The prompt this week:

“Each student will be assigned a section of the novel Green Grass Running Water (pages will be divided by the number of students). The task at hand is to first discover as many allusions as you can to historical references (people and events), literary references (characters and authors), mythical references (symbols and metaphors).”- Dr. Erica Paterson

The pages that I was assigned were pages 41-45, in the copy I am using it matches up to pages 66-75. Everything that will be cited will be used from the copy that I am using.

Page 67: The tape recorder was making squeaky noises, as though something deep in the mechanism was slipping.

This passage makes you think about what they want you to think about here. Which noise it is truly making? The one that there could be many answers to, is there something wrong with the machine, or is there something that is just stuck that needs to be loosened.

Page 68: “I don’t know…four, five hundred years…”

This is referring to in Indians; they aren’t able to make a reference to age because they look older than what they actually are. Saying that once you get to a certain point, over seventy or eighty, age doesn’t matter you just look old, this is very racist. Saying that with these people you aren’t able to tell anything because at some point they all look alike because that is who they are.

Page 72: Mr. Red, Mr. White, Mr. Black, and Mr. Blue.

This is an interesting sentence just for the use of colors. People are often defined by the colors of their skin “The white man or the black man”. Having the extra colors in there is trying to making something funny that actually had meaning behind the derogatory slag that it could be used for. Most the time when you are considered by the color of your skin it isn’t for the purpose that everyone is wanting.

Page 73: We used to talk, you know, life, kids, fixing the world. Stuff like that.

In this place in the text the men are talking about a group of people, and they are women because of the things that they are taking about. They are talking about their lives and children, and how they what they are going to do with their lives. And through this talk they are automatically assumed that they are women because no man would ever be caught talking about these things, as they aren’t seen as “manly”. Even though later someone mentions that “the files say the Indians were men” and the reply is “Suit yourself”. Just proving how stereotypical these men are as they won’t relate to this group because they act different.

Page 74: “Enough of this dog and pony show,”

This is a common colloquial term that relates to meaning highly promoted, often over-staged performance, presentation or event designed to sway and convince opinions.

In this expression Cereno is using it to make a statement, he wants them to be aware that he is over what they are doing and is going to do his own this. As if the thing that he is about to go to is more important and more relevant than what everyone else is doing.

Work Cited.

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

Paterson, Erika. “Lesson 3:5.” ENGL 470A Canadian Literary Genres May 2015. U of British Columbia. Web. 26 June 2015.

The prompt that I looked at:

What are the major differences or similarities between the ethos of the creation story or stories you are familiar with and the story King tells in The Truth About Stories ?– Dr. Erica Paterson

I grew up with very religious grandparents, which no matter what you thought it was wrong compared to them. You were not able to have any other thoughts or feelings than the ones that the bible provides. The creation story is something they believed in whole-heartedly and won’t even consider anything else that could have happened. Even though other opinions of what happened, which have just as much validity.

But there are many things that are not answered when it comes to these stories. Who was here first? Why did they create what they did? Are we supposed to be learning something from every story that is told?

These are things that no one really has the answers to. And that no one will really find the answers to. It is interesting to hear all the variations of what people think happened to create the world that we live in today.

Work Cited

Paterson, Erika. “Lesson 3:5.” ENGL 470A Canadian Literary Genres May 2015. U of British Columbia. Web. 26 June 2015.

The prompt for this week:

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. – Dr. Erica Paterson

For this week I decided to focus on The Royal Proclamation of 1763. This proclamation is a document set out for guild lines for European settlement of Aboriginal areas in North America. King George III issued this in 1763 to try and “officially” claim this as British territory after the Seven Years War. King George issued this to claim all ownership of this new land and he did give the Aboriginals a large area of reserve in the interior of North America west of the Appalachian Mountains. He did however proclaim that settlers were forbade to take land from Aboriginal occupants unless the crown had bought if first and then sold off. This was until King George changed him mind and made sure that only the crown would be able to buy the land from the Aboriginals.

