Notes From a Wanderer

Assignment 3:7 – Write a blog that hyper-links your research on the characters in GGRW according to the pages assigned to you. Be sure to make use of Jane Flicks’ GGRW reading notes on your reading list.

In “Coyote Pedagogy – Knowing Where the Borders Are in Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water,” Margery Fee and Jane Flick summarize the complexities of the novel when they deduce that “there is no reader of this novel, except perhaps Thomas King, who is not outside some of its networks of cultural knowledge” they go on to acknowledge that “every reader is also inside at least one network and can therefore work by analogy to cross borders into the others” (131). The beauty of King’s work is that he doesn’t answer questions, or give explanations, instead, he lays breadcrumbs throughout, compelling readers to continue and eventually find things out for themselves. I come to this book as a settler on Indigenous land; my background is European/Canadian and so my “basic general knowledge” covers primarily one of King’s “three distinct groups: Canadians, Americans, and Native North Americans” (Fee & Flick, 132). So, in this blog post, I’m exploring the allusions included on pages 1-3 and then 9-15 of Green Grass, Running Water (from here on referred to as GGRW) where we meet Coyote, Silly Dream, Dream Eyes, Dog Dream, that GOD, the Lone Ranger, Hawkeye, Ishmael, and Robinson Crusoe. King’s cyclical framework makes it difficult to definitively call this section “the beginning,” because it appears so often throughout the novel in different ways, but the first pages in this novel serve as an introduction to several important characters.

In the beginning…

Coyote: In my last blog post, I discussed coyote pedagogy, and part of my research for that involved learning about coyote as a symbol within Indigenous culture. I found Coyote’s introduction to be really in tune with their typically contradictory nature – that of the trickster who is both powerful and naive. Coyote states, “I am very smart” (2), tells the others that “Everything’s under control… Don’t panic” (2). From this snippet into his character, he appears initially as pretty authoritative (childlike, but with knowledge), and we see this contradicted later in the novel when his ignorance and naivety offers humour (for other characters and for readers).

I decided to view Silly Dream, Dream Eyes, that Coyote Dream and Dog Dream as characters because I wanted to discuss how even with something so seemingly simple naming characters, King resists categorization. Within many Indigenous cultures, dreams are interpreted and judged differently than in Western culture. Jean-Guy A. Goulet, in his article “Dreams and Visions in Indigenous Lifeworlds: An Experiential Approach” explains the difficulty in “contend[ing] with the fact that in these societies the distinctions familiar to the Western mind between the world of everyday life and the world of dreams are simply not drawn”; instead, ““the world of ghosts and spirits is as real as that of markets, though real in different qualitative ways” (173). He goes on to discuss the incompatibilities between Western culture’s “low tolerance of fantasies” and many Indigenous societies that find “well-developed traditions for inducing visions and/or lucid dreaming, traditions that are available to individuals as part of their social development” (173). When we read GGRW with an open mind, ready to cross borders and boundaries, we can more easily resist the urge to categorize and hierarchize what is and isn’t animate. Author Mel Y. Chen, in her book Animacies: Biopolitics, Racial Mattering, and Queer Affect draws the term animacy “from linguistics, where it refers to an entity’s degree of agency, awareness, sentience, liveliness, or mobility. Across languages, grammatical structures indicate speakers’ views about the animate and the inanimate. A simple example in English is the distinction between “he” or “she” and “it.” The latter is reserved for inanimate objects, so that calling a person “it” conspicuously performs his or her demotion on the animacy hierarchy” (Haynes).

“that Dog Dream has everything backward” (2)…

King’s humour and challenging of the Eurocentric status quo is evident from the first couple of pages. His allusion of that Dog Dream and that GOD to the Judeo-Christian version of God are powerful and illustrate right away that readers are going to have to suspend their preconceptions. We’ve discussed contradiction at length thus far in this course, and King artfully plays upon the dichotomy of Judeo-Christian vs Indigenous creation and faith.

