When I first shared Leslie Silko’s story about the power of stories and the beginnings of evil in the world (King 9), my listener asked me a simple question: what is evil? We sometimes characterize evil as some sort of active, polarizing force in the world, but my listener disagreed. She claimed that evil does not exist in this way, just as Chamberlin reminds us how we always try to classify things into black and white, the two neat categories of “Them and Us” (49), when such dichotomies only serve to limit our understanding. Similarly, this story suggests we can clearly separate evil from not evil. It also hands the responsibility for knowledge and access to the force of evil to one person. As I began to modify the story, I realized I wanted a cooperative effort to bring evil into the story, just as the various shades of evil and not evil in today’s world are mostly defined by how others perceive them, rather than by measurement against some external rubric. And the idea of evil itself in my story here is very different than that of Silko’s witches and may not even qualify as evil at all to you.

In the process of telling this story, I went through many iterations of adding and subtracting certain details but finally had to pin some of them down for the final telling below. I have already told it again differently than shown below, though, so this recording is hardly a final version of the story I hold inside of me. I now feel much more empathy for storytellers like King who have pinned down their stories to a recorded form! It is certainly a frustrating experience to transition from a highly customizable, personal, private, even mood-dependent way of expressing oneself to a much more impersonal, finalized, and uncontrollable recorded form (uncontrollable once released, anyhow).

Here is my story:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJ9AwxpEWhA&feature=youtu.be

Works Cited

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

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

When I think back to my Grade 11 Social Studies course (the final installment of required history and civic studies courses in BC high schools), the aspects of the curriculum I remember most highlighted Canada’s achievements on the world stage and at home over the past century. From this we learned how Canada developed into a bona fide nation during that time. Certainly, we also covered some embarrassments and mistakes— the internment of Japanese Canadians during WWII, the crushing of labour movements in the Prairies during the Great Depression, and the Oka crisis, to name a few. But overwhelmingly, the taste left behind by that course was refreshing: despite making mistakes, Canadians apologize and do better next time. And we bring our expertise in listening to every side of the story to world affairs, where for many years we excelled as peacekeepers and diplomats. But this is not exactly how our story is told to those outside Canada. Take this article from the Canadian magazine The Walrus for example. The author, Larry Krotz, visits a former Indian Residential School, now a museum, to gather material for a documentary, only to discover that the Al Jazeera media network has been there first, filming documentary footage for their series Inside Stories Americas. The administrator of the museum speaks to how even her and her brother, a former leader of the local Long Plain First Nation, felt conflicted about sharing their stories too extensively with Al Jazeera, claiming “[they] just want to criticize the Canadian government. And [my brother] doesn’t want to get in any trouble” (Krotz). Just what kind of trouble should he be afraid of today? This question is itself problematic within my Grade 11 story of modern Canada.

In J. Edward Chamberlin’s book If This is Your Land, Where are Your Stories, he suggests that the story of Canada’s First Nations after the arrival of Europeans is “something [Canada has] to offer the world” (228), more so than the picture of Canadians currently imagined by Canadians such as myself. To remediate some of the damage Canada has incurred upon its First Nations, Chamberlin offers a legal restoration project of sorts. He suggests that Canada change its land ownership system to restore underlying (Crown) title to aboriginal title. This means that the power underwriting the so-called “fee simple” land ownership individual Canadians hold would switch from the federal government to the aboriginal peoples of Canada. But, as Chamberlin states outright, such an act “would be a fiction,” and “[t]he facts of life would remain the same” (231) for Canadians after such a change. Its implementation would have very little impact on how we interact with land on a day-to-day basis, the idea of underlying title being a highly conceptual legal construct. So how, exactly, would this help change the narrative of colonization in Canada?

Chamberlin offers several reasons for implementing this change. Firstly, he acknowledges that First Nations, not surprisingly, believe “a story of underlying aboriginal title” (229), since Canada was their ancestral home before colonization. He also emphasizes the uniqueness of this story for each aboriginal group: just as different groups might have many unique creation stories, so too is their relationship with the land unique to within their group. According to Chamberlin, this multiplicity of land and creation stories is a rich resource for Canadians, who can benefit from the “contradict[ion of] the idea of exclusive ownership” (228) presented by a mosaic of underlying title patterned with the traditional homelands of First Nations. And finally, the recognition of First Nations stories as part of the pervasive, invisible underlay of our government and society will, in Chamberlin’s words, serve as “an example to other communities” (232) where violence has already erupted over issues of indigenous land rights. This is the type of gesture compatible with my Grade 11 version of Canada, and hopefully those outside of Canada would see it similarly.