This also had significant relevance because it contributed to the cause of the American Revolution in 1775, which legally defined the North American interior west of the Appalachian Mountains for the Aboriginal peoples. This caused problems for the ever-expanding Thirteen Colonies who still wanted for land for expansion. The other issue is that the western border for this land was not specifically defined as King George wasn’t in the area and didn’t have concrete maps of the area. Having no defined line didn’t cope well with either the Aboriginals that was promised land in one area and the ever-expanding Colonies.This would make things very difficult between people trying to understand the nation that is being pushed on them and those who are trying to define them as being their own body.

In the years since there has been lots of debate about what they should do to this treaty. Some thought that this only really applied to British Columbia where the majority of the land remains un-surrendered by treaty. This however is still being legally enforced in other areas like the Yukon, Eastern Artic, parts of Quebec and the Maritime Provinces.

In the proclamation it references section 25 of the Constitution Act of 1982, this dictated that nothing in Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms diminishes Aboriginals people’s rights as it expressed in the Royal Proclamation.

This makes it really hard to see in the “eyes of the law” what people’s rights should be. If there are contradictory statements out there how is anyone supposed to understand what is right? It is what you believe, or is it the law that we hold so dear?

Work cited

Historica Canada. Royal Proclamation of 1763. Web. Accessed June 26. http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/royal-proclamation-of-1763/

Paterson, Erika. “Lesson 3:1.” ENGL 470A Canadian Literary Genres May 2015. U of British Columbia. Web. 26 June 2015.

University of British Columbia. Royal Proclamation, 1763. Web. Accessed June 26. http://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/home/government-policy/royal-proclamation-1763.html

The prompt that I picked for this week is:

“To raise the question of ‘authenticity’ is to challenge not only the narrative but also the ‘truth’ behind Salish ways of knowing “(Carlson 59). Explain why this is so according to Carlson, and explain why it is important to recognize this point.

Authenticity is being able to prove something without doubt. The stories of the Salish peoples do not usually have the distinction of being authentic, as there is no proof to their stories. This doesn’t mean that their stories are any less correct; there is just no physical proof that these things happened. This “inaccuracy” isn’t something that is unique to just the Salish peoples. These “inaccuracies” also happen in the history of Westerners as well. Most non-Natives have generally not been overly concerned with historical legitimacy of the Aboriginal legends and myths, but people are considered with their overall legitimacy that others believe they either have or do not have (56). Carlson’s biggest point from the above prompt is that he thinks those who raise too many questions try to challenge a certain way of life and the ways that they consider to be their ways of knowing their past. This isn’t to say people shouldn’t ask about their ways to be able to understand them. People don’t need to question someone’s authenticity when they are curious about his or her ways of life. Asking questions is a natural fact of life, everyone will ask something. The manner in which questions are asked, and the intentions behind those questions, are two of the most important aspects of asking a question.

It is important to recognize Carlson’s ideas, as they are valid ones. When someone tries to pry into another person’s life that is based primarily on beliefs instead of facts, only issues can arise. People understand certain aspects of life because they have faith that what they are told is correct, and they hold it dear. When people start interrogating them and trying to strip this away, they are left with a feeling of nothing and that everything they know is incorrect. This is true about any religion or way of life, though. There are not always concrete or authentic answers for everything in this world. Some things people just have to do on faith. Faith that no matter what they do in this world, there is always something that will catch them and make everything work out as it should.

Work cited

Carlson, Keith Thor. “Orality and Literacy: The ‘Black and White’ of Salish History.” Orality & Literacy: Reflectins Across Disciplines. Ed. Carlson, Kristina Fagna, & Natalia Khamemko-Frieson. Toronto: Uof Toronto P, 2011. 43-72.

Patterson, Erika. “Lesson 2:4.” Web log post. ENGL 470A Canadian Studies: Canadian Literary Genres May 2015. UBC Blogs, n.d. Web. 9 May 2015.

