Author: Zac

What are the major differences or similarities between the ethos of the creation story or stories you are familiar with and the story King tells in The Truth About Stories ?

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“Personally, I’d like to hear a creation story, a story that recounts how the world was formed, how things came to be, for contained within creation stories are relationships that help to define the nature of the universe and how cultures understand the world in which they exist.”

(King, 10)

I chose here to discuss the story of Charm alongside the greek myths, and a condensed version of the biblical account. This is because I have already discussed the Biblical story of creation in another post, so I felt that it would add little to the discussion. In addendum, I have analyzed a bonus creation story in addition to these two, which I think blends the philosophies found within the Biblical and Greek accounts very nicely.

There was Chaos.

 

There are different accounts and different interpretations of the early days of Greek myth and theogony. But the most well known and highest regarded is the works of Hesiod, specifically The Theogony, which details the genealogy of the Greek Gods, all descendants of six gods, the most powerful of which are Chaos, Gaia, and Eros. (II 116-138)

For most of the Homeric mythology that we are most accustomed to, these three gods have largely left the story, as have most of the others before the arrival of the Titans on mount Olympus. However, in the early days of the myths, they were responsible for the birth and creation of the world, and the many gods and creatures who would later rule it. Gaia created Uranus (the sky), Ourea (the mountains), and Pontus (the sea); as well as the many Gods and Goddess that would form the Titans. (Hesiod, II 116-138)

The Titans, no longer bound to Gaia, began taming the world, and adding more gods to it. These gods were in charge of their own domains: Epimetheus and Prometheus respectively created animals and humans, and gave them each different qualities distinct from each other; Athena was the goddess of wisdom and reason; Hades was the God of the underworld, and his “wife,” Persephone, was the goddess of spring.

As such, the creation story of Greek mythology is an explainer for how the gods that look after all that we know in the world came to be, which is not entirely different form the creation of the world, itself.

God Created the heavens and the earth.

Around the same time in region of Mesopotamia, another group of gods were being worshipped. One god, particularly holy to the Canaanites was the god who would come to be known as Yahweh. (Held) The exact origin of this god is contested, but the general understanding is that Yahweh was one god among many within the region, with stories and artifacts that have since been lost to time and conflict and the changing politics of history.

In the Judeo-christian tradition, the world started without form, and void. It was God, Yahweh, who brought the world into being, and through a symbolic passage of 7 days, Yahweh on his own created everything as it is. Through his will, Yahweh created light, the sky, the sea and dry land, vegetation, plants, fruits, and trees, the sun and the moon, birds and fish, and land animals and humans all within that week.

Adam and Eve, the first humans were in charge of the garden of Eden, and all the animals that lived within it. The two gave each of the animals names, following gods will. However, when God asked the two not to eat from the fruit of one of the trees in the garden, as it would give them knowledge of good and evil, the curiosity got the better of them and they denied gods will. As punishment for eating this fruit, Adam and Eve were sent out of the garden to fend for themselves in the wilderness.

The world we know as earth was nothing but water.

“In the beginning of imagination, the world that we know as earth was nothing but water, while above the earth, somewhere in space, was an older more ancient earth.

(King, 10)

In this older world, a curious, pregnant woman named Charm was going for a walk. While on her walk she encountered a hole in the base of a tree that she became curious about, wondering if it had something for her to eat. So she stuck her head in, and fell through. Because this older world sat above the newer world of water, she was surprised to suddenly find herself in the sky, falling towards a vast, endless ocean.

The flying animals of this world flew up and caught her, and rested her on the back of a sea turtle. Immediately all the animals started to look for a solution, because they knew that she couldn’t live on the sea turtle forever. So, Charm asked the swimming animals to get her some dirt that she could use for magic. Many animals dove down as far as they could, but only the otter managed to go down far enough to bring back a clump of dirt.

Charm thanked the animals, and used her magic and this dirt to create land, just in time to give birth to a pair of twins. These twins started shaping the land, making it flat, and building up hills and mountains, digging trenches to make rivers, made trees and flowers, the seasons, and the sun.

Analysis of Greek and Judeo-Christian Gods

The Ancient Greek Mythology paints a picture of a world that is ruled by character, where the attributes of the world are anthropomorphized. It shows how the world is made by people. People who are seemingly all-powerful, undying, and who have dominion in a way that we cannot understand. But still, people, with human emotions, and human flaws, and interact with each other as humans.

