Assignment:

Write a blog that hyper-links your research on the characters in GGRW according to the pages assigned to you. Be sure to make use of Jane Flick’s reference guide on your reading list.

My response:

     I was assigned pages 114-130, which opens with Eli arriving at his mother’s place and meeting Clifford Sifton. My assigned pages also cover the history of Charlie and Alberta’s relationship, Lionel and Norma picking up the Old Indians on the side of the road, and Bill Bursom setting up The Map in his store.

     The first section of my assigned pages covers Eli’s introduction to Sifton. Given that Sifton is named for Clifford Sifton, a federal minister and knight who promoted immigration to Western Canada, thus displacing the natives, it is no surprise that Eli’s initial gut feeling towards Sifton is of dislike.
     Eli seems to be named for Elijah Harper, “who blocked the Meech Lake Constitutional Accord in 1990 by being a standout vote in the Manitoba legislature” (Flick 150) and “voted against a debate that did not allow full consultation with the First Nations and that recognized only the English and the French as founding nations” (Flick 150) and for Pete Standing Alone, a Blood Elder and subject of a trilogy of documentaries, who took a “50 year journey from cultural alienation to pride and belonging” (Pete Standing Alone Trilogy). Given Eli’s alienation from his culture in Toronto and later stand against the Grand Baleen Dam, both these fit.
     The Grand Baleen Dam is named for the Grande Baleine or Great Whale River Project in James Bay which destroyed traditional Cree hunting territories (Flick 150-151). It is also reminiscent of the Oldman River Dam, which was constructed on Peigan land without consultation with the Peigan people and is located near the fictional town of Blossom (Flick 151). The Grand Baleen Dam is, of course, reminiscent of numerous industrial projects that the government and corporations have pushed through without proper consultation with First Nations peoples.

     The next section I was assigned, from pages 115 to 120, covers Charlie’s contemplation of his relationship with Alberta. While Alberta may have been named for the province which King lived in for many years, her full name – Alberta Frank – is reminiscent of Frank, Alberta, the site of “Canada’s deadliest rock slide” – according to the Huffington Post – where “82 million tonnes of rock fell from the summit of Turtle Mountain into the Crowsnest River valley below. The slide lasted a mere 90 seconds but in that short time at least 90 people were killed and the southeastern corner of the coal mining town of Frank, Alta., disappeared” (Graveland). 1903, the year of the disaster, is one of the dates Dr. Hovaugh tracks (Flick 144). While the disaster certainly fits with King’s environmental concerns, I am not sure what the disaster has to do with Alberta herself. Does King mean to suggest that she is a disaster? Or that she risks becoming the site of one?
     Charlie represents the token Native whom Western corporations employ to fight against his own people. Charlie is not ready to accept his cultural identity and represents the view that, once taken, an action cannot be undone. Charlie firmly believes that the dam cannot be stopped now that construction has started (King 118). He is representative of western progress and linearity.
     On page 117, it is noted that the media made the project appear to benefit the Natives – financially – and that someone suggested they rename the dam the Grand Goose or Golden Goose. The only reference I can find to the Grand Goose is an alcoholic drink (perhaps suggesting that any joy brought by the dam will be short-lived and followed by negative consequences?); however, the Golden Goose is a reference to an old European folktale, recorded by the Grimm brothers. The tale tells of a young man who helps an old man whom the young man’s brothers refused to help and who is rewarded with a golden goose. While the goose brings him much prosperity, eventually leading to his marriage to a princess, it could be argued that the goose does nothing but cause trouble. The goose is overly attractive, causing a number of characters to attempt to steal a feather from it; however, as soon as their hands touch it, they become stuck, unable to let go. The group is forced to follow the young man around the country. As for the young man’s prosperity, it is not so much the goose but the old man that brings it to him. As such, the Golden Goose would be a fitting name for the Grand Baleen Dam which seems to promise prosperity but will only bring trouble for those foolish enough to reach for it.

     The next section I covered, from pages 121 to 125, covers Norma and Lionel picking up the four Old Indians on the side of the road and their conversation en route to Blossom. This passage alone is full of references, from the literary references to the Lone Ranger, Ishmael, Robinson Crusoe, and Hawkeye, to the trickster reference to Coyote.
     While the Old Indians are named for western characters, they come very much from a native tradition. Their journey to “fix up the world” (King 123) should immediately alert the reader to trickster business and it is evident that the four Old Indians, like Coyote, have set out to save the world. The question is whether or not they’re able to successfully do so and we are reminded, when the Lone Ranger says that “we made this mess and we got to clean it up” (King 125), that they – unlike Western heroes – have made mistakes in the past. Amongst other things, the trickster acts as teacher for children and this line is a didactic warning.
     While the Old Indians come from a native tradition, their names are borrowed from Western narratives, a reversal of the typical Native character in White writing. The Lone Ranger is the hero of a number of western novels as well as TV shows and movies. He represents the myth that a single man could save a town (Flick 141) and is parodied by King’s Lone Ranger, who says that fixing Blossom is too big a job for the four of them (King 123).
     Ishmael is a Biblical name and the name of Herman Melville’s protagonist in Moby Dick. At the end of the novel, Ishmael survives a shipwreck by floating on the coffin of his dead Indigenous friend, much as White Canada and United States have survived on the exploitation and genocide of those indigenous to the land.
     Robinson Crusoe is the protagonist of Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, the account of a man marooned on an island with his mute, Indigenous friend, Friday. Friday is depicted as a savage, rescued by Crusoe and converted to Christianity (Flick 142), but King’s appropriation of Crusoe makes us question who the savage really is.
     Hawkeye is the name of a stock Native character in a number of western movies and TV shows. The name is also used by a white woodsman with “knowledge of Indian ways” (Flick 141-142).
     Each of these characters is accompanied by a token Native friend who has left behind his own culture for the “superior” culture of the colonizers. These stories paint Native cultures in a negative light, often calling them cannibalistic and savage, and leave Western readers with a warped view of Indigenous peoples. These stories are dangerous as they reinforce the demand for colonization and assimilation. By appropriating Western characters from such tales into his novel, King shows them to be unfair, single stories that only represent one point of view. From King’s perspective, these characters are at least as ridiculous as their native friends in the stories they come from.
     The last reference of importance in this section comes right at the beginning, when Lionel steps out of the car and gets his shoe wet. While he does not yet realize it, this is the beginning of a cleansing process, which will be completed when he is soaked by a sudden rainfall whilst walking to work. At this point in time, however, Lionel is not ready to accept his cultural identity and attempts to dry his shoes. This is a reference to the cleansing power of water in many Native cultures, which King plays with throughout the novel.