On a practical level, the concept of switching to aboriginal underlying title in Canada is currently under discussion, at least for reserve lands. Federally, a proposal is underway to offer First Nations the option of switching these lands over to aboriginal underlying title, to the purported economic benefit of those who use this land. This proposal is warmly by many in the First Nations and academic communities, as it will allow individuals living on reserve to hold property as their own rather than simply living on it as Crown land, greatly increasing their economic power. Unquestionably, this would also develop the richness and diversity of Canada’s land stories.

Overall, Chamberlin offers a compelling suggestion for enriching Canada’s story of government and power. As it turns out, the concept of underlying aboriginal title might indeed benefit First Nations in a day-to-day fashion as well, demonstrating the strength of one type of legal fiction or story in Canada today.

Works Cited:

“Japanese Internment.” CBC Learning. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 2001. Web. 16 January 2014.

Struthers, James. “Great Depression.” The Canadian Encyclopedia. Historica Canada, 07 November 2013. Web. 16 January 2014.

“Standoff at Oka.” CBC Learning. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 2001. Web. 16 January 2014.

Krotz, Larry. “A Proper Schooling.” The Walrus May 2008. Web. 16 January 2014.

“Revisiting a dark chapter in Canada’s history.” Inside Stories Americas. Al Jazeera, February 2013. Web. 16 January 2014

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

“First Nations Property Ownership.” First Nations Property Ownership Initiative. First Nations Tax Commission, 2012. Web. 16 January 2014.

Welcome to my course blog for UBC’s online version of ENGL 470A Canadian Studies: Canadian Literary Genres, or “Oh Canada… Our home and native land?” as it is described by our instructor, Dr. Erika Paterson. I am a fourth year student studying Biophysics at the University of British Columbia’s Vancouver campus. Some of my interests include triathlon, knitting, and cross-country skiing. At times I also like to knit objects related to my coursework, such as this sea monkey (BIOL 140) and dissected frog (for a biology prof).

Last year I took ENGL 222 Literature in Canada with Duffy Roberts, where we focused on the stories of Vancouver. ENGL 470A is my first experience with an online course, and I hope that it will be an enriching and fulfilling one.

We will be listening to many storytelling voices throughout the course, from Thomas King’s Green Grass Running Water and The Truth About Stories to Edward Chamberlin’s If This Is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories? and many more. Drawing from readings and other media presented in the course, we will identify aspects of storytelling and relate them to the identity of the storyteller, as well as the role storytelling plays in literature. Class storytelling will take place in individual blog postings by class members and in comments on those postings and will culminate in an online conference to be held near the end of the course (Paterson “Course Syllabus”).

When I imagine my “native” land, I picture the Canadian West Coast, full of scenic and stormy oceanfront and lush with rainforest biodiversity. This is the setting where I grew up and where I feel most at home. Of course, I didn’t really grow up in the forest — I attended a city high school in Victoria, BC, rode my bike through trafficky streets, and enjoyed all the urban conveniences from microwave ovens to Gore-tex. But beyond the picturesque backdrop that the coastline of the Straits of Georgia and Juan de Fuca, or Salish Sea as it has recently been renamed, provides us, I have long been fascinated by the minutiae of the living environment, from birds to plants to echinoderms. In fact, recognizing and understanding so many of the organisms that live on the coast comforts me, as I am familiar with and can imagine my part in each of their stories. Victoria is the homeland of several Coast Salish groups, who traditionally shared my preoccupation with the living environment, as this was their medicine cabinet, hardware and grocery store rolled into one (Turner 28). Going further than I in their storytelling, however, they spoke words of blessing to the living materials they collected, physically imbuing them with stories and thereby increasing their value and significance (Turner 8).

During this course, I would like to become more aware of the many layers of story a single object can hold. In particular, I am interested to hear about how applying different stories to the same place or object affect how “useful” we consider it to be.

Works Cited:

Paterson, Erika. “Course Syllabus.” ENGL 470A Canadian Studies: Canadian Literary Genres. Web. 08 January 2014.

Paterson, Erika. “Instructor’s Bio.” ENGL 470A Canadian Studies: Canadian Literary Genres. Web. 08 January 2014.

“Duffy Roberts.” Department of English. University of British Columbia, 28 July 2011. Web. 08 January 2014.

Turner, Nancy J. Saanich Ethnobotany: Culturally Important Plants of the WSÁNEC People. Victoria, BC: Royal BC Museum, 2012. Print.