The Indian Act of 1876 is a interesting event in Canadian history for multiple reasons. The Indian Act has put a considerable strain on native americans and it has bound them to a brutal contract which has not been two sided. The Indian act when it first was brought to Canada was a system that denied womans rights, introduced mandatory residential schools and had literally hundreds of clauses that held the average native american in a position with very little options. There were clauses in the Act that were barbaric and completely ridiculous such as denying the Native to speak their own language. The reality is that the beginning of the Indian Act treated aboriginal people like second class citizens that had few to no rights and their ability to be an active part of society was impossible unless they rejected their background and heritage. Either way Native Americans today are still suffering from the laws that this Act brought about. This is evident in the reserves that are across Canada today where native americans are often plagued with unrest and social issues that are directly correlated to the Indian Act of 1876. What is interesting is the lack of knowledge on what the Indian Act actually did and how it is being dealt with today? An article written by CBC stating “21 things you may not know about the Indian act” highlights many unknown realities of what the Indian Act actually enforced. There are still so many elements of the Indian Act that need to change and it evidences itself in how aboriginal are treated today. The Indian Act was a terrible way of trying to make native americans reject their heritage and infiltrate into society. Different methods were used to categorize native americans such as reserves. What is evident is that there are many elements of this Act that are discriminatory and racist? Why the Indian Act has not been abolished is a well debated topic and clearly controversial. The reality is that the Indian Act has been improved since 1876 and does provide certain rights to the native american that are beneficial. Yet the damage that the Indian Act has done is evident when considering all of the social issues that often are prevalent in native reserves. For example poor education standards, lack of opportunities, poor healthcare, and no to little social justice. These are just some of the issues that continually haunt native communities and the injustice needs to stop. One of the social issues that I personally am most passionate about is education rights for native communities. Realizing the need and putting in the time is essential at this time in order to make a difference. As Thomas-Muller states we need to see the “incredible potential of indigenous youth.” (APTN National News) Unless we give these communities the education they deserve change cannot come. Recognizing that many do not have the opportunities to go and pursue higher education and their world is therefore very small and confined. We also often ignore the damaging effect that the residential school system had on the education and lives of native groups. Residential schools were designed to destroy the ‘Indian’ way of life. The results of the residential schools led to many issues such as an increased rate of suicide and an epidemic of drugs and alcohol often used as a coping mechanism.  These social issues are effecting natives today and is one of the number one reasons the school system is of number one priority. My findings on the Indian Act of 1876 do support Colemans research and statements in “White Civility” in that the Indian Act was based on British superiority and white civility. The Indian Act was born out of a time period that believed in white superiority and quite simply a racist way of viewing the world.

Works Cited

Joseph, Bob. “21 Things You May Not Know about the Indian Act – Indigenous – CBC.”CBCnews. CBC/Radio Canada, 2016. Web. 06 Dec. 2016.

Plewes, Cathy T. Ann. “First Nations, the Church, State, and Image: Policy and Ideals Reflected in the Indian Act of 1876.” Order No. MQ22099 Carleton University (Canada), 1997. Ann Arbor: ProQuest. Web. 6 Dec. 2016.

“The Residential School System.” The Residential School System. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 Dec. 2016.

“Top 5 Indigenous Issues All Canadians Should Care about – APTN National News.” APTN National News. N.p., 2015. Web. 06 Dec. 2016.

CanLit Guides. “Reading and Writing in Canada, A Classroom Guide to Nationalism.” Canadian Literature. Web. April 4th 2013.

