Edward Chamberlain points out that “all so-called oral cultures are rich in forms of writing…[such as] woven and beaded belts and blankets, knotted and coloured strings, carved and painted trays…” (19-20). Keith Thor Carlson (2011) goes beyond this to demonstrate that the very stories told in some oral cultures (in this case, the Salish people of coastal and plateau British Columbia) contain elements of literacy; that the exploits of characters in these stories create permanent marks upon the world that result both in something that gives stability and something to interact with (interpret), engage with (retell), and eventually change (rewrite).

Carlson first demonstrates that the Salish word for literacy is not taken from those languages introduced to the Salish people post-contact (with non-indigenous people). Words denoting objects for which the Salish people had no prior knowledge or understanding (such as cow, pig and mule) were taken from other sources – kweshú (from the French cochon, or pig), miyúl (from the English mule), or even the onomatopoetic músmes (from the sound a cow makes). But the Salish word for writing/to write (xélá:ls) is not derived from any post-contact languages, understandings or impositions. The fact that an indigenous word was used for a concept (writing, or literacy) that was supposedly only introduced by contact with Europeans – a concept that is supposedly colonial – suggests that there were pre-existing understandings of that concept.

[This lends credence to Thomas King’s rejection of the terms pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial on the grounds that they define indigeneity in terms of (on the terms of) contact, Europeans, colonialism, oppression, etc. (King 2004). That understandings of literacy predate all of these things suggests this part of indegeneity (taking only the topic at hand) must be seen on the terms of the Salish people irrespective of contact, interactions with Europeans, etc.]

Carlson then addresses what those pre-existing understandings were. The Salish word for writing (xélá:ls) is derived from the root xá:l, which means to mark. This root word also forms the words Xá:ls (the name of the central transformer figure for the Coast Salish people) and xá:ytem (the actual work of the transformer – though it is not made clear whether it is ‘that which is transformed’ or ‘the act of transforming’; for our purposes, I don’t think it matters).

Transformers (Xá:ls) place their permanent marks [xá:l] upon the world – the permanent forms of people and things [xá:ytem] – thereby creating stability and both preserving and revealing the world we know (Carlson 46, 61, 62, 63). Transformations necessarily create symbols – artifices that attest to the action and the result. And that’s all language is – symbols representing things, ideas, actions, etc. Literature (or literacy) is just a more permanent (that is, not necessarily longer-lasting but less flexible) way of marking down those symbols. This is what Xá:ls do – creating more permanent symbols of what had previously been both impermanent and ‘not right’ (46).

The xá:ytem are in turn “understood and known through the stories describing the act” (61). The act of permanently marking the world, then, also creates something we can interpret, retell as stories, and eventually rewrite (to varying degrees) as our world changes. I had been thinking about why John Lutz would write that, to some degree, “indigenous people had the power to determine the success or failure of new European settlements” (Lutz 12). I think the transformation stories of Robinson, Bertha Peters and Mrs. Bertha Peters, along with Carlson’s work on what orality says about literacy provide one interpretation. That indigenous understandings of their world, their histories, mythologies, etc. – that is to say, their stories – were better suited to adapting to the changes they faced. To the extent that there was literacy in indigenous communities prior to contact with Europeans, the fact that their stories retained a significant element of orality, and contained Xá:ls who could recast the world, their understanding of the world was flexible enough to incorporate these unsettling changes.

Language affects the way we think, what we think, and what we think about; how we develop the signifiers for what is to be signified. Maybe we can think of the transformer stories as a kind of language – xá:ytem as a signifier for what has been marked (written) upon the world. As has been said many times in this class (by us and in our readings – see especially King on how creation stories (2003, 28-30)), the language we use (and the way we use it – see especially King on Harry Robinson (2004, 186)) will fundamentally alter our understandings of the world, or in this case, the way we think about literacy (creating the world) and what we think about literacy (indigeneity).

– – – – – – – – –

Two asides:

This blog post is fairly late. One of the many things taking up my time the last two weeks has been a hunter education course I’m taking at night. In the first class, the instructor talked about wildlife management, and how First Nations’ traditional knowledge is incorporated into Yukon government’s management processes. He didn’t get in to specifics of what that meant or how it worked, though I suspect it’s as difficult to describe as the term/idea/promise of/commitment to “consultation”.

