There’s probably nothing worse than making a dope pop culture reference and having no one pick up on it. Growing up watching the Simpsons and listening to hip hop, my vocabulary is rife with allusions, and having someone that isn’t my sister pick up on the cryptic hidden messages is like finding out you’re not the only person who drinks pickle juice. Finding someone who gets your references is finding a kindred spirit. It is like finding a sub-reddit for your identity. It is feeling like whatever story you’re telling is finally being heard.

Perhaps that is why Thomas King writes with so many arcane, subtle and humorous allusions. Why he so seamlessly weaves pop culture, religious and historical sub-plots into the more obvious stories he is telling. In writing with allusions, King is bringing to attention the pre-existing knowledge of the reader, and challenging them to develop more. He is picking at the scabs of histories that have been heard time and time again to reveal ones that haven’t. King’s stories are uniquely accessible in that one could read them with a certain whimsy that does not acknowledge any of the sub-histories of his words, but also invites readers to look into the layers of what he is saying–the foundation that holds stories we originally thought stood alone.

I will be looking at pages 31-40 “Where did all of the water come from?” to  “Eliot paused at the door. …”. I am lucky to be engaging with the introduction of Ahdamn and the First Woman, Alberta Frank’s love triangle and the trouble with the “disappearing Indians”.

When I first started to write this blog post, I was worried that I couldn’t find any allusions in the first section about the First Woman and Ahdamn. I went to Catholic primary and secondary schools, so the religious allusions seemed so obvious to me that they didn’t seem like references. An assumption about knowledge and backgrounds that I made: that this “blatant” referencing was intentional, as if everyone grew up handing out the Eucharist during “junior liturgy”.

ANYWAY, the first section was a fun little dive into the story of Eden, with a feminist, Indigenous, Thomas King original twist. When Ahdamn (note the cadence of the spelling) is introduced, there is a line, “I don’t know where he comes from. Things like that just happen, you know.” (pg. 40 in my book) Ahdamn seems to be the embodiment of settler-colonists, while the First Woman would represent Indigenous folks. Ahdamn has an endearing lack of knowledge, displayed in his attempt to name things. This naming process, in which Ahdamn gives names to creatures and is told to “try again” (41), alludes to pre-existing knowledge–even in the garden of the first man and woman–feeding into a more circular definition of time, with an ever elusive “beginning”. This is also alluded to in the beginning of the section, “where did all of the water come from?” (38, my book)–this constant digging for the beginning.

I love food. I don’t know why I got such a kick out of the fried chicken and hot dogs falling from the trees, but I absolutely loved the idea of Americana, processed foods nourishing the first people. I don’t know if this is a stretch, but I do know that John Locke was pretty influential (and very racist) in helping colonizers to form laws and political philosophies around indigenous-colonizer relations. In The Second Treatise of Civil Government Chapter Five, “Of Property” (1960), Locke delves into these complicated notions of ownership, with Christianity being the main foundation of his discussion and understanding of what man can and cannot own. I do not have the time/space/extensive knowledge necessary to break down Locke’s influence on colonial laws, and how much his notions of religious morality (and therefore who was and was not human) skrewed over First Nations groups, but I do just need to say that it is relevant for King to be referencing Locke’s 1) fixation on religious entitlement/morality 2) discussion around property via food humour.

To crudely summarize, Locke notes that God created everyone/everything, but what makes something the rightful property of man is the labour that man puts into it. This exhibits a moral lean towards agricultural rather than nomadic lifestyles. And also assumes that Indigenous people did not have any agricultural knowledge/practices–which is just plain wrong. Locke breaks down this overarching power of God into ownership being fixed by man when he exudes his effort into it. Thus justifying ownership. God technically owns everything but the white man civilizing it is the next best thing. Food falling from the sky pokes fun at the misread histories of Indigenous land use/existence and brings to question notions of “property” and land ownership that are still vital to First Nations-state relations today.

Moving on to my gal, Alberta. The negotiation in Alberta’s head around hating to travel and preferring engaging with her gentlemen callers in “her city, her house, her terms” (44) also brought be make to notions of property, terra nullis, and who got to make the rules. “But Alberta knew that apart from no men in her life, two was the safest number.”(45) The choice of the word “safe” is vital, in that its antonym is “dangerous”. I do feel like this notion of men being dangerous to an Indigenous woman has layers and layers of meaning, but would like to focus on two things. First, the Indian Act and White Paper in Canada and the notion of “Indian status”. I don’t think I am equipped to engage fully with the complexities of Indian status as both detrimental and important, but one thing to be noted is that a woman would lose her status if she married a non-Indigenous man. Patriarchy transcends female identity every. time. Furthermore, this notion that “more than sex…men wanted marriage.” (45) continues this notion of something being turned into one’s property via that insertion of labour. To marry a woman is to make her your rightful property. Same as agriculture. ~~excuse me while I barf all over the place~~ but the empowering thing is that Alberta is savvy to these dangers and is playing Charlie and Lionel like a straight up killa.

