2] 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.

For this assignment, I have chosen to discuss the Indian Act 1876. I have chosen this act because I have briefly taken a look at it in one of my Gender and Women’s Studies classes in the past. I think that the Indian Act very much so is in agreement with Coleman’s theory of “white civility.” Also, much of the problems that the Indian Act has created (as we are talking about a constructed nation that is using this act to enforce an imagined idea of civility on a people) are still being felt today.

I remembered watching a video before on a bunch of really amazing art based on reactions towards the Indian Act 1876 that I wanted to post for you. Unfortunately, I was unable to find it, so I will be posting a picture of one of the more memorable pieces I have seen.

This is An Indian Shooting the Indian Act by Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun. If anyone is interesting in taking a look, there’s also 30 min documentary on him that can be found here. I haven’t had a chance to take a look yet, though, so I have no reviews for you!

In 1876, The Indian Act was created and enforced by the Canadian government in order to control and regulate Indigenous people and their land. While the Indian Act put many restrictions on Aboriginal life, there were a few key points that the Indian Act focused on. The Indian Act also created reserves in order to allocate land towards the government as opposed to the people that lived on those lands. The Indian Act changed existing structures that existed within Aboriginal society and replaced it with governmental structures in the form of band councils. Perhaps most important, The Indian Act was influential by creating the concept of Indian status, as well as who qualified for it. Indian status entitled those who held status to: ” treaty benefits, health benefits, the right to live on her reserve, the right to inherit her family property, and . . . the right to be buried on the reserve with her ancestors.” (Hanson)

The act is known for being extremely oppressive towards women in regards to status. Any woman marrying outside of her band was subject to, and often did, lose her status. This would often extend towards any children that were born through this marriage, taking both the woman and her children away from her culture and, often, into the imposed European culture that was being built into Canada. This could also occur if the woman were to marry another man of Indian status that was from another band. However, as Hanson notes, “if an Indian man married a non-status woman, he would keep all his rights.” So, it was quite clear that this document was formed with not just a racial bias, but with a gender bias as well.

While the Indian Act has gone through several revisions since it was first introduced, ” today it largely retains its original form.” (Hanson) On this wonderful page I found, Erin Hanson discusses why The Indian Act has not yet been abolished. Hanson says this is because “it acknowledges and affirms the unique historical and constitutional relationship Aboriginal peoples have with Canada.” So, while the Indian Act has been, and is, very destructive, to simply abolish it would be to get the Canadian government off the hook for everything that has resulted since the passing of the Indian Act.

In reference towards Coleman’s theory of white civility, I absolutely believe that the Indian Act was introduced as a means to impose the European conception of civility onto Indigenous culture. While the Canada we know today boasts of its multiculturalism, early attempts at nation building leave me to believe that Canada was not accepting of other cultures. So, rules and oppression were the tools that Canada used to mold what already existed in this nation into an image of civility that mirror white, European ideals. The Indian Act was not the only injustice that was imposed by the Canadian government on the Indigenous population and, though the government is attempting and continues to make amends, the wounds that it created in its mission of nation building will not easily be healed.

Works Cited

“Indian Act.” Justice Laws Website, http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/I-5/index.html. Accessed 28 Oct. 2016.

“Rockburn Presents – Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun.” YouTube, uploaded by cpac, 8 Aug. 2016, https://youtu.be/zEsU_GlJ53Q. Accessed 28 Oct. 2016.

Hanson, Erin. “The Indian Act.” Indigenous Foundations, http://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/home/government-policy/the-indian-act.html#introduction. Accessed 28 Oct. 2016.

Yuxweluptun, Lawrence Paul. “An Indian Shooting the Indian Act.” May 2013, http://cdn.agilitycms.com/national-gallery/Images/Galleries/May2013/Yuxweluptun-An-Indian-Act-2012.0439.19A.jpg. Accessed 28 Oct. 2016.

Yuxweluptun, Lawrence Paul. “An Indian Shooting the Indian Act.” Tribe Inc., http://www.tribeinc.org/wp-content/uploads/tribe-Lawrence_Paul_Yuxweluptun.jpg. Accessed 28 Oct. 2016.