Prompt for this week ” We began this unit by discussing assumptions and differences that we carry into our class. In “First Contact as Spiritual Performance,” Lutz makes an assumption about his readers (Lutz, “First Contact” 32). He asks us to begin with the assumption that comprehending the performances of the Indigenous participants is “one of the most obvious difficulties.” He explains that this is so because “one must of necessity enter a world that is distant in time and alien in culture, attempting to perceive indigenous performance through their eyes as well as those of the Europeans.” Here, Lutz is assuming either that his readers belong to the European tradition, or he is assuming that it is more difficult for a European to understand Indigenous performances – than the other way around. What do you make of this reading? Am I being fair when I point to this assumption? If so, is Lutz being fair when he makes this assumption?”

To be able to assume that Lutz thinks that the majority of the audience he is reaching out to would be ones of those with European persuasion would be correct. At this point Lutz probably thought that the majority of the settled world had European roots or something similar to the area. This is seen when he talks about how the European settlers perceived these new people.

“Undoubtedly, what was sent via the performance was imperfectly received by the audience, and the response to the misunderstood message was no doubt also misunderstood in a cycle of confusion” (30)

Lutz makes it seem that it started out with these new people’s fault and in turn making “us” not be able to understand what they are trying to communicate about. Just because something is different from what you are used to doesn’t mean it is any less wrong from what we know. What do you think it felt like for them as well? These strange people show up and them not being able to understand what you are trying to say to them. Who do you think they thought of the Europeans?

I think it would have been difficult either way, Europeans having troubles with understand Indigenous performance and Indigenous trying to figure out the Europeans why of communicating. No two ways were similar, they spoke different languages, had different actions for things and two completely different mentalities for thinking. Indigenous people drew from the land, their thoughts and feelings were in a common circle. Unlike the Europeans who were more focus on what they wanted and how they were going to get it regardless of the obstacles. There must have been some common ground for them to start on and go from there. Once you are able to understand the minimal the rest comes easier.

“The first contact was not so much “an event” for both European and Indigenous people as an initiation of a dialogue which, once commenced, could not be easily broken off.” (31)

Lutz did understand that once a dialogue between people was established there wasn’t much that could be done to separate them as they were living on the same land. The Indigenous peoples were probably wondering what they wanted to do with the land and interact with what they saw was proper. With this contact between them lots of things could be understood about what they could expect in the new land and how they could prepare for it.

Work cited

Lutz, John S. Myth and Memory Stories of Indigenous-European Contact. Vancouver: UBC, 2007. Print.

Patterson, Erika. “Lesson 2:2.” Web log post. ENGL 470A Canadian Studies: Canadian Literary Genres May 2015. UBC Blogs, n.d. Web. 9 May 2015.

Everyone had varying views and opinions on what home meant to them, but most people had similar underlying factors that they considered when choosing what home was to them. Home isn’t simply the place you are living in, the place your mail ends up, or where you rest your head at night. In fact, almost nobody chose their residence as their home. Home is much more than your residence.

Everyone has to connect with their home in some way. Whether it’s a mountain top, a neighbourhood they grew up in, or somewhere else, there’s always a strong connection to the place. There are memories that have been formed here. It could be that they have spent every year there since they were young, or because they had their first, or their best there.

When people arrive at their home, they feel a sense of relief. They can stop worrying about what is going on, and they can be their true selves. Gone is the worry about what others are doing, what’s happening elsewhere; replacing those feelings are ones of comfort and peace. Many people talked about how they are more relaxed when they are at home, wherever it may be. Home is a special place, and it invokes special feelings within us when we are there.

One common thread amongst many of the articles was the connection to nature. In this digital world, it’s still nature that many people retreat to when they want to feel at home. I personally feel at home in nature the most, and am pleasantly surprised to see that so many others do as well. It’s good to see that even today we can still appreciate the natural beauty of this world, and put away our electronics long enough to properly appreciate it and feel at home.

I enjoyed reading about everyone’s feelings about home, and what it meant for them. This assignment has me wanting to return to home once again, and enjoy everything it has to offer.