In comparison to the Biblical account where Yahweh alone exercised power and agency, an understanding of creation that incorporates the imperfections and trivialities of human personality within these conflicting sources of power is strikingly different. The world of greek mythology is also inherently political, focusing on the ways that different powers conflict. But because the world of judeo-christian creation does not feature a number of gods with conflicting interests, all the power and will is focused on one, all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good creator.

Because of this focusing in power, the idea of morality is thought of largely different as well. the Ancient Greek world is constructed from deities who are just trying to find solutions to their problems — sometimes to the detriment of human kind, sometimes to each other —humanity does not hold the same communal expectations towards the deity of the Canaanites. Instead, humanity is subject to God, and the morality that is taught is that you can be a good person by following Him, alone.

Charm

You may have noticed that the way that I wrote the summary the Biblical creation story and the creation in Greek Myths is significantly different from how I wrote the summary for Charm. Where for the former two I focused on the general state of things, the facts of these particular histories — who had power, what did they do with it, how did they delegate — Charm’s summary focused on the journey that Charm took. This is because Charms story resists compression in a very unique way. Where the former two revolved around the systems at play, who had power, and how do you access it, Charm’s was focused on not on the systems in the world, but on the decisions of a character within it. It was a story!

This may be an artifact of King’s unique style. We can tell from his writing in Green Grass Running water that his work is character-driven, focusing on the intricacies of these interacting characters, the unique qualities of ‘I says’ and Coyote, and the mystery behind the Old Indians throughout. But even with this in mind, there was not a nice and easy way of dissecting this story into its main parts the way that we can in Genesis and the Greco-Roman Pantheon.

Throughout this story, too, is the confusion of time in various ways. In the beginning Charm only has suspicions that she might be pregnant, but by the time she is on the the newly created land, she has given birth to her twins. The passage of time unfolds without the characters or the audience really being aware of it. Perhaps it took the animals a really long time to find the dirt underwater. Perhaps she was just falling for a long time. Perhaps time simply did not behave the same way on an earth without a sun. What is left with the audience is a sense that time is flying.

Further, this mystery of time also alludes to the cyclical nature of time within stories in the indigenous worldview that King is discussing. In the colonized worldview there is an expectation of an absolute beginning to time. This may come from the religious idea of God creating the heavens and the earth, as discussed above, or from the Aristotelian and pre-socratic philosophies of an unmoved mover, but engrained in the European worldview is the idea that not only is the the past is finite, but there also has to be a cause for this finite past. In the modern worldview focused on the capabilities of science, this spiritual understanding of a limited past is embedded in cosmological concepts such as the Big Bang Theory.

However, many cultures around the world have had, and continue to have, an understanding of an infinite or cyclical past without concern. In many indigenous cultures, this past is signified by the cyclical concept of time, where all things have four overlapping phases of life. This is perhaps why King starts the story of creation by having Charm standing and living on a completely different world. In any other kind of story, this would beg the question, of where that world came from, too. But this way of telling the story allows for the audience to understand that this may have happened before, and it may happen again. This philosophy of embracing you curiosity even when it may not give you the answers you are looking for is echoed by Charm’s conversation with the moose at the beginning:

Hello, said the Moose. Aren’t you that nosy woman?

 

Yes, I am, said the woman, and what I want to know is why you are so much larger than me.

 

That’s easy, said the Moose, and he walked into the lake and disappeared.

(King, 11)

This interaction, and the unanswered questions of cosmology fit in with the indigenous ways of knowing and being, and specifically echoes the First Peoples Principles of Learning, specifically, the concept that “learning involves recognizing that some knowledge is sacred and only shared with permission and/or in certain situations.” This story not only teaches us about the concepts of community and cooperation, or the structure of indigenous storytelling, but also about the expectations of what kinds of things can be learned, and what kinds of questions demand answers.

Conclusions?

The worldviews of these three cultures informs and is informed by the stories that they tell. One could imagine the world of Greek myths and the Judeo-christian religion being told early on by people living in an area that was being surrounded by conflicting powers and wars, and trying to make sense of the chaos in various ways. And trying to find meaning in the damage being done around them by seemingly cold and impassive rulers. Where the greek mythology embraced the chaos in order to understand it, the judeo-christian belief attempted to find order within it.

