Prompt: In his article, “Godzilla vs. Post-Colonial,” King discusses Robinson’s collection of stories. King explains that while the stories are written in English, “the patterns, metaphors, structures as well as the themes and characters come primarily from oral literature.” More than this, Robinson, he says “develops what we might want to call an oral syntax that defeats reader’s efforts to read the stories silently to themselves, a syntax that encourages readers to read aloud” and in so doing, “recreating at once the storyteller and the performance” (186). Read “Coyote Makes a Deal with King of England”, in Living by Stories. Read it silently, read it out loud, read it to a friend, and have a friend read it to you. See if you can discover how this oral syntax works to shape meaning for the story by shaping your reading and listening of the story. Write a blog about this reading/listening experience that provides references to the story.
First off, I want to point to the disgusting quote by Harper that Erika Paterson brought up in her lesson:
We also have no history of colonialism. So we have all of the things that many people admire about the great powers but none of the things that threaten or bother them.
—Stephen Harper, speaking at G20 news conference in Pittsburgh, September 2009. David Ljunggren. “Every G20 Nation wants to be Canada, insists PM”. Reuters News Online. 25 Sept 2009.
Suggesting something as ridiculous as this needs a willful ignorance about the history of this country. Or, more likely, it is rewriting history where we are Chapter 1 of this place, rather than Chapter 15, as Asch suggests. In his article “Canadian Sovereignty and Universal History,” Asch uses two quotes from Thomas King as the base of his argument, one is the “If this is your land, where are your stories?” line by the Gitxsan elder that we are already familiar with, and the other is that, to the Gitxsan, we (settlers and their descendants) “came up as Chapter 15 of the story… a little too early perhaps” (29-30). So, it is as if Harper responded to the Gitxsan elder with ‘one hell of a story.’
In the context of his speech, which was delighting in the idea that Canada deserved no blame for the economic crisis, it is a subtle insult; a mean trick; sleight of the backhand slap.
I want to share this video with you:
It was shown at the Bill Reid Gallery recently, in a Beau Dick exhibition (the artist at the end is Beau Dick). Although it is a response to the Enbridge pipeline controversy, it also makes me think of how Canadian lakes are being turned into mine dumps. There is a caricature of Harper – it is quite hilarious.
Harper’s insistence of placing the settlement of Europeans into Canada as the beginning of this place is in itself a trick; for then he is able to say ‘we never colonized other countries, (because we colonized our own).’ With that in mind, let’s read an excerpt of King’s “Godzilla vs. Post-Colonial”:
“When I made that rather simplistic comparison between pre-colonial and post-colonial, I left out one of the players, rather like talking about pre-pubescence and post-pubescence without mentioning puberty. My apologies. It was a trick to make you think I was going to say something profound, when, in fact, I was going to make the rather simplistic observation that in the case of pre- and post-colonial, the pivot around which we move is puberty and colonialism. But here, I’m lying again. Another trick, I’m afraid, for in puberty’s case, the precedent, the root, and the antecedent are, at least, all part of a whole, whereas in the case of colonialism–within a discussion of Native literature–the term has little to do with the literature itself. It is both separate from and antithetical to what came before and what came after.” (184)
Here, he uses playful language to make a significant point: The trick of time makes an assumption of chronology dangerous. This goes hand-in-hand with Lutz’ statement that “we are still in that contact zone,” and Paterson’s statement that “we may not be able to listen to the Indigenous stories of the past, but we can learn to listen today” (4). The assumption by Lutz that some of us tackled last week is tempered by his earlier statement that “not only are settler populations and indigenous people still meeting in zones of mutual incomprehension… they are also still creating and telling new contact stories and challenging the old ones” in the aptly titled “First Contact, Over and Over Again” (4). Using the terms “pre-colonial,” “colonial,” and “post-colonial” is unsuitable, because it is hard–or pointless–to delineate what begins and ends.
What those terms suggest is that there is a “time of attrition” vs. a “time of progress,” which is wrong. As King says, “Ironically, while the term itself–post-colonial–strives to find new centres, it remains, in the end, a hostage to nationalism” (185).
