different notions of what is real and what is imaginary” (2).
In other words, they are stories, told by people with different cultural lenses. But while the Indigenous may not have distinguished nature from spirit, the Europeans confused religion, science, and conquest.
The idea of divinity, or spirituality, is something that has been assumed in many cultures over time, going all the way back to pre-History. However, Abrahamic religions like Christianity are rather unique in assuming that there is One Almighty God that rules over everything, rather than individual deities or spirits that preside in different places. Therefore, Indigenous superstition was compared to “mythology” —the religions they replaced. Thus, it was considered “primitive,” according to “rational thought,” or Spencer’s “scientific knowledge” (for more on Spencer, see my second blog).
Colombus’ account of the “Indies” was largely coloured by his readings of Marco Polo, and Classical discussions of “the Other” by Pliny, Homer, and Herodotus (2). He may well have believed Raleigh’s Discovery of Guiana, if he lived during that time. Travel-books were all the rage in the 17th century, and they were marked by an outlandish fascination with the exotic–a winking “I was here, and you weren’t.”
Lutz argues “that the ‘rational European stories’ that pass for realist accounts, are in fact as rooted in a European mythology as others are in an indigenous ‘myth world'” (6). He illustrates that while different Indigenous groups became disillusioned with their original assumptions about the Europeans, even if they never quite distinguished imagination from reality, European nations stayed firm in their belief that they were superior. So, it is wrong to assume that he meant the Indigenous people were at fault when he said understanding their performances was “one of the most obvious difficulties” (32). Both participated in first contact, and the stories that arose, but “whether or not indigenous people thought of the Europeans as gods, European observers were hoping to see themselves in that role” (32).
If they were made in “God’s image,” the Natives were something “inferior.”
Now that is an assumption.
Works Cited:
Franey, Evan. “Examining the Intersection Between Orality and Literacy.” Liminal Space between Story and Literature. UBC Blogs, 22 May 2015. Web. 13 Jun. 2015.
Lutz, John. “First Contact as a Spiritual Performance: Encounters on the North American West Coast.” Myth and Memory: Rethinking Stories of Indigenous-European Contact. Ed. Lutz. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2007. 30-45. Web. 13 Jun. 2015.
Lutz, John. “Myth Understandings: First Contact, Over and Over Again.” Myth and Memory: Rethinking Stories of Indigenous-European Conflict. Ed. Lutz. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2007. 1-15. Web. 13 Jun. 2015.
Narr, Karl J. “Prehistoric religion.” Encyclopaedia Britannica. Encyclopaedia Britannica, n.d. Web. 13 Jun. 2015.
Raliegh, Walter. “The Discovery of Guiana” [full title: The discovery of the large, rich, and beautiful Empire of Guiana, with a relation of the great and golden city of Manoa (which the Spaniards call El Dorado)]. Gutenberg. Project Gutenberg, 7 Feb. 2013. Web. 13 Jun. 2015.