The section that I cover in Green Grass Running Water covers pages 9-15. This particular section begins with four characters all of which are trying to begin by telling a story of creation. However before the story can begin each character continually argues with each other as to how the story actually starts. It seems that each of them have a different interpretation as to what the true beginning may actually be, and quarrel with each other until they are able to get it right. I believe that this quarrel is part of an essential theme that this novel tries to convey, which is that each man, depending on their people’s cultural and historical background has a different version of the creation story. This point is exemplified by the fact that each of the names of these characters stem from very different cultural figures that have appeared throughout man’s history, whether that be from popular American culture, the bible, or stories about Native Americans.

Lone Ranger
The Lone Ranger is an American cultural icon and is in a way considered to be one of the country’s first “superheroes”. The character was first introduced to American audiences in the 1930’s through a radio show, which later stemmed into comic books, tv shows, and a feature film in 2013. The origins of the character begin with a group of Texas rangers chasing down a criminal named Butch Cavendish. However Butch and his gang ambush the ranger killing all of them, except for one survivor. This survivor is then brought back to health by a Native American man named Tonto.

When trying to tell the story of creation the Lone Ranger starts with “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep-“. I believe that the reason for typical Judeo-Christian telling of the creation story is because the Lone Ranger is very much a western character. This western character coming from the United States would typically adhere to the religious traditions of the country, which during that time typically of Christian faith. However just because he believes that this is his version of creation, doesn’t mean that it is the only one, as we shall see from the other characters.

Ishmael
Ishmael is a much more ancient cultural figure that stems from the Bible and the Quran. As a character Ishmael is the son of Abraham, he was born from a need for him to have a son, as his wife Sarah was too old to have children. Thus Abraham sleeps with his maid servant Hagar. However through miracle Sarah is later able to have a child Isaac.

Hawkeye

Robinson Crusoe

The medicine wheel is a tool that Native American people use as a way to view the world. As a metaphor the Medicine wheel can represents a number things such as the stages of life, the seasons within a year, or the four states of being. Other than being a representation of certain ideas it can also come in different forms which include an “artifact or painting, or it can be a physical construction of the land.” What connects all these different representations is that the medicine wheel is cyclical and always turning. This means that while all these states come to pass, they also return, in an everlasting cycle of change. In his novel Green Grass Running Water Thomas King uses the flexible nature of the medicine wheel and applies it in own storytelling. This is evident in each chapter of his book which is clearly inspired by the medicine wheel cyclical structure due to the fact that each of them all begin the same way, but also end the same way. This is seen on the very page with King starting his novel with the line “In the beginning, there was nothing. Just the water.” Moreover the story also begins with the tale of coyote, and also ends with coyote as well.

Another aspect of the medicine wheel that is reflected in King’s novel is that both deal with the story and concept of creation. The medicine wheel reflects how ““Aboriginal peoples see and respond to the world in a circular fashion and are influenced by examples of the cirlces of creation in our environment.””

Another aspect of the medicine wheel that I found so interesting is, as I have previously mentioned, there is no one set interpretation as to what exactly it represents, and as a result it has been utilized in many different ways. I am not sure if many of these are accurate but if you search for images for Medicine wheel on google you are bound to get many different wheels each with their own way of categorizing each of its four quadrants. This in my opinion can get quite confusing as it is hard to determine which one should be pegged as the standard, if there is even any standard at all. In a way, this is the same concept that Thomas King is trying to impart in us in his novel. This is because the medicine wheel, like the stories that permeate Native American culture, are notions that one can never truly understand it as an outsider. Thus it is important that we try to take in these cultural institutions as they are, instead of immediately trying to analyzing it using your intellect. In other words, it is better to just take the story, like the medicine wheel as is, and not what you may interpret it to be. Ironically, I believe that doing this will actually allow outsiders to better connect with what is going on, rather than continually analyze what it may represent which only serves to affect your idea of what the story is truly trying to convey.