King prefers the terms “tribal,” “polemical,” “associational,” and “interfusional” to describe Native literature. The latter is pertinent, as it’s the fusion of the oral and the written, and he points to Harry Robinson as the best example.
Upon reading King, I did not know that his almost-oral way of writing is largely influenced by Robinson. So much of his writing seemed like a speech, delivered in the spur of the moment. However, I found the Coyote sections of Green Grass Running Water very jarring. I had no idea that Coyote was the trickster figure, or divinity–“Father”–of Indigenous storytelling, although that soon became apparent. These pages became magical, especially when I read out loud.
So, when I read Robinson’s “Coyote Makes a Deal with the King of England,” I jumped straight to performance. It reminded me of story-signing, for speaking is slowed down to allow for the fluidity of sign language. I must admit, I groaned when I saw how long it was; nonetheless, the many punctuated pauses allowed for the ease of breath, as well as the use of gesture. It eschewed literary grammar to uphold oral syntax, because who cares about grammar when you have the magic of storytelling?
While reading, there was the pervading sense of “this is Coyote’s time, his moment.” This reminded me of switching from the past to present tense to create urgency, one of my favourite tricks in writing dialogue. Robinson is not only the master of blending orality and literacy, but manipulating time–when the Indians suddenly appear in the King’s chamber, he does not need to say “all of a sudden” to do that.
After performing for my friend, she read the King’s lines and imitated Harper. It was hilarious.
Works Cited
Asch, Michael. “Canadian Sovereingty and Universal History.” Stored Communities: Narratives of Contact and Arrivial in Constituting Political Community. Ed. Rebecca Johnson, and Jeremmy Webber Hester Lessard. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Print, 2011. 29-39. Print.
Franey, Evan. “(Spiritual) Assumption(s).” Liminal Space between Story and Literature. UBC Blogs, 13 Jun. 2015. Web. 20 Jun. 2015.
King, Thomas. “Godzilla vs. Post Colonial.” Unhomely States: Theorizing English-Canadian Postcolonialism. Mississauga, ON: Broadview, 2004. 183-190. Print.
Milewski, Terry. “Lakes across Canada face being turned into mine dump sites.” CBC News. 16 Jun. 2008. Web. 19 Jun. 2015.
Leung, Marlene. “Pipeline primer: What you need to know about Northern Gateway.” CTV News. 17 Jun. 2014. Web. 19 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.
Paterson, Erika. “Lesson 2.3.” ENGL 470A: Canadian Studies. UBC Blogs, 2015. Web. 19 Jun. 2015.
Stephen Harper, speaking at G20 news conference in Pittsburgh, September 2009. David Ljunggren. “Every G20 Nation Wants to be Canada, Insists PM.” Reuters News Online. 25 Sept. 2009. Web. 20 Jun. 2015.
“Meet Beau Dick ‘Maker of Monsters’.” Youtube. LaTiesha Fazakas, 12 Jul. 2012. Web. 19 Jun. 2015.
“Haida 3: Save Our Waters” by KINNIE STARR feat. Ja$e El Nino. Youtube. Amanda Strong, 1 Dec. 2014. Web. 19 Jun. 2015.
Hey Evan,
Interesting that we both chose the same topic. I feel drawn to comment on your analysis of Patterson’s prompt. Like you, I was similarly struck by Harper’s quote.
“We also have no history of colonialism. So we have all of the things that many people admire about the great powers but none of the things that threaten or bother them.” – Stephan Harper
To me, it wasn’t disgusting as it was ignorant. I think this really points to how I felt reading Thomas King’s article. I thought that Harper was bringing our attention to the erasure of anti-colonial narratives. What do you think?
We must retire the language of post-colonialism in favour of a more collaborative use of language.
It’s interesting you thought ‘interfusional’ was a adequate label for Robinson’s work. I chose tribal. I’m now thinking that interfusional was also a good fit.
I thought your quote, “using the terms “pre-colonial,” “colonial,” and “post-colonial” is unsuitable, because it is hard–or pointless–to delineate what begins and ends,” was particularly insightful. My thoughts were that the literature of colonial is often over-ridden or ignored. Is this an opinion that you share?