At one point he asked the participants how long First Nations have been in the Yukon. There were many guesses in the thousands of years, millions of years, etc. A friend of mine, an archeologist said 13,000 years. I like to annoy her, so I said since time immemorial. The instructor was good enough to avoid the debate, saying that in any case they have been here longer than us, and have a wealth of knowledge for helping to manage wildlife.

In the first break, my friend made it clear that she knew what I was doing, but that Science (capital S) proves the timelines (certainly much less than ‘forever’!). It got me thinking not about which timeline is correct, or how to interpret the different timelines put forward, but about the way we approach different timelines. For example, among many people I know, there are constant jokes about how people (in the southern United States, to take a common stereotype) believe that the Earth is only thousands of years old, that dinosaurs never existed, etc. With vitriol ‘we’ admonish them for their stupidity, backwardness, and belief in their Biblical stories, lamenting their state of education. Yet among these same friends, the approach to timelines (history) claimed by indiginous stories is either the opposite (not questioning) or certainly without the same vitriol

Why is this? Is it just the pendulum swinging? Is it a way of atoning for past wrongs? Are some of my friends just anti-Christian? Is acceptance of tribal understandings a zero-sum game (meaning do we need to reject one view that is in opposition to accepted Science in order to accept another similar view)?

– – –

I’ve also been listening to this song a lot lately. Every time I hear it, I think of the speaker as a third party talking to indigenous people and Europeans, about their relationship. A quick search finds that most people think it’s about kids from a previous marriage talking to their step-parent.

Anyway, it’s a beautiful song.

 

Boroditsky, Lera. “How Does Language Affect the Way We Think?” Edge. n.p. 27 Aug 2013. Web. 18 Feb 2014.

Carlson, Keith Thor. “Orality and Literacy: the ‘Black and White’ of Salish History,” in Orality and Literacy: Reflections Across Disciplines. Ed. Carlson, Keith Thor et. al. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011. 43-72.

Chamberlain, J. Edward. If This is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories? Finding Common Ground. Toronto: Vintage Canada, 2004.

Imogen Heap. “Hide and Seek.” YouTube. n.p. 21 Jun 2008. Web. 20 Feb 2014.

King, Thomas. “Godzilla vs. Post-Colonial,” in Unhomely States: theorizing Longish-Canadian Post-colonialism. Mississauga, ON: Broadview, 2004. 183-186.

King, Thomas. The Truth About Stories: a native narrative. Toronto: House of Anansi Press, Inc., 2003.

Lutz, John. “Contact Over and Over Again,” in Myth and Memory: rethinking stories of indigenous-European contact. Ed. Lutz, John. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2007. 1-15.

Sweetgrass, Shari Narine. “First Nations Reject Province’s Consultation Policy.” Alberta’s Aboriginal News Publication. n.p. 2013, 6:20. Web. 20 Feb 2014.    

Harry Robinson tells both a first story (creation story) and a contact story (how settlers and indigenous people in North America first met) (Robinson, 9-10).  I will give a very brief retelling of this story, but I will change some of the words in order to hopefully capture the intended message but also further illuminate that message.  I will use “We” to denote settlers, and “They” to denote the indigenous people of North America (or Indians as Robinson says).

We and They were twins charged with performing certain tasks related to creating the earth and its first inhabitants.  They performed their tasks.  We may or may not have performed our tasks, but we did steal a text that We were told not to touch.  When asked about this, We denied having taken the text.  For this We were banished to a distant land, and They remained in Their place of origin.  [This, Robinson says, is how They were here first before Us].  We were told that Our descendants would travel to the home of Their descendants to share the story from the text.  When Our descendants came to the home of Their descendants, We not only killed Them and stole Their land, but We refused to share the story.

There are a few points that struck me in this story.  First, We and They shared a common home (the place of origin).  Robinson says that this story tells of how “the Indians were here before the white” (Robinson, 9, emphasis added).  If We and They were in different places at the time of banishment, the banishment story would not need to be told to demonstrate how They were here first.

Second, We were not banished because we took the text, we were banished because we would not admit to taking the literature.  We wanted to keep this text to Ourselves.

Third, if They were here first, and if the twins were both here originally, then we must not have been We (“white”) and they must not have been They (“Indian”) until the moment of banishment.

Putting these three points together, my first response to Robinson’s story is that the twins became ‘white’ and ‘Indian’, became Us and Them when we separated; and the twins separated because We wanted to keep Our newfound text – comprised of story(ies) – to Ourselves.