But the world of Charm seems to be told from a community who finds their own survival to be determined by cooperation and respect, where people work together to find a shared understanding of how they can make the world better for others. It comes from a culture that embraces a continuance of nature that has existed through time immemorial, and must continue to exist eternally. It comes from a culture that encourages growth and learning and curiosity, but also puts limits within that to ensure the focus is remains on the world before them.

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“Aristotle’s Prime Mover Explained” YouTube, uploaded by Philosophy Vibe, 26 Apr 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SE8OPfCh2iY

The Bible. The New Revised Standard Version with Apocrypha. Hendrickson Publishers, 1993.

D’Aulaire, Ingri. “D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths” Random House Children’s Books. 1992. Print.

“First People’s Principles of Learning.” First Nations Educational Steering Committee, http://www.fnesc.ca/first-peoples-principles-of-learning/ Accessed 19 Mar 2021

Held, Shai. “How YHWH Became God.” The Wall Street Journal. 11 Mar. 2016. Web. https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-yhwh-became-god-1457732366

Hesiod, “The Works and Days and Theogony,” ReadHowYouWant. 2008. eBook.

Joachim Wtewael. Battle Between the Gods and the Titans. 1613. Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago. Art Institute of Chicago. https://www.artic.edu/artworks/105466/the-battle-between-the-gods-and-the-giants

King, Thomas. “The Truth About Stories.” House of Anansi Press. 2003.

Michelangelo. The Creation of Adam. 1512. The Sistine Chapel, Rome. https://www.museivaticani.va/content/museivaticani/en/collezioni/musei/cappella-sistina/volta/storie-centrali/creazione-di-adamo.html

 

For this blog assignment I would like you to make some comparisons between Harry Robinson’s writing style in “Coyote Makes a Deal with the King Of England” and King’s style in Green Grass, Running Water. What similarities can you find between the two story-telling voices? Coyote and God are present in both texts, how do they compare in character and voice across the stories?

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I have not had the fortune of reading much of Thomas King’s creative works outside of those in this class so far, so my familiarity with how King’s style has changed to take on some of Robinson’s qualities will be somewhat limited. I have, however, been taking note of how their creative styles differ and overlap as I have been reading.

Both Robinson and King use typical aspects of oral storytelling in the way that they engage with their audiences. In the case of Robinson, as discussed previously, this is a carefully controlled pace, expertly weaved into the elaborations and repetitions he uses to tell his story. In the case of King’s Green Grass, Running Water, however, his pace regularly bounces back and forth between three different styles: (1) a traditional written story we often see in Canada; (2) a familiar oral format happening within Coyote’s scenes with God and the Narrator; and (3) the dialogical manner that characters parse out information for the reader.

This form of dialogue is not unfamiliar in the stories we have read so far. In Coyote Makes a Deal with the King of England, most of the important events happen through a form of dialogue. In his story, Coyote’s trickery is unveiled mostly through the dialogue between his characters.  Most other information is relayed to the audience through an implied dialogue of asking questions of the audience that may as well have been asked to a character in the world he has created. “Who? What is it?” Robinson asks as he draws out the trick that Coyote plays on the European explorers. (65) Robinson does this to further engage the audience in his story by giving them what feels like an active role.

However, King uses this dialogue in more ways than just to relay information. He uses dialogue across all three of his styles for use of humour. Throughout the novel, characters are either purposefully, or unintentionally missing the mark in conversations with each other. As Sergeant Cereno interviews Babo, the latter regularly ignores the questions of the former to keep talking about what they want. (50-54) While this shows the attitude that Babo has towards the officer, one that partly disregards his authority, it also creates a very funny comedy of errors, where they regularly misunderstand both questions and answers.

Both King and Robinson use humour throughout their work in a myriad of ways. King suggests, through his reference to Basil Johnston’s essay How do we Learn Language, that “Native peoples have always loved to laugh,” elaborating through Johnston’s work that humour is a common quality among Native stories as it is the means by which understandings about the human experience have been passed on throughout indigenous communities. (23) So this understanding and open use of humour is perhaps not unique to these two authors, so much as it is a favoured means of storytelling among the communities that they both hold dear.