Works Cited:

In his book White Civility: The Literary Project of English Canada Daniel Coleman argues that the concept of Canadian whiteness is not inherent to the country’s origins. Instead this idea of whiteness is really just a project of white colonialists which dates all the way back to the early 1800’s. This project was focused on ensuring that being white would be the norm in Canada, and all other races would be treated outliers in what was believed to be a largely a white, English Canada. This would be achieved mainly through the use of literature, which was used to promote the misleading notion that racial norms in Canada should only be based on “a specific form of whiteness based on a British form of civility.” (Coleman 5)

Moreover Coleman points out the impact of this misleading notion in the opening pages of his book. In it he references an account of a South Asian mother who finds evidence of this literary project of English Canada through her own daughter. This discovery was instigated in a classroom, wherein a teacher asked her daughter to draw her own family in class, only for her to respond with drawings of people that were blond haired, white skinned, and blue eyed. When confronted by her mother the little girl responded as logically as she could stating that she copied to from all the books that she has read, which only depicted white families. This example therein shows that the project of white civility has largely succeeded, not only including itself into the culture of Canada, but also permeating within the minds of its youth, changing the way they identify with themselves.

Fortunately the Canadian government over the years has taken steps to ensure that the racial conception of a Canadian is not just that of whiteness. One such example of this effort comes from the Multiculturalism Act of 1989, which “normalized the government’s commitment to “promote the full and equitable participation of individuals and communities of all origins in the continuing evolution and shaping of all aspects of Canadian society””. This involves creating a number of laws that would promote laws that help “protect ethnic, racial, linguistic, and religious diversity” (Historica Canada) not just for white Canadians, but for all other races present in the country as well.

From this act it is clear that Coleman’s argument regarding this project of ensuring white civility most definitely had some merit to it. With the account of the South Asian mother revealing that it’s goal was largely a success. In addition that particular account was surely just one of many instances wherein people who were not white felt marginalized, which I think is one of the main reasons as why the Canadian government sought to alleviate these issues through the Multiculturalism Act of 1989.

In my opinion since this act was put in motion Canada has definitely become much more racially varied both demographically and culturally. Now rather than whiteness my own conception of Canada is a place that doesn’t really have a set identity, as it is a place that is defined by diversity of its people rather than a particular race.

Words Cited:

Coleman, Daniel. White Civility: The Literary Project of English Canada. Toronto: U of Toronto, 2006. Print.

Burnet, Jean, and Leo Driedger. “Multiculturalism.” The Canadian Encyclopedia. Historica Canada, n.d. Web. 29 Oct. 2016.

In the article “A Map that Roared and an Original Atlas: Canada, Cartography, and the Narrative Nation”, Matthew Sparks claims that the original atlas he writes about is used to provide a “cartographic “musical score”. (468). The reason why he calls it a musical score is that it shows every note of the land. Thus each note can reveal the subtleties of its history, and is also all jotted down in a way that those who study the map can better understand the origins of it. Moreover the musical score metaphor is one that also allows Canadians to rethink who Canada’s original settlers were, while also changing their original notions of wherever it’s colonial frontiers may have originally began as well.

Moreover, in this atlas more than one area is marked as the beginning of the nation of Canada, which discredits the idea that the country has only one national origin. This very idea is what brings Judge McEachern to say “We’ll call this the map that roared.” Judge McEachern references the roar because this comparison connotes some sort of power and influence. In addition a roar, like this map is able to bring the attention of anyone who can hear it, or in this particular case, see it. Thus, the map in this context is roaring, as it is able to bring greater attention to the land claims made by the Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en does. In addition, another reason roaring map is important as it is able to highlight signal the issues the Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en people had withthe Canadian government, and bring attention to the issues surrounding colonization of their land.

Other than the word itself, the roar that Judge McEachern’s speaks about may also be a reference to the “The Mouse that Roared”, a 1959 movie based on Cold War geopolitics. According to IMDB the movie is about a poor country who declares war against the United States, while also having no intention to actually win it at all. In fact the loss of this war is all part of the poor country’s elaborate plan to receive a large donation of money from the United States, as a way for them to rebuild their economy. Thus the word roar in relation to this particular film, may reveal the true meaning of Judge McEachern’s statement as well as the way he views the plight of the Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en people. So in this context the map itself is Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’enthe people’s own declaration of war, that in Judge McEachern’s perspective will surely lose. However Judge McEachern likely believes that this loss by the Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’enthe people are also all part of their plan to bring some attention to the issues they face.

Words Cited:
“The Mouse That Roared.” IMDb. IMDb.com, n.d. Web. 23 Oct. 2016.

Sparke, Matthew. “A Map That Roared and an Original Atlas: Canada, Cartography, and the Narration of Nation.” Theories of Mapping Practice and Cartographic Representation The Map Reader (2011): 430-39. Web. 23 Oct. 2016.