1] In his article, “Godzilla vs. Post-Colonial,” King discusses Robinson’s collection of stories. King explains that while the stories are written in English, “the patterns, metaphors, structures as well as the themes and characters come primarily from oral literature.” More than this, Robinson, he says “develops what we might want to call an oral syntax that defeats reader’s efforts to read the stories silently to themselves, a syntax that encourages readers to read aloud” and in so doing, “recreating at once the storyteller and the performance” (186). Read “Coyote Makes a Deal with King of England”, in Living by Stories. Read it silently, read it out loud, read it to a friend, and have a friend read it to you. See if you can discover how this oral syntax works to shape meaning for the story by shaping your reading and listening of the story. Write a blog about this reading/listening experience that provides references to both King;s article and Robinson’s  story.

For this blog post, I attempted to read “Coyote Makes a Deal with King of England” in as many ways as I could to get a better appreciation on the oral syntax of the story that this question is concerning. I read it in my head, I read it out loud, I read it to my sister, I read it to my cat (who did not seem overly impressed by the narrative) and I alternated between reading certain passages in my head to outloud. My initial impressions of “Coyote Makes a Deal with King of England” were that it does need to be read out loud to gain better understanding of it. Many of the passages just sounded better when they were read out loud, particularly some of the stanzas (I’m going off of an impression that this can be seen as poetry due to the story’s structure) which fluctuated in line length.

So they drive the boat closer but they can never get close.
Just about the same distance at all time.
They follow them around and around.
And they couldn’t get close. (Robinson 64-5)

As I read it in my head, I found myself reading the narrative faster, and not absorbing the content as well as I had when I read it out loud. I also found myself either skipping over, or even correcting, the grammatical layout that Harry Robinson employs in “Coyote Makes a Deal with King of England.” However, when reading it out loud, I felt a certain level of frustration towards the text as I kept stumbling over the words as though it was a word puzzle.

Focusing back on the Thomas King article we read for this week, “Godzilla vs. Post-Colonial,” I would like to agree with his opinions on “Coyote Makes a Deal with King of England.” King speaks of the assumption that key factors of oral storytelling, such as interactions between the listener and the storyteller, are lost when oral stories are translated into written stories. To me, this seems quite obvious, to the point where I had taken this loss for granted. However, King also writes that Robinson is able to work past this “by forcing the reader to read aloud . . . [and] re-creating at once the storyteller and the performance.” (King 186) While I, by no means, felt forced to read the story out loud, I do agree that Robinson is pushing the reader to become the storyteller. I did find that as I read it out loud, particularly for my audience, I did adopt a storyteller’s persona by altering tone and employing gestures.

Blanca Chester also looks at the concept of form in Robinson’s stories in her article, “Storied Dialogues: Exchanges of Meaning Between Storyteller and Anthropologist.” Her article is her own translation of a recording and dialogue between Harry Robinson and his editor, Wendy Wickwire. Before getting to her translation, Chester questions the way these tapes can shift in form when being transplanted from a recording to a written work.

The translation of these recordings into written texts enables one to play with form. Indeed, form manifests itself as an integral component of the dialogue. Meanings change depending on the form and style that is used in framing an oral narrative. Should these stories be presented as prose narratives, or as poetry? Is the prose form more objective than the poetic? What is objectivity? Is the poetic form an imposition on Harry’s text, implying that his speech is, somehow, more natural than Wendy’s? (Chester 14)

I believe that Chester questions what King celebrates in his article. While it is interesting and innovative that Robinson is able to bridge that gap between oral and written stories, Chester questions these choices, as well as if by altering the form, the story loses part of its form.

I would like to direct my attention now to an interesting article I found for this week concerning language and orality in Icelandic sagas. In “In the Refracted Light of the Mirror Phrases sem fyrr var sagt and sem fyrr var ritat: Sagas of Icelanders and the Orality–Literacy Interfaces,” Slavica Ranković discusses the two phrases, “sem fyrr var ritat/ skrifat (as was written before/ as already written), which directly invokes writing, and the appropriated oral-mode mirror phrases sem fyrr var sagt/ getit/ nefnd/ talat/ mælt/ rœtt (as was said/ mentioned/ named /told /spoken of /talked of before)” (299) in Icelandic sagas. While I do not believe that the connection between these referential phrases and our material this week is immediately apparent, it has been making me think about all our material up to this point. Ranković writes that “growing accustomed to the medium had slowly obviated the need of the authors to draw special attention to the fact of writing as such and freed them for a more metaphorical use of language and stylistic exploitation of the immediacy of the spoken word,” (807) which I believe Robinson utilizes in his story by stylistically mimicking oral storytelling.