But the way that they present this humour is very different. Robinson’s humour is found in the situations that he sets up in his story, showing the playful nature of Coyote, and of the world through his own eyes. In King of England, Robinson describes how the white people came up the west coast and got misdirected by a trapped Coyote, leading them into the fog across the Pacific Ocean. (64-6) Each time the Europeans try to get closer to Coyote, he goes faster across the water; making them build faster boats to try to catch him, but never able to. The playful way that Coyote evades the European explorers across the Pacific shows the kind of humour that Robinson loves. King, also loving this manner of storytelling, lets us see the strings in this playful way that storytellers engage with their audience as he tells his story of Charm:

“Sometimes when I tell this story to children, I slow it down and have Charm stick her head into that hole by degrees. But most of you are adults and have already figured out that Charm is going to stick her head into that hole so far that she’s either going to get stuck or she’s going to fall through.” (Robinson, 13)

Here, both Robinson and King have shown how you can draw the humour out of people by the way that you tell your story. By drawing out the dilemma, and inching slowly towards an obvious solution, they are both making their audience feel engaged in the creation of the story and with the laughter.

King, on the other hand finds a lot of his humour by playing with his audience’s expectations. He does this in the storyteller format, as in the above story of Charm, where he lingers on the part of the story that he knows the audience has already started to figure out. But King also uses an element of absurdity to make his jokes noticed an appreciated. This ranges from the subtlety of the character Dr. Joe Hovaugh representing the vision of Northrop Frye in Green Grass, Running Water (and the many other hidden puns and references within the characters in his story); to the very existence of God within the narrative.

Both Robinson and King have God playing a similar role within the text, which is to say, largely in the background. Where God is a named character within both stories, he is not represented in the same way.

In King of England, Robinson holds God as the figurehead of creation, dominating Coyote and all of humanity. God has such authority that we only know of his position and interests through the Angel that he sends down to speak with Coyote, much like in the biblical tales. Further, it is through Coyote that his will is done, by sending him to England to make arrangements with the King. Despite the chaotic nature that Coyote has, he appears quite subdued in this story, and is clearly subordinate to God.

 However, in King’s story, God is not this grand ruler of all that we see in Robinson’s. In fact the idea of God is played with to the point of ridicule, playing the role of what seems to be a newborn puppy, rather than a dignified authority. Where Coyote answers to God in Robinson’s work, God is created in Green Grass, Running Water by one of Coyote’s particularly silly, and restless dreams. While highlighting King’s playful and imaginative sense of humour, this also clearly shows the relationship between God and Coyote: one where Coyote’s sense of mischief and chaos answers to no one, not even little ol’ GOD.

By presenting God in this way, Robinson is able to portray both characters as ultimately limited. After all, at the end of the day, Coyote is Coyote. He is not the ruler of the universe, he is a trickster that acts impulsively and makes mistakes, escalating to the point within the first 2 pages of the novel, that the narrator has to say to Coyote “Now you’ve done it,” as he accidentally creates God.

This interaction between God and Coyote in either story perhaps draws upon the relationship between the two within the battling spiritualities of Natives and Europeans. Where Robinson portrays God in the manner that we are used to seeing him in this culture — a high, powerful, authority figure — King makes God a comic relief, and ultimately subject to Coyote’s most prominent quality: chaos. Where Robinson is perhaps sympathetic to the idea of a deity, King appears to be able to do without, embracing a world that is not in the control of an authority, but, in some way, responsible for one.

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King, Thomas. Green Grass, Running Water. HarperPerennial Modern Classics. 2007

King, Thomas. The Truth about Stories. House of Anansi Press. 2003.

Robinson, Harry. Living by Stories. Talonbooks, Feb 2009.

Flick, Jane. “Reading Notes for Thomas King’s Green Grass Running Water.” CanLit. 1999. 140-172. https://canlit.ca/article/reading-notes-for-thomas-kings-green-grass-running-water/

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 both King’s article and Robinson’s story.

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What I noticed when telling my own story to family and friends a few weeks back, and what I had seen from others’ posts as well, was that writing a story has a very different feeling from telling the story. For myself, my written voice is a lot more elaborate, uses a lot more words, and — having had practice — captures my ideas a lot better. But my oral voice is more direct, and uses more accessible, common words. Our understanding of what words feel good to use, the phrasing, the size and variation of the sentences changes dramatically between putting our stories down on paper, and saying them out loud. The words that we choose for written text may look the way that we want our ideas to be seen, but rarely do they appear as they sound.

