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.
Beware the term “authenticity.” It is slippery and maybe unattainable. An education in the liberal arts teaches us that “objective truth” is an illusion, and authenticity is a close cousin of truth. It carries an immense amount of cultural clout; no one wants a copy, they want “something real.” No one wants to hear a story third-hand if they can hear it from someone who was there (“I was there!”). Keith Thor Carlson’s article Orality About Literacy, examines authenticity in different cultural contexts. Regardless of how shaky a concept it is, authenticity in the relation of events is of paragon importance everywhere you go, but why?
Carlson asserts that by challenging the authenticity of Salish narrative, you challenge the truth of their ways of knowing because in Salish culture, knowledge is something that is conferred. Salish people do not write long treatises alone to be sent out into the world and examined by readers in solitude, they tell stories to groups of people who are perspicacious listeners and observers. A good story for the Salish people is one that is sanctioned by many listeners; the genealogy of the story becomes a part of the story itself. Wendy Wickwire notes that “oral footnotes” are an integral component of a worthy Salish story (qtd. in Calrosn 57). So a challenge to a well-known story told by a Salish individual is a challenge to the group. Writing history in the Western tradition is much more autocratic than it is in the Salish tradition, as the telling is subject to the style and interpretation of the writer. In Salish culture, the tales seem to be more obstinate, less flexible to the whim of the teller; Carlson quotes Sally Snyder, who notes, “it was wrong for [Salish historians] to ‘guess’ meaning, to pad, improvise, paraphrase or omit” (59). Accuracy in storytelling for the Salish people is a matter of grave seriousness just as it is in western culture and so, considering the spiritual wellbeing of the orator and listeners is on the line, we must regard Salish stories with credence. The idea that retelling a story “[convenes] the spirits of the historical actors concerned” (Carlson 58) is a terrifying one, but it is certainly a good journalistic practice. Stripped of its spiritual element, this idea involves the teller considering the narrative from every possible angle and understanding that stories have irrevocable consequences, as King reinforced for us earlier. Carlson notes the negative impact of poor or inauthentic storytelling and its effect of fomenting nationalist hatred leading up to World War II (58). This week we can even see how weaving a fraudulent personal narrative, falsifying the story of your life, can have effects on a global scale. Maybe if Rachel Dolezal had considered the Black women’s perspectives she was invoking with her appearance, she might have avoided wrongheaded appropriation and paid tribute to Black history in a more respectful and constructive way.
It is important to take “indigenous historical understanding seriously… because it destabilizes mainstream understanding of and assumptions about history and therefore creates a new starting point for cross-cultural dialogue” (Carlson 45). In other words, by doing this we rid ourselves of the “evolutionary developmental paradigm” that comes with thinking of orality as primitive in comparison to literacy. Carlson notes that literacy has long been held as the fulcrum of Western intellectual superiority, but only recently scholars have begun to see that this is “a reflection of Western assumptions and arrogance” (52). Westerners tend to only see authenticity in pre-contact Native stories, which Carlson calls “historically deterministic… [and in thinking this way] we potentially insult the people who share the stories and thereby reduce the likelihood of their generosity continuing” (56). Last week’s readings addressed the willingness of anthropologist Franz Boas to bend Native narratives into an arc of his choosing; many thought of Native myth as “timeless and ahistorical” and Boas altered retellings to fit that particular notion (Wickwire 11). The propensity to treat Native storytelling as somehow subordinate in authenticity to non-Native historical documents (or pre-contact storytelling) could cut off our link to a different and enriching perspective on a shared history. And, as Carlson pointed out earlier, there are few things more dangerous than one-sided history that purports to be total.
Blow, Charles M.. “The Delusions of Rachel Dolezal.” The New York Times. The New York Times Company, 17 Jun., 2015. Web. 19 Jun., 2015.
Carlson, Keith Thor. “Orality and Literacy: The ‘Black and White’ of Salish History.” Orality & Literacy: Reflectins Across Disciplines. 43-72. Print.
EMI Music. “LCD Soundsystem- Losing My Edge.” Online video clip. Youtube. Youtube, 25 Feb., 2009. Web. 19 Jun., 2015.
Robinson, Harry. Living by Stories: a Journey of Landscape and Memory. Ed. Wendy Wickwire. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2005. Print.