The Lone Ranger, Hawkeye, Ishmael, and Robinson Crusoe

(Note: I’m going to refer to these characters using the he/him pronoun as they’re presented when they’re using these names for the purposes of this assignment)

At first glance, these four characters represent Western ideals – colonization and the dominance of whiteness. They are all juxtaposed with variations of “the faithful ‘Indian’ companion” (Flick, 142). The Lone Ranger has long been a household name for American and Canadian families – he represents the strong male, fighting for justice alongside Tonto. Then there’s Hawkeye, whose counterpart is Chingachgook, Robinson Crusoe and Friday, and Ishmael and Queequeg. Each of these four characters is taken from diverse, but acutely American, origins. Peter Gzowski’s interview with Thomas King beautifully highlights the complexity of these characters:

TK: Oh, the four old Indians, yeah—the Lone Ranger, Ishmael, Robinson Crusoe and—

PG: Hawkeye.

TK:  Hawkeye, right. Well, I wanted to create archetypal Indian characters. I wanted to create the universe again, and those characters—

PG: Tom?

TK: Yes?

PJ: The Lone Ranger’s not an archetypal Indian character.

TK: Well, actually, he sort of is, in some kind of a strange way, within North American popular culture, you know, you’ve got the Lone Ranger and Tonto, and you’ve got Ishmael and Queequeg, and you have Hawkeye and Chingachgook, and you have Robinson Crusoe and Friday, and these are all kind of—they’re not archetypal characters in literature, but they’re Indian and white buddies, I suppose. They’re kind of, not buddy movies, but buddy books, I suppose. But those are just the names that the old Indians have at the time that we meet them. In actual fact, these are four archetypal Indian women who come right out of oral creation stories.

Works Cited

Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. “Lone Ranger.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 7 June 2015, www.britannica.com/topic/Lone-Ranger.

Flick, Jane. “Reading Notes for Thomas King’s Green Grass Running Water.” Canadian Literature 161-162. (1999). Web. Mar 07/2019.

Haynes, Melissa. “Intersectionality Matters.” Reviews In Cultural Theory, 1 Sept. 2013, reviewsinculture.com/2013/09/01/intersectionality-matters/.

“Ishmael & Queequeg’s Friendship in Moby-Dick.” Study.com, Study.com, study.com/academy/lesson/ishmael-queequegs-friendship-in-moby-dick.html.

King, Thomas. Green Grass, Running Water. Harper perennial Canada, 2007.

“More than Just a Trickster: The Many Faces of the Coyote.” Fractal Enlightenment, 18 Jan. 2018, fractalenlightenment.com/40732/culture/just-trickster-many-faces-coyote.

“A Quarterly of Criticism and Review.” Canadian Literature, canlit.ca/article/peter-gzowski-interviews-thomas-king-on-green-grass-running-water/.

Question 2: Coyote Pedagogy is a term sometimes used to describe King’s writing strategies (Margery Fee and Jane Flick). Discuss your understanding of the role of Coyote in the novel.

I wanted to begin by defining pedagogy because it’s not a word that commonly pops up in literary criticism and analyses. Pedagogy refers to the practice of teaching and the methods used to share knowledge. In many Indigenous cultures, Coyote represents an important trickster figure. Jane Flick’s reading notes for Green Grass, Running Water describe Coyote as being one of the “First People,” a race with “tremendous powers, [who] created the world as we know it… but [who] were also capable of being brave or worldly, conservative or innovative, wise or stupid” (143).  From the first page of the novel, King makes clear the relationship of Coyote to the trickster figure; the narrator states that “when that Coyote dreams, anything can happen” (King, 1). The blending of Western and Indigenous is persistent throughout King’s novel. He compels readers to look beyond traditional cultural boundaries and ways of knowing, and in doing so, illustrates the limitations of only one way of knowing.

As we journey through the novel, Western policies, people, and culture are weaved in among Indigenous cultural references and humour. The inclusion of both makes it challenging for readers to understand everything, and I found myself needing the Internet many a time to research a particular word or person (not only Indigenous references but also for some of the Western references, especially related to Western films, which is a subject I’m not familiar with). King’s strategies of mixing imagery and allegory from distinct cultures really highlight how openminded and inquisitive readers need to be while reading. I can imagine this novel being assigned to a class where individuals (for various reasons) may be unable or unwilling to take the necessary time to find out what King is referencing. So much of the power created from King’s symbols would be lost.

In Green Grass, Running Water, Coyote challenges Western beliefs about creation. Coyote takes on the role of teacher and student. Often, his character is reminiscent of the childhood troublemaker most of us either were or witnessed, on the playground… humorous, egocentric, a bit erratic, eager to learn, fast acting (not always aware of the consequences of one’s actions), naughty, but generally well-intentioned. For example, Coyote frequently makes statements about himself that appear unrelated to the bigger things at play; he’s in his own little world:

“My favourite month is April,” says Coyote.

