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.
According to Dr Paterson, the first reason for the limiting of our capacity to find meaning from first stories is the fact that “the social process of the telling is disconnected from the story and this creates obvious problems for ascribing meaningfulness”. This is also highlighted in Wickwire’s Introduction to Living Stories as the printed versions of the stories were short, lifeless and lacked details, dialogue and colors (Wickwire 9). There are two main reasons for this are, the stories lost meaning in translation and summarization. The translation not only disrupted the original narrative, but the storyteller and their community affiliations were missing. Wickwire could not find the colors in the stories she collected the same she did when he sat and talked to Robison for hours. There are 634 First Nations in Canada and each of these nations has different stories. According to Wickwire, there stories have been composited erasing the variation in the local storytelling. Archibdd in her research studies how oral tradition has been denigrated and diminished through Western literature influences (Archibdd 14). Which I think explains Wickwire’s points. Tt is apparent that meanings can be lost in translation and summarization because both groups have their own translation of the stories which is tied to their culture and language. This fact coupled with the bad intentions of Western had to suppress First Nations stories, the stories have lost their meaning.
The second reason given is “the extended time of criminal prohibitions against indigenous people telling stories combined with the act of taking all the children between 5 – 15 away from their families and communities.” We also see this point highlighted when Robinson told his story. Robison tells “Although he had spent lots of time listening to his grandmother and her contemporaries tell stories, he did not begin to tell stories until he was immobilized by the injury” This is showing how the process of the storytelling was already broken in the community. With children removed from their families and the community, people like Robison could not tell stories and pass it to generations. We also see how Robinson was worried as his health was falling that he would be able to tell all the stories he wanted to tell because he only started telling story when he retired from his ranch. Because all the variation of the stories were kept orally, storytelling is a key to preserve the first stories.
By the end my reading what I construed from Wickwire’s experience of collecting the first stories is that there is lack of structured way of collecting the first stories. Throughout the process we see the challenges Wickwire faced collecting the stories. At begging, she had to travel back and forth with only few hours a day to spend with Harry and later on he rented a cabin close to him. On page 12 of the book, we see the Harry highlighting the lack of structure it is telling the stories over the past times. He says sometimes people “stay here only two, three hours only” and mentions that “sometimes I might tell one stories and I might go too far in one side like. Then you have to come back and go on the one side the same way” (Robison 12). In addition to two main challenges we raised, even after the math of the First Nation people suppression, there is a chance to now collect and write the stories unless it is people like Wickwire who persistent push to write the stories, there are no channels of telling the first stories.
Citation
Robinson, Harry. “Living by Stories: a Journey of Landscape and Memory.” Compiled and edited by Wendy Wickwire. Vancouver: Talon Books 2005.
Archibdd, JO-ann Coyote Learns to Make A Storybasket: The Place Of First Nations Stories Ln Education
https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/first-nations