If I were to read my ideas out loud the way the would appear on the screen, it might be hard for the average listener to follow, as it just isn’t the way that people tend to talk to each other, even if it is the way that we might read. I would normally assume, too, that this would be the same if I were to switch roles, and transcribe the spoken word into the written. However, in Coyote Makes a Deal with the King of England, Harry Robinson demonstrates great skill at doing just that while maintaining the connection between storyteller and (for lack of a better word) listener.

Looking at the text of this book, the first impression that I am given is that it looks like poetry. It is not written in the format that I would normally recognize as a story in the European tradition. It has lots of single lines, one after another. Some larger than others, some just a couple of words. There are many breaks in the writing, where there is an empty line between spaces. If it weren’t for the accurate use of capitals in this book, it would look like a collection of E.E. Cummings’ work.

However, despite appearances, this story is not written like poetry in the traditional sense, either. Reading the story feels like a conversation. Like someone sitting down at the table across from you, and telling you how they see things. It feels honest, and careful. And familiar. This closeness seems to lure you in to the mind of the storyteller as Robinson recounts his tale.

Thomas King describes this as Robinson “recreating at once the storyteller and the performance,” by developing an oral syntax that prevents the reader from just reading in their head. (186) King elaborates that the voice of the storyteller, the gestures, and the interaction are all lost when trying to transcribe a story for use in text. But by laying out his stories in the form of fragmented ideas, told slowly through repetitive, winding journeys, it is somewhere between inconvenient and impossible to skim the text, as so much information about what is going on will be lost. By forcing the reader to read each word like this, Robinson has created a means of guiding the reader to imagine the story the way it is meant to be told — out loud. Included in this is the imaginings of gestures, raising voice, and beyond anything else, a storyteller.

On reading the text, ‘pace’ was one of the first qualities that I noticed. The pace is very controlled and simultaneously rhythmic and arhythmic. I am a very slow reader, and normally tend to read at a speaking pace, finding it very difficult to skim. So reading rate felt unaffected. But despite this, I actually found it quite difficult to put the text down, or take a break from it. This was not just because it was captivating, but almost as if I didn’t want to interrupt the flow, or the conversation.

Each line tells us an idea that we are supposed to hang onto before moving on to the next. But some of these ideas are more important than others. Robinson emphasizes these ideas by telling and retelling them. Sometimes the same way, other times in different ways. When describing Coyote and the Indians waiting for the kings of England to give indigenous people rights to land on a reserve. He lists each King out, one, two, three, four, and eventually comes to a new leader who instead is going to be a Queen. This is how he describes the change to queen Elizabeth II: 

(76)

 

Instead of passing on with new information, King hangs on to the idea of the new crown being a woman. Notice how he cycles through the same ideas throughout this passage: a king, a queen, they don’t have a boy, they have a daughter. Using repetitive connections and sentence starters — maybe, when, they — gives us a sense of a syncopated rhythm as this idea is hashed and rehashed again and again.

Partly, Robinson does this to be absolutely sure that the ‘listener’ understands what he means. Partly, Robinson does this because it is an important piece of history that he remembers being monumental at the time. Having been in his 50s at the time of her coronation, this was likely something that has stuck with him in the 30 years before writing this down. But he also does this because he is a great and practiced storyteller. We know that if something hasn’t happened until Queen Elizabeth II, then the story must continue when she is introduced, and hanging onto that idea lets the listener (or reader, in this case) feel hooked on his telling.

This manner of emphasizing and reclarifying information as the story is being told is a hallmark of the oral tradition, and one that is historically not welcome in the European tradition of the written word. What often seems to be expected from written work is that if it is worth saying, it is worth saying right the first time.

As I read it aloud to my partner, I felt a bit embarrassed at first, as the story was not told through a voice that you could mistake as my own. But I got into the flow of it, and felt quite active in the role of storyteller. My partner was a bit confused with the story as the listener, not prepared, I think, for the jumbling of ideas, but by the time she started to read to me, it was clear that she found the role fun to put on as well.

King is right, I think, to say that Robinson has done something incredible in the way that he has transcribed his stories. Where we might have missed this complex and captivating story if written in plain text, edited down to suit the traditional, European style, instead Robinson has led us into the role of storyteller and given us a chance to slow down and think about what makes a story important, and more significantly, what makes it sound important.

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King, Thomas. “Godzilla vs. Post-Colonial.” Unhomely States: Theorizing English-Canadian Postcolonialism. Mississauga, ON: Broadview, 2004. 183- 190.