“That’s nice,” I says.

“I also like July,” says Coyote.

“We can’t hear what’s happening if you keep talking,” I says.

“I don’t care much for November,” says Coyote.

“Forget November,” I says. “Pay attention.” (King, 195)

Other times, though, Coyote appears as the teacher…

“Everything ‘s under control,” says Coyote. “Don’t panic.”

Where did all that water come from? shouts that GOD.

“Take it easy,” says Coyote. “Sit down. Relax. Watch some television.”

But there is water everywhere, says that GOD.

“Hmmmm,” says Coyote. “So there is.” (King, 3)

I think Coyote serves several roles throughout the novel. He challenges the status quo and traditional borders of knowledge. I view him almost as King’s attempt to guide readers; using Coyote, he illustrates what can be, if one is only willing to listen and be open to new ways of knowing.

Works Cited

“Coyote the Trickster.” Deaf Pagan Crossroads, ocean1025.files.wordpress.com/2007/06/coyote_the_trickster_by_coyoteflutesong-d36jxwl.png.

Flick, Jane. “Reading Notes for Thomas King’s Green Grass Running Water.” Canadian Literature 161-162. (1999). Web. Mar 07/2019.

King, Thomas. Green Grass, Running Water. Harper perennial Canada, 2007.

“Trickster.” The Canadian Encyclopedia, www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/trickster.

Question 2:  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.

First enacted in 1876, the Indian Act allowed the government to control most aspects of “Indian” life; it has since been amended (several times, most prominently in 1951 and 1985), but it continues to discriminate against First Nations peoples today (“Background: The Indian Act | CBC News”). The Act was first introduced as a means to eradicate First Nations culture and assimilate the “Indians” into Euro-western Canadian society and ideology. In 1876, the Canadian government developed specific criteria for who would be considered an Indian and who would qualify as having “Indian” status; Inuit and Métis are not included within this criterion of “Indian” and are therefore not governed by the Indian Act (“Indian Status”). Additionally, the Indian act created a category of non-status Indians; to this day “registered Indians, also known as status Indians, have certain rights and benefits not available to non-status Indians, Métis, Inuit or other Canadians. These rights and benefits include on-reserve housing, education and exemptions from federal, provincial and territorial taxes in specific situations” (Northern Affairs Canada).

The Indian Act introduced residential schools, created reserves, denied women of Indian status, renamed individuals, restricted the movement of First Nations people, enforced enfranchisement, forbade First Nations from forming political organizations, prohibited First Nations from practicing their religions and ceremonies and speaking their languages, prohibited the sale of alcohol and ammunition to First Nations, denied their right to vote, imposed the “band council” system, among many other discriminatory restrictions and policies. Bob Joseph’s article (which became a book that I’m now really interested to read!) “21 Things You May Not Have Known About The Indian Act” beautifully sums up significant aspects of the Indian Act and allows you to click on specific details for more information (I went down a bit of a rabbit hole after discovering his article).

In my last post, I discussed some of the contemporary repercussions of the government’s imposition of a “band council” system on Indigenous groups and how it has led to conflicts within Indigenous groups regarding jurisdiction over land titles when “elected band chiefs and councilors also belong to family houses and have their places in the hereditary system” (Procaylo). It’s devastating to read about how this act continues to perpetuate discriminatory policies and create discord among Indigenous groups who had no control over the creation of the Indian Act.

It’s interesting that despite the victory of the French over the English, French speakers (as the largest group of non-English speakers) have been accommodated, while other groups, including the Indigenous, have consistently been expected “to assimilate to the notion of Canada as British” (CanLit Guides “Nationalism, 1500–1700s: Exploration and Settlement”). This supports Coleman’s argument that there has been a “literary endeavor” to “formulate and elaborate a specific form of [Canadian] whiteness”  beginning with early nation-builders (Coleman 5). So, while the French were not British (duh, they were French), their apparent “whiteness” afforded them many allowances not extended to the Indigenous population in Canada. The Indigenous peoples’ deviation from the “fictive ethnicity” of “British Whiteness” set the foundation for the government to target their people and enact policies that attempted to erase Indigenous identities through the prohibition of their cultural and spiritual practices, as well as the systematic elimination of their languages. The Indian Act functioned as the vessel that the government utilized to force the Indigenous peoples to conform to European ideals of governance and culture; a major example of this was the banning of the Sun Dance and the potlatch, fundamental ceremonies practiced by many Indigenous groups (CanLit Guides “An Introduction to Indigenous Literatures in Canada”).  