     The last section of the novel I have been assigned is pages 126-129, in which Buffalo Bill Bursum sets up the map in his store. Buffalo Bill is a play on Holm O. Bursum, a senator who proposed the Bursum Bill, aiming to “divest Pueblos of a large portion of their lands and to give land title and water rights to non-Indians” (Flick 148), and Buffalo Bill who exploited Indians for entertainment in Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show (Flick 148).
     The map, of course, represents the colonial power and explorers who came to the Americas to map out the land. They could recognize a location on the map, but had no knowledge of its local fauna, flora, food sources or dangers. Mapping is an abstraction which was brought to the Americas by colonizers who used it to further their claims over land they had no knowledge of. As such, the map is a dangerous colonial tool.

     While there are numerous other references I could touch on, I have already surprised the 1000 word limit, so will stop here. These 15 pages, like the rest of King’s novel, are rich with allusions, both to Western and Native culture(s), which interweave to create a complex text which writes back to colonial works and mindsets.

© 2015 Heather Josephine Pue

Works Cited:

Flick, Jane. « Reading Notes for Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water. » Canadian Literature 161/162 (1999): 140-172. Google. Web. 15 Mar. 2015.

Graveland, Bill. « Frank Slide, Alberta’s Deadliest Rock Slide, Impresses Visitors To Crowsnest Pass (PHOTOS). » The Huffington Post Canada 11 May 2012. Web. 16 Mar. 2015.

Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm. “The Golden Goose.” The Complete Grimm’s Fairy Tales. New York: Pantheon Books, 1944. 322-326. Print.

Hall, David J.. « Sir Clifford Sifton. » The Canadian Encylopedia. Historica Canada, 2015. Web. 15 Mar. 2015.

King, Thomas. Green Grass, Running Water. Toronto: Harper Perennial, 1993. Print.

Pete Standing Alone Trilogy. National Film Board of Canada. Canada. Government of Canada. 15 Mar. 2015.

Sismondo, Christine. « The Grand Goose. » The Globe and Mail 4 Sept. 2014. Web. 15 Mar. 2015.

Assignment:

Identify and discuss two of King’s “acts of narrative decolonization.”Please read the following quote to assist you with your answer.The lives of King’s characters are entangled in and informed by both the colonial legacy in the Americas and the narratives that enact and enable colonial domination. King begins to extricate his characters’ lives from the domination of the invader’s discourses by weaving their stories into both Native American oral traditions and into revisions of some of the most damaging narratives of domination and conquest: European American origin stories and national myths, canonical literary texts, and popular culture texts such as John Wayne films. These revisions are acts of narrative decolonization. James Cox. “All This Water Imagery Must Mean Something.” Canadian Literature 161-162 (1999). Web April 04/2013.

My response:

     Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water is a complex, interfusional text which interweaves an array of myths, novels and films into its plot. In appropriating western texts, King reverses the standard appropriation of native culture by settlers in an act of narrative decolonization. Amongst the many stories King decolonizes in his text are the Grand Narratives of Progress and Religion, used as justification for the colonization of North America.

     The Grand Narrative of Progress is symbolized in Green Grass, Running Water, by the Grand Baleen Dam and Clifford Sifton. The dam is symbolic on a number of levels, however, is significant for the sake of this paper for its alternative ending to “progressive” industrial projects. Whereas the western narrative – and Clifford Sifton – assumes that dams are infallible and portray their construction as a step in the linear path towards economic gain, King’s novel shows the life of the dam as cyclical and the economic gain inverted as economic loss. The breaking of the dam represents an alternative notion of progress, ending with the destruction of the government’s industrial project and the cleansing of the land from colonization.

     In addition to rewriting the Grand Narrative of Progress, King interweaves a number of Christian narratives from the Bible with various native mythologies throughout the novel. Rather than simply retelling Christian stories from an indigenous perspective, King inserts Christian characters into native myths, underlining the absurdity of the stories when taken out of context. As settlers have been making fun of native mythology for generations, so too does King poke fun at Christian mythology. He portrays Adam from the Garden of Eden as arbitrarily assigning the animals names without interacting with them; Noah as a would-be rapist, chasing Changing Women around the “canoe” then island, insisting that she procreate with him; and Jesus as a sexist elitist who pays no heed to his surroundings, be they people or water, unless he can gain from their manipulation. King also portrays GOD as a backwards, contrary dream of Coyote’s and Jehovah (Joe Hovaugh) as responsible for the Fort Marion imprisonment of natives, suggesting that the ill-treatment of indigenous peoples in North America was a direct result of God.