5] “To raise the question of ‘authenticity’ is to challenge not only the narrative but also the ‘truth’ behind Salish ways of knowing “(Carlson 59). Explain why this is so according to Carlson, and explain why it is important to recognize this point

~The Importance of understanding Salish Storytelling

Carlson in writing “Orality about Literacy: The ‘black and white’ of salish history”, discuss’s the differing interpretations between the white account and the Native account. It is evident that the Natives have been continuosly questioned on their background history and this is both concerning and important to recogize in order to put history straight. Why is there the underlining assumption when the western stories and the Native stories differ, that the western story is the correct one. In the Native way of understanding the past there is “no authentic or inauthentic swoxwiyam, only beter remebered/conveyed or less well remembered/conveyed swoxwiyam.”( Hanna, Darwin, and Mamie 57) This is extremly important in moving forward and understanding the Salish accounting of history. As well as recognizing that they have a equal voice in telling their stories. When we question the authenticity of the Salish way of knowing we are also questioning the Salish peoples right to tell their very own stories. This is important to recgonize as it changes the whole conversation on whether we take the Salish people seriously or not. This plays an important role in not only understanding the past but also moving forward and is something historians and story tellers alike have to grapple with. It is evident therefore that in both Western and Salish society history is important. While ways in telling history or stories differ both emphasize the importance in either society. This leads us to the reality that raising the authenticity question is a faulty conclsuion and something we have to be aware of. Questioning the autheniticty of the natives stories we see is  unfair as we read that “‘If a story was imperfectly recalled it was wrong for {Salish historians} to ‘guess’ meaning, to pad, improvise, paraphrase or omit. It was better not to tell it at all for it was dangerous to omit scenes and to shorten myths.”(Hanna, Darwin, and Mamie 59) An important part of understanding Salish history is to understand the Spiflaxem, this is the ” non-creation stories,  which tell of the history, way of life, and cultural teachings of teh Nlhazkapmx people. These particular narratives were chosen because the elders thought that they were important to tell.”(Hanna, Darwin, and Mamie 1) This is important to recognize as it becomes clear that this was nonfabiracted and important to the Salish people. Ignoring certian elements of the Salish History is problamtic even though there are issues that we are not used to from our cutlure. Understanding where they are coming from and hearing more of their stories is important and questining the truth of these stories is clearly offensive to the storyteller. While the Salish people may have a different way in order to authentisize a story there is no reason to question what is being said and how the story is being told.

Works Cited

Hanna, Darwin, and Mamie Henry. Our Tellings: Interior Salish Stories of the    Nlha7kapmxPeople, UBC Press, Vancouver, B.C, 1995;2014;1996;.

Carlson, Keith Thor. “Orality and Literacy: The ‘Black and White’ of Salish History.” Orality & Literacy: Reflectins Across Disciplines. Ed. Carlson, Kristina Fagna, & Natalia Khamemko-Frieson. Toronto: Uof Toronto P, 2011. 43-72.

1. We began this unit by discussing assumptions and differences that we carry into our class. In “First Contact as Spiritual Performance,” Lutz makes an assumption about his readers (Lutz, “First Contact” 32). He asks us to begin with the assumption that comprehending the performances of the Indigenous participants is “one of the most obvious difficulties.” He explains that this is so because “one must of necessity enter a world that is distant in time and alien in culture, attempting to perceive indigenous performance through their eyes as well as those of the Europeans.” Here, Lutz is assuming either that his readers belong to the European tradition, or he is assuming that it is more difficult for a European to understand Indigenous performances – than the other way around. What do you make of this reading? Am I being fair when I point to this assumption? If so, is Lutz being fair when he makes this assumption?