It wasn’t that We had the text, or the stories contained within it, it was that We wouldn’t share them.  Jeanette Armstrong wrote that “when my words form I am merely retelling the same stories [of my people] in different patterns” (King, 2).  We can only contextualize ourselves in that which has already been said.  Having taken the written story for itself, neither the younger nor older twin could situate themselves in the same story, and so the twins became something different – Us and Them.  Upon returning, We would still not share Our story, perhaps could not share Our story – much like the government officials in Chamberlain’s story (1).

But while the paper (text) was taken, the story of the paper could not be taken.  You can steal a written document; I don’t think you can steal a story, at least not in the same way.  You can retell it (and attempt to make it your own, attempt to appropriate it), but each and every story belongs to the moment of telling.  Outside of that moment, it is a different story, and so has not been ‘stolen’ but rather recreated.  [That being said, one can refuse to share a story, by refusing to tell it – which can also be a way to exert power].  But a story written down can be stolen by virtue of possessing the written document.

The story of the paper, however, is separate from the contents of the paper.  It can stand irrespective of the text (paper).  This is perhaps why Robinson’s story has such power, because even when written down, it retains important elements of orality – impermanence and flexibility.  The storyteller or listener/reader can decide for themselves what the paper or the book Black and White contain (or leave it unsaid).  [This echoes our previous assignments, in which we told the story of how evil came into the world, but didn’t necessarily tell of that evil].

This point relates to how we see Robinson himself – whether he is a mythteller or a storyteller.  Wendy Wickwire suggests he would be insulted if called the former (Robinson, 29).  I think the distinction is almost immaterial – he is a storyteller, and in the course of telling stories he may tell of myths and of historical events.  What is important is that we recognise the stories he tells, and in particular the story of the twins, are not bound temporally.  Robinson is telling us what happened, but he is also telling us what is happening, and what will or may happen.

He is situated within a much more expansive ‘contact zone’ than described by Lutz (Lutz, 4).  In this sense, ‘first contact’ occurred almost at the moment of creation, which is given credence by the notion that any contact, at any point, is contextualized by a retelling of spiritual, cultural, moral stories of the people making contact, of all that has come before that point.  And the contact zone is ongoing, and I wonder if it must continue until that story (Our story) is finally shared.  At that point [and this is just a wild tangent at the end of a long blog post], perhaps We and They will again become something different, sharing common ground that enables We/They to contextualize the self and the other not in a single story (there can be no single truth), but in a fair and equal sharing of stories.

 

Chamberlain, J. Edward.  If This Is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories? Finding Common Ground.  Toronto: Vintage Canada, 2003.

King, Thomas.  The Truth About Stories: a native narrative.  Toronto: House of Anansi Press, Inc., 2003.

Lutz, John.  “Contact Over and Over Again,” in Myth and Memory: rethinking stories of indigenous-european contact.  Ed. John Lutz.  Vancouver: UBC Press, 2007.

McAllister, Jamie.  “It’s Your Story Now: how evil came into the world.”  What’s the Story: Literature and Canada.  n.p., 28 Jan 2014.  Web.  09 Feb 2014.

Robinson, Harry.  Living by Stories: a journey of landscape and memory.  Ed. Wendy Wickwire.  Vancouver: Talon Books, 2005.

Rollo, Tobold.  “Sage Against the Machine: being truth to power.”  Nations Rising.  n.p., 10 Dec 2013.  Web.  09 Feb 2014.

I think I’ve read everyone’s story of home (of those posted by this afternoon).  But here I’ll concentrate on four blogs (I’ll name them because I’ll refer to specific details) – @Cat’s, @Deanna’s, @Edward’s and @Greta’s.  There might be some selection bias here (relative to my own post; but these were the ones with elements that really stood out for me.

There are (not surprisingly, and similar to many of the other stories), common elements of proximity (in terms of space or mind) to loved ones, and of impermanence (difficult to define, not static).

Most interesting, Cat’s, Deanna’s and Edward’s all revolved to some extent around loss, either as a beginning or an end to the story or plot (the mother, the siblings, the parents and buildings).  There is a sense of something being destroyed or shattered (a previous life, a family, an entire town).

There are also elements of leaving and returning (to a hometown/place of painful memories, daily returns of a family, to a changed place).