Roberts, Linzie. “E.E. Cummings: The Power of Structure and Form.” Owlcation, https://owlcation.com/humanities/EE-Cummings-The-Power-of-Structure-and-Form. Accessed 5 March 2021.

Robinson, Harry. “Coyote Makes a Deal with the King Of England.” Living by Stories: a Journey of Landscape and Memory. Ed. Wendy Wickwire. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2005. 64-85.

Scott, Tom. “The Hidden Rules of Conversation.” YouTube, uploaded by Tom Scott, 4 May 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJEaMtNN_dM.

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

 

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First stories tell us how the world was created. In The Truth about Stories, King tells us two creation stories; one about how Charm falls from the sky pregnant with twins and creates the world out of a bit of mud with the help of all the water animals, and another about God creating heaven and earth with his words, and then Adam and Eve and the Garden. King provides us with a neat analysis of how each story reflects a distinct worldview. “The Earth Diver” story reflects a world created through collaboration, the “Genesis” story reflects a world created through a single will and an imposed hierarchical order of things: God, man, animals, plants. The differences all seem to come down to co-operation or competition — a nice clean-cut satisfying dichotomy. However, a choice must be made: you can only believe ONE of the stories is the true story of creation – right? That’s the thing about creation stories; only one can be sacred and the others are just stories. Strangely, this analysis reflects the kind of binary thinking that Chamberlin, and so many others, including King himself, would caution us to stop and examine. So, why does King create dichotomies for us to examine these two creation stories? Why does he emphasize the believability of one story over the other — as he says, he purposefully tells us the “Genesis” story with an authoritative voice, and “The Earth Diver” story with a storyteller’s voice. Why does King give us this analysis that depends on pairing up oppositions into a tidy row of dichotomies? What is he trying to show us?

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Thomas King represents these two stories in two very different, almost oppositional ways, representing the different world views, and spiritualities that these stories are told from. The biblical tale talks about the hierarchy of creation, with God at the top, and humans having dominion over the land. It expresses the ideology of our creation being an act of an authority figure that we must be devoted to in order to survive the ultimate turmoil of existence. Meanwhile, the story of Charm talks about the world as an imperfect place, where mistakes are made, characters are flawed, and yet still have value with how they live. No authority instructed Charm on how to make the world. But with the support of her newfound community of animals, she was able to help them make the land for them, on and near which they can live in harmony in pursuit of their survival. (23)

King is doing a few things by setting these two stories at ends with each other. First, he is showcasing how these two ideologies have shaped history. He is, of course, representing beliefs that are in some way contrary with each other, because when we view how these two worldviews interacted with each other in our past, the result was one worldview assuming dominance over the other, and attempting to control them “for their own good.” The dominance of one group over another is not an idea that is formed in Charm’s story of creation, but is rather built on over and over again throughout the many stories in the Bible. Here, King is comparing the worlds of these two culture’s spiritualities and the world that makes up our history.

Second, King is breaking from the colonial norm of assuming one truth and embracing the complex nature of the world that lives outside of our minds. It is a colonial mindset that finds co-existence of opposing views discomforting. After all, where in the Biblical story all truth and all power points towards god, in the story of charm, life is permeated with cooperation and harmony.

Dichotomies are a colonial construct. Believing that there is an inherent, mutually exclusive opposition between states of being (rich/poor, white/black, strong/weak, right/wrong, etc.) is a way that colonial mindset boils down complex ideas into easy to understand bites that let us to make what feels like meaningful statements about the world. As King puts it “we trust easy oppositions. We are suspicious of complexities, distrustful of contradictions, fearful of enigmas.” (25)

We have ideas about how the world is black and white that we have been taught to embrace as soon as we start learning the English language. As young children we learn all about male and female, boy and girl, and yet there is no standard in grade-level education where students are expected to develop a broader understanding of the differences between gender identity, gender expression, sexuality, and sex, and how the many variations along the spectrum between boy and girl, male and female, are expected to fit in to what we know.

It feels controversial to say, but few, if any, of the binary ways of thinking that we accept in everyday life actually line up with reality and our lived experience. That is not to say that the colonial framework is fundamentally flawed (though this may be contested), but more that the language that we have learned in this culture simply does not recognize a gap between what our words boil down we understand and the complexity of what we experience.