It also makes me think of our blog posts. Early in the article, Ranković notes that “new communication technologies . . . processes of cultural transition from one dominant mode of interaction to another tend to be evolutionary, as the new media not only never fully supplant the old but also often adopt, adapt, and semantically appropriate some of the existing facets and etiquettes of communication.” (299) Are our blog posts not new technology looking to adopt and evolve the practice of oral tradition? Though our words are written, I do often read our posts as though we are all speaking our words and stories to read other. This translation of the written to the spoken word, again, is what Thomas King believes Harry Robinson is able to accomplish in “Coyote Makes a Deal with King of England.”

Works Cited

Chester, Blanca. “Storied Dialogues: Exchanges Of Meaning Between Storyteller And Anthropologist.” Studies In American Indian Literatures: The Journal Of The Association For The Study Of American Indian Literatures 8.3 (1996): 13-35. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 20 Oct. 2016.

King, Thomas. “Godzilla vs. Post-Colonial.” Unhomely States: Theorizing English-Canadian Postcolonialism. Peterbough, ON: Broadview, 2004. 183- 190. Web. 20 Oct. 2016.

Ranković, Slavica. “In The Refracted Light Of The Mirror Phrases Sem Fyrr Var Sagt And Sem Fyrr Var Ritat: Sagas Of Icelanders And The Orality-Literacy Interfaces.” Journal Of English And Germanic Philology 115.3 (2016): 299-332. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 20 Oct. 2016.

Robinson, Harry. Living by Stories: a Journey of Landscape and Memory. Ed. Wendy Wickwire. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2005. Print.

3. 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?

I feel as though it is fair to point out this assumption, though perhaps it is required to add this assumption in. After all, academia constantly feels the shadow of the European tradition and, coming from European tradition myself, I did not see this shadow until several Gender and Women’s Studies courses pointed this out to me.

Looking at this question, I was reminded of a novel I once read in a course on narratives. The book that I read was Half-breed by Maria Campbell. The novel is a memoir of her life living as a Metis woman in Canada. Maria Campbell details her life as caught between two different cultures, with those around her assuming she can never fit into either of these two cultures because of her liminal identity. The memoir is her attempt to bring an understanding to the difficulty she had to deal with in her life, though there was always something about the novel that bothered me.

Though I have not read the novel in a long time, I still remember the tone that created a divide between me and the author. It was as though Maria Campbell assumed that the reader came from the European tradition and, because of this, the reader would never fully be able to understand her story. I also remember how alienated I felt reading the novel as she creates a clear divide, separating herself and her people from other cultures in the narrative.

For this post, I read “The Two Way Flow: Connecting Cultures, Understanding Others” by Sanjukta Dasgupta from Landscape, Place and Culture : Linkages between Australia and India. The UBC Library has an eBook version of this article, which is what I have hyperlinked to. Hopefully this will give you a quick route to the book. If I need to edit that, or make it easier to link to the book, please let me know. The article goes over how connection between cultures allows for an understanding that can remove the assumptions that I am questioning. Dasgupta says that, “desires for exceptionalism instead of cultural pluralism ushers in the risk of discrimination and the resultant disinterest in the society and culture of the re-located space” (6). Now, this made me think of Half-breed because, while Campbell does not attempt to exceptionalism her culture, there is a measure of disconnect between cultures throughout the novel. It is the disconnect and disinterest that gave me pause.

Again, I had this feeling as I read the Lutz article for this lesson. Lutz makes the assumption that his reader is European and that they will either need to drastically alter their perceptions, or will be unable to understand first contact stories outside of the European tradition. When I first felt this feeling with Half-breed, I wrote a very long essay about how this alienation created a divide between myself and Campbell, turning my anger into ammunition. As Audre Lorde says in her speech, “The Uses of Anger,” while anger and frustration can often be seen as disruptive and negative, they are also active emotions that can inspire change.

But anger expressed and translated into action in the service of our vision and our future is a liberating and strengthening act of clarification, for it is in the painful process of this translation that we identify who are our allies with whom we have grave differences, and who are our genuine enemies. (Lorde 280)

However, I also detailed that perhaps this was not a bad thing because it inspired me to write about Half-breed, which generates conversation on the topic.

