Monthly Archives: October 2016

To Build a Story?

For this week’s post, I will be responding to the following prompt:

“[I]n her essay, Maracle answers her question describing what she sees to be the function of literary criticism in Salish society. Summarize her answer and then make some comparisons between Maracle and Frye’s analysis of the role of myth in nation building” (Paterson, question 6).

In order for criticism to arise naturally from within our culture, discourse must serve the same function it has always served. In Euro-society, literary criticism heightens the competition between writers and limits entry of new writers to preserve the original canon. What will its function be in our societies? (Maracle 85)

Author, storyteller, and educator Lee Maracle poses this question in her essay, “Toward a National Literature,” where she continues to explore different elements of what the function of criticism could be, especially with regards to First Nation society (Maracle identifies herself as Sto:lo). In her “response,” Maracle suggests that story and its criticism can be a prompt for discourse and “healthy communal doubt” (85). This questioning can create inspiration to reflect on one’s self and society, or “face ourselves,” and to grow and transform by expanding clan knowledge or augmenting “the house … by adding rafters” (Maracle 85). Once augmented, it calls for new myths to be created based on these changes, which can help to spark opportunities for group learning and further criticism and reflection on the story’s role and relationship to oneself and one’s community, and to their continued growth. In the words of Maracle, the “purpose for examining old story is first to understand it; second, to see oneself in the story; and then to see the nation, the community, and our common humanity through the story and to assess its value to continued growth and transformation of the community and the nation” (85).

Through this process of reflection, criticism, and group learning, Maracle suggests that new stories are created, some of which can help to direct one towards the “good life,” change behaviours, and “clear old obstacles” (85). Beyond this, Maracle indicates that this process of “creation and recreation of literary culture is a function of education,” which is also a means to share and transfer knowledge (90). This knowledge and stories are a part of an inheritance that is a part of what Maracle says governs her (94) and that are also elements of a nation (85). In fact, Maracle suggests that these stories come forward and are created by the myth-make in the interest of the nation (85).

In the words of professor Erika Paterson, “[t]here is an intimate relationship between constructing a literary canon and building a nation.” Author and literary critic Northrop Frye also alludes to this concept in his reflections at the beginning and conclusion of his book The Bush Garden: Essays on the Canadian Imagination. Not only can this connection be found, but Frye also shares some commonalities with Maracle in terms of reflecting on the myths and stories that influence, and are influenced by nations.

To expand, both Maracle and Frye suggest that one’s place, both within the environment and society, can contribute to one’s experience with stories, and with national identity. In the words of editors Aman Sium and Eric Ritskes, “[l]and is not simply the backdrop against which stories are told; it’s the premise of why and how we tell them” (vii). In Frye’s analysis, this affects nation building as one’s physical location alters one’s imagination and culture which is directly linked to identity; causing identity to be found at a local scale (ii). This contrasts with a more euro-centric view of a nation-state being culturally homogenous (“Introduction to Nationalism”); however, even with various attempts at assimilation (including residential schools and promotion of “Canadian unity and identity” (Frye ii)), Canada has continued to be culturally diverse, with many “nations” within the internationally recognized state (“Introduction to Nationalism”). In a similar way, Maracle also recognizes that one’s location and experiences affects one’s writing — and suggests that writing from within one’s culture and with an understanding of that culture’s original knowledge is essential for that culture to grow (84).

Beyond this, Frye and Maracle both suggest that imagination is important for identity and that a lack of connection to previous, historical knowledge contributes to a degree of loss in terms of identity and national myths. However, Maracle and Frye come from very different standpoints in this regard as for Maracle, this is due to the detachment of knowledges, national systems, and stories that have been forcefully disconnected and interrupted by colonialism (80). On the other hand, Frye (contributing to the erasure that Maracle reflects on) finds the transformations in Canada, from “wilderness” to “a part of North America and the British Empire, then [to] a part of the world” (219) is too fast for a writing tradition, and its related national identity, to really be grounded and developed (while simultaneously suggesting that “Canada” began when Europeans arrived).

As indicated by both these authors and Paterson, myth plays a role in nation building and, to go beyond the ideas already presented, “to believe in [stories and myths] is to reimagine the world” (Sium and Ritskes v). This concept creates numerous possibilities—and challenges. To return to an earlier reflection, perhaps these myths are some of the reasons why it can be so challenging, and often problematic, to be at home in Canada. In the words of Indigenous (Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg) writer and academic Leanne Betasamosake Simpson: “[i]t struck me at that moment that our nationhood, my nationhood by its very nature calls into question this system of settler colonialism; a system that is such an overwhelming, violent, normalized and dishonest reality in Canada and so many other places” (Simpson, emphasis added). In this way, stories can contribute to the forgetting or, in this case, the remembering of histories that a nation may want rewritten. Yet, to others, this concept may not seem surprising as Chamberlin suggests that “that’s what all stories do: they hold some people together and keep others apart” ( 227). In this sense, national stories and myths can tell who belongs to the nation and how they do, while also excluding others who are not a part of the socially constructed nation.