The second is a more obvious discussion around danger, and the ongoing violence against Indigenous women that is continually ignored (and thus justified) by the Canadian legal system.

Finally, the discussion between Dr. Eliot and Dr. Hovaugh around the “disappearing Indians”. Heynow this brings me full circle to my first blog post about the Edward Curtis Project. Full circle. But Edward Curtis was taking photos of Indigenous people on the basis that they were a “vanishing race”. Because genocide. But furthermore, the language of “vanishing” or “disappearing” not only adds this mystical element to the genocide of First Nations people, but transfers the agency from violent settler-colonists to the Indigenous folks themselves. This is played with in the last sentence, “why would they want to leave?” (48).

Works Cited

King, Thomas. Green Grass Running Water. 38-48. Harper Perennial. Toronto. 1999.

Locke, John. Second Treatise of Civil Government. “Of Property”. 1960. Web. https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/politics/locke/ch05.htm

4. Identify and discuss two of King’s “acts of narrative decolonization.”Please read the following quote to assist you with your answer. The lives of King’s characters are entangled in and informed by both the colonial legacy in the Americas and the narratives that enact and enable colonial domination. King begins to extricate his characters’ lives from the domination of the invader’s discourses by weaving their stories into both Native American oral traditions and into revisions of some of the most damaging narratives of domination and conquest: European American origin stories and national myths, canonical literary texts, and popular culture texts such as John Wayne films. These revisions are acts of narrative decolonization. James Cox. “All This Water Imagery Must Mean Something.”Canadian Literature 161-162 (1999). Web April 04/2013.

The ways that King engages with and uses “acts of narrative decolonization” are two fold.  First, in being a First Nations story teller and writer, King confronts Canadian readers with a different approach to discussing, understanding and experiencing the Canada’s colonial history (and present), decolonizing not only historical narratives in Canada, but definitions of the forms that art and literature can take. Concentrically, in Green Grass Running Water, King introduces characters that, through telling their own stories to identify self and home, challenge the narratives that their experiences as colonized, oppressed people–survivors of genocide. The literal narrative decolonization present in the unfolding of characters’ stories–the confrontation of creation stories, and the movement toward and from home, speaks to the subtler action of King’s writing as an action of decolonization itself.

Wha? Bare with me, and then I’m going to bring Valerie Solanas into the mix because feminism.

On a base level, the stories presented in Green Grass Running Water are stories of narrative decolonization. Characters experiencing and engaging with narrative decolonization. The rebuilding and collaboration of creation stories to retell histories and question the histories previously heard to be truth. I was about to say that Alberta Frank was my favourite character, but I do think that Lionel’s story line presents the most obvious process of narrative decolonization. The fact that Lionel’s storyline is introduced through the three mistakes he’s made in his life is tickling and vital. While his story starts here and back-pedals, the beginning of identification and story through the acknowledgement of change, of mistakes, speaks to the retelling of First Nations’ histories in the Canadian context. Or Canadian history in the First Nation’s context. This is not to label colonization as something so innocent as a “mistake”, but to start a story at a point of change, at a point of movement acknowledges that things have been happening previously. It also acknowledges that actions influence outcomes and as much as we wish for a concrete historical timeline, situations are always in flux.

We go back in story to examine the process of Lionel’s mistakes and swing forward to see the results, with his current situation being continually influenced by past experiences and actions. This supplements the emphasis places on getting the whole story, on starting at the beginning. The need for context to understand Lionel’s current existence speaks to the greater narrative of  of need for context Canada’s identity as a colonial nation and the identities of current day Indigenous folks who are experiencing historical and current oppression simultaneously.

Continuing with this exchange of past and present to tell a new and ever changing story of self-situation, the creation story woven throughout the novel (both the conversations with Coyote and GOD etc and the banter between Lone Ranger et al) speaks to the different layers and angles of stories that are ignored when history is seen as objective truth. **I use “ignored” rather than “go unheard” because I do believe that those not hearing First Nations histories are actively doing so–it is on us, not on oppressed voices to speak even louder.** The creation stories break down the binary options often presented to us in understandings of history–not only are contexts always in flux due to histories, contexts are always feeding off one another. Histories are always feeding off one another. Decolonizing narratives is not simply presenting an alternative narrative, but making heard an angles of the current narrative that were previously ignored.

The second fold of King’s decolonization of narratives is his very existence as a story teller and the creation of the book Green Grass Running Water. I recall engaging with this notion much earlier on in the class, but what I love about King is his use of humour. Not only was King’s narrative style so unique based on the cadence of his dialogue–his mark as a storyteller and keeper of oral tradition–but his subtle humour and use of the absurd and super natural to engage with a very serious history (read earlier comment about Canada’s colonial past as genocide). I wouldn’t be so condescending as to say that King makes the First Nations’ perspective accessible (namely because I don’t think it is on the backs of First Nations to make the complexity of their experiences accessible to the colonizers who dominate narratives), but he changes the game when it comes to literature, the telling of story and the validation of histories as true.