Now that it has been a few years since I wrote that paper, I would like to add something to this thought process. While, normally, I believe that assumptions, such as claiming that someone from European culture can never understand another culture, can be extremely dangerous and create further divide between cultures, I feel as thought it may have been necessary in this case. By pointing this out, Lutz and Campbell draw attention to the fact that the assumed reader will never have to experience being told that they will never understand because, as part of the dominant culture.

This brings attention to the fact that Indigenous cultures often have to deal with this kind of critique. As seen in The Truth About Stories, Thomas King discusses European and Indigenous stories of creation. King notes that European creation myths are often viewed with a grain of truth in them, while Indigenous creation myths are immediately dismissed. I feel as though, by pointing out a similar thought process in “First Contact as Spiritual Performance,” Lutz is challenging any potential readers that belong to European tradition to think outside of the assumptions that are taught to them.

Assumptions can be very dangerous constructs. They can often be damaging and create an isolation between cultures by alienating cultures from each other. However, this can be repaired. As we go through this course, I believe that we are making steps to repair and dispel these assumptions. In “First Contact as Spiritual Performance,” Lutz makes assumptions about his readers in order to continue his dialogue. In this instance, his assumptions are able to help in his argument because he puts the assumed reader in a space where they can begin to question their own assumptions.

Works Cited

Campbell, Maria. Half-breed. Goodread Biographies, 1983.

Dasgupta, Sanjukta. “The Two Way Flow: Connecting Cultures, Understanding Others.” Landscape, Place and Culture : Linkages between Australia and India, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2001, pp. 2-13.

King, Thomas. The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative. House of Anansi Press Inc., 2003.

Lorde, Audre. “The Uses of Anger.”Women’s Studies Quarterly 25.1/2 (1997): 278-85. Web.

Lutz, John. “Contact Over and Over Again.” Myth and Memory: Rethinking Stories of Indignenous- European Contact. Ed. Lutz. Vancouver: U of British Columbia P, 2007. 1-15. Print.

Hello there, English 470! Happy Monday and Happy October to you! Can you believe that we’re already a month into this term? It seems as though September went by so quickly. Anyways, here is my follow-up post to our assignment where we had to list what home means to us. I had a lot of fun reading your stories this week. Here are my observations, which I will be posting alongside some commentary. I, then, plan on following up my observations with an overall commentary on the assignment and my findings.

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SIMILARITIES

Evolution – Many of our stories revolved on the relocation of our sense of home, but it was Colleen Fish that brought the world ‘evolution’ to my attention. She begins her blog post by saying that “the reason why ‘home’ is so difficult to find is because home is something that evolves as you experience life” (Fish). I think this is an excellent way of looking at our sense of home as it is ever-changing as we rotate our location.

Comfort/Safety – Comfort and safety were words that were used often within our blog posts. I cannot agree with this more, as my story ended on me finally getting comfortable in my new house.

Family/Friends/Support System/Love – Out of all the blog posts that I read, I believe that this was among the three most mentioned aspects of the sense of home. The three most mentioned were: evolution, comfort/safety, and love. I believe this is because family is so closely connected with the home, so you feel most at home with those you consider to be your family.

The Attachment of Memories/Stories to a Physical Space – Memories and story were, of course, big themes in this assignment. The assignment was to write a story and, as I will discuss in my additional commentary, it is a crucial part of why a location becomes a home. Lucas Hui discussed the importance of story in his sense of home, while Michael Pendreigh shared memories with us in his story. 

Independence/Evolution of Identity – Finally, while not many mentioned the independence that contributed to my sense of home, Patrick Woo did discuss something similar. In his post, he says “I came to recognise it is not only my father’s home but mine as it helps us figure out who we are” (Woo). I am not sure if he was getting at the same thing as I was, but I think that this indicates that identity and the evolution of an identity can also be part of the process of making a home.

DIFFERENCES

Sense of Belonging – A few of the blogs that I inspected, such as Colleen Fish’s blog, brought up a sense of belonging and its connection to a sense of home. I will discuss this further in the additional commentary section of this post.

Stability – While most of Jenny Bachynski’s story aligned with what I wrote in my story, I thought it was interesting how her early sense of home was tied into the stability of her childhood home. As I moved so much in my childhood, I never felt this, but I enjoyed how she got the sense of stability and how that related to feelings of comfort and home across through her story.