When trying to understand contact stories it is important to acknowledge that unless we go back in time and are able to listen to every story from every storyteller, can never truly derive the full meaning of them. As discussed in class this is primarily due to two main reasons.

The first reason is that social interaction is critical to this process of story telling. While one may be able to rewrite and collect these stories in printed or audio form they will never be able to perfectly replicate the story that would be told. This is because storytellers don’t just recite what they hear, but change or alter their storytelling in subtle ways depending on the social context they are in.

The second reason is due to the effects of the Indian Act which outlawed the telling of stories in the potlatch. This not only prevented story tellers from recording their knowledge through writing, but also prevented removed the social interaction that is required for these stories to be told properly.

While these two reasons are important reasons for the lack of meaningfulness we may find in these first stories, Harry Robinson, a storyteller who was “a member of the Lower Similkameen Band of the Interior Salish people” (“Harry Robinson”) gives as a third reason, which is death. Through death not only is the social process of storytelling removed, but also the storyteller him/herself. This means that the storyteller’s decades of accumulated knowledge regarding these first stories can never truly be passed on by writing, or even through the use of oral tradition. According to his bio Robinson had learned “hundreds of stories that he had learned in childhood.” (“Harry Robinson”) While individual stories can be meaningful on their own, it is even more so when more than one are included. This because each stories impacts each other, Robinson’s individual interpretation of each story like influenced the stories he told, also by current events that happened through his lifetime such as “his interpretation of the landing on the moon of the American astronaut Neil Armstrong.” (Twigg) This is because stories don’t exist in a vacuum, the context of an individual story will forever be altered once one has another story, or event, to compare it to. Thus certain adjustments to one’s storytelling will be altered depending on what stories or experiences he/she has had over his/her lifetime. Thus it is very like the Robinson was able to choose what events are meaningful to him as well, and is able to incorporate that into his stories.

Furthermore each storyteller has his/her own specific way of telling their story, that cannot just be adopted by another person no matter how many times they are presented with the story. This is because each storyteller uses unique mannerisms, pronunciations, and emphasis, based certain aspects of the story they are telling. Unfortunately, while these specifics are extremely essential in understanding these contact stories, they are subtleties that can not be passed on through text or audio. Thus, in order for one to be told this specific tale as accurate as possible, it still must be experienced within the physical space of the storyteller.

Works Cited:
“TALON HOME.” Harry Robinson » Authors » Talonbooks. Talonbooks, 23 Mar. 2010. Web. 22 Oct. 2016.

Twigg, Alan. “ABCBookWorld.” ABCBookWorld. ABCBookWorld, n.d. Web. 22 Oct. 2016.

Our sense of home
1)Home is not always a tangible place
Home does not necessarily have to be tied to a physical space. In much of the blogs I have read people associated their concept of home with a certain feeling, that makes them feel at ease. This sentiment is shared by a recent article I have read affirming that “there’s a big psychological difference between feeling at home and being at home.” (Klinkenborg) there’s a big psychological difference between feeling at home and being home. For most people, this feeling usually stems from being around family and friends you have grown up with, or loved ones both old and new.

2)Home is a fluid concept, it can change over time
Since home is not always something tangible, but more of a feeling one has, it seems possible that you can transport those same feelings of ease to somewhere new. A new study from the University of Alabama suggests that home isn’t really about home, but the “feelings and qualities” we usually associate with it. However “When these qualities aren’t present in a new environment, we begin to long for them”. (Ho)
From the blogs I have read I found that this finding was largely true with many people noting that as they first moved they, they would first feel very homesick. However once they stayed there long enough they would develop these feelings of home over time, albeit in a different location

3)Home is tied to memory
A place is nothing without the memories attached to it. Most people do not feel home because of the space itself, but because of the memories they have associated with it over time.

Citations:
Ho, Derrick. “Homesickness Isn’t Really about ‘home'” CNN. Cable News Network, 16 Aug. 2010. Web. 13 Oct. 2016.

Klinkenborg, Verlyn. “The Definition of Home.” Smithsonian Magazine. Smithsonian, May 2012. Web. 13 Oct. 2016.

As mentioned in my previous blog posts, I have spent the majority of my life living in the Philippines, and while I identify this place as my home, due to a majority of my family and friends residing here. However I must admit I have never actually felt completely at ease living here either.

