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).

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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.