in which I address question 5 of assignment 2:2
A few elements of the banishment of Coyote’s younger twin particularly interest me.
The liar is banished across water because he denies theft of the “paper”.
There are a few aspects of this I’d like to examine:
1. Denial as justification of exile,
2. Positive relationship of land and truth, [misconception]
3. The nature of the “paper”,
4. The “water”; postcolonial information (I assume) integrated into native stories,
5. The twins themselves.
1. The story as I read it justifies the exile of the white first ancestor by citing his denial of theft. It is not the crime itself but the refusal of admission that warrants exile. From this I attempt to infer the storyteller’s ethos, at least in part; honesty is clearly of high value to Harry’s “Indian”, while theft (not ‘property’) is of lesser import. It might be worthwhile to compare this (assumed) ethos to those typical of primitivist/colonial justification – the characters of ‘noble’ and ‘ignoble savage’ .
2. Initially I read Wickwire’s text as assigning positive correlation to truth and land; I thought Harry had said “the white man can tell a lie more than the Indian” because the “the Indians [were] here first before the white.” (edit from Wickwire). This piqued my interest, especially given the dissociation of race in favour of ‘presence on the land’, a relationship between property and stories and the assertion that native peoples ‘belong to the land’ – not the other way ‘round. I now believe this to be my own misconception and that Harry does indeed correlate race (constructed here by ancestry) and character (or criminal tendencies at the very least).
3. I am curious as to the stolen paper and its echo (the “Black and White”). My reading (I am a literature major raised in a predominantly ‘written’ culture*) is that the forbidden paper might represent technology (by medium and content) or ‘science’ (knowledge and methodology) – an apple of Eden that provides power to the descendants of the thief; this knowledge is meant to be shared (as is the “Black and White”) but is rendered inaccessible to Coyote’s descendants (again as with the “Black and White”). Why was it forbidden in the first place? What assumptions about all people underlie that decision – and what values are attached to obedience?
4. I write now from several intersections (colonial/postcolonial, oral/literary/digital, Canadian (European/Métis/Ojibwa) and took note of an intersection in this narrative. The integration of what I assume to be chronologically ‘postcolonial’ information (the ‘distant land across water’, the ‘white’, the King of England) with one of a series of Similkameen creation stories reinforced my recognition of an assumption I think once typical of anthropological inquiry: the assumption of ‘authenticity’, a search for oral histories representative of a perspective particular to a historical group. This, for me, is predicated on a fundamental misunderstanding of oral history and presupposition. The colonizing scholar looks for stories that fit his narrative instead of asking for a narrative (itself an imposition). Inquisition and adaptation in place of dialogue and listening. Predetermined conclusions (through theoretical structure) are just as dangerous to cultural inquiry as they are in the sciences (which have themselves been co-opted [1] [2] to justify manifest destiny – a sort of ‘divine right’ in itself).
5. Finally, I am interested in the twins themselves, and the water, and the King. These are symbols that ‘break’ assumptions – told as they are happening. I would very much like to further explore stories that defy imposition – stories that roar. **
*A dichotomy of ‘oral’ and ‘written’ cultures is much too simple for serious thought, never mind the danger of value judgments. Media are (not just) technologies of communication and digital media have allowed for the remediation of many others; we are reading a picture of a written transcription of an oral narrative. I only mean to denote influences on this perspective. Also note my use of the term ‘reading’.
**This was included after I’d read the next post.
Please consider this my (ritualistic) disavowal of any generalization predicated on characteristics, socially constructed or otherwise. I never spoke with Harry Robinson and my understanding of this story is my own; namely, it’s likely flawed and probably spends too much time on Netflix. I do not profess to understand even my ‘own’ First Nation or Métis background, let alone those of others. I also do not mean to appeal to my background to justify flawed analyses. Please let me know if there are glaring errors (in content or judgment) and they will be addressed.
Works Cited:
– a book review
– Wikipedia
– myself
– Wickwire’s Robinson text
in short, I surrender all academic pretensions. this blog is firmly in the ‘reflections’ camp.