Escape – In Chloe Lee’s blog, she said that “home has been a place of solitary peace for me, where I can escape from the world.” As my sense of home revolves heavily around the people in my life, I had not considered this aspect. However, I do agree that my home is where I find my peace and relax from the pressures of the world outside my home.

Language – As I have only ever lived in a country where my native language is the official language of the country I live in, I have never had to experience what Francisco Araneta has felt. Though, I am bilingual and I have a slight taste of what it feels like to be a fish out of water when it comes to language. I found this to be a very interesting blog post as I had never considered my language to be connected to my sense of home before.

ADDITIONAL COMMENTARY

I would like to begin this commentary with mentioning how much we all seem to want to give into cliches! I am not sure if this is a good thing, or a bad thing, but I found it interesting how many of us utilized the phrase “home is where the heart is” or “there’s no place like home.” Even when I was writing my short story on home, I felt an urge to use these phrases as well. Perhaps there is some sort of truth to these sayings.

I also found that, as a group, we had more in common than we had in difference when describing our sense of home. Many of the stories were based around memories or stories that occurred in the location we proclaimed home and it was these stories that made that location a home to us, not to sound redundant. There was also many references as to home being the place where we were surrounded by the ones we love and the ones that love us, whether it be family, friends, or others we are close to.

The idea that home is not a physical space until we make it a physical space was something I also came across quite often, though not in those exact words. Many of the stories began with talking about how home was not a physical space, but it took on these qualities by being the location where the stories occurred. Looking through all of these blogs, I feel as though it is our stories and memories that make our homes.

In terms of differences, I did not find many between all of us. Even in the differences, I found them to be quite small and maybe only different in how we termed them. For instance, I went over the sense of belonging in the differences section of this post. While I did not go over this in my story, I do think that this ties in with home being where your loved ones are because your family accepts you. I also found that Francisco Araneta’s take on linking language to your sense of home also works into the idea of belonging somewhere. It is difficult to feel belonging when you are isolated by a language barrier.

In conclusion, I thought that this was a very interesting assignment. I learned a great deal of things about what I consider to by home for myself, and also learned about what other people consider to me home. While all of our stories were unique and individual, we all shared some similarities in our sense of home. Our theme of storytelling also continued into this week when I found that it was the story of home that transformed our house into our homes.

Works Cited

Araneta, Francisco. “Assignment  2:2, Alienated at Home, at Ease Overseas.” Telling Stories of My Own, 28 Sept. 2016, blogs.ubc.ca/franciscoaraneta/2016/09/28/assignment-22-alienated-at-home-at-ease-overseas. Accessed 3 Oct. 2016.

Bachynski, Jenny. “Shifting: Assignment 2:2.” Canadian Studies: Exploring Genres through Canadian Literature, 28 Sept. 2016, blogs.ubc.ca/470acanstudies/2016/09/28/shifting. Accessed 3 Oct. 2016.

Fish, Colleen. “What home is….for me. – Assignment 2.2.” English 470 – Canadian Studies, 30 Sept. 2016, blogs.ubc.ca/colleenfish/2016/09/30/what-home-is-for-me-assignment-2-2. Accessed 3 Oct. 2016.

Hui, Lucas. “Blog Post 2.2 – “Home” Is Where the Heart Is.” Engl 470A: Seeking new stories to write my own, 28 Sept. 2016, blogs.ubc.ca/lucashui/2016/09/28/blog-post-2-1-home. Accessed 3 Oct. 2016.

Lee, Chloe. “2.2 Home.” Chloe’s Blog for English 470, 28 Sept. 2016, blogs.ubc.ca/470chloe/2016/09/28/2-2-home. Accessed 3 Oct. 2016.

Pendreigh, Michael. “2:2 The Sense of a Home.” Michael’s Foray into Home on Stolen Ground: Canadian Literature Discussed, 28 Sept. 2016, blogs.ubc.ca/michaelpendreigh470/2016/09/28/22-the-sense-of-a-home. Accessed 3 Oct. 2016.

Woo, Patrick. “Canada Is My Home And Not–Assignment 2:2.” We are in the Same Boat: Discovering the Homeland of Canadian Literary Genres in its Historical Context, 28 Sept. 2016, blogs.ubc.ca/patrickwoo/2016/09/28/canada-is-my-home-and-not-assignment-22. Accessed 3 Oct. 2016.