     King’s rewriting of these particular narratives is important as they have been used, along with the numerous literary stories worked into Green Grass, Running Water, to justify the colonization of the Americas and the marginalization of indigenous peoples. Europeans justified their colonization of the Americas due to the native peoples’ “primitiveness” and “heathen” spirituality. In King’s rewriting, however, it is the Christian Europeans and not the natives who are made to look primitive and backwards. King continuously comments on the nonsense of “Christian rules” and the Biblical characters’ failure to respect their relations. In rewriting the Grand Narratives of Progress and Religion from a native perspective, King points out the ridiculousness of such narratives and reasserts native values.

© 2015 Heather Josephine Pue

Works Cited:

King, Thomas. Green Grass, Running Water. Toronto: Harper Perennial, 1993. Print.

New International Version. BibleGateway.com. Web. 1 Mar. 2015.

Assignment:

In this lesson I say that it should be clear that the discourse on nationalism is also about ethnicity and ideologies of “race.” If you trace the historical overview of nationalism in Canada in the CanLit guide, you will find many examples of state legislation and policies that excluded and discriminated against certain peoples based on ideas about racial inferiority and capacities to assimilate. – and in turn, state legislation and policies that worked to try to rectify early policies of exclusion and racial discrimination. As the guide points out, the nation is an imagined community, whereas the state is a “governed group of people.” For this blog assignment, I would like you to research and summarize one of the state or governing activities, such as The Royal Proclamation 1763, the Indian Act 1876, Immigration Act 1910, or the Multiculturalism Act 1989 – you choose the legislation or policy or commission you find most interesting. Write a blog about your findings and in your conclusion comment on whether or not your findings support Coleman’s argument about the project of white civility.

My response:

“Up to April 10, 1978, to talk of racism in Canadian immigration policy is over generous to the Government of Canada. Rather, we should talk of racism as Canadian immigration policy.”
–« Racism in Canadian Immigration Policy: Part One: The History », David Matas (emphasis in original)

     I have been surprised to discover, while reading the Immigration Act of 1910, that Canada forbade the immigration of « idiots, imbeciles, feeble-minded persons, epileptics, insane persons, and persons who have been insane within five years previous » (Immigration Act 3a), « immigrations who are dumb, blind, or otherwise physically defective, unless in the opinion of a Board of Inquiry or officer acting as such they have sufficient money, or have such profession, occupation, trade, employment or other legitimate mate mode of earning a living that they are not liable to become a public charge or unless they belong to a family accompanying them or already in Canada » (Immigration Act 3c), and « immigrants to whom money has been given or loaned by any charitable organization for the purpose of enabling them to qualify for landing in Canada under this Act” (Immigration Act 3h). Other stipulations were less surprising, such the barring of prostitutes and pimps from immigration.
     I was also surprised to discover that immigrants and tourists were required to “possess in their own right money to a prescribed minimum amount, which amount may vary according to race, occupation or destination of such immigrant or tourist, and otherwise according to the circumstances” (Immigration Act 37, emphasis mine).
     I also discovered that “The Governor in Council may, by proclamation or order whenever he deems it necessary or expedient…prohibit for a stated period, or permanently, the landing in Canada, or the landing at any specified port of entry in Canada, of immigrants belonging to any race deemed unsuited to the climate or requirements of Canada, or of immigrants of any specified class, occupation or character” (Immigration Act 38c). This policy was used to “prohibit immigrants of the German, Austrian, Hungarian, Bulgarian or Turkish races” (Matas 8) in 1919 and to bar “the landing in Canada of Dukhobors, Hutterites, and Mennonites” (Matas 8) that same year. This especially surprised me due to the large Mennonite population in Manitoba. (Does anyone reading this know when they arrived?)
     Section 79 of the Immigration Act stipulates that both the Immigration Act and Chinese Immigration Act apply to Chinese immigrants (which, according to the Chinese Immigrant Act, includes British immigrants of Chinese descent). While most Canadians today have heard of the Chinese Head Tax (part of the Chinese Immigrant Act), it is still disturbing to see the special treatment of Chinese immigrants in official government documentation.
     In 1914, the Immigration Act was used to “prohibit the landing of any immigrant who came to Canada otherwise than by continuous journey from the country of which he was a native or naturalized citizen” (Matas 9). As it was impossible “to purchase in India or prepay in Canada for a continuous journey from India to Canada” (Mayas 9) at that time, while direct journeys from the United Kingdom were readily available, this Order was introduced with racist intent.
     While this Order and some of the others mentioned do not fall directly under the Immigration Act of 1910, they developed from its racist policy. Perhaps the most shocking policy I discovered in my research was the policy which did not exist and yet was enforced. According to Matas, “there was no Jewish Immigration Act” (9), yet immigration authorities were determined to “keep out every single Jew, fleeing first Nazi persecution, then the Holocaust, and finally the aftermath of the Holocaust” (Matas 9). Without a specific immigration act for Jews, only the Immigration Act of 1910 stood between them and Canada. The vague wording of the Act allowed anyone the immigration authorities did not like to be turned away, without specific government legislation.
     All in all, I was surprised to discover just how racist Canada’s immigration policy was. While I was previously aware of the Chinese Head Tax and the treatment of Japanese Canadians in World War II, I was not aware of all the racist policy regarding Europeans. We always talk about Australia’s racist immigration policies, both past and present, yet Canada’s racist policy is relatively unknown, having been buried under rhetoric of multiculturalism.
     As such, I agree with Coleman, both about Canada’s racist past and white privelege in Canada today.