Valerie Solanas, in her S.C.U.M Manifesto, discusses the notion of “great art” and “culture” as something that is decided and monitored by men in misogynistic and patriarchal society. The history of colonization is in itself part of and partly the product of patriarchal structures, and this is noticed in what is generally deemed to be valuable and legitimate “art” or “literature”worthy of being heard/read/taken seriously/discussed. “This allows the [passable]`artist’ to be setup as one possessing superior feelings, perceptions, insights and judgments, thereby undermining the faith of insecure women in the value and validity of their own feelings, perceptions, insights and judgments.”  (Solanas, 1967) The cadence and humour of King’s novel hold true to his way of knowing and sharing through orality, and challenges the colonial Western notion that orality is somehow the antithesis of literacy. Furthermore, his combination of read-aloud-tone in the written medium goes back to the overcoming of binaries in creation stories. Rather than King’s art being defined as either passably Western, Canadiana lit, or traditional, First Nations storytelling, he bends boundaries of what we expect his identity to be. Is he telling stories as an Indigenous man or is he catering to the Canadian literary canon. PSYCH his is doing both and neither. He is writing as a man whose histories, identities and art can’t be neatly divided into pre or post-contact. His use of humour digs deeper into the obscurities of morality, group histories/identities and individual stories.

King’s identities as a writer, as a Cherokee man, as a funny guy etc are continually challenge the colonial narratives that are imposed on him. His bending of storytelling styles to amplify ignored histories continues the decolonization of narratives. The idea of “good” art goes hand in hand with the notion of “objective” histories, everything is dependent on contexts, and contexts are always in flux with one another.

Works Cited

King, Thomas. Green Grass Running Water. Harper Collins Ltd. Toronto, 1993.

Solanas, Valerie. S.C.U.M Manifesto.1967. Web. http://www.womynkind.org/scum.htm

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.

The Canadian Multiculturalism Act of  1988, “provided a legislative framework for the official policy of multiculturalism adopted by the government in 1971”. (pier21.ca) Trudeau’s government introduced the policy, but it was under Brian Mulroney that the Act itself passed in 1988.

I don’t exactly know where my base definition of multiculturalism comes from; it seems that the notion of multiculturalism, Canada’s “cultural mosaic” is engrained into the Canadian consciousness from a young age. In elementary school, I remember being taught about Canada’s stance on multiculturalism in comparison to the United States: where Canada was a mosaic, the US was a “melting pot”. Those racists! was more or less what little me got out of the lesson, and ironically, in understanding that my nation was more culturally tolerant, cast shame and judgment on another nation and culture. The general understanding of Canada’s multicultural policies that I received was that in Canada, families were welcome to engage with their own cultures: religions, languages, foods etc. and be celebrated for it, that everyone could kind of join together and exchange these cultures and learn from each other.

Multiculturalism, as a national policy (and thus part of national consciousness) is more complex than sharing of food and freedom of religion, and deciding who multicultural policies benefit can be challenging and ambiguous. First, to make things easy, and put them in a binary, the choice between cultural mosaic and cultural melting pot doesn’t translate to being so cut and dry. The question(s) of assimilation that come into national policy and /law/ surrounding /culture/ are incredibly convoluted. Does multiculturalism mean room and understanding for segregation (for lack of a better term) in urban spaces, and what assumptions present themselves under that cheeky term “equality”? As a white, settler Canadian kid, I always thought that multiculturalism meant that everyone was treated the same regardless or background. But the problem with that is that background is what creates culture and identity in the first place. Different histories result in different present existences, and to claim social justice via equal treatment is to ignore history. This same glossing over of history is probably what lead me to see myself so self-righteously as Canadian, for I had yet to be taught Canada’s colonial history. This paradox of celebrating “difference” in order to achieve colourblind equality not only washes over histories of violence and identities of anger, displacement and coping out of necessity, but more or less says that cultures are welcome to exist so long as they are convenient, positive and exciting for Canada. Canlit notes this, “some critics have argued that multiculturalism policy leads to token displays of diversity–such as food, song and dance–rather than dealing with actual injustices.” (“Introduction to Nationalism”).

Continuing with this notion of binary, this “us and them”, the Canadian mentality of multiculturalism still latches onto the idea of Canadian culture accepting other cultures. Growing up, my idea of multicultural relied heavily on the idea of immigrant families–those who are welcomed into Canada thanks to multiculturalism, rather than part of this multicultural identity. I fully acknowledge that this could be based on my experiences growing up white, with a predominantly French Canadian heritage. But even if I have come to criticize my previous assumptions around who is legitimately Canadian and who is benefitting from Canadian multicultural policies, I do believe that it is a general consensus that whiteness, the settlers, the colonists are neutral in this cultural mosaic. The grout that holds all of the pretty, colourful pieces of glass together. When the general understanding of multiculturalism is “we are tolerant of different beliefs” rather than “we are a coexistence of different histories”, there is still an imbalance of power. Of who is able to provide the tolerance. Who presents and decides the laws in the first place.