Work cited

James Long. “Literal Home away from Home.” https://blogs.ubc.ca/canadianstudies470ajameslong/2015/05/29/literal-home-away-from-home/

No Author. “A Sense of Home.” https://blogs.ubc.ca/anyplaceanytime/sample-page/

Melissa Kuipers. “Where we Grow.” https://blogs.ubc.ca/melissakuipers/2015/06/04/home/

Home isn’t the place that you lay your head down every night, or where your family is. Home is where you are able to feel completely comfortable. Growing up I didn’t understand the concept of home. My parents fought all the time, my dad drank and my mother just tolerated it. There aren’t many memories of when I was younger that we truly felt like a family in a home. After my parents became divorced, we were all learning to cope, and were moving from place to place, never finding that one place that I could feel truly fit in. When you keep changing schools it is hard to settle into who you are supposed to be. I have lived in eleven different houses, and not one has really felt like a home. Once my parents remarried, they seemed more at peace with their choices, yet I still couldn’t find a place that I felt at “home” in. As I grow older I find the idea of having a traditional home, with all the fancy, sleek and modern items make me uncomfortable and feel like I don’t belong.

This is where I started to figure out where I truly belong. It wasn’t until I was really able to explore the wilderness and camping on my own that I was truly able to start finding myself. I have never felt more at home than when I have a beach to sit on, a body of water nearby and the wilderness surrounding me. During these moments, there is nothing that you need to focus on besides the scenery around you. There is no technology to distract you from what is going on and ruin the moment. These places are becoming harder to find, and the places that I usually end up visiting are getting busier and more populated with new people finding the area and wanting to experience it for themselves. With the addition of more people, the peace and quiet is reduced.

Don’t get me wrong – sitting down at the water and looking out at the lake with the moonlight being the brightest thing around, and suddenly a fish jumps or something rustles in the bushes – it can definitely scare you. But that moment of peace, where there is nothing happening but the stillness around you, is where I feel at home. There is nothing to judge the choices that I have made in life, there is no second guessing the decisions that need to be made, there is no worrying about the family that I come from. There is nothing but stillness. Even though sometimes the silence can be overbearing when your mind won’t shut up, it is nice to have a moment to take the time and sort these thoughts out.

Where you feel at “home” is different for everyone; they have different ideals of what they are looking for in their sense of home. Some people want to be surrounded by their love ones, either family or friends that are close to family, some people want to be completely alone and isolated, and some people want to be in the center of everything. Everyone has their own sense of how they feel when they are “home”. Personally, it is a complete sense of nothing, nothing but the scenery around me to capture my complete attention. I am a visual person; I love drawing, pictures and things that could take my breath away. This is where I feel at home.

Thanks for reading my blog!

Kathryn

The prompt this week was “Your task is to take the story about how evil comes into the world, from King’s text, and change it to tell it. First, learn the story by heart, and then tell the story to your friends and family. When you are finished, post a blog with your version of the story and some commentary on what you discovered. If you want, you can post a video of you telling the story, in place of text. ”

After looking at this it took me a long time to decided on an idea that would be something that I could write on and be something that could be connected to The Truth About Stories. But here it goes:

Once upon a time in a world before light and evil there was a group of people living on a small island. This group of people were the only ones known to this world, besides the animals of course. They were created to take care of the place that they lived in and not cause harm to anyone or anything. Inevitably, not all rules are followed.
One day a boy named Killian and a girl named Emma were caring to the land, as they do every day. These actions are nothing new to either of them, and they were getting bored. They wanted to go on an adventure together in the woods. Killian andEmma had been warned what would happen if they didn’t do their jobs and ran off. They were told that something would happen that neither of them liked. Nothing like that every happened in this place, though. There was no unpleasantness or unhappy feelings; nobody had ever experienced these feelings in their lives. Nobody knew what it was like to be unhappy or experience something unpleasant.

As noon neared the next day, the duo decided to go into the woods. They wanted an adventure and didn’t want to wait anymore. The deeper they ventured into the woods, the more mysterious the area became. There were noises they had never heard before, and plants they didn’t know existed. Everything was completely overwhelming to the both of them. They wanted to learn more. Emma and Killian explored even deeper into the woods until the woods was all they could see. They decided that they never wanted to go back to the life they were living before. Once this decision was made they were changing the purpose of why they were on this planet. They no longer wanted to care for the planet, and instead wanted to simply live off of it in the forest. This went against everything they were created for, and there was a price for that.