The themes of loss and leaving/returning struck me, but I don’t think Greta’s had these same elements (at least not as centrally, because there is an element of each student having left some other place to come to Singapore).  Thinking of why Greta’s story struck me in much the same way the others’ did, I think it’s because all four have an element of recognition in them, either of recognizing something (the heat, familiar breakfast plates) or being recognized (by family/friends, for who you are – that is, not just for ‘being cute’).  In Greta’s story this recognizing something and being recognized were one and the same – a mutual recognition of a shared situation, that of being seemingly without a home (in the teacher’s restrictive definition).

As an aside, I think Greta’s story also contains an element of the process of creating ‘home’, in the dialogue among the students in trying to create a conception of home, variously (and never incorrectly) defining home as the school, a space around which their family is, a familiar place/place of recognition, nowhere and everywhere.

Peter’s first concrete memory of home was of it breaking apart. He was four years old and standing in a cold train station with his parents. Terminal stations are always cold – long, deep caverns with a high ceilings and platforms stretching almost out of sight.

His parents had explained to him what was happening – he was to accompany his father to their once and former home in the country to say goodbye to friends and family, and his mother would pick him up a week later for their permanent move to the city. His father would remain in the country. Later in life, Peter would have no recollection of what was said between any of them that day; all that remained in his mind was a subtle knowledge that something was changing, an unrealized recognition of ending

Peter grew up with two homes, or rather two places of residence. He came to know them well, his father’s apartment and his mother’s townhouse, later his stepfather’s house. There was a great sense of familiarity with all of them, throughout his life. Returning to these places as an adult from time to time, he knew exactly how many leaps and bounds it took to mount or descend the stairs; he would let his hand linger on the worn, smooth gypsum when rounding the corner from the kitchen to the living room; he recalled how large the ceilings and green belt behind the house had seemed as a child. Trees bore scars from abandoned tree forts, his mother’s eyes showed sleepless nights and broken curfews. There was comfort in these remembrances, a sense that he knew these places and they knew him.

And yet from the moment he left high school he felt compelled to move on, always. First to university, then for work, then for travel. He would often return to one of these homes for a time, linger, then move on again. Moving away. Though never sure what he was moving away from.

Eventually Peter stopped moving, and started building. He built himself a small one bedroom house in a town between the country and the city. He met his wife and built an extension – a second, larger bedroom and another bathroom. When his wife became pregnant, Peter tore down the guest bedroom and built a nursery; when his wife lost the baby, he boarded it up. When their first child was born, Peter rebuilt the nursery; when their second child was born, he added another level. When the children left home many years later, he turned their rooms into hobby rooms (with wall beds for when they returned). And when his wife passed away, Peter remained in the house, closing off the upstairs and making small changes as his aging body permitted. When Peter passed away, the house was left to the elements, eventually crumbling.

* * *

I had been trying all week to think of specific aspects of home, connections to them, etc. And I realized I don’t really have those memories, I can’t locate a sense of home anywhere, even though I’ve had loving homes. I’ve been thinking about home as a place, home as a feeling, home as comfort. I think there’s a strong connection between home and comfort, and that this comfort comes from both knowing that home and being known by it. But because both ourselves and the places we call home are constantly changing, this ‘knowing’ and ‘being known’ must necessarily be a process. Home is then a process of destruction and construction as we build something out of brick and wood and memories and plans that will give us the comfort of knowing and being known in an impermanent world.

Gavin Maxwell wrote in Ring of Bright Water that “happiness can neither be achieved nor held through endeavour” (1). In thinking about my sense of home, I see a similarity in this quote. If home is something we build to make sense of the world (something we know) and to give ourselves a sense of being in the world (something that knows us), and if this is a process that involves our past, present and future, then maybe home isn’t something we can have or keep, but something we live.

Having said this, I’m now concerned that this idea of home could be dangerous. If home is not something you can ‘have’, and if land is integral to X knowing and being known (that is, land constitutes or is an integral part of their home), then someone could argue X cannot ‘have’ their home. Does this make it too easy to divest people of their land? A potential response could be that with this approach, if no one (not X or Y) can ‘have’ that home (the land), then everyone can ‘have’ that home. And maybe unsettling the idea of home (that it cannot be ‘had’ or ‘kept’ or owned) can not only destabilize settler approaches to home (and the land), but open up a dialogue about the relationship between home and land?

But is this approach itself too close to settler colonialism, and does it oppose efforts at land claims? Or is this whole conception nonsense? I’d appreciate any thoughts.

 

 

 

Maxwell, Gavin. The Ring of Bright Water Trilogy. London: Penguin, 2001. Web. 01 Feb 2014.