Thanks!
Hannah
Hi Hannah,
Great minds think alike, haha. We seem to have a lot in common as far as what topics we are drawn to, as well as our pasts in the Tsawassen area.
I found Harper’s quote disgusting, because he has drawn so much attention to the possibility of terrorist attacks, when many Indigenous women have gone missing – distracting from the real problem.
I know he is aware of Indigenous culture, but he chooses to ignore it, which ties into your question about colonial literature. I read the essay in your blog (great hyperlink btw), and I think that since writing was forced on them, it took awhile for them to really embrace it and use it as a means of expression. Current Indigenous authors are giving those who lived through colonialism a voice, so it “colonial literature” as much as it is “post-colonial literature.” And, I think that we do value our Indigenous writers, as authors like Thomas King and Tomson Highway are praised. Took time though.
🙂
Holy crap.
I read this blog post and I seriously felt bad about my blog post this week.. You killed this! I love how you answer the question in such relatable terms. You created a piece that is stuffed with substance and eloquence. That being said I have to admit I love trash-talking Harper and the pipeline.. so that may have contributed to my love for this blog post juuuuust a little bit.
Here’s some actual commentary:
You know when you read something and you look at the page (or screen) and you think “what the hell did I just read?”
I don’t know about you, but I find that when I read something by Thomas King, or I read one of our stories that is meant to be read aloud I actually absorb the story so much easier/better than I do if something is convoluted with academia and/or difficult language. Oral-writing (I feel like that’s a huge oxymoron.. forgive me) is colloquial, and is therefore so much simpler. The Aboriginal creation stories in Green Grass Running Water are short, simple, easy and repetitive. “In the beginning, there was just water” is something that we hear over, and over, and over. It makes me think that literacy is really just a pretentious way of communicating to the world. How do you think this relates with Carlson’s article when he argues that literacy is actually something that was missing from Aboriginal culture?
🙂
Hey Hailey,
Thanks for the praise lol. I don’t know how I wrote this so quickly, as I didn’t know where to begin at first. I read Susanna Moodies’ introduction like 10 times, and while it reminded me of how my grandpa came here, I couldn’t absorb it. To be honest, I only read part of Carlson’s paper, as I noticed a theme of chronology in the coursepack, and wanted to stick to that (somehow).
Although there were some lines in Harry Robinson that I didn’t fully understand, they didn’t distract from how I absorbed it – just reminded of how we often trail off or speak non-grammatically. I agree, the repetition Harry Robinson, Thomas King, and Ted Chamberlain use is so great. In school, we’ve learned to not use repetition, and it wasn’t until recently that I learned that it’s okay. Using conjunctions like “but,” “and,” “or” etc. is okay too–they just taught us that it isn’t so we don’t write like 4th grader. (http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/can-i-start-a-sentence-with-a-conjunction)
I feel like Native writers reject things that they, or their ancestor’s, have learned in residential schools–which actually have no foundation–and are such natural writers because of it.
Hey, Evan!
I don’t have much to say that Hailey and Hannah didn’t already, but I will echo their sentiment that this was a fantastic and incredibly well thought-out blog. It’s refreshing to see people put such an effort into these assignments, as it helps to stir up our class discussion. I did have one question from your post, however (and it’s totally insubstantial): what do you mean by “story-signing”? I Googled the phrase but didn’t come up with much, and I’d love to hear more about your connections between this sort of oral story telling and sign language.
Thanks!
🙂
Hi Evan,
Thanks for the read. I don’t know if you intended it to be funny but I laughed when you said you used the punctuated pauses to breathe. I struggled when I read it out loud because of the broken English. It’s interesting because I found the story to be organic and inorganic. Oragnic because it flowed like a regular conversation. A lot of pauses and broken sentences. A lot of jumping around and filling in the blanks. It wasn’t trying to be specific and fully coherent like an academic paper. But I also found it inorganic because it wasn’t how I talked.