As they traveled deeper into the woods, Emma and Killian got to what seemed like a clearing with a large fast running river in the middle. Emma and Killian wanted to get to the other side of the river, as they thought if they got that far no one would be willing to follow them to the other side. The travel over the river was treacherous, and it consisted of walking along a rock ridge that was covered in slime. They knew it would be a risk, but felt that this new life could not happen unless they were across the river. Emma went first and Killian went after her. As they were crossing, Emma wasn’t having any issues, as she was small and could get across easier. Killian was having more of an issue, he was lankier in stature and wasn’t able to control all of his body. While trying to cross he stumbled on a rock and fell into the fast moving river and was carried downstream.

By the time that Emma found Killian he was washed up on shore and no longer breathing. This was the first time anyone in this land had experienced death, especially one as tragic as this. As Emma cried over the loss of her dear friend, the body let out a both a bright white light and a dark cloud. The bright light was looked at as his soul leaving and travelling to a better place. However, the darkness lingered. This was the first darkness created in this world; it was born through tragedy and loss. From this point on, everyone’s lives involved some amount of darkness, regardless of where they went or did. The darkness from Killian’s body wafted through the village like smoke from a fire, leaving a thin layer of darkness everywhere.

Because..once a story is told it can never be taken back.

Thoughts:

After I memorized this and read it to my boyfriend he just kinda stared at me. His first comment was, “why would you give this false hope of them being happy if he is just going to die at the end?” He liked the way that you weren’t expecting how the darkness was going to take over on the unsuspecting place that they are living. No one else except Emma knows what happened to bring the darkness to the town.

Work Cited

Cardoso, Kathryn. My Personal Photos. Accessed May 29, 2015.

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

Question 1:

The notion that a big distinguishing factor about culture is whether it is considered an “oral culture” or a “written culture” is something that has been highly debated for decades. Speech and writing are so entangled with each other in every aspect of life that we are not able to distinguish the difference (MacNeil).

The thought of orality is being oral or orally communicating, or as a preference for or the tendency to use spoken forms of language instead of writing (MacNeil). When we look at written history it is perceived as being absolutely necessary for the development not only of science but of history, philosophy, explicative understanding of literature and any art, and indeed for the explanation of language itself (MacNeil).

The divide in oral and written history makes one seem weaker and not as important as the other. It makes orality seem as a primitive or underdeveloped medium, as those using it aren’t flourishing in the new society that is being developed (MacNeil). Society quickly dismissed those who don’t have a written history or those who use speech and performance to relay their history. However, they are praised for their naturalness and naïveté in how they connect with one another. Speaking and listening are simple in nature, while writing and reading are cultivated and complex (Chamberlin, 34). The logic is that if people don’t have any of whatever it is: no farms, no written history, no faith, no get up and go. They are forced to do just that, get up and go (Chamberlin, 81).

What we have to think about is that oral history has been around much longer than any form of written history. Yes, there used to be markings that could represent something, but there is no proof, simply speculation. Being able to listen to a culture’s history gives you a closer connection than reading it from a book.

There are issues with both of these ways of history. When you look at written history, it didn’t start in English. It likely started in Italian or Greek and translated from there. Do we truly know how much has changed when this is done? If the people didn’t know how to translate it, would they just omit it? These are facts that no one is completely certain about. On the other hand, there is oral history, which is told through generations. Are people remembering every detail that their teachers or their elders gave them? If it is written down a different way than what it is told to someone, which way is correct?

It is interesting to consider that writing and speech go hand in hand, yet there is such a social divide in the history that you come from. I don’t feel that there should be a divide. If a person is confident in the way that they get their history why should it matter?

Work Cited

Chamberlin, J. Edward. If this is your land, where are your stories?: Finding Common Ground. Toronto: Vintage Canada, 2003. Print.

Gallery Old Writing Letters. 22 May 2015. Web. http://www.bianoti.com/gallery-old-writing-letters.html

MacNeil, Courtney. “Orality.” The Chicago School of Media Theory. 2007. Web. 22 May 2015. <https://lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/mediatheory/keywords/orality/>.