Still, whether the stories are honest or not, writers and storytellers, such as Maracle (89) and Simpson (“Storytelling as a Force of Resistance and Tool of Reconciliation”) suggest that, even with all the power they hold, stories are not the only pieces required to alter reality, or even to construct oneself, and that one needs to “close the false gap that often exists between speaking and acting” (Sium and Ritskes v). In the words of Maracle, “[o]ur stories belong in and to our future” (94) and we will need both stories, and actions, in order to move towards “genuine decolonization” (Maracle 95) and a more connected, “reimagined” world (Sium and Ritskes v).

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Story Plots

For this post, I will be responding to the following prompt:

[R]efer to Sparke’s article, “A Map that Roared and an Original Atlas: Canada, Cartography, and the Narration of Nation” … [and] write a blog that explains Sparke’s analysis of what Judge McEachern might have meant by this statement: “We’ll call this the map that roared.” (Paterson, question 3)

I have always found maps to be fascinating. They spark my imagination by hinting about places that I may or may not know and can relay large amounts of information about the thing (typically a place) they are depicting, as well as potentially revealing some of the underlying perspectives behind the map’s making. However, along these lines, maps, while often portrayed as unbiased and objective, can be hugely political and powerful depending on what the cartographer(s) choose to, or to not, show.

As quoted by Matthew Sparke in his article “A Map that Roared and an Original Atlas: Canada, Cartography, and the Narration of Nation,” in the 1987 court case regarding Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en sovereignty and land rights (463) the court judge, Allan McEachern, accordingly called the map that the Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en brought with them “the map that roared” (Sparke 468). This statement could be interpreted in a number of different ways and Sparke’s analysis provides a couple of potential ways that this statement could be viewed.

“A Map that Roared” by Don Monet

The first analysis that Sparke provides indicates that these comments, made by McEachern, could be interpreted as suggesting that the Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en plaintiffs and their map are “ramshackled” and “anachronistic” in a scornful, or “derisory,” way (468). More specifically, Sparke indicates that the comment could be suggesting that the map is a “paper tiger” and/or could be referring to a 1959 movie called “The Mouse that Roared” (468), in which a small territory declares war on the United States in order to replenish the territory’s treasury (Erickson).

However, Sparke and others, such as Don Monet through his artwork above, also provide an alternative analysis to this statement, as the concept of a roaring map also evokes ideas of resistance (Sparke 468) and potentially new stories being told loudly and clearly. To expand, by its “roaring refusal of the orientation systems, the trap lines, the property lines, the electricity lines, the pipelines, the logging roads, the clear-cuts, and all the other accoutrements of Canadian colonialism on native land” (Sparke 468), this map challenged assumptions of map objectivity and plotted another story of the land, one that had gone mostly unrecognized by mainstream colonial maps. In this way, the maps that the Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en worked to create and brought to the courtroom, not only challenged the Canadian legal “game” (Sparke 471), but, like Thomas King’s contrast of creation stories, showed that another “story” could be used to narrate a place that had had another story imposed on it.

In fact, maps have contributed to colonialism since first contact through perpetuating myths such as terra nullius and detaching people, stories, and living connections from a place by “abstracting” the space to something that was empty (Harris 175; Sparke 474). In the words of geographer Cole Harris, maps, such as early colonial ones, “erased almost all the contents of the space they depicted” (175). This apparent emptiness made it easy for lands to be plotted and claimed by others, even while those who were doing this could be on another continent.

However, maps tell stories (Fotiadis 6) and mapping is now also being used to offer alternative perspectives, stories, and understandings of place, and different kinds of maps, such as story and oral maps, are also contributing to these re-imagined mappings. For example, while some may argue that the maps created by the Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en for the 1987 court case did not result in the plaintiff’s desired objective, these maps still helped to articulate their “claim to their territories in a way the judge might understand” (Sparke 472) and provided a powerful alternative to the barren seeming colonial maps, presenting “a landscape rich with the historical geographies of Wet’suwet’en and Gitxsan names and meanings” (Sparke 474). Another example of this re-imaging of maps is the Mapping Indigenous LA project which is using storymaps to “uncover and highlight the multiple layers of indigenous Los Angeles” while making “the rich Indigenous identities and histories that are often hidden … yet deeply embedded in the history of Los Angeles” more visible (“About Our Project”). Among other things, these maps are helping to re-story the landscape and bring forward the layers and presences on the land that often remain hidden in Western cartography.