Also, I don’t think literary grammar and oral syntax are mutually exclusive things. However, I do think that grammar is insignificant when it comes to storytelling (written or oral); I feel that grammar sometimes ruins creativity. I love when novels have run on sentences and fragmented ones. It mimics the way we talk and just flows a lot better.
Hi Evan,
What a neat video you’ve shared! The line, “radical Indians… you’re scared of progress” really reminds me of Mahmood Mamdani’s book “Good Muslim, Bad Muslim,” and the idea of “culture talk”. He basically talks about how Westerners view cultures in three ways: either pre-modern, modern, or anti-modern. Pre-modern cultures are considered primitive, but embracing or moving towards Western ideas of progress. Anti-modern cultures, however, are considered primitive and dangerous. Here’s a lengthy, but I think appropriate quote from the first chapter of his book (found it online here: http://www.readersread.com/excerpts/goodmuslimbadmuslim.htm)
“…antimodern fundamentalists are said to have a profound ability to be destructive. The destruction is taken as proof that they have no appreciation for human life, including their own. This is surely why Culture Talk has become the stuff of front-page news stories. Culture is now said to be a matter of life and death. This kind of thinking is deeply reminiscent of tracts from the history of modern colonization. This history stigmatizes those shut out of modernity as antimodern because they resist being shut out. It assumes that people’s public behavior, particularly their political behavior, can be read from their habits and customs, whether religious or traditional.”
While Mamdani is referring specifically to the way Muslim culture is depicted in Western media, I still feel that his theory is appropriate when talking about Indigenous folks. I find the line “history stigmatizes those shut out of modernity as antimodern because they resist being shut out” to be particularly powerful, and just so on point.
Unrelated: I find oral literature to be such an interesting oxymoron. Last year, I took a class with a prof who essentially discredited the existence of “orature,” but reading your post proves him wrong. The written word often begs to be spoken aloud.
🙂
Hi Hava,
I think you would like my first blog. Here’s a link to make things easier:
https://blogs.ubc.ca/engl470franey/2015/05/15/introduction/
As it says, I was born deaf, and while I had learned sign language, I had forgotten it to learn speech. However, I went to Uganda for a summer to intern at the Good Samaritan School for the Deaf, and relearned some there. Here is another video, showing our mural project where we did story-signing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8h-JkMVUmc
The Kitengesa Community Library served as a place the students could play and read, and in doing so, dismantle some misunderstandings about deafness. Unfortunately, a stigma has persisted across milennia that deaf people cannot learn. In Uganda, “Kasiru” is a name attached to deaf people, meaning “stupid”; however, we have an analogue in “deaf-and”dumb” that is still used (yes, that’s basically where ‘dumb’ comes from).
Nonetheless, when people saw us story-signing, they were interested.
Simply put, story-signing is telling a story in sign language, but that can be supplemented with speech–and it becomes a kind of performance where you’re speaking the lines as well as acting them out. Best believe I spoke loudly for others to hear–it was fascinating for them.
Even if you don’t know sign, so much can be communicated. Sign language is a beautiful language where you can really bring out your personality, or the personality of those you’re portraying.
The video shows the deaf and hearing playing together, and the mural is an emblem for how they’re growing together.
🙂
Hi EJ,
I know what you mean, but I found it more organic to read them out loud than silently.
I agree that grammar kind of ruins creativity. Or at least with how we’re taught to structure sentences in school. You can be very creative and it’s grammatically correct, but baseless “rules” of academic writing prohibits that. I hate scientific writing in university, because everything has to be like a list, even though that is not how Oliver Sacks and other (interesting) scientific authors write. Having a diversity of sentence lengths and structures is needed.
Hi Melissa, I think it’s so true that we always look at things as “pre-modern” or “modern” or “anti-modern,” or even “post-modern” – meaning after the modern but returning to the traditional. However, that doesn’t really mean we look at traditional as good, but what we APPROPRIATE from traditional as good, so “pre-modern” is still looked at as “primitive”. I find it so frustrating when I hear a culture being referred to as “backward,” or when someone says, “They’re like how we were – they’re just a bit behind.”
Attaching labels to things is dangerous. They serve one perspective, and don’t really consider other peoples’ perspective of the world.