 

Works Cited

“Background: The Indian Act | CBC News.” CBCnews, CBC/Radio Canada, 14 July 2011, www.cbc.ca/news/canada/background-the-indian-act-1.1056988. Accessed 25 Feb 2019.

CanLit Guides Editorial Team. An Introduction to Indigenous Literatures in Canada. CanLit Guides. 2016. Web. http://canlitguides.ca/canlit-guides-editorial-team/an-introduction-to-indigenous-literatures-in-canada/. Accessed 26 Feb 2019.

—. Nationalism, 1500–1700s: Exploration and Settlement. CanLit Guides. 2016. Web. http://canlitguides.ca/canlit-guides-editorial-team/nationalism-1500-1700s-exploration-and-settlement/. Accessed 26 Feb 2019.

Coleman, Daniel. White Civility: The Literary Project of English Canada. Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2006. Print.

“Indian Status.” Indigenousfoundations, indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/indian_status/. Accessed 24 Feb 2019.

Joseph, Bob. “Blog.” Indian Act and Women’s Status Discrimination via Bill C31 and Bill C3, 2 June 2015, www.ictinc.ca/blog/21-things-you-may-not-have-known-about-the-indian-act-. Accessed 24 Feb 2019.

Northern Affairs Canada. “What Is Indian Status?” Government of Canada; Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada; Communications Branch, 9 Aug. 2018, www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1100100032463/1100100032464. Accessed 24 Feb 2019.

Procaylo, Nick. “Wet’suwet’en Dispute over Pipeline Deal Illustrates Complexities of Indigenous Law.” Vancouver Sun, 12 Jan. 2019, vancouversun.com/news/local-news/wetsuweten-dispute-over-pipeline-deal-illustrates-complexities-of-indigenous-law. Accessed 26 Feb 2019.

 

Question 3 – In order to address this question you will need to refer to Sparke’s article, “A Map that Roared and an Original Atlas: Canada, Cartography, and the Narration of Nation.” You can easily find this article online. Read the section titled: “Contrapuntal (Contradictory) Cartographies” (468 – 470). 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.”

 

To begin, a little context for those readers who didn’t choose this question and are wondering a) what contrapuntal means (or am I the only one who needed to dictionary.com that?), and b) who Judge McEachern is and why are we analyzing his language? In 1984, Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs claimed ownership of 58,000 square kilometres of territory; cartographic tools and arguments were used by both sides, the defense (the BC and federal governments), and the Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en peoples, who used these tools in an attempt to “outline their sovereignty in a way that the Canadian court might understand” (468). It was when unfolding one of these maps that Chief Justice Allan McEachern stated, “We’ll call it the map that roared” (468); in his article, Sparke analyzes what McEachern might have meant.

Sparke suggests that McEachern may have been referencing  “the colloquial notion of a ‘paper tiger’” (468), which is a translation of a Chinese phrase that refers to something (a nation or institution) that appears threatening but is actually ineffectual and powerless. He then goes on to question whether McEachern’s statement was in reference to the film “The Mouse that Roared,” a 1959 satire about a fictional country that decides to declare war on the US with the aim to lose quickly and benefit from the financial aid that the US has historically provided. Both of Sparke’s suggested meanings imply that the Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en nations are weak and unable to govern themselves. Unsurprisingly, McEachern dismisses the Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en nations’ claims to ownership and jurisdiction. However, in 1997, after the Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en nations filed a land title action with the Supreme Court (after years of failed negotiations), the Supreme Court decided to overturn Judge McEachern’s ruling. This decision set a new precedent for proving Indigenous title and giving oral history the same power as written testimony in the court of law.

Sparke also comments on cartoonist Don Monet’s interpretation of  Chief Justice McEachern’s reference to a roaring map. Monet asserted that the reference “simultaneously evoked the resistance in the First Nations’ remapping of the land: the cartography’s roaring refusal of…the… accouterments of Canadian colonialism on native land” (468). Sparke goes on to convey that the structure of Western court “serve[s] as an apparatus of colonizing state power;” the Wet’suwet’en and Gitxsan people entered negotiations knowing that they would be at a disadvantage, having to work within a colonial system. They repeatedly demonstrated the importance of their oral histories, language, and culture, and in doing so, undermined the court system (472).