© 2015 Heather Josephine Pue

Works Cited:

Immigration Act 1910. Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21. Canada. Government of Canada. 1910. Web. 26 Feb. 2015.

Matas, David. “Racism in Canadian Immigration Policy: Part One: The History.” Refuge Vol. 5 Issue 2 (1985): 8-9. Google. Web. 26 Feb. 2015.

“Reasons for the Head Tax.” The Critical Thinking Consortium. Web. 26 Feb. 2015.

Assignment:

Read Susanna Moodie’s introduction to the third edition of Roughing it in the Bush, 1854. I use the Project Gutenburg website which has a ‘command F’ function that allows you to search the entire document by words or phrases. Moodie’s introduction is often read as a warning to would be emigrants as well as an explanation of why her family emigrated from Britain. See if you can find echoes of the stories discussed above: a gift from god, a second Garden of Eden, an empty/wasted land, the noble but vanishing Indian, and the magical map. By echoes I mean reading between the lines or explicitly within Moodie’s introduction. Discussing what you discover, use your examples as evidence to write a blog that explores what you think might have been Moodie’s level of awareness of the stories she carried with her. And accordingly, the stories that she “resurrects’ by her appearance in the Dead Dog Café in Green Grass Running Water.

My response:

     While Susanna Moodie may be a foundational name in Canadian literature, one need read no more than the introduction to her memoir, Roughing it in the Bush, to realize that the Canada she portrays in her writing is far from the Canada(s) many of us are familiar with. While her Canada is set apart from ours by over 100 years, it is also set apart by Moodie’s naïveté and cultural lens.
     Moodie portrays Canada as one of “the waste places of the earth” (5) and laments the remoteness of bush settlements, “often twenty miles from a market town, and some of them even that distance from the nearest dwelling” (3). Her introduction makes no mention of indigenous Canadians at all and her book portrays them much as de Sepulveda did: as lesser than Europeans and the “respectable settlers” (Moodie 5) Moodie talks about.
     Moodie’s introduction predominantly portrays Canada as an empty/wasted land and the colonies as second Gardens of Eden, stories which Moodie seems to be unaware she carries. Her descriptions of empty land give the illusion of an unpopulated nation – terra nullius – just waiting for impoverished settlers to arrive and begin anew. It is a surprise then, when Moodie goes on, later in her memoir, to mention the local natives, people who, by her description, should not exist. Her descriptions of an empty, barren land coupled with her later, condescending descriptions of the natives are very much the creation of her culture. While Moodie’s Canada is portrayed through a Euro-Christian lens, it’s one she’s grown so accused to wearing that she seems to have no awareness of its presence.
     There is one Euro-Christian story, however, that Moodie challenges, right from the beginning of her book. While she portrays Canada as an empty wasteland, her experience in the colony has led her to challenge its representation as a gift from God. She counters the stories “told of lands yielding forty bushels to the acre” (3) by saying that “they said nothing of the years when these lands, with the most careful cultivation, would barely return fifteen” (3). While Moodie certainly believes that colonization is “hew[ing] out the rough paths for the advance of civilization” (Moodie 5), she does not seem to view Canada as a gift from God, but rather a gift she and her husband are giving in their service to God. Moodie’s Canada is not the land of plenty, but a land of hope (perhaps against hope).
     While Moodie seems to be unaware of the stories she brought to the “New World” with her, others who have read her book have come to it with more awareness. In Margaret Atwood’s Journals of Susanna Moodie, the character Moodie notes that “whether the wilderness is/real or not/depends on who lives there” (Atwood 63) and that she “should have known/anything planted here would come up blood” (Atwood 75). While Atwood uses Moodie as a character, often mimicking her naïvity, many of Atwood’s Moodie poems are underlined with a satirical note, such as “Charivari” in which she tells of a man being killed and “the American lady, adding she/thought it was a disgraceful piece/of business, finish[ing] her tea” (78).
     Likewise, Moodie makes a cameo appearance in Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water, where she visits the Dead Dog Café with E. Pauline Johnson and Grey Owl. The group is presented as clueless Canadian tourists, wishing to learn about the natives but failing to see what is right before their eyes. While Moodie may have been unaware of her cultural lens, King (and, to a lesser degree, Atwood) draws attention to it, leaving her looking absurd and pathetic. In King’s book, the roles are reversed and we see European Canadians from a native perspective, rather than the other way around. As European Canadian literature has been appropriating native culture for years, King appropriates Moodie and many of the other characters in Green Grass, Running Water from the European tradition. His portrayal of Moodie (and many of his other characters) calls into question the single narrative we have been hearing for years, while poking some good intended (and much needed) fun at European Canadians and our bizarre traditions, beliefs, and stories.

© 2015 Heather Josephine Pue

Works Cited:

Atwood, Margaret. Selected Poems. Don Mills, Ontario: Oxford University Press, 1990. Print.

Gorham, Harriet. « Pauline Johnson. » The Canadian Encylopedia. Historica Canada, 2014. Web. 12 Feb. 2015.

« Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda. » Columbia College. Columbia University. Web. 12 Feb. 2015.

King, Thomas. Green Grass, Running Water. Toronto: Harper Perennial, 1993. Print.

Moodie, Susanna. Roughing it in the Bush. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart Inc., 1989. Print.

Smith, Donald B. « Archibald Belaney, Grey Owl. » The Canadian Encylopedia. Historica Canada, 2014. Web. 12 Feb. 2015.