Finally, in addition to the points mentioned above, maps have contributed to various narratives through the process of naming. In this sense, I found it quite interesting to notice that, according to Sparke, the first thing that judge McEachern did when first unfolding one of the Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en territory maps was to name it, or say what they would call it by stating: “we’ll call it the map that roared” (468). Perhaps this act in and of itself suggests the power of this map as, while the judge’s comment could be considered derisory, it could also be seen as the judge’s attempt to claim and to regain some control over something that seemed to be “roaring” with another powerful perspective.

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Created by Stories

For this week’s post, I decided to respond to the following prompt:

First stories tell us how the world was created. In The Truth about Stories, King tells us two creation stories … [and] provides us with a neat analysis of how each story reflects a distinct worldview … The differences all seem to come down to co-operation or competition — a nice clean-cut satisfying dichotomy. However, a choice must be made: you can only believe ONE of the stories is the true story of creation – right? That’s the thing about creation stories; only one can be sacred and the others are just stories. Strangely, this analysis reflects the kind of binary thinking that Chamberlin, and so many others, including King himself, would caution us to stop and examine. So, why does King create dichotomies for us to examine these two creation stories? Why does he emphasize the believability of one story over the other — as he says, he purposefully tells us the “Genesis” story with an authoritative voice, and “The Earth Diver” story with a storyteller’s voice. Why does King give us this analysis that depends on pairing up oppositions into a tidy row of dichotomies? What is he trying to show us? (Paterson, question 1)

“The truth about stories is that that’s all we are” (2) states storyteller and author Thomas King near the beginning of each lecture, or chapter, in his 2003 Massey lectures and book The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative. Telling two different creation stories, he draws comparisons between them, while proposing that “[i]f we believe one story to be sacred, we must see the other as secular” (King 25). By doing so, he to also seems to create dichotomies between the perspective suggested in both stories, such as cooperation and competition, and creates a choice to decide which story to “keep.” However, King and other authors, such as J. Edward Chamberlin, suggest that creating these dichotomies can be dangerous as they can encourage one to choose between “false alternatives” (Chamberlin 24). Still, by creating these comparisons, King also implies some similarities between these creation stories, creates an alternative story to what is often found in mainstream Canadian society, and helps to draw attention to the power of stories.

To expand, both stories present a different perspective on the origin of people and the world as we know it — and both have elements that are more “mythical” seeming, inviting the audience to “believe it and not” (Chamberlin 160), regardless of how “authoritative” the story’s words might sound. Beyond this, stories, such as these, underlie and influence much of society, including what is often perceived to be fact and truth and share this commonality as well. Yet, when one looks at these stories more closely, they are just that: stories — and stories, no matter the topic, still need the imagination and belief to be brought into the world.

However, as King suggests, these creation stories still have numerous differences if looked at from a storyteller’s perspective (23), including that one of them is better known and, as a narrative, underlies a broader part of Canadian society (including laws, economics, and media), whether or not people are conscious of it. By contrasting these stories, one could say that King isn’t creating a choice so much as exposing an alternative narrative to those often found in mainstream society. King provides the opportunity to see that there is an alternative way, or an alternative story, of understanding how people have come to be in the world, and how people can continue to “fit” into its larger picture.

In this sense, stories can affect the way we interact with and perceive the world. As suggested by King (in the context of sharing a number of family stories with his audience), “I tell the stories not to play on your sympathies but to suggest how stories can control our lives, for there is a part of me that has never been able to move past these stories, a part of me that will be chained to these stories as long as I live” (emphasis added) (9). In a similar way, one could say that, whether or not one “believes” in them, the stories that are shared with us, especially those reenforced through society, are still are chained to us and affect who we are and our perspectives on the world.

More explicitly, King ponders the powerful impact that stories can have on people, and prompts his audience to do the same, by asking: “[d]id you ever wonder how it is we imagine the world in the way we do, how it is we imagine ourselves, if not through our stories … For these are our stories, the cornerstones of our culture” (95). By reflecting on and comparing the two creation stories, King creates this opportunity for his audience to see similarities between different stories, see an alternative story to the one often told, and recognize the power that stories can have on society, especially by altering the way people imagine the world around them. In this way, while stories, such as the two shared by King, are often referred to as “creation stories” in the sense that they express how the world began and/or how people came to live in a place, one could argue that they are still “creating stories” and contributing to creating cultures, including “Canadian culture.”

A representation of a few different forms of story that can affect one’s perception and understanding of society and, in this case, law.