This discussion of multiculturalism as 1) claiming equality to deny history and 2) celebrating the convenient pretty things by making them “legal” rather than full heartedly examining the legacy of violence that continues in Canada today, brings to mind the very recent passing of marriage equality in the US. While this is law is monumental for so many groups and individuals and has  on the backs of so many people throughout history, there have been many voices in the queer community–particularly queer people of colour–who say that making marriage legal distracts from the violence that is regularly occurring against them. Furthermore, having equality acknowledged through allowing people to get married, simply pushes the heteronormative, capitalist agenda of what a relationship and a family should be. Two people. Monogamous. In the same way that multiculturalism is often celebrated via food (and hey, I’m not complaining, I love me some food), homosexuality is accepted through marriage–something that is acceptable, comfortable and more or less the norm in the eyes of the law. Legally extending heteronormative values into what used to be deviant (from the norm) groups, can, in some ways, only further extend the influence of those in power (i.e. oppressive, colonial governments). The poet duo Darkmatter articulates some of these thoughts, “when marriage and not murder is the number one queer issue”, in the poem “It Gets Bourgie”; they refuse to join in the ignorance of the intersectionalities of capitalism, colonialism and the misogynistic patriarchy that is the state.

To engage in a legal declaration of the ever ambiguous “multiculturalism” is to shift the focus from, “Europeans colonized this land”, to “now that you’re in Canada, you are allowed to speak your language at home, but you still have to speak English (or maybe French) in most institutions/if you are an immigrant and want to be recognized as a citizen. Also food.” Sorry for being facetious, but to legally claim that Canada is multicultural is to shift the blame of oppressive and unequal policies/mentalities to other parties. All of the daily racism/violence/second class treatment/patronizing that non-white Canadians experience can no longer be the fault of the multicultural government, but of specific ignorant people, and that isn’t really the government’s problem. Furthermore, the Multiculturalism Act doesn’t really speak to any kind of policies to undo the violence that led to inequalities in the past, rather it claims a fresh, “equal” starting point for all groups. Which is impossible given histories of violence and all of the people in power who do not resemble or represent or identify as First Nations, and thus though everyone is allowed to sound their voice, only some are heard. And some have experiences such oppression that they may not feel able to sound their voice. There is so much history in silence. But the Multiculturalism Act more or less assumes that everyone is going to be singing at the same volume.

Works Cited

Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21. “Canadian Multiculturalism Act”. Web. 2015. http://www.pier21.ca/research/immigration-history/canadian-multiculturalism-act-1988

CanLit Guides. “Reading and Writing in Canada, A Classroom Guide to Nationalism.” Canadian Literature. Web. April 4th 2013.

DarkMatter. “It Gets Bourgie”. Youtube. Web. March 26, 2015.

Darnell L Moore. “I am Black and Gay, But I Refuse to Be Proud This Weekend.” Mic. Web. June 26, 2015.  http://mic.com/articles/121420/Civil-Rights-Marriage-Equality

Dean Spade, Craig Willse. “Marriage Will Never Set Us Free.” Organizing Upgrade. Web. http://www.organizingupgrade.com/index.php/modules-menu/beyond-capitalism/item/1002-marriage-will-never-set-us-free

Immigrant Welcome Centre. “Canadian Multiculturalism Act.” Web. http://www.immigrantwelcome.ca/resources/42-canadian-multiculturalism-act

I really enjoyed reading various classmates’ stories of home, but found it incredibly challenging to write this post, connecting the assumptions and experiences of various authors. What I liked most, perhaps, was navigating the small details of home speckled throughout larger themes of what home meant to the individuals I read. Quirky anecdotes about great danes and ostriches added so much more meaning to the words of my peers, but also made me feel cautious when making assumptions about the assumptions/similarities of these stories. I found that a main theme between myself and my peers, in discussing home, was this notion that home is a strange combination of the tangible and the emotional, and I feel very humbled to engage with and try to understand and connect to the emotional significance and undertones of my classmates’ stories.

Anyway, I will be looking specifically at Saarah Ghazi, Freda Li and Whitney Millar’s stories about home. Common threads between these three (and others) included drawing back to memories, and childhood–this notion of time as important in solidifying and reifying what we call home–the concept of change in the recognition of home and the relationship between comfort/familiarity and building or growing into home.

The use of childhood memory in the definition of home was apparent in essentially all of the blogs I read. Perhaps this was more just along the line of the use of childhood/memory in storytelling, but I found it interesting that home was most often explored and referred to  in the context of the past. I think this connects to the next two themes I explore, change and comfort, but also speaks to what we refer to in our knowledge of self and place. Saarah’s discussion of her childhood was interesting because she maintained a certain ambiguity with regards to timeframe–it didn’t feel so linear: like childhood was more of realm rather than a the first however many years. This was useful because it implies that there is a certain set of values or way of experiencing things as a child that form memories and perceptions of home. Freda continued this stretching of history and knowing by connecting her childhood perceptions of home with her parents as immigrants. Freda acknowledged that her parents were “forced to look forward and create a new home,”, that home being her childhood. I appreciated this look into history that isn’t directly experienced, but passed down and formative–continued memory and time, layering perceptions of home.