“First Contact as Spiritual Performance” is an article that peeked my interest as it takes a slightly different view of what occured between Europeans and Indigenous peoples. I definitely noticed the assumption that Lutz makes here and I personally thought it was a relevant point. I think this quote from Lutz book Myth and Memory is relevant considering the past and the future, “But contact stories are not just about the past and the ‘might have been.’ Contact stories grasp out attention because they also explain how things are now, and they contain a key to how they might be.”[ Lutz 12) Personally the way I understood the statement above where Lutz says “one must of necessity enter a world that is distant in time and alien in culture, attempting to perceive indigenous performance through their eyes as well as those of the Europeans.” I interpreted it as firstly we are entering a different time for both Natives and Europeans, we are looking at the first interactions through historical accounts  this therefore adds many difficulties as we have differing stories and differing world-views of men who are telling the stories. He does seem to be assuming that his reader is from a European tradition because as he says “one must of necessity enter a world that is distant in time and alien in culture“(Lutz)  this statement from my interpretation points to a non indigenous culture. While indigenous people of today may be distant in time they would not be totally alienated from their heritage and culture. Lutz is not being necessarily fair when he makes this assumption it may be equally difficult for the indigenous people to understand European tradition and yet in many ways they have been forced to come to an understanding. I would not say that it would be more difficult for Europeans to understand the Native tradition then it would be difficult for Natives to understand European tradition as an overruling statement. Yet there is an element in which Europeans did not understand the Indigenous culture and this is evident in how Europeans treated Natives historically.  One thing that stood out to me in the reading though was the fact that many Natives seemed to view the Europeans coming to America as not an extremely shocking event as they understood it as a supernatural event.  Yet as Trigger makes it clear ” by the late nineteenth century most Native cultures had been significantly altered and disrupted by European contact.”(114 Trigger) Another element that may have made it harder for Europeans to accept the Native culture is that “European religions, though ecumenical in spirit, were exclusive and intolerant, as well as hierarchically organized and controlled.”(121 Trigger) Overall then I think that Lutz is fair in making this assumption and it is not necessarily a wrong assumption to make.

Works Cites

• Lutz, John S. Myth and Memory: Stories of Indigenous-European Contact, UBC Press, Vancouver, 2007;2014;.
• Trigger, Bruce G. Natives and Newcomers: Canada’s Heroic Age Reconsidered, McGill-Queen’s University Press, Kingston, Ont, 1985;2014;1986;.
• “Discovery of the Mississippi.” Https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Native_Americans_in_the_United_States#/media/File:Discovery_of_the_Mississippi.jpg. Wikipedia, n.d. Web.

Write a short story (600 – 1000 words) that describes your sense of home; write about the values and the stories that you use to connect yourself to, and to identify your sense of home.

If I were to describe what home is for me in one word it would probably be laughter. This may seem odd yet I feel as though this was something that was heard in my home continuously as I grew up. The defintion of home according to the dicitonary is “the place where one lives permanently, especially as a member of a family or household(English Oxford Living Dictionary).” I grew up on a sort of hobby farm in southern Ontario although in my world I know that I have many places I can call home this particular place will forever be special in my mind. With its rolling hills and it’s imperfect old farm house it was for me the ideal place to grow up.  I know that home is different for everyone and even my own definition of home as changed in the past year. I identify with the idea that home is wherever your family is. I was raised with core values like hard work, the importance of family, and the knowledge that I was loved no matter what.  The stories that connect me to myself and to my home are often the memories of long days of work helping my Dad either plant tree’s or cut down trees for firewood. The memories feel faint yet a story that connects me to home would be time spent with our golden retrievers espeically when our dog beau had puppies. My obsession was real and every spare moment was spent with the puppies.  Objects that connect me to home are the real fireplace, my dogs a golden retriever and a Bernese mountain dog. I identify home with the smell of wood smoke and the cuddling of kittens near the hearth. It boils down to though the sound of my family’s voices and the late night chats my sister. While I don’t plan on living at home for a while and homesickness is a disease I have had to conquer and I relize we all have to move on at one point I will forever carry a bit of home with me.  There is joy for me as well in returning and while I needed to make the choice to move on for my own personal journey there will be a beautiful place that I will forever be able to visit. A good home to me is one where values and love are instilled into children from the earliest age. I feel like then there is a foundation for the child to go off of when they reach the real world. Home is a place where we can be vulnerable and real and somewhere where we can feel protected and safe. At the end of the day it does not matter in my opinion what your background is as long as love is instilled and a place to be vulnerable is created. I think, however, this is modeled is not as important as the fact that it does happen. Home while different for everyone is a important aspect to who we are as people and how to relate to the world around us.

Works Cited

“Home – Definition of Home in English | Oxford Dictionaries.” Oxford Dictionaries.    AccessedOctober 18, 2016. https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/home.