So, while I would argue that the meaning behind Judge McEachern’s comment is that it was one of disdain, belittlement, fear, or ignorance, I am choosing to value and bolster Don Monet’s interpretation of the roaring map and experience it as a metaphor for the Wet’suwet’en and Gitxsan peoples determination, grit, and integrity in manipulating a colonialist system and winning (even though it took a disgustingly long time for the government to accept and honour their land claims).

I was really interested in this subject and looked into what the Wet’suwet’en and Gitxsan Nations look like today, and if there have been more conflicts around land claims as a result of economic expansion in BC, and I found some interesting articles related to the TransCanada Corp.’s Coastal GasLink pipeline project and how it’s challenging both Western and Indigenous law and dividing Wet’suwet’en leaders. The conflict highlights tensions within Indigenous groups, where “painful trade-offs between economic development and ancient obligations of land stewardship” must be discussed (Hunter et al.).

These articles in the National Post and Vancouver Sun illustrates how issues regarding conflicts between Western and Indigenous values (and the implications of Western values being forced upon Indigenous groups) continue today. With disputes occurring between First Nations band councils (which are creations of the federal Indian Act) and the historic hereditary systems of governance as seen in the Wet’suwet’en opposition of the $40-billion LNG Canada development (Penner).

 

Works Cited

Beaudoin, Gabriel A. “Delgamuukw Case.” The Canadian Encyclopedia, www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/delgamuukw-case.

The Canadian Press. “Five Things to Know about the LNG Pipeline Protest in Northern B.C.” National Post, 8 Jan. 2019, nationalpost.com/pmn/news-pmn/canada-news-pmn/five-things-to-know-about-the-lng-pipeline-protest-in-northern-b-c.

CONELRAD6401240. “The Mouse That Roared: Trailer (1959).” YouTube, YouTube, 4 Dec. 2011, www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKOftmWGGXk.

“Delgamuukw Decision Anniversary Signals a Return to the Supreme Court.” The Wilp | Gitxsan, www.gitxsan.com/community/news/delgamuukw-decision-anniversary-signals-a-return-to-the-supreme-court/.

Hunter, Justine et al. “This Pipeline Is Challenging Indigenous Law and Western Law. Who Really Owns the Land?” The Globe and Mail, The Globe and Mail, 13 Jan. 2019, www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/british-columbia/article-a-contested-pipeline-tests-the-landscape-of-indigenous-law-who/.

Jang, Trevor. “Twenty Years after Historic Delgamuukw Land Claims Case, Pipeline Divides Gitxsan Nation.” The Discourse., 20 Mar. 2018, www.thediscourse.ca/reconciliation/twenty-years-historic-delgamuukw-land-claims-case-pipeline-divides-gitxsan-nation.

Procaylo, Nick. “Wet’suwet’en Dispute over Pipeline Deal Illustrates Complexities of Indigenous Law.” Vancouver Sun, 12 Jan. 2019, vancouversun.com/news/local-news/wetsuweten-dispute-over-pipeline-deal-illustrates-complexities-of-indigenous-law.

Sparke, Mathew. “A Map that Roared and an Original Atlas: Canada, Cartography, and the Narration of Nation.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 88.3 (1998): 468-470. Web. 29 February 2016.

Question 1: First stories tell us how the world was created. In The Truth about Stories, King tells us two creation stories; one about how Charm falls from the sky pregnant with twins and creates the world out of a bit of mud with the help of all the water animals, and another about God creating heaven and earth with his words, and then Adam and Eve and the Garden. King provides us with a neat analysis of how each story reflects a distinct worldview. “The Earth Diver” story reflects a world created through collaboration, the “Genesis” story reflects a world created through a single will and an imposed hierarchical order of things: God, man, animals, plants. 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?

I’m coming at this question from a bit of an uninformed perspective; I am not religious, and the closest thing to a creation story that I was exposed to growing up was the big bang theory. This made it particularly interesting to read these two stories; while I’ve heard versions/snippets of both in various contexts, as an individual with limited experience with creation stories, I found myself not having a problem with there being two. Perhaps it’s because I view them as “stories” – not particularly true, but not particularly false either,  or, perhaps to phrase that better… I’m comfortable with the ambiguities in both stories because I didn’t grow up hearing them (at all, generally, but definitely not hearing them as truth), that enables me to see them on the same level.