Assignment:

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?

My response:

     In his article, “First Contact as Spiritual Performance,” John Sutton Lutz states that “one of the most obvious difficulties is comprehending the performances of indigenous participants” (Lutz 32) as one must “enter into 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” (Lutz 32). While Lutz makes two assumptions in doing so – that his readers are non-aboriginal and that it is easier for indigenous Canadians to understand the reality of European Canadians than vice versa – his assumptions are sadly justified.

     While it is certainly possible that an indigenous Canadian will read Lutz’s article (and some no doubt have), it is published in an academic volume with a very limited, scholarly readership. According to Stats Canada, 9.8% of aboriginal Canadians aged 25 to 64 had a university degree in 2011, compared with 26.5% of non-aboriginal Canadians in the same age bracket (The educational attainment of Aboriginal peoples in Canada). This, combined with the fact that only 4.3% of the population of Canada was aboriginal in 2011 (3.8% in 2006) (Aboriginal Peoples in Canada: First Nations People, Métis and Inuit), leaves no doubt that the limited market Lutz’s book is written for is a predominantly non-aboriginal one.

     Lutz’s second assumption, that indigenous Canadians can better understand European performance than European Canadians can indigenous performance, is equally justified as aboriginal Canadians, like African Americans, live in the margins. According to bell hooks,

Living as we did – on the edge – we developed a particular way of seeing reality. We looked both from the outside in and from the inside out. We focused our attention on the center as well as on the margin. We understood both (hooks xvii).

     While hooks lived much closer to the centre than many aboriginal Canadians, who live in isolated, remote communities, do, they nevertheless share the experience of being “part of the whole but outside the main body” (hooks xvii). Even the most isolated of aboriginal Canadians have been educated in the European school system, by predominantly European Canadian teachers, and out of European-written textbooks. While they may grow up hearing the stories of their parents and learning their nation’s traditions, they also grow up learning the traditions of European Canadians. From schools to the courts to television, western tradition has penetrated aboriginal communities.

     The same cannot be said in reverse. Canada’s European-written textbooks make little mention of aboriginal Canadians and the curriculum teaches about aboriginal culture as though it were a thing of the past. The majority of non-aboriginal-Canadians living in major cities have little contact with indigenous Canadians or their cultures. The stories European-Canadians hear at home over dinner mirror the stories they are taught at school and see on TV. While each family’s stories vary, they are born of the same Euro-Christian tradition.

     While I do not believe that Lutz assumes that his readers are European, I do believe that he assumes they are not aboriginal. This assumption, along with the assumption that European-Canadians cannot understand indigenous performance as well as indigenous Canadians can understand European performance, is fully justified. Of course, this is not true of all aboriginal-Canadians, some of whom have been isolated from their traditions, nor of European-Canadians, some of whom have grown up in small, predominantly indigenous communities; however, it is true of the majority.

© 2015 Heather Josephine Pue

Works Cited:

Aboriginal Peoples in Canada: First Nations People, Métis and Inuit. Statistics Canada. Census Analysis Ser. Ottawa: Statistics Canada, 2011. Web. 03 Feb. 2015.

“bell hooks.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Encylopædia Britannica Inc., 2014. Web. 03 Feb. 2015.

hooks, bell. Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center. New York: Routledge, 1984. Google Books. Web. 03 Feb. 2015.

The educational attainment of Aboriginal peoples in Canada. Statistics Canada. Census Analysis Ser. Ottawa: Statistics Canada, 2011. Web. 03 Feb. 2015.

Assignment:

Read at least 3 students blog short stories about ‘home’ and make a list of the common shared assumptions, values and stories that you find. Post this list on your blog.

My list:

Home is family.
Music as home.
Home is divided; not one place.
Home changes.
Story as home.

     Reading through my classmates’ stories about home, I’ve found that many sentiments are shared; however, few (if any) are common to all. While our stories about home vary quite a bit, most of the blogs I read mention family. It seems, from reading my classmates’ blogs, that family is the number one thing that many of us use to define our home.
     I found that most of us do not have one home, but many. Shamina Kallu spoke about leaving her childhood home for a new home at UBC; Florence Ng made a pie-chart portraying how her sense of home is divided amongst three places. Sarah Casorso wrote about a home destroyed by fire, but went on to say that the home hadn’t really been destroyed as the family was alright: “Our home is right here. We’re all alright” (Casorso). This sense of multiple homes also ties into my own story, which speaks of struggling to define home, with all the homes I’ve had.
     Another common theme I came across was change. I ended my own story by saying that home is always changing, a sentiment that is reflected in Florence’s and Sarah’s blogs. Florence spoke about her previous home, Macau, having changed a lot in the past 7-8 years and one of Sarah’s characters spoke of home as a place that “no train could take [him] to” (Casorso). This ties in with my own sense of my childhood home(s) as no longer being home. I moved back to my parent’s house this September to pursue my studies; however, my hometown has developed too much in the past 10 years to be recognizable. Even my childhood bedroom, as I mentioned in my story, no longer feels like home, but rather like something that belongs to a different me.
     The last two commonalities I found were home as story and home as music. I mentioned both of these in my own story and found hints of them in the stories I read. Florence mentions her family’s history in Hong Kong as part of her sense of home; likewise, I mentioned my family history in Ireland, Alberta, and England as a part who I am. To a large degree, my sense of home is defined by stories, not places. Shamina mentioned a song as tying her to her home and taking on different meaning as she travelled. Likewise, music has helped to define my home(s) over the years and I also mentioned songs as connectors in my story.
     While the stories I read differ quite a bit, they actually have a fair amount in common. While we all have different understandings of home, many (if not all) of us seem to define home as family, music, divided, ever changing, and story.