The idea that things are black and white are an essential part of what King describes from the colonial creation story: all creative power lies with God, and it is through his actions that anything exists. (24) With ultimate power, knowledge, and good will in the hands of one being, there exists the faith that there is one single truth, and only one perspective that matters.

With this objectivity, the world that we take in can be easily divided up into categories that we can share and compare with others. We categorize ideas into ‘right’ and ‘wrong,’ and ‘success’ and ‘failure,’ because our words demand that we put things into these categories, rather than accept them as something broader.

King puts these two stories at ends to showcase how the colonial framework of competition and hierarchy has a tendency to dominate our ways of thinking. He is showcasing how colonial thinking alters our expectations. By posing these two stories in conflict, King is demonstrating how these two worldviews have clashed in the past, continue to clash in the present, and how these two stories express the ideologies that each culture holds dear.

I had misread the final paragraph in this chapter when I read it the first time. King had previously set the scene, talking about how the conceit of the biblical narrative seems to fuel our thirst for goods such as electricity and private property, and allows us to control the expression of race and gender which we make them discriminatory. Through this, I read the final lines as “but don’t say you would have lived your life the same way had you only heard this story.” I quickly realized my mistake, though I thought the implication here was clear, and I have not been able to stop thinking of it this way: The stories that we grow up with shape the way that the move through the world.

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Green, Hank. “Human Sexuality is Complicated….” YouTube, uploaded by vlogbrothers, 12 Oct. 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXAoG8vAyzI

King, Thomas. The Truth about Stories: a Native Narrative. Anansi, 2007.

Quinn, Emily. “The way we think about biological sex is wrong.” YouTube, uploaded by TED, 6 Mar. 2019, https://www.ted.com/talks/emily_quinn_the_way_we_think_about_biological_sex_is_wrong

Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Tractatus Logico.

Bonus Link:

Piapot, Ntawnis. “9-year-old Sask. girl embraces identity through makeup, ribbon skirts.” CBC Indigenous, https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/9-year-old-indigenous-girl-makeup-identity-1.5921066. Accessed 21 Feb. 2021, 

When I was writing my own thoughts about home, I came up with a few ideas that stuck with me through my entry.

I started by thinking of ‘place’ as an environment and the expected things that fill that environment. So for myself growing up in a suburb, that place was an environment filled with winding streets, residences, corner stores, and friends.

I thought of space, as the specific things that I remembered in that environment, and how those specific things changed in time. In my own suburb, where the place was filled with residences that you would expect to see in a neighbourhood, the space had memories of friends’ houses, and how after all these years those houses are not my friends’ anymore.

I thought about home as being a place that was safe to explore, secure enough to be myself, and grounded enough that I could rest at the end of the day.

Peers’ thoughts

The following are a list of themes discussed in my peers blog posts on the same topic:

• Unique Space
• Land
• Independence
• Freedom
• Joy and Happiness and Love and Pride
• Memories
• Hope, Future
• Security, Care
• Family
• Community
• Belonging
• Making Connections
• Shared Experience and History
• Knowledge
• Learning

This list far exceeds the ideas that I discussed in my own post. When reading my peers’ blogs, I was astounded to find how people managed to articulate my exact thoughts about home, while approaching it in an entirely different way. I had considered ideas of space, freedom, security and adventure in my own description, and yet all of these other ideas of family, community, and belong; of shared experience and memories — none of them seem at all different to how I would want my feelings of home articulated, and yet were left out in my own post.

I have broken down my thoughts into general themes below, with a conclusion that wraps up these ideas at the bottom. There simply was a lot to unpack in my peers’ work, and I wanted to make sure their writings were done justice.

Unique Space and Land

I had considered the idea of place and space as being essential to our ideas of home, but I hadn’t considered how the uniqueness of that space would be essential. Holly, Victoria, Laura, Grace, and Magda all spoke about home involving a unique space that we can get to know personally. Laura, Magda, and Grace all spoke about the importance of land and nature in the places that we call home, and how they influence our feelings towards them. Grace specifically having the experience of growing up on an island, finds the idea of land not connected to the ocean as being unsettling and I have to say that, having grown up on the coast and always being near a beach or a river, I have to agree.

Holly and Victoria Specifically came across the ideas of seeing your home as space that is created by our living there. In Victoria’s story, she describes how a feeling of home starts to take shape from just the few days spent in an empty apartment. These “hints of home” coming in the forms of abandoned coffee and yet to be washed dishes, and framed pictures already starting to be hung on the walls. In Holly’s, the deep understanding of your space as how the layout reflects your experience.