King asserts that “we are suspicious of complexities, distrustful of contradictions” (25); in pairing up oppositions into rows of dichotomies, he illustrates the ineffectiveness of this way of framing things because these stories and analyses are not simple. These creation stories are layered with nuance, and I think it’s impossible to analyze them as separate from the societies that created them. As King points out, these creation stories reflect the worldviews of their people. They appear less about the specific facts and more about the values upheld and promoted by their creators. King extends this line of thinking by hypothesizing what the world might look like had “the creation story in Genesis featured a flawed deity who was understanding and sympathetic” (27).

So, while King emphasizes the believability of the Genesis story, he also makes obvious its flaws and posits how “being made in God’s image…must have gone to our heads” (28), how, as a result of our arrogance, we are now “chas[ing] progress to the grave” (28). King’s tidy analysis appears clouded in sarcasm, as if, in making obvious the inadequacies of the dichotomies and not allowing for the richness of contradiction, he exemplifies how limiting it is when we perceive the world in this way.

As a teacher, I find my reading lens is that of an educator, and I relate to the readings we do for this class in terms of what I see in the classroom. When King discusses Genesis’s authoritative voice, it brings to mind the way children learn to behave and relate to others based on how they see their parents and teachers behave. When students experience an authoritarian teaching styles (highly demanding teacher unresponsive to student needs) on a regular basis over an extended period of time, their behaviours, understandably, change to reflect their environment (Everhart et al.).  

I think King wants us to think more acutely about our own creation stories, and question why there can only be one truth. In portraying the creation stories as neatly placed oppositions, he forces us to come to our own conclusions about how problematic it is to adhere to our desire to categorize and dichotomize things. King introduces us to story “The Earth Diver,” and in doing so offers us a lesser known, but arguably more holistic and fair, alternative, but he contradicts this by offering the story up as lesser than the Genesis story. This strategy compels us to take a closer look at the hierarchies we create, and how we choose to rank our beliefs as more important (or authoritative) than others.

His analysis of creation stories, and how traditionally, only one can be sacred while the other remains “only” a story, lends itself to a discussion about why we believe this, and whether or not this one-sided view is the way to move forward. You don’t even need to compare different religions to see how ineffective binary thinking is when differences in what constitutes “fact” varies within a single religion. For example, within the Christian faith, there are groups who believe in contradictory things, where Genesis is taken literally by some and figuratively by others, referenced in Thomas Purifoy, Jr.’s article that discusses the differing beliefs of those who accept the conventional view of history and those who accept the historical Genesis view as fact.

 

Works Cited

Conrad, Peter. “The Rise And Fall Of Adam And Eve Review – Fanfare For God’S First Couple”. The Guardian, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/sep/03/rise-and-fall-adam-eve-stephen-greenblatt-review-fanfare-gods-first-couple. Accessed 2 Feb 2019.

Everhart Chaffee, Kathryn, Kimberly A. Noels, & Maya Sugita McEown. “Learning from authoritarian teachers: Controlling the situation or controlling yourself can sustain motivation.” Studies in Second Language Learning and Teaching [Online], 4.2 (2014): 355-387. Web. Accessed 4 Feb. 2019.

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

Purifoy, Thomas. “A Tale of Two Dichotomies.” Is Genesis History?, 5 Apr. 2018, isgenesishistory.com/tale-two-dichotomies/. Accessed 4 Feb. 2019.

Wilsey, McKinder. “Mckinder Wilsey: Mythos.” All Creation Myths Are Different. All Creation Myths Are the Same., 1 Jan. 1970, mythosz.blogspot.com/2013/09/all-creation-myths-are-different-all.html. Accessed 5 Feb. 2019.

Read at least 6 students blog short stories about ‘home’ and make a list of the common shared assumptions, values, and stories that you find. Post this list on your blog with some commentary about what you discovered.

Hi all. I wanted to thank everyone for their beautiful words. I started out reading the 6 blogs required of us, but getting to learn so much about everyone was so fascinating that I think I ended up reading almost all of them (at least from January 30th and earlier). Getting an opportunity to hear both how everyone came to be where they are today, as well as everyone’s diverse writing styles and how we positioned ourselves within, or outside of, our short stories was compelling.

