Question: In this lesson I say that our capacity for understanding or making meaningfulness from the first stories is seriously limited for numerous reasons and I briefly offer two reasons why this is so: 1) the social process of the telling is disconnected from the story and this creates obvious problems for ascribing meaningfulness, and 2) the extended time of criminal prohibitions against Indigenous peoples telling stories combined with the act of taking all the children between 5 – 15 away from their families and communities. In Wickwire’s introduction to Living Stories, find a third reason why, according to Robinson, our abilities to make meaning from first stories and encounters is so seriously limited. To be complete, your answer should begin with a brief discussion on the two reasons I present and then proceed to introduce and explain your third reason from Wickwire’s introduction.
In Erika Paterson‘s blog, she clearly outlines two reasons that our capacity for understanding the first stories is limited:
1. “in the acts of collecting, translating and publishing these stories, the social process of the telling is disconnected from the story and this creates obvious problems for ascribing meaningfulness”.
2. “there exists a serious time gap of almost 75 years, between 1880 and 1951, when the telling and retelling of stories at the potlatch, and other similar First Nations institutions across the country, were outlawed by the Indian Act and accordingly, the possibilities for storytelling were greatly diminished”.
In the first reason, we see that the verbal telling is no longer emphasizes and is in fact being removed all together. By having the stories written down, the only thing that is needed for the stories to continue is a reader. Previously, they were told at a potlatch feast, which seems to be a sort of community gathering. Paterson effectively describes it as “a special place and time set aside where laws, cultural and spiritual beliefs, and treasured knowledge are displayed, performed, challenged, decided and disseminated”. Now that only a reader is needed, the community and teaching aspect of these stories is stripped away.
The second reason has a more political emphasis. For 75 years, which is an entire life for most, and consists of 7 separate generations, it was against the law to speak of stories at a potlatch. As mentioned above, the potlatch was a time for the community to get together to learn, tell stories, and build community. Without the ability to tell stories in this time, many family favourite has the opportunity to be lost. Furthermore, Native children were taken from their home and placed in residential schools where they were taught the traditional Catholic stories, not their culture’s stories that they would have learned otherwise.
In Wendy Wickwire’s introduction to Harry Robinson’s book Living by Stories: A Journey of Landscape and Memory, she introduces several other reasons why our capacity for understanding the first stories is limited. The one I will focus on is her argument that other’s ideas and values can impede our own. She tells how she decided how to compile Robinson’s stories into two separate volumes, wondering “how much of Boas’s editorial decisions had influenced [her] own selection process” (22). I would say that by compiling narratives into a coherent theme would be a way that limits our stories. Earlier in the intro, Wickwire explains that she enjoyed staying with Robinson for longer trips so that she could wander with him and through those wanderings and explorations his memory would be triggered to tell another story. These are organic stories. They are not being forced together; they are not asking to be linked or to be seen as similar. The stories told by a whiff of nostalgia are the stories that cause our arms to sweep around us as we tell them. They make us lean in; they keep us engaged. They make our souls salivate and have us craving more.
Works Cited:
- anashinteractive. “The Importance of Potlatch.” Online video clip. Youtube. Youtube, 27 Feb 2008. Web. 9 Feb 2015.
- Paterson, Erika. “Lesson 2:2.” ENGL 470A Canadian Studies: Canadian Literary Genres – 99C Jan 2015. UBC Blogs. Web. 9 Feb 2015.
- “Residential Schools.” Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. n.p., n.d. Web. 9 Feb 2015.
- Robinson, Harry. Living by Stories: A Journey of Landscape and Memory. Ed Wendy Wickwire. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2005. Print.