“My sense of home is more about the life of the home, who is in it, what are they doing, how are they feeling, as opposed to the objects” (Christie Smith).

© 2015 Heather Josephine Pue

Works Cited:

Casorso, Sarah. “2.1: Home is where the heart is.” Eng470. UBC Blogs. Web. 02 Feb. 2015.

Kallu, Shamina. “Home Is Wherever I’m With You.” Canada: Muffled Voices and National Narratives. UBC Blogs. Web. 02. Feb. 2015.

Ng, Florence. “2.1 Home is a pie chart and a couple of memories.” Maple Trees and Beaver Tails. UBC Blogs. Web. 02 Feb. 2015.

Smith, Christie. “Home.” A Journey into Canadian Literature. UBC Blogs. Web. 02 Feb. 2015.

Assignment:

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

My story:

     Who am I? she’d ask. She’d sit in darkness, waiting for space to solidify around her, but there was none. Who am I? she’d cry, wishing desperately for an answer. She was cold and it seemed like nothing would ever come to warm her.

     Then something would hit her, flying out of the pages of a book straight into her soul, and she’d know where she belonged. This place was familiar; it reeked of childhood and familiarity. It was what she’d grown up on. It was home.

     Or was it? Safely hidden between the pages of a book, she could be at home, but when she put the book down and wandered onto the street, she’d be a stranger. At 11, it had been home, but now she had an accent; she could no longer belong.

     Home. Alas, it could not be home.

     Darkness folded in around her, wrapping her in its empty arms. You and I are the same, it seemed to say: we don’t belong.

     But then a song would reach her ears, a familiar tune from her teenagedhood, a reminder of a history that gave her a sense of home. She’d start to sing, start to feel ground solidifying beneath her, but like the book, the song too would fade. She could sing it loudly and proudly, but there would be another and another, until one came on that wasn’t familiar. This was a tradition she’d been dropped into then plucked out of. It was not a place in which she would ever find belonging. It would never envelop her in the way the darkness did.

     And the darkness would come again, curling around her fingers and gently caressing her back. It would whisper things in her ear, tell her that she would never be at home in the light. You’re an international bastard*, it’d tell her: you only belong in that you don’t.

     She’d begin to believe it, begin to curl up in the darkness, but then she’d hear a voice, a voice telling tales of the past, and she’d know that she belongs. Her parents, her grandparents, they had history, if only she could find it. But over top of that voice would come another, the voice of reason, a monotone drawl telling her that those links were severed, that she could never belong to a land she’d never been to. Citizenship, yes; home, no.

     She belonged nowhere. Only the void would embrace her. She could move between countries and literatures and languages, but she could never wholly belong to any of them. An international bastard, she existed in the space between them: belonging, but not belonging.

     Who am I? she’d ask herself. The answers never ceased to come, but they came from all directions, at ends with one another. She’d been raised to value difference, to accept all, but she’d never learnt where to place herself. The harder she searched for a place of belonging, the further she divided herself, until no place of belonging was ever to be found. She could only belong in that she could not belong. For her, home was a notion she couldn’t define.

     Even as her childhood bedroom began to solidify around her, she knew that it was no longer home. Home had changed; ‘home’ was ever changing.

*I borrowed the term “international bastards” from Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient: “Kip and I are both international bastards – born in one place and choosing to live elsewhere. Fighting to get back or to get away from our homelands all our lives” (176). Toronto: Vintage Canada, 1992. Print.

© 2015 Heather Josephine Pue

Works Cited:

Les Enfoirés. « Qui a le droit. » « Garou, Zazie, Isabelle Boulay, Corneille, Patrick Bruel et Jean Baptiste Maunier Qui a le droit Les Enfoires 2005. » Youtube. 13 May 2010. Web. 31 Jan. 2015.

Marchetta, Melina. « Extract: On the Jellicoe Road. » Penguin Books Australia. Penguin Books Australia. Web. 31 Jan. 2015.

Assignment:

Your task is to take the story about how evil comes into the world, from King’s text, and change it to tell it. First, learn the story by heart, and then tell the story to your friends and family. When you are finished, post a blog with your version of the story and some commentary on what you discovered. If you want, you can post a video of you telling the story, in place of text.

My story:

     I have a great story to tell you. It’s about evil and how it came into the world. I can see already that you don’t believe me, but just listen and you will.

     It wasn’t white people or black people or red people or yellow people who brought it here, although we often like to pretend it was, to pass blame off onto others. You want to know who it was who brought evil into the world? It was witch people.

     Now, I know what you’re going to say. Witches don’t exist. But that’s where you’re wrong. Witches do exist, but not in the way we know them from stories. Those stories were told by the real witches, to keep us from discovering them. There are witches all over the world: some men, some women, some old, some young, some black, some white, some red, some yellow, some all mixed: all witches. It’s the real witches who drowned women and burnt them at the stake, to divert attention from themselves.

     Now, once long ago, there was a gathering of witches from all over the world. They had come together to see who could produce the best magic. They cackled and they laughed, then the first witch stepped up to compete in the competition. Let’s call him Mr. Harper. So Mr. Harper stepped up and he showed the witches how he could dig deep into the ground and extract a gooey, black substance, which he then tossed across the world in exchange for squirts of liquid gold and a clatter of coins. All the witches cheered. They liked Mr. Harper’s trick very much.