While I was reading everyone’s blogs, I made a little mind map of the values and assumptions that crept up; I find that when reading digitally, I like to make notes by hand, so I’ve taken a photo of what I made and I’ll expand on it here in list form.

Common themes:

• Home as a person or people –
  • Family or a partner: many of the blogs I read focused on their perception of home as the relationship they share with another person, whether that person is a mum or dad, brother or sister, extended family members, or a collection of all of these people.
  • Community: I also noticed that several people pointed out their community as being vital to their sense of home. Developing and maintaining a sense of connectedness and belonging to one’s community appeared as a shared value.

 

• Home as a place in the traditional sense of the word (a family house, apartment, etc.): I wasn’t surprised that this was a recurring image of home for many people. I think for many people who grew up in one main childhood house, the abundance of memories of the house itself, especially to a younger mind, can leave lasting impressions on us as to what “home” means. I also noticed that many students didn’t grow up in the safety (or complacency – depending on how you want to look at it) of one home, and many people moved around frequently as they grew up (to different continents, countries, provinces, cities, and neighbourhoods) for a variety of reasons. I appreciate those of you who shared your stories of heartbreak, where you were forced (or your family chose to leave) to leave your physical homes because of war, limited opportunities, or death.

 

• Home as something natural/wild/found in nature (trees, mountains, beaches, etc.): When I read a number of short stories where nature and the natural world were seen as home, I wondered if this response would be less prevalent in other countries? Canada, and particularly the west coast, is infamous for its immense and beautiful landscape, and I’d guess that more people who live on the coast view the land as more welcoming (homey), than perhaps those who live in a more stark, frigid environments. I’m making a general assumption here, so I could be totally wrong, but at least for me, growing up in Alberta, my affiliation and love of the land grew exponentially when I moved to Victoria. Mind you, that may simply be personal preference, as I also know a number of people who moved up North to the territories and fell absolutely in love with the land and all that it offers to them.  

 

• Finding home in one’s religion or spiritual practices: this was one that came up in a few different ways, and was a value that deviated from mine. It was an interesting glimpse into another perspective and I wanted to thank Simran Chalhotra for sharing about the meditation centre: I loved reading about it  because it was such a new concept for me.

 

• The idea of multiple homes, chronologically as well as simultaneously – many people, including me, questioned whether we could have one home at a time, or if it was possible to have several simultaneously. I recently read an Atlantic article about the psychology of home and one line stuck out for me: ““Looking back, many of my homes feel more like places borrowed than places possessed.” This statement resonated with me in that I think of myself as becoming part of a place for a moment in time, until I’m ready to “borrow” another place for a time. It’s the people I bring into this place that make it a home more than the place itself.

 

• Home as memories (a film or a song, memories of a place): Kevin Hatch brought up how he associated the guitar riff from the 1994 Spiderman with home, and while I didn’t explicitly include this notion in my own short story, reading his words reminded me of how powerful some sounds, textures, and smells are in bringing up memories of home. In my story, I mention the smell of my mum’s chocolate chip cookies, and how this smell, combined with the greasy feeling of the 20-year-old recipe card that we still use to this day, arouses memories of my childhood home.

 

• Home as within one’s self – and the intangibility of this feeling

 

• The sense of home becoming more powerful when one leaves (to travel and embark on new adventures): Verlyn Klinkenborg, in The Smithsonian Magazine,  writes of home as “a place so profoundly familiar you don’t even have to notice it,” and it’s only when we leave it that we become fully aware of it. I found this notion came up several times for me, as well as while I was reading other people’s blogs. For many of us, it took an extended period away from our homes, usually our first big trip, to understand the hold “home” had (and has) on us.

 

I also wanted to briefly comment on how frequently homelessness came up as I read. I am lucky in that I wasn’t really able to relate to many of my peers in this sense, having almost always felt at home somewhere, whether in a physical place or within a relationship with family. I compiled a list of the features of homelessness that I noticed:

• Fractured families – through the ending of relationships, or through physical distances
• Language – not feeling at home in a foreign place because language barriers; the struggle to communicate easily with others can be isolating
• Leaving a beloved home out of necessity – may it be to escape a dangerous situation, or to seek a new beginning
• Confusion and uncertainty in general about what home is supposed to be, based on traditional assumptions of home and how these traditional features may not fit with one’s lifestyle or memories.