Powerful Emotions

In general, we often have positive feelings of home. I was specific in my own entry to not declare that everyone’s experience of home is positive, but in our posts, it seems that many have those positive feelings of home. Presumably, when we do not feel these positive associations, we try to find other places to call home as we grow.

Magda, Holly, and Cayla had all uncovered powerful emotions that represent home in their blog entries. Magda had discussed the ideas of hope and future prospects as being something that fills the space and feeling of home. Both Magda and Cayla had added on with positive associations we have with home; feelings of Joy and Happiness and Love. Cayla talked about finding ways to stay entertained, engaged, and connected to the world. I suppose this is why I had brought in my memories of long bikerides as a kid. For me, it was a great way to pass time and feel connected to the space that surrounded me.

And Holly and Cayla both discussed how home is a place where we don’t just make memories, we take the time to make memories. When we feel at home, we create experiences that we can look back on when thinking of our past.

Security, Community, and Belonging

Ultimately I refer to home most often in terms of my ‘home base’. I think of home in my day-to-day as the place where I can relax and turn off for a bit. Magda, Cayla, Victoria, and Laura also saw ‘home’ as a place where we can feel this sense of security. A place to relax, find peace of mind, and to wind down. Victoria, Laura, and Magda all talk about how attached the feelings of family and community are to the feeling of home, with Magda describing community in terms of a group that provides freedom, play, and support. Finally Laura, added the feeling of belonging to this idea of community, security and family. And I have thought of this belonging throughout my life — from experiences in school and in university; in my professional life; and in my personal life. We feel at home when we think of our space as being a place that we belong. From the activities we do and the entertainment we seek we are in search of a sense of belonging connected to our feeling of home.

Connections and Experience

When I was describing my feeling of home, I was very focussed on the idea of home as a noun.  ‘Home’ is a place that we experience, and I wanted to describe that experience as best as I could. I had not, however, considered thinking of home a verb, or as a thing that we are in an active roll of doing and creating. Magda discusses how we don’t just find ourselves in a community, we build ourselves into that community. From the early ages of preschool and before, we are making connections to those around us in order to form that community. These connections give us that same sense of belonging, and help us navigate the spaces that we include in our ideas of home.

But we don’t just make these connections in the young ages of 3 and 4. We are making these connections throughout our lives, identifying with those who can share in our experiences of the world, and who come from a shared history. Holly and Laura both describe this idea of shared experience in our ideas of home, that communities that we make our homes alongside share in the mutual feeling of belonging through their shared experiences and cultural contexts. 

Knowledge and Learning

Throughout these entries is the feeling that home isn’t just about memories, or about our feelings of community and belonging. They come back to that idea of our space being unique, and our knowledge of how it unique. Our knowledge comes in many forms. As Cayla describes, it may be a space where learning happens, or may be a place where we know the resources around us. To Laura, it may be the knowledge of the space, its history, its meaning, and its context. To Grace, telling the story of the settlers who colonized her island as their home this knowledge may be in the form of stories told about the land that we live on.

Conclusion — TL;DR

I was amazed at how widely we think about home, and how so many people consider such similar ideas, and such drastically different ideas. For instance, it seems that we all agreed that security and rest are an important part of what we find in a home. We all considered how home is contained in a physical space, but also an emotional space, and that we have complex ways of navigating these feelings. We all seemed to consider that home changes over time in various ways. Home, as a child is different to home as an adult.

But many had some really unique ideas that don’t seem to contradict our ideas of home. Home having a specific connect to story was an interesting thing to read from Grace, who had a unique understanding of the place that she grew up.

Home being a place where we learn and understand responsibility in different stages of life was an idea of Cayla’s that was profound and eye-opening, but still somehow felt fundamentally true.

Victoria and Holly both came to the conclusion of home involving a specific understanding of how a space is unique to us, and I have not been able to get this idea out of my head since.

And Laura thought about how home exists in your sense belonging to a group, to a space, to an experience. And this, too, seems essential to how I think about home, but had not considered before now.

I’ve learned a lot in this assignment about how our ideas about home all cover very similar ground, while taking many different paths across it. Some experience home in how they connect to others, how they think about the land, or how they remember their past. But each of these seem to just be a perspective with which we can regard a generally understandable space.