I found these discussions of home in relation to childhood important to understanding how I relied on time and memory in legitimizing my definitions of home. To quote Missy Elliot, “it don’t matter where you from it’s where you at,” why do we tend to directly go to the past, rather than current states and feelings when defining home. Is home always a nostalgic thing, rooted in preliminary experiences, or can we have multiple, different definitions of home, some very new? Saarah brings balance and comfort when she notes that, “home is understanding and accepting the future while simultaneously honouring the past.” I guess we always see home in relation to wherever we are now; the past becomes significant with the present, but speaks the fact that our current definitions of home heavily rely on our initial definitions of home. Histories are incredibly valuable in orientation and wholeness of self.

The thing that amplified the focus on childhood as formative to notions of home was a specific change that challenged and then cemented perspectives. Again, this use of a causative incident is also probably just related to good storytelling (well done, team!), but it does speak to how we recognize and define norms. Whitney speaks about trying to replicate home when she moves to a dorm, and “rediscovering the familiar”, and Saarah speaks about slowly growing into seeing a new place as home after a move. The fact that all of our definitions of home come from preexisting experiences is valuable in understanding what norms we set when hearing others’ stories. Subconsciously we are holding up everyone else’s definition of home, to our own, just as we would when living in a new place. Change allows us to see all of our assumed norms, we often define home in terms of differences and similarities to a preexisting constant. In reading my peers’ blogs, I often found that they would either challenge or align with my own experiences and definitions of home–my memories set the norm form how I read everyone else’s.

A huge thank you to my peers for the interesting, heartwarming and challenging stories that helped me to better understand my own definitions of home.

Works Cited

Li, Freda. “Home is Not (Always) A House.” Whose Canada Is It? June 5, 2015. Web. https://blogs.ubc.ca/fredaliblog/2015/06/05/blog-4-a-home-is-not-always-a-house/

Ghazi, Saarah. “2.2.” Saarah Ghazi. June 4, 2014. Web. https://blogs.ubc.ca/saarahgeng470/2015/06/04/2-2/

Millar, Whitney. “Let Me Come Home.” Whitney Engl 470 Experience. June 5, 2015. Web. https://blogs.ubc.ca/whitneymillar/2015/06/05/let-me-come-home/

Missy Elliott. “We Run This.” The Cookbook. Atlantic/ Goldmind. 2005.

Assignment 2:2

poem to my uterus 
Lucille Clifton

you     uterus
you have been patient
as a sock
while i have slippered into you
my dead and living children
now
they want to cut you out
stocking i will not need
where i am going
where am i going
old girl
without you
uterus
my bloody print
my estrogen kitchen
my black bag of desire
where can i go
barefoot
without you
where can you go
without me

My friend Riley jokingly calls her body her “meat suit”. The imagery is graphic and morbidly suiting for the giggly, dimpled girl that crafted it. My father is a chef, and before the mid 2000s, when he began teaching his art, I grew up inside of a restaurant. The last two times I’ve had my heart broken it was because someone was moving away–most recently, the one moving away smoked cigarettes, and thus smelled like my late Grandma Jean. We squirmed in bed saying goodbye, trying to differentiate physical orientation from state of mind. Once I pooped my pants while on a run.

I’ve spent a significant amount of my life trying to understand where exactly I am situated in my body. I’d like to think of this skin as a meat suit I could peel off, tone, shave, whatever; but I have difficulty distinguishing the skeleton that it sticks to, that is to say, I almost never feel things in my bones. More often than not, my sense of self and sense of place are convoluted by my chemicals and physical bulk. The physical space one takes up can be daunting. I’m still working to understand what of my being I am in control of, and what is stubborn, unchanging, a physical constant. I feel like a lot of people devote their life(style) to disassociating state of mind from physical existence, transcending the barriers of the body. This is a powerful thing to do, and in so many situations, rejecting the traditional limits of the body is vital to growth and well being. But for me, in the discussion of home, I can’t help but to acknowledge my physical existence as significant to my sense of place.

I’m going to borrow the themes in Clifton’s poem, stretching them from what I see as her intended message, to discuss the significance of physical self in relation to notions of home. you have been patient as a sock. I tend to feel emotions extremely physically. I’m that kid who pukes when they are stressed out. Crying is one of my favourite things. I also like going for runs after nights out. I like the way I cough and spit and physically come to terms with everything I’ve consumed and done. My body is patient and forgiving, and in realizing this, I slowly become the same.

While is incredibly cathartic to use physical motion to come to terms with the emotional self, understanding and accepting the limits of the physical self is just as much as a process. All of the chemicals and synapses that feed into my emotional sense of existence, all of the stubborn bits that prevent me from functioning and identifying with myself are what make separation of physical self and emotional self challenging and perhaps impossible. There is this sense of urgency when your chemicals exhaust you. When you cannot rationalize your state of being. When your emotions feel primordial to your identity, that you are experiencing this essentialism that you aren’t really in control of. My body has been patient as I’ve tried to transcend it in my definition of self. As I’ve travelled and moved and changed places unknowingly lugging myself–my meat suit–around.