In fact, perhaps the most important part of the ideas that King highlights through the contrast of these two creation stories is to remember that “[t]he truth about stories is that that’s all we are” (King 2) and, for this reason, the stories we tell ourselves, and that we allow to become a part of us, are especially important. In other words, “‘we live by stories, we also live in them. One way or another we are living the stories planted in us early or along the way, or we are also living the stories we planted — knowingly or unknowingly — in ourselves … If we change the stries we live by, quite possibly we change our lives’” (Ben Okri qtd. in King 153).

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Where We Belong

For this week’s post, I am reflecting on some of the beautiful stories about home that my classmates wrote this week. While I did not get the chance to read every post thoroughly, I was struck by the impact that the concept of home seemed to have on many of us and on our memories—and by the number of similarities between the experiences or feelings relating to home that many of us seem to have. In fact, while everyone’s experiences and stories were different, I found it hard to find values and stories that did not have at least one other post reflecting similar perspectives. While it doesn’t contain every commonality I observed, the following list summarizes some of the major similarities I found in the values, assumptions, and stories I read this week. These similarities include that home:

is connected to people (including pets). Many posts mentioned that home is connected to family, friends, pets, and/or significant others and that these relationships were more important than the actual location of one’s home.

is adaptable. While not always explicitly stating this, multiple posts reflected that home has changed throughout the years, depending on a number of things, such as one’s sense of connection to the place and people one is around.

is complicated. A number of posts talked about home being complicated, or not making sense. Some reflections suggested that this has changed throughout the times and places the blogger reflected on; overall numerous posts seemed to indicate that defining the concept of home and finding a home is complicated.

may be connected to a place, but isn’t merely one space. A number of posts also implied that, while home is often assumed to be a place, it is often not specific to a location. Some blog authors suggested that home can relate to the sense of one’s surroundings and things that one is connected to (such as the forest or the sound of rain) and that this sense isn’t directly tied to any one place; while it can be connected to places such as the ocean, it isn’t a specific place so much as a sense found in the presence of such an entity.

is a feeling and is where one feels a sense of safety, comfort, and belonging. Many posts reflected that home was a feeling more than a physical location, and, in broad terms, this feeling was also associated with a sense of safety—whether this be a sense of stability, connection, belonging, or comfort.

is sometimes not present in one’s life. While the focus of the previous blog prompt was to discuss home, the sense of a lack of home also came-up for me while reading others’ reflections. Chamberlin suggests that “[h]omelessness is also a condition of mind and spirit” (84), and this sense of “homelessness” seemed to be reflected in some of my classmates posts as they reflected on times when they have felt at home and times when they felt that this connection was lacking (whether in the past or in the present), even if they physically had a place to live in.

I also found that, while there were many common ideas about home, every blog didn’t mention all of the similarities listed above and, in some cases, a couple of blogs would share something in common that would be different from many others. For example, a number of my classmates mentioned how home was connected to independence and making home your own. However, while this idea was common among some people, it wasn’t reflected in all the blogs I read, and wasn’t consciously reflected in my own reflections on home.

Beyond this, some blogs prompted me to think of elements of home that I had not considered before, such as the importance of language in connecting one to people and place. As someone who is fluent in the language I’m commonly surrounded by and who has lived in the same region for the majority of their life, I hadn’t consciously thought of this facet of home, although it seems important in feeling a sense of safety and connection. I also didn’t find another mention of creating art or music in the other posts I read regarding home, which I found interesting as it was one of the first things that came to mind for me as something that connects me to a sense of home.

In addition to these thoughts, I found myself reflecting on the pieces that construct this sense of home for me and my classmates. Home seems to imply a physical place, yet for most of us, it has more facets to it than a physical meaning, and it sometimes doesn’t indicate a specific place at all. This caused me to wonder if home is constructed by different elements, such as physical places, interpersonal connections, the language and culture we feel a part of, a feeling of belonging, comfort, safety. In this way, home seems to have a lot to do with a sense of connection to these things, and yet it seems to be something different than a sense of connection. All of the posts I read told some form of story, and one even explicitly acknowledged that “home is in my story” (HannahWagner), in addition to the ones suggesting that home is related to stories we tell ourselves. Perhaps these different, yet similar senses of home can be best summarized by saying “there are many ways to build a home” (StephanieLines). In this way, home is like the different structures that create the places where we live, or, perhaps more applicably, create the stories we tell: possibly made of similar elements, yet constructed in different ways, in different proportions, at different times, and with different voices.

I feel a deep gratitude to everyone who shared their stories and reflections regarding home through this process. In particular, I send thanks to stephanie, Hope, Hannah, Madelaine, Chloë, Patrick, Francisco, Colleen, and Mikayla for the thought-provoking and insightful reflections that inspired this post.

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