     Then the next witch stepped up. Let’s call him Mr. Abbott. Everyone had liked Mr. Harper’s trick so much that they didn’t think Mr. Abbott could outdo him, but Mr. Abbott ran around in circles, creating a massive pit in the ground. After much running, he emerged with his arms full of steel-like rocks and golden nuggets which he then tossed across the world in exchange for coins and jewellery. The witches were very impressed indeed! That was a good trick.

     After Mr. Abbott, another witch went, then another. Some turned forests into butter-like blocks of oil; some flew into the air and shot down wolves; some laid cement overtop of cacti, proudly announcing they were paving the way for the future. The witches were impressed time and time again and no one could agree who should win.

     Then the last witch stepped up. This witch had sat in the back, silently watching the proceedings. This witch hadn’t brought any equipment and hadn’t spoken to any of the other witches. Nobody could tell this witch’s age or race or gender and nobody was quite sure where they had come from.

     When everyone fell silent, the witch told a story. But it wasn’t just any story. It was a terrible story; a fabulous story: the greatest story any of them had ever heard. The witch spoke of murder and destruction, of money and power. When the witch was finished speaking, everyone agreed that they had won.

     “You win!” they said. “But please, call the story back! It’s too powerful. That kind of magic isn’t good for the world. It’ll get people thinking and who knows what they’ll say, what they’ll do.”

     The story couldn’t be called back, though. Once a story’s told, it’s out there.

Commentary:

This written version is, of course, quite different from the version which I told to my father, which also varies from the numerous versions I have told inside my head over the past week. I spent most of the week playing around with the story inside of my head, trying to knot out the details and grow confident in it. I found telling the story quite challenging as I’m used to writing stories, memorizing them, and telling them verbatim, not traditional storytelling. I knew the story well (and was able to write it quite easily), but telling it aloud was quite challenging and I found myself pausing quite a bit, trying to remember what I wanted to say next and/or how to say it. I often tell stories several times inside my head before writing them down, but I never reach a point in which I can tell them fluidly until they have been written and memorized. In writing, pauses to think feel normal; however, oratory doesn’t allow such pauses and I have come to realize that I am unskilled in storytelling. Of course, telling stories in the moment and with the right inspiration is much more natural than telling them in a contrived situation due to a university assignment. I tell stories all the time, just not of this sort.

© 2015 Heather Josephine Pue

     Words are a central and core part of a person or group’s identity. To quote Melina Marchetta’s Finnikin of the Rock, a novel which I read years ago but that has never left me, “Who are we without our words?” (Marchetta 65). I read Finnikin of the Rock in 2008, but words from it still dance around in my head. Certainly, the importance of a book I read 6 years ago in my current life is proof that words are significant. While Finnikin of the Rock may be a fantasy novel, its power lies in its close proximity to the “real world” (whatever that may be). Reading it brought me closer to the tangible world I (sometimes) live in by giving me a new perspective and distancing me from my own perspective enough to give me a critical eye and ear.

     As Chamberlin emphasises, we build our lives around the notion of “us” and “them”: those who share our beliefs, rituals, and customs – and those who do not. While we can certainly visit other countries, it takes time to learn their ways and come to accept them. As readers and listeners, we generally sympathise with the protagonist of a story, regardless of culture. As such, reading brings us closer to those who do not share our values and beliefs; it gives us greater understanding of our differences and of our similarities.

     Reading and storytelling play on the notion Chamberlin mentions of “a cat that is both there and not there” (132), of “the happening that is not happening” (Chamberlin 152). When we read a book or listen to a story, we are experiencing something that seems very real, yet which we know did not happen (or not exactly in the way presented to us, in the case of nonfiction). It is both real and not real, true and not true. While stories may not have happened, we build our world upon the truth of them.

     We learn from a very young age that magic does not exist and that animals cannot talk, yet we also learn that Glooscap was formed by lightening, that Eve was created from Adam’s rib, and that Skywoman was rescued by talking animals. While, on the one hand, we know that these things cannot be true, they also become the basis for our understanding of the world.

     “The Book of John” tells us that “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (New International Bible, John 1.1), a reminder that God, like the cat invoked by three letters on a sheet of paper, is both there and not there. God was created in a word.

     Likewise magic is created by words. Harry Potter may seem far from the truth, until we remember that Diagon Alley is a play on “diagonally” (Appelbaum 86), the way we need to look at the world to perceive the magic all around us. Harry’s England is not far from the England my father went to school in: steam trains, prefects, Latin, and elitism. Surely, even the most fantastical of stories contain more truth than fiction. After all, no story we cannot relate to will hold our imagination. As Chamberlin points out, “our English word ‘fact’ comes from the same root as ‘fiction;’ both mean ‘something made up’” (138). No story told can be 100% true as truth is imperfectly remembered; however, a story that is 100% fiction could not be conceived. We live our lives in the space between the two. Our stories are both fact and fiction, true and not true, existing in the space of contradiction which Chamberlin talks about. This is not to say that words are insignificant.

     It is important to remember that God – created in a word – has been the cause of wars and death. Surely, this goes to prove the power of words. Like Chamberlin’s cat, God both exists and does not, yet God has clearly had an impact on the world around us. God may not have a physical existence, but he provides an answer to questions we cannot answer. The belief in the existence of a god helps humans of diverse cultures to come to terms with the world around them. Our explanation draws us closer to the world and holds us away from it, giving us answers and keeping us from answers both at once. God, in this sense, is no different from science.