I’ve travelled a decent amount for the number of years I’ve been alive. For a long time (including the present), I (have) put a huge amount of energy into associating with place. Into becoming physically rooted to a city or geography. This notion of geographical space and Canadian identity has been discussed in our class before, and is especially vital to notions of colonialism and land. I do not wish to identify as someone who has shared the First Nations experience(s) of colonialism, but I would like to connect my reliance on physicality to connection to place to the use of physical geography to define home.

where can I go/barefoot/without you/where can you go/without me. Lugging my body to new places has exhausted me into accepting this idea that home is most often a cumulation of experiences rather than a physical location. The title of Chamberlin’s book, If This Is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories?, speaks to the transformation of geographical location into home. When Chamberlin talks about displacement, as European colonizers as also homeless, he brings to question the different layers of displacement and disassociation of place and self. I fear that it is impossible for me to not indulge in this cliche, this idea that home is a feeling, a memory; that people who love you make up your place. But it is true that you can’t just seek your stories elsewhere. That home is comprised of histories and melded into this pseudo-physicality that cannot be denied. This is not to say that home cannot be and is not being constantly recreated, but it is also saying that one’s physical self, the home that one carries around, is always interacting with the homes of others.

I have this baby tooth, rotting away in my mouth. There is no adult tooth underneath, and so there is nothing to push it out. But 21 years with a vice for gatorade power means that this baby tooth is riddled with cavities. I was eating sushi and part of it chipped off. I bailed on my last dentist appointment so this half tooth is just kind of sitting there. I’m trying to think if I have any cells in my body older than this tooth. I’m trying to think what will happen to my jawbone if I just leave it there, rotting.

Works Cited

Clifton, Lucille. “poem to my uterus.” Quilting Poems. Brooklyn, NY: BOA Editions. 1991.

Chamberlin, Edward. If This is Your Land, Where are Your Stories? Finding Common Ground. Toronto: AA. Knopf. 2003. Print.

hey cuties!

This week was fun, thanks for the challenging assignment, Erika!

Below is my story. I don’t actually have any beef with coffee or the consumption of coffee, though this tale may have been inspired by one person’s (your truly) inability to handle her caffeine.

I’ve always been an incredibly shy person, I would say veering past shyness and into the realm of anxiety. In the comic above, I give a little shout out to my love of solitude, but for real, the silenter, the better. This doesn’t mean I don’t like people, in fact, I am often super curious about and wish to connect with a lot of the people I only know as acquaintances, but when it comes to actual interaction I freeze up and all sorts of thoughts go through my brain and it can be really hard to articulate anything. Anyway, oddly enough, as a teenager (when my anxiety was at its peak), I found that it was actually much easier for me to talk to large groups of people, rather than one on one. There, for me, is so much more control in presenting to a group of people, having them sitting there for the purpose of listening to you, and being able to evoke emotions (you choose which emotions to evoke, and thus which emotions to feed off of). Actually, about 90% of it probably had to do with the fact that you could prepare ahead of time, and I have a very good memory, and thus was in complete control of what was going to happen. I did public speaking competitions and slam poetry regularly, and even ended up being class valedictorian ***I don’t know how this happened, because I honestly only had one friend, Eliza, to whom I spoke during my entire high school career, and when she wasn’t around at lunch time, I would honest to God just pace through the halls. Maybe everyone thought I was pacing through the halls because I was super involved; jokes on them, suckers!!!!*** 

Ok, that was a tangent, but when I got to university, I started drinking developing coping mechanisms for my shyness–tools I regularly turn to when feeling uncomfortable. One of them is most definitely humour; a bit of forced over-sharing and exaggerated emotion to make up for the silence with which I wish to engage. I use this ALL of the time and sometimes it evolves into a fake it till you make it type situation–the more I engage with people, consciously forcing myself out of my comfort zone, the more I begin to enjoy it (mostly).

This storytelling assignment brought me back to my roots of speech giving and spoken word. The ideal situation for story telling would be in front of a large group. Like Thomas King in his Massey Lectures. In total control. But I couldn’t so much conjure a large group of people, so I did tell my stories one on one to two friends. With this, my stories became a little more conversation like; I’d get interrupted for clarification, or read the individual’s face and feel the need to step out of the story and justify or explain things. Or I felt the need to cater each telling to each individual (mainly how much I would allow myself to swear when imitating P). At first I thought this was a bad thing, I was like “look at how much I am being interrupted” or “this is so not like traditional story-telling” but then I realized that that is exactly what King was talking about. All stories are always growing and changing. Even though I might feel more in control of a large group of people, I have no clue what they will do with my words, or what is going on in their brain. I may feed off of collective energy, but the words change as soon as they leave my mouth and hit someone else’s brain. Someone else’s consciousness. A story is not always so much an exchange of knowledge, but just an exchange. Our brains and experiences and memories and anxieties do the rest, the changing and growing of the words. Stories are very human things.

love,
Jocelyn

Works Cited

King, Thomas. The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative. Peterborough:Anansi Press. 2003. Print.

