{"id":68,"date":"2016-10-07T11:51:09","date_gmt":"2016-10-07T18:51:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/hwagner\/?p=68"},"modified":"2016-10-13T16:49:04","modified_gmt":"2016-10-13T23:49:04","slug":"assignment-2-4-question-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/hwagner\/2016\/10\/07\/assignment-2-4-question-5\/","title":{"rendered":"Assignment 2.4 – Descendants of \u201ca liar and a thief\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

My first reaction to this story is sadness. It makes me sad because it so strongly demonstrates how the white settlers treated the Native People of Canada. There is no surprise that the story shows white men as descendants\u00a0of \u00a0\u201ca liar and a thief\u201d (Robinson 12) because that is what they did – lied and stole. My sadness at this story comes from two places. The first from the reality of the horrific and devastating atrocities committed against Native Peoples’ for so many years. Though I had never heard this story before I quite readily recognize it as truth, because everything in life is based on our perspective. This story it is true to those who were brought up with it, and to those who experienced situations that demonstrated the truth within it for many years. The second part of my sadness comes from the truth in this story – the idea that I have descended from a lying thief. I began to wonder, how can I combat this identity?<\/em> What can I do to make up for the errors of my ancestors?<\/em><\/p>\n

The “written document” is such a an interesting dynamic of this story. What does the document represent? I was wondering right away \u2013 what was written on that paper? <\/em>But I realized, it doesn’t matter what was written on it because the significance of the document is not what it said but what it represents; writing and literature. This led me to thoughts of the intersection between orality and literature and the way they are often viewed as conflicting. I began to wonder what part did this idea of conflict play in the relationship between settlers and Natives?<\/p>\n

Instead of sharing<\/em> the contents of the \u201cpaper\u201d as prescribed, white men came brutally enforced <\/em>their interpretation of those contents.\u00a0Natives seem to highly value and respect the art of storytelling, but White culture attributes a significant amount of validity and authority to literature over orature. In white culture it is a comparison, in which literature is deemed “better.” This white culture perceived \u00a0contradiction in values is a very saddening outlook. It not\u00a0only encourage white settlers to try to annihilate Native history, language and culture through assimilation<\/a>\u00a0– but it is still a major barrier to widespread societal acceptance and recognition of Native rights<\/a>, history and knowledge.<\/p>\n

White settlers did not have to act \u201ctrue to their original character\u201d (Robinson 10); they did not have to kill and steal. But they did. And this reality is devastating and painful. However, while this story demonstrates the truth of that history, it also offers hope for a more cooperative future. Though it may be too late to share the contents of the \u201cpaper\u201d in an honouring and reciprocal way. Maybe we<\/em> (a new generation) can repair the damage that has been done. Perhaps there is still an opportunity to return to the original plan, perhaps we <\/em>can uphold our part of deal struck upon our ancestor\u2019s banishment; perhaps together we can all create a new and happier end to this story.<\/p>\n

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Works Cited<\/p>\n

Mitchell, Terry. UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: Monitoring and<\/i><\/p>\n

Realizing Indigenous Rights in Canada<\/i>. Centre for International Governance Innovation, 2014. Web.<\/p>\n

Robinson, Harry. Living by Stories: A Journey of Landscape and Memory.<\/em> Ed. Wendy<\/p>\n

C. Wickwire. Vancouver: Talon, 2005. Print.<\/p>\n

Trigger, Bruce G., and Bruce G. Trigger. The Contested Past : Reading Canada’s<\/i><\/p>\n

History : Selections from the Canadian Historical Review: The Historians’ Indian: Native Americans in Canadian Historical Writing from Charlevoix to the Present (1986)<\/i>. University of Toronto Press, 01\/01\/2016. Web.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My first reaction to this story is sadness. It makes me sad because it so strongly demonstrates how the white settlers treated the Native People of Canada. There is no surprise that the story shows white men as descendants\u00a0of \u00a0\u201ca liar and a thief\u201d (Robinson 12) because that is what they did – lied and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43398,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[305208],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-unit-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/hwagner\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/hwagner\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/hwagner\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/hwagner\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43398"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/hwagner\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/hwagner\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":74,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/hwagner\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68\/revisions\/74"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/hwagner\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/hwagner\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/hwagner\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}