Q 5.“If Europeans were not from the land of the dead, or the sky, alternative explanations which were consistent with indigenous cosmologies quickly developed” (“First Contact” 43). Robinson gives us one of those alternative explanations in his stories about how Coyote’s twin brother stole the “written document” and when he denied stealing the paper, he was “banished to a distant land across a large body of water” (9). We are going to return to this story, but for now – what is your first response to this story? In context with our course theme of investigating intersections where story and literature meet, what do you make of this stolen piece of paper? This is an open-ended question and you should feel free to explore your first thoughts.
After reading through both the Wickwire’s introduction and our Lesson 2.2 section on the course website, I spent a lot of time pondering the significance of the Coyote Twins’ tale and its ties to story & literature. I was particularly fond of Wickwire’s interpretation of the tale where, according to Robinson’s story, there was no ‘first contact’ between First Nations and European people. Instead, the audience is handed an expression of how European people were created through the banishment and return of the white twin and his descendants to Turtle Island. In my experience as a settler body here on the West Coast of B.C., I was taught various versions of ‘Contact Stories’ through public school social studies classrooms and textbooks. From what I recall of these educational materials, there was very little storytelling to be shared (this is why I use the single quotation marks around ‘Contact Stories’ in this context). For each period of ‘Canadian History’ in the textbook(s), there was one page dedicated to the role of women, and one page dedicated to the lives of First Nations people during the respective time frames. As a teenager, I always felt odd about this concept. If First Nations people owned this land we were learning about, why is there only a few pages out of entire textbooks that talk about it? Why do we learn the European version of everything? Despite these gut-feelings and initial questions however, my critical thinking rarely deepened on this topic. I blame the taught and learned historicization of Indigenous rights and people throughout my grade school education (as well as an obvious lack of encouragement for real critical thinking). Given this background I have provided, it feels natural now to have initially been taken aback by Robinson’s story of the Coyote Twins. After having read the tale a few times, I have become more connected with it. I was particularly moved by Robinson’s quote, “that’s why the white man can tell a lie more than the Indian…” (10). This quote made me consider my previous understanding of what I now consider to be half-assed settler versions of a contact story: these were lies. And not only were these stories I had been taught lies, a First Nation contact/first-story-hybrid gave an explanation for this lying without attacking and hurting the white twin- or, my first ancestor. There was no torture or hate, nor was there forgiveness or understanding of the white twin. Instead, the story is simply told as it is and it is up to the listener (or in our case, the reader) to digest, process, and mould the tale to our own lives and lived experiences.
Works Cited
“The Creation of Turtle Island.” Native Art in Canada. n.d. Web. 16 June 2016.
Hyssop, Katie. “Raising the Grade on What BC Kids Learn About Aboriginal People.” The Tyee. The Tyee. 10 Sept. 2012. Web. 16 June 2016.
Wickwire, Wendy, and Harry Robinson. Living by Stories: A Journey of Landscape and Memory. Vancouver: Talon Books Ltd., 2005. eBook.