Question 3: Words. Chamberlin talks a lot about language, in particular the strangeness and wonder of how language works. Stories, he says, “bring us close to the world we live in by taking us into the world of words” (italics mine, 1).  He describes learning to read and write as learning “to be comfortable with a cat that is both there and not there”  (132). Based on Chamberlin’s understanding of how riddles and charms work, explain this “world of words.” Reflect on why “words make us feel closer to the world we live in” (1).

For the past two years, I have been the proud best friend of my roommate’s cat, Sprite. Sprite, my roommate and I’s house was recently torn down, so we were forced to part ways, but up until this, our cohabitation involved a lot of this:

sprite

Sprite is a strange cat in that she is a purebred Ragdoll. She has been (in)bred to be docile and passive, and is thus even more floppy and sleepy than your average cat. I understand that this is not exactly what Chamberlin was speaking about when referencing the cat that is both there and not there (in Sprite’s case, not there meaning asleep 20 hours of the day), or herding cats (my kind of cat-central-metaphors kind of guy); but it did get me thinking about the elusivity of something we hold so closely as part of our self-actualization: language.

I ended up at a previous student’s blog for a previous semester of this course, who explained that the cat as both there and not there is a reference to a thought experiment conducted by Erwin Schrödinger that explored imagination and reality as the ultimate paradox. Kk, sorry Erwin, philosophy is not really my jam, but this notion of reality and imagination as not so much polar, but symbiotic makes (a little more) sense with regard to Chamberlin’s “world of words”.

In describing the relationship between imagination and reality as symbiotic, I do not wish to confuse Erika’s discussion of the symbiotic relationship between story and literature–though the two pairings do seem to go hand in hand. Words and language are much like my pal Spritey because as much as the speaker/writer is in control of them–feels as though they own and raise them intentionally–they are also 1) not something entirely created by the speaker, their own entity that came from past relations/history/beings 2) available to others (readers, listeners and other speakers) to be interpreted and used. The connotations of language are aloof to the speaker: as Erika notes, the control and power is messily and foggily exchanged between writer and reader, speaker and listener. While storytelling allows for more context, energy and emphasis to be added that can influence the listener, the speaker is still very much in a vulnerable state in presenting their reality through words: does the reality need to be confirmed by listeners in order for it to be actualized. Through how many variations of hearing can a story go for power to come from shared belief?

In the context of discussion around colonization, forgetting and unlearning, power seems to be a separate factor: something that is not entirely born from shared stories and belief, but something that pre-exists due to histories of violence and misunderstanding (I fear that misunderstanding is too gentle a term, but alas I am limited in the world of words). When histories are intentionally forgotten on an institutional (and thus, national) level, not only do the connotations and meanings of words veer strongly out of the favour of certain (read First Nations) groups, but ways of using words to exhibit knowledge, belief and consequent reality are challenged and ignored.

Macneil’s discussion of orality was a much needed read, because I have been exceedingly frustrated by this binary of “literacy”–and the horrors of “illiterate” groups–“illiterate” women around the globe. Last summer I did an internship at a library in Busolwe, Uganda. I was doing impact assessment on this language decolonization program for elementary schools. ~~I have, to the point of nausea, one million things to say about the fact that I was even working abroad, especially in what would be considered a “development” situation, so hit me up if you ever want to chat over a beer, because I can’t type it all out on this bad boy.~~ The thing about Uganda is that it is seen as one of the *best* countries in East Africa if we’re talking about stability and the UN Millennium Development Goals; on that note, the thing about Uganda is that elementary school is taught in home vernacular until grade three, before a straight up switch where everything goes to English. whaaat. Because of this (again, I need a beer), there is a tonne of internalized inferiority, a huge drop in grades and “literacy”/the learning curve and a very estranged relationship to language. What I noticed especially was that, because English was this language specific to (Westernized, high emphasis on science, math etc.) school and studying, students used the language very clinically–self expression, story telling and poetry were kind of out of the picture when speaking English. But at the same time, students are punished when speaking their family dialects, so that is kind of limited too–or there is a certain amount of shame associated with it. For so many people, language (speaking and writing) is a primary medium for self-expression. Self-expression is a confirmation of self: a cumulation of experiences that confirms one’s existence, reality and validity. To force Eurocentric ideals, and colonial languages is to challenge the realities of groups, histories and individuals. THIS IS IN NO WAY MEANT TO BE ME TELLING THE STORY OF THE “DISEMPOWERMENT” OF THE PEOPLE IN BUSOLWE. I feel vulnerable in my own words here, because I hope in no way to be taking some kind of anthropological, “look what we’ve done”, labelling of the “victims” of colonialism. This is just one slice, one story/perspective to illustrate a point of the power of words and language and how tied to history “legitimate” ways of knowing can be.
 