This unease began when I was still in grade school where over the span of many years I moved to a variety of International schools where English was the primary language, and Filipino was hardly ever spoken. Over the years as my English improved, the grasp I had over my native tongue dissipated. While this was all well and good while I was in the safe English-speaking gates of my house and school, outside it I would be thrust into a world where I felt alienated, and truly foreign. Now whenever I am approached by someone who speaks to me in my own language constantly I feel like a deer in head lights. While I understand the majority of what they are saying, I fail to respond in a manner that is coherent or sometimes even appropriate. In this way, I feel like not only a foreigner in my own country, but a fraud as well.

Furthermore as the Philippines Is still a developing country with a high crime rate, going outside your home and walking from place to place isn’t as much of an option, even until today. Ever since I could remember I was told to never walk alone as I was risk at getting mugged or even kidnapped! This fear instilled into me at a very young age curbed my ability to explore my own country, or even speak to my fellow citizens, as I felt like I was constantly in danger.

Moving to Canada in 2012 only exacerbated this dichotomy I felt between home and alienation further as I experienced the clear differences between the two countries. While in the Philippines I felt confined to certain spaces, in Vancouver I felt liberated, able to walk and take a bus from one location to the next without fearing the people that surrounded me. Moreover I finally had the opportunity to speak with everyday people on the bus, skytrain, or even in stores, allwith the same coherence I could with my closest friends and family.

While this was enthralling at first, the perils of homesickness had eventually befallen upon me. I missed my family and my friends, as well as the memories and locations I had gotten used to for the past 18 years. While the language barrier was no longer a factor, there was definitely longing to be with the people I had grew up with for most of my life.

So unfortunately there has never been a time where I felt both truly comfortable wherever I reside. If I am in the Philippines, while  I do feel at home in certain places, outside of said places the language barrier and safety concerns force me to feel alienated. On the other hand, when I am in Vancouver I do get quite homesick, but that same sense of alienation when I am traversing the city is not as present due to the fact that I can speak to anyone I encounter with ease and complexity not present when I reside in the Philippines. Thus I feel as I have come at a catch-22, wherein I identify home as a place of both comfort and alienation, and where Vancouver is a place where I feel like I am not a

Overall I have come to the conclusion that I associate home not necessarily to a specific country, but instead to certain places that make me feel safe, comfortable, and confident in my ability to converse with people in the same way I do my family and closest friends. It’s cliché but the saying “home is where the heart is”, truly applies to my sense of home.

THE ORIGIN OF DAY AND NIGHT

The creation of our world, began with a world that is not our own. This world lived under the light of an eternal moon that while not very bright, illuminated the world with a gentle glow. For the most part everything was perfect. The earth was completely flat and for some reason perfect for growing food, the rivers were clean and calm, and the people who lived there lived in complete harmony with one other, as it provided them everything the ever needed to survive.

However in this utopia lived a man who seemed to never quite belong. Let us call him Henry. Henry was a greedy man that never helped anyone but himself, and often got food from the rest of the village without contributing to the harvest.

Henry was insatiable. Despite the perfect world he lived in, he found that only his physical needs were met. He wanted something that no else had; he wanted to feel like he was superior, his ego demanded more.

So one day, on the way to getting more food Henry stumbled upon a shiny gem in the bottle of a ditch. This gem was the brightest thing he ever saw, even brighter than the moon above him. It seemed to brighten up everything that was in its vicinity with a golden glow that emanated with an intense heat as you approached it. He wanted to take this gem, and show it off to everyone in the village.

 However as he tried to take this gem he found that it was stuck into the earth. In his anguish Henry furiously tried pulling it out, using everyone ounce of strength to remove it. When he finally did, the gem began to float above him, flying higher and higher until it finally knocked out the moon above him and his village.

 Yet rather than being concerned over the wellbeing of the moon Henry chased after it instead, trying to keep it for himself the way he could not do for the gold shiny gem that now was above him. However he would find that in his attempt to steal the moon it would then proceed to fly up and knock out the gem as well. To this very day Henry continues this constant chase after the moon, and this gem we now call sun, his greed effectively creating the cycle of day and night.

 Unfortunately his village, not used to these cycles, began to suffer. Their crops rather than flourishing began to dry out. In order to stop this they found that the river provided them with the water to bring them back to life.

 Yet these resources were finite and soon families started banding together, competing, claiming, and fighting each other’s for the resources they needed to survive. They built walls around certain crops in order to keep others from sharing it with them, they blocked off certain sections of the river so that each family could have their own supply, and finally their lack or resources drove them into killing other animals for food, and later just sport. Soon these families would turn into the modern civilizations we are now part of today, still struggling to fend for themselves.

