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.