This post is in response to Question 5.

One of the first things I noticed during my reading of the story about the Coyote and his twin was the presence of binaries. The twins themselves, referring to them as the ‘elder’ and the ‘younger’, and, of course, the opposition of Black and White, all indicate a sort of binary dynamic, in which there is no in-between (or no grey). In reality, we know that there are seemingly infinite shades of grey between black and white and so I wondered about the significance of binaries within the story. I was led to think about the ways in which binaries encourage “othering” and the occurrence of othering in this story and in Canada’s history (or rather, Indigenous history). Othering creates a mindset that encourages divisions between “us and them”, ultimately creating binaries (discussed in ‘2: Definitions’ of this link). Perhaps the repetition and reference to different binaries throughout this story are allusions to the role of othering in the conflicts between the Coyote twins.

While reading the story I was particularly interested in the elder Coyote’s visit to the king. Upon investigation, I discovered that Chief Joe Capilano from Squamish, Chief Charley Isipaymilt from Cowichan, and Chief Basil David from Shuswap, travelled to England in 1906 for an audience with King Edward VII. (For the sake of my blog’s length I will not go into the details of this event but I highly recommend reading over these articles; I found them fascinating and had never heard about this before). These chiefs came from BC (Harry Robinson’s home) and so I wondered about the relationship between this event and the Coyote’s visit with the king, although the outcomes of the two visits differed in their productivity.

London newspapers covered the Chiefs’ audience with the King

With regard to the course theme of investigating intersections between story and literature, I noticed that the written word acted as a sort of interruption throughout the story. ‘Paper’ (and the written words on it) seemed to act as a catalyst for the rising action of the story’s plot.

When “the younger twin stole a written document-a paper-he had been warned not to touch” he was banished to a distant land and the elder Coyote was “left in his place of origin” (9). (To me, this echoed Eve’s banishment from the Garden of Eden after eating the fruit she had been warned not to touch. Some of my previous blogs have referred to the story of Adam and Eve too but I just keep making connections to it.) Therefore, the paper is the very reason for the separation between the twins, which ultimately leads to the conflict between them and to the younger Coyote (and thus, the white man) being able to “tell a lie more easily” (10).

Another example of written word interrupting potential peace in the story occurs when the younger twin’s descendants return to North America and they initiate conflict. It is significant that the storyteller (Harry) notes that the younger twin’s descendants “concealed the contents of the ‘paper'” (10). This made me immensely curious as to what the contents of the paper are. (Please leave a comment if you have any ideas on this.) Once again, the presence of the paper is an underlying reason for the story’s conflict.

I noticed that written word was a central factor in the elder Coyote’s meeting with the king, as they “produced a book that outlined a set of codes by which the two groups were supposed to live and interact” (10). The “Black and White” book was distributed but the story of the Coyote twins ends when one of Harry’s friends “having attended residential school, … could read English. But he died before he could reveal its contents to his colleagues” (10). This conclusion to the story is a vital intersection between story and literature. The set of codes that would (supposedly) allow the two groups to coexist peacefully is unable to be conveyed properly due to the barrier that is posed by written word. It is ironic and woeful that the skill to translate the contents of the Black and White was due to the man’s forced attendance at a residential school. The man’s death ultimately proves that this avenue to peace (attempting to translate of the contents of the book through cultural genocide of one group) leads only to death and does not yield a translation nor does it yield peace.

Works Cited