     Riddles are a means of revaluating language. What does a raven have in common with a writing desk (Carroll 104)? Perhaps there is no answer, but writers and readers alike have spent decades searching their knowledge – both of the world and of language – for an answer. Certainly, the multitudes of answers that can be found with a google search do not change our understanding of the world, but they may alter our understanding of language.

     Charms, on the other hand, be they poems, songs, prayers, or stories, hold us together by presenting us with a story that may not match our lived experience of the world, but which we believe in nevertheless. As Chamberlin puts it, “riddles and charms bring words and the world together and test one against the other to see which gives way…In a riddle, it is language that gives, while the world stays just as it is…In a charm, it is the world that changes – if only for that moment when we sing our national anthem or recite our creed or repeat our creation story” (239). When I read Finnikin of the Rock, my notion of the world shifted, as I came to understand the struggle of refugees around the world, through the eyes and ears of a fictitious character in a fantasy land.

© 2015 Heather Josephine Pue

Works Cited:

Appelbaum, Peter. “The Great Snape Debate.” Critical Perspectives on Harry Potter . Ed. Elizabeth Heilman. New York: Routledge, 2003. 83-100. UBC Library. Web. 16 Jan. 2015.

Carroll, Lewis. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2000. Print.

Chamberlin, J. Edward. If This is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories? Toronto: Vintage Canada, 2003. Print.

Giffard, Sue. “Finnikin of the Rock.” School Library Journal. Vol. 56 Issue 3 (2010): 163-164. UBC Library. Web. 15 Jan. 2015.

Marchetta, Melina. Finnkin of the Rock. Camberwell, Victoria: Penguin Group (Australia), 2008. Print.

New International Bible. Bible Gateway. Web. 15 Jan. 2015.

Rowling, J.K.. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. London: Raincoast Books, 1997. Print.

My father and I were recently talking about Canadian literature,
Trying to name a book to represent each province,
But all we could agree on was Margaret Laurence for Manitoba
And Thomas King for Alberta,
Provinces whose literatures we aren’t familiar with.
When it comes to BC, we couldn’t decide between Douglas Copeland,
Wayson Choy and Eden Robinson;
We couldn’t agree whether Jane Urquhart or Thomson Highway better represented Ontario,
Because our country doesn’t have one common culture.

     The above lines from the first draft of a poem I wrote this fall embody my current understanding of “Canadian literature” (or lack thereof). What does it mean to be Canadian? In a country as diverse as ours, what could possibly tie us together?

     The conversation with my father was in response to an article in Brooklyn Magazine which listed a book to represent each American state (“The Literary United States: A Map of the Best Book for Every State”). While trying to come up with a Canadian equivalent seemed like a fun idea, it proved rather challenging. In provinces as big as ours, what ties us together? How could we choose a book from one cultural background over one from another?

     I have recently begun reading Obasan by Joy Kogawa, a novel which explores the internment of Japanese Canadians during World War II. Obasan has led me to question what it is to be Canadian even further. Canada is not a binary country made up of natives and non-natives or Anglophones and Francophones: it is a mosaic of cultural identities. With identities as diverse as Chinese-Cree-Irish-Ukrainian Canadians and Cherokee-Greek-German-American Canadians, how can we possibly pin-point Canadian identity?

     If Canadian identity is fluid, then what makes a book Canadian? Is a book written by a Canadian-born author Canadian (even if that novel takes place overseas with a cast of foreign characters)? What of authors, like Michael Ondaatje and Thomas King, who immigrated to Canada? What of foreign authors who visit Canada and write about our country?

     What is Canada? Is it lines drawn on a map by colonizers, a feeling in one’s heart, or a political entity with no concrete existence? Historically, Canada was viewed as an overseas extension of Britain; however, more recently, “multiculturalism itself [has become] that upon which Canada is imagined. Canada’s national imaginary – perhaps somewhat ironically – is that which is whole and yet continually in crisis, continually threatened to be fragmented into diverse and disparate cultures and identities” (Davis).

     In researching Obasan, I was surprised to discover that Japanese-Canadians were issued an apology for their internment during World War II in 1988 (Davis), 20 years before Harper’s residential school apology. How is it that a country which embraced multiculturalism 40 years ago (Davis), which prides itself on welcoming immigrants from around the world (and turns a blind eye on those it is not willing to accept), refuses to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land? How is it that our schools still teach about indigenous cultures as though they were history?
 
     It is grappling with these questions that I “walk into” this electronic classroom. I hope that the books we study and the discussions we share will help me to further my understanding of what it is to be Canadian. As such, I welcome you, my classmates and readers, to my English 470 blog, where I will respond to prompts about Canadian literature and how our country’s imagined identity is (identities are?) created and depicted in literary and oral works. I look forward to sharing this journey with you!

     For those who are interested, here is the final version of my poem: “Canadian, eh?”.

 

© 2015 Heather Josephine Pue

Works Cited

Davis, Laura K. “Joy Kogawa’s Obasan: Canadian multiculturalism and Japanese-Canadian internment.” British Journal of Canadian Studies. Vol 25 Issue 1 (2012): 57-76. UBC Library. Web. 08 Jan. 2015.

Iversen, Kristin. “The Literary United States: A Map of the Best Book for Every State.” Brooklyn Magazine 15 Oct. 2014. Web. 08 Jan. 2015.

Kogawa, Joy. Obasan. Toronto: Penguin Group (Canada), 1981. Print.

Pue, Heather Josephine. “Canadian, eh?” Vancouver Poetry Slam 05 Jan. 2015. Youtube. Web. 08 Jan. 2015.