Evil and its presence in this world is an interesting topic to discuss. Where does sickness, death  and evil come from is seemingly the age old question. It is clear in studying history that many explanations have come up and yet it is difficult as I sit here staring at my computer trying to put into words a story of my own when it comes to evil and where it comes from. I think of stories like Pandora’s Box or even King’s story and yet it is still a challenge. I shall try my best therefore.

The First Shadow.

The basic background to the story

The Shadow symbolizes evil

Your Shadow could be atoned for and therefore taken away. The story of the first shadow create it into a murder greed and darkness coming from someone’s heart and therefore creating the first shadow

The story of the first shadow being created explains how the greed that is found in the characters heart creates the first shadow.

A canoe trip was the beginning of a wonderful fall semester. It was accompanied by my three sisters and my father.  Every day was spent in paddling the Lady Lake Evelyn a gem of a lake hidden in Ontario’s Northern Wilderness. The days were beautiful and the nights were spent in continuous laughter and the sharing of life’s moments that will forever be held close. It was in a star-filled night that I decided to tell the Story of the first Shadow. Occurring generations earlier I retold the horrific story to my sisters on how the first family brought the Shadow into the world. The first family had two girls it had been a happy upbringing with joy and continuous laughter. There were no shadows or darkness, there were no arguments or bitterness. Laughter was forever heard in this beautiful family. What occurred next forever changed society though and a dark shadow would forever follow mankind. The older sister fell into the trap set out by a higher power. She fell into the trap of greed by wanting not only the beauty of light but light itself which was the Sun. By having this unquenchable want for the sun a Shadow was attached to her being changing who she was.   The darkness of the shadow that had attached itself to the sister was unshakeable. It followed her wherever she went and the shame and misery of the Shadow caused her to commit her second crime of murder. She was unable to see the beauty of her former life and in her darkness she killed those who had been her life. Mankind was brought under the curse of this unforsakeable shadow and the only hope of salvation was found in the starlit sky. In the starlit moments where the sun gave peace to the world for just a few hours release from the Shadow is found.  In these moments forgiveness was found but complete dismissal of the Shadow was not a reality. Because of her greedy desire of more sun she fell into the trap of the shadow.

The story horrified and made a damper on the evening we had enjoyed together it was another reminder that the Shadow exists. The story had been told and although new in storytelling the reality was the same. The story exists. The story was told and like the shadow it would stay.

In writing this blog post I struggled. I am not at all accostomed to this type of exerise and it was definitly a challenge. I feel like stories are important and yet while I am continuously telling  stories about my life or what is happening to people around me. Yet for some reason writing a story about evil and how it came felt foreign and somewhat difficult. Because I have such a strong idea of where our world came from it felt very odd writing my own version. Ultimitaly though the idea of stories and the importance of telling stories is a important part of all our lives.  As King states “The truth about stories is that that’s all we are(King).” In telling my story to a friend she definitely resonated with the idea of a Shadow representing evil. In the sense that it is obvious that there is evil all around us and it sometimes seems to attach itself to our lives.

Works Cited

Lopenzina, D. “Our Fire Survives the Storm: A Cherokee Literary History, and: The Truth about Stories: A Native Narrative (review).” The American Indian Quarterly, vol. 32 no. 3, 2008, pp. 356-359. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/aiq.0.0005.

I moved away from home for the first time a year and a half ago. When I say home here I am using the word to describe the physical home that I grew up with along with the family that made it the home that it was. I had this nieve belief that I would not be homesick, this certainly was not the case. Either way, the meaning of home for me has changed in the course of a year as I have made connections and friends in different parts of Canada, demonstrating that the term home is more complicated than I personally would have believed before.