 

Works Cited

Beck, Julie. “The Psychology of Home: Why Where You Live Means So Much.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 29 Dec. 2011, www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2011/12/the-psychology-of-home-why-where-you-live-means-so-much/249800/. Accessed 1 Feb. 2019.

Klinkenborg, Verlyn. “The Definition of Home.” Smithsonian.com, Smithsonian Institution, 1 May 2012, www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-definition-of-home-60692392/. Accessed 29 Jan. 2019.

Iyer, Pico. Ted, Ted Talks, www.ted.com/talks/pico_iyer_where_is_home?referrer=playlist-what_is_home#t-148241. Accessed 2 Feb. 2019.

Write a short story (600 – 1000 words) that describes your sense of home; write about the values and the stories that you use to connect yourself to, and to identify your sense of home.

Home is a funny word, you know? Is it a place, or a person? Physical, tangible: that last step on the way to the basement that you trip on every time, ever so slightly? Or a feeling: fearless; incorrigible? Or perhaps a familiar smell, when you walk in the door, nine years old, haphazardly spilling wellie boots, mittens, sopping raincoat, and a half-opened backpack onto the floor as you breathe in Mama Bear’s oatmeal chocolate chip cookies?

Can you have just one, Home, I mean? When you happen upon a new one, does the old one get discarded? Or can you collect them, pocketing the good ones and turning away from the darker ones, questioning if they’d ever even counted?

There’s a place I call Home, and it moves, it moves within me, behind me, and beyond me. Like it’s waiting, waiting for me to make my next, almost always exceedingly deliberate move, but waiting patiently all the same.

First, Home was a house, a house in the prairies, on a tree-lined street, hipster adjacent to the somewhat more trendy Old Strathcona in Edmonton, Alberta. My neighbourhood was Hazeldean, a word which became the first “big” word I could spell without cheating, without whispering into the ear of my three-years-older sister for help with a letter here, a letter there. Home had a big backyard, filled lovingly with flowers by my gardener extraordinaire of a father. Flowers whose delicate petals became occasional casualties of the many soccer games I held there.  

The inside of Home belonged to my mother, a sometimes stay-at-home mum, a sometimes nurse, an always baker. Home was cozy couches, always covered in cat fur; spilled grape juice, staining favourite dresses. Home was “the swoop,” an extravagant jump my sister and I invented, where we’d careen off one of our loft beds into a sea of pillows, coming quite close to peeing ourselves with laughter.

Home shifted as we got older. Home fractured as half of our previously inextricable unit moved to the west coast. Home adapted to this new way of being, together but apart. Home strengthened when its value became even more acutely obvious.

Then again, four years later, Home offered itself yet again, in a new, more exciting, more terrifying way. Home became a new country, a new way of living, an inviting blend of sangria, foreign tongues, ancient architecture; but above all, Home became a new feeling – independence.

Two years later, homesickness hit. Casually at first, like an ignorable fly, but then, with more meaning, a buzzing manifestation of all that I missed: my language, my family, my trees, my ocean. By this time though, Home was complicated. Home had become a new person; home had become a new, ecstatic, previously unfelt feeling. But Home had also become confusing, disjointed. Parts of Home were here. But parts of Home were there.  

But you know what? The funniest thing happened. I got lucky. I got to bring this foreign Home, the Home I fell in love with, yet wanted to leave, home with me. Home took the form of a person, a person who somehow, and I still can’t fully comprehend how he did it, managed to encompass all that I loved about my adopted country, the bustling streets, the cantankerous bartenders, the always better tasting oranges, the unorthodox drivers, never not laying on the horn… And this new Home transformed me once more, extending its arms around me and pulling me close. Home illustrated again how truly enormous, yet somehow also infinitesimally small this planet really is.

Home became a person who gave theirs up, who traveled across oceans and prairies and mountains to preserve this newfound interpretation of the word. Home became a shared life, in a tiny, overpriced one-bedroom, blanketed with books, a kettle perpetually ready for more tea, an occasional meow, and a neverending lesson in Spanish.  

 

Works Cited

Hyndman, Nikole. “5 Of the Most Inspiring Architectural Sites in Madrid.” IEUniversityDrivingInnovation, 29 Sept. 2018, drivinginnovation.ie.edu/5-of-the-most-inspiring-architectural-sites-in-madrid/.

“A Trip Guide to Old Strathcona, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.” To Do Canada, Todocanada, www.todocanada.ca/city/edