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
Hi Kathyryn.
It is nice to here that you have adjusted well to living away from your childhood home despite you initial homesickness. It is a testament to your family’s care.
I agree that ‘home’ is a tricky word to define without bringing in stories of such things as borders. Without the story of borders for instance, we may have had to vote in the American federal election sooner than later. Unfortunately it is those same stories that have displaced the Indigenous peoples of Canada and America into reservations, but have also split parts of cultures in half such as the Coast Salish peoples that are currently split by the Canadian and US borders. Imagine not being able to see your “home” without showing a passport.
If written stories including histories are not allowed to be forgotten, I think that there are both negative and positive consequences to that. For instance, as a history student I can go through hundreds of years of written documents and analyze how people’s ideals changed through time and hypothysize in what direction the world could possibly be going as far as ideals go, ideals about racism for example.
However when a border is drawn an recognised by rulers (perhaps settlers) of two nations, it is particularly hard to change said borders if they get taught to the ruler’s children for generations, and they continue to be rulers by ignoring indigenous outcries, as what generally happened in North America, as can be learned by its written history.