Either way ‘home’ is a complicated word to define and certainly a term that differs from person to person. The term ‘home’  is complicated in that it holds a different meaning for everyone and it also symbolizes or is a metaphor for differing ideas. It holds different meaning; land, people, a physical house are just some of the many words we can use to describe a home. A country such as Canada makes the idea of home an even more complicated issue as many people who reside in Canada view it in opposite ways.  The reality is that we all have this idea of what Canada is in our minds and yet the reality of what Canada really has been in the past and what is happening now is often quite different than what we imagine it to be. What is particularly devastating to me is that the displacement of the Indigenous People by  settlers hundreds of years ago is still having drastic affects to this day. Therefore how are our actions in the 21st century going to affect our nation in a hundred years from now? And with this question in mind how can we make a difference in the world we live in today in order that people may not be unjustly displaced for centuries? Projects, therefore such as Gord Downie efforts in bringing awareness to the displacement of Indigenous People are positive steps in the right direction. Downie’s project on bringing awareness to what happened in residential schools is only one aspect of displacement in our history.

Stories are important though in order to bring together our differing understandings of home.  As Chamberlin points out in his first chapter in telling a story about the interactions between government officials and natives,”what they understood was more important: how stories give meaning and value to the places we call home; how they bring us close to the world we live in by taking us into a world of words; how they hold us together and at the same time keep us apart.”(1) Stories are vitally important in giving the term home a meaning. Stories, are a powerful part of who we are, they are also a vital part in looking forward to where our world is headed and what our place is in the world. Home for better or for worse is a tricky and uneasily defined and yet, “whatever and wherever it is, home is always border country, a place that separates and connects us, a place of possibility for both peace and perilous conflict.”(1) This conflict is an element of home that will always exist and yet there is the necessary part of bringing history alive through stories in order to better define what our home is.   One quote I personally really jumped on in reading the professor’s blog is “history specializes in forgetting” (77). I think therefore story telling is part of the answer in that stories give us a really powerful way of not allowing history to forget. I suppose many Canadians live their lives not being aware of the realities that occurred and are continuing to occur towards minorities groups. Therefore the importance of bringing these stories forward cannot be emphasized enough. Rivers of Babylon is an powerful example in song of a story of a displaced people. Canada is full of these stories of displaced people and these stories need to be heard.

Works Cited

Chamberlin, Edward. If This is Your Land, Where are Your Stories? Finding Common Ground. Toronto: AA. Knopf. 2003. Print.

Bony M. “The Rivers of Babylon“. Lyrics. Metro Lyrics. Web. April 04 2013.  http://www.metrolyrics.com/rivers-of-babylon-lyrics-boney-m.html

Hey, Everyone! Very excited to start this course with you all! I am a fourth-year history major and I am planning to apply to the education program at UBC this fall with hopes of becoming a high school teacher.  I grew up on a small hobby farm in southern Ontario and I love animals, especially my dogs. Looking forward to doing three other courses online this semester but I am especially excited to learn more about Canadian literature and history by taking this class.

Looking through the course syllabus and the required readings for this semester I am excited as a History major that we will be delving into literature from different time periods and cultural backgrounds throughout the history of Canada. I have taken two Canadian history courses in the past two years and I have been fascinated by how our country was built and how it affects Canadians today. It has also been disappointing, as it is evident that there were many injustices against minority groups that occurred throughout Canada’s history. Unfortunately, many of these events are unknown or not talked about among  Canadians, for example how the Japanese Canadians were treated during World War Two. One of the most eye-opening Canadian books I have ever read is called Obasan by Joy Kogawa, this novel delves into the realities of the Japanese Internment. Literature is a powerful way for us to learn more about the past and also a way for us to look forward. I am hopeful that in reading the books throughout this term and by interacting with other students that this course will inform and help me better understand minority groups that have often not had a voice in Canadian history.

anyways again really excited to learn online with you all this semester and I am looking forward to reading all the blog posts!

Have a wonderful week

Works Cited

1. Obasan Joy Kogawa, GoodReads, Review(2016 Goodreads inc.) http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9723.Obasan
2. Japanese Internment, “Canada a Peoples History” (CBC Learning),http://www.cbc.ca/history/EPISCONTENTSE1EP14CH3PA3LE.html