Thus the world transitioned from the peaceful moonlit utopia it once was, into the constant fight for survival has become today, all because of the greed one man, that has since spread to the rest of humanity.

COMMENTARY:

My family while very intrigued by the story, also found it extremely disheartening. They were perturbed by MY negative view of humanity. I felt somewhat guilty, as my intention with this tale was to not portray humanity as greedy, but to purely create aN entertaining story, that would explain the cycle of day and night in way that would emulate the tradition of oral storytelling. From this I have found that one must be careful about the stories they tell, because it may influence others into having a negative outlook on life itself, even though it may not be their intention to do so.

The dawn of the Internet has not only changed the way we interact with each other, but also with how we interact with literature itself. Hypertexts, for instance, have enabled readers to go beyond the words that a writer has written on his/her page by relaying them into a plethora of links that they can continue to delve further and further into. This provides the reader with access to a nearly endless amount of information that may span reviews, commentaries, biographies, and even criticisms of the writer and his/her work, allowing them to go beyond initial text in ways that were never possible in the past.

However, while this resource may be useful in gaining a greater understanding of how people may interpret and feel about the initial text, it also serves to sever the connection that used to directly connect both the reader and the writer. This disassociation is due to the fact that while physical literature only gives reader access to the words printed on the page, digital literature provides additional material that spans beyond the writer’s original work. Thus the reader is no longer a just taking the writers word for granted, but analyzing and scrutinizing their work all through the work of others. In this way the reader is transformed from a passive participant, into an active one by becoming a sort of scholar of the writer. This is because he/she is no longer solely conversing with the writer, but with many other individuals from all over the world present on the Internet as well. These conversations provide the basis for an online community to thrive through debating, analyzing, and criticizing the original work in ways the writer never even intended. This is especially so if the writer is telling a story, as the readers perspective of the story is forever skewed and inspired by the different interpretations that these hypertexts can provide. Reddit, an online message board is one such example of these kinds of online communities present on the Internet today. On Reddit readers may create entire websites dedicated to a singular writer and to their work, allowing for conversation to take place long after a writers work has been published.

In addition to hypertexts, the collaborative and editable nature of the Internet also allows us to question the very permanence of digital literature. Wikipedia for example is a online collaborative encyclopedia. Thus, rather than the information being provided by one source, it is instead compiled by multiple sources all of which combine together to produce an article on a particular subject. Thus it is easy to imagine that the logical conclusion of this kind of cooperation could one day result in a very fluid kind of storytelling birthed from the collaborative nature of the Internet. This fluidity would then allow stories to no longer just stem from a singular voice,  but a cacophony of them, in which many people all come together to produce a story that may originate from cultures all around the world.

Hello everyone! My name is Francisco Araneta, and I am a 5^th year student majoring in Political Science and English Literature. While I have taken many English courses within the UBC campus before, this is the first one I am doing online and from all the way in the Philippines! I am very interested to see how the dynamic of this course will play out, especially after being so used to participating in a physical classroom rather than one that exists solely through Facebook and UBC’s blogging platform.

In addition to the distance learning aspect of this course I am also interested in the actual subject matter it deals with as well. This is because throughout my time in UBC I have largely studied writers with ideas stemming the Western world. Thus I believe English 470A will be a fantastic way to get engaged with literary voices that are not commonly heard by most students of English Literature. Moreover after spending so many years in Canada I think it is about time that I finally hear those particular voices for the first time.

One such writer I am eager to get started with is Thomas King, a prominent Canadian writer of Cherokee descent who tends to fuse both the typical Western literary style we come to expect from most English courses, with the less familiar oral traditions originating from Canada’s First Nation’s people. King’s works are best known to directly address issues facing both North America’s First Nation people in both the United States and Canada, by attempting to eradicate stereotypes that continue to exist up to today.

Overall throughout this course I hope to gain a greater understanding how the creation of Canada has both birthed and inspired many of the literary voices we have in the country today.

Works Cited:

“Native American Authors.” Thomas King on. Ipl2, n.d. Web. 12 Sept. 2016. <http://www.ipl.org/div/natam/bin/browse.pl/A44>.

Busby, Brian John. “Thomas King.” The Canadian Encyclopedia. HISTORICA CANADA, n.d. Web. 12 Sept. 2016. <http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/thomas-king/>.