Continuing with this, the documentary Schooling the World: The Last White Man’s Burden  calls bullshit on the current trend in international “development” toward building schools to tackle illiteracy. The main point is that for some reason, the building of Western-style schools doesn’t seem as inherently racist or ignorant as, say, Christian religious missions, due to this assumption that education and literacy is “higher” in the hierarchy of needs and thus universal. But the reality is that going into situations to eradicate “illiteracy” is to claim a terra nullius on the knowledge and histories of the families and groups being approached. The film notes that inferiority is internalized in a twofold manner: children are taught that they are essentially being saved from the ignorance and poverty of their families through these new, Western schools (presumably being “built” by white voluntourists) and elders are being told that they have nothing valuable to teach to the young people in their communities. Additionally, when the kids taught in these Westernized elementary schools don’t succeed at becoming doctors, they don’t have the knowledge of their families/communities, and aren’t really useful at, for example, subsistence farming. It is kind of like a displacement of knowledge that can lead to literal displacement of people.

These examples of current-day colonization exhibit the delicate relationship between language and reality. While there is the micro relationship between how words articulate imagination, thus creating this quasi-reality is present, on a macro level, how we determine what types and uses of language are valuable and legitimate feeds into create and denying entire histories and bodies of knowledge. This is where unlearning, though SO difficult, is valuable. Through my schooling, I’ve always been taught to “think critically”, question whatever one is being told. But the problem with this is that critical thinking mostly materializes in the form of imposing one’s subjectivity and reality onto a story/argument/artwork. Unlearning as a method of critical thought more requires criticizing one’s subjective reality to better understand all of the assumptions that are made when listening. What we hear and what we don’t hear, and why. What we choose to make real, and what we see as mere detailing.

I’m trying to think of a way to bring this back to my cat. How do you deal with the pukey hairballs of your lil fuzzy words?

love,
Jocie

Works Cited
Dada, Zara. “Imagination v. Reality, The Ultimate Paradox?” UBC Blogs. 01/17/14. Web.

Black, Carol. “Schooling the World: The White Man’s Last Burden.” A Thousand Rivers. 2010.

Chamberlin, Edward. If This is Your Land, Where are Your Stories? Finding Common Ground. Toronto: AA. Knopf. 2003. Print.

Courtney MacNeil, “Orality.” The Chicago School of Media Theory. Uchicagoedublogs. 2007. Web. 24 May 2015.

I would like to acknowledge that I am writing on the occupied, unceded, traditional, and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish peoples, specifically the sḵwx̱wú7mesh, sel̓íl̓witulh, and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm nations.

Hi, my name is Jocelyn and this class is one of the last two I am taking before graduating with a degree in International Relations. I enjoy spending my time eating carbohydrates and making home videos. This blog is for ENGL 470A, “Canadian Studies”. After reading other people’s blogs, I am beginning to really look forward to the conversations and learning that will take place; and very excited to get to know my peers on the inter web.

While I’ve only taken a handful of English Lit courses, the themes, topics and critical nature of this course seem to be right up my alley and I look forward to learning from a literary perspective. In my International Relations theory (and in life), I identify as feminist–an identity that has shaped a huge amount of my university learning and something that I think this course will feed and nurture. I am particularly interested in anger as a discourse: the language that shapes it, how notions of time understand it and how it can be a relevant way of knowing in academia. Glen Coulthard is a professor at UBC who teaches in the First Nations Studies program and wrote Red Skin White Masks, his discussion around anger coming from an Indigenous and Canadian History/policy perspective. I mention him now because UBC has some amazing indigenous voices–voices I look forward to reading throughout the course. Additionally, it was in Coulthard’s class that I first read The Edward Curtis Project, a play by Marie Clements that some other students mentioned in their blogs/discussion (holla!). What I love about The Edward Curtis Project is that, in print, it uses multiple mediums (photography and words)–I absolutely love combining creative forms of communication, word and image, food, movement whatever in learning and self expression, and I think it is such a vital part of holistic learning (that is what is kind of nice about writing a blog for this course: there is such potential for audiovisually funky posts)! I’m excited for the literature in this class, because Indigenous stories can simultaneously be both historical and super urban, young and experimental. I guess all stories can be, but you know what I mean (for example, some of the slam poetry posted on a fellow student’s blog; or First Nations hip hop artists). ~~side thought, are Tezuka’s Princess Knight and Woolf’s Orlando the same story?~~

  (same same?)

Now, back to Coulthard. I am white, like seventh (?) generation Canadian  and have loads of privilege. I understand that the notion of checking privilege is not necessarily brand new information for anyone in this course or reading this blog, but it is something that I feel necessary to do when engaging with literature. As an angry feminist (I am very intentional in this self-identification), I often have a whole bunch to say and don’t want to waste time taking bullshit from anyone. But the thing is, my voice cannot speak for everyone. And when it is speaking, it is often speaking over people. I am here to learn tenderly, to listen and to check myself. This class should provide me with a large amount of new and valuable, valuable perspectives; perspectives that I don’t so much intend to appropriate but can learn so much from.

I am excited for some story time where I listen (in the form of reading) quietly to the really awesome voices of classmates and writers.

cheers

Works Cited

Clements, Marie, and Rita Leistner. The Edward Curtis Project: A Modern Picture Story. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2010.

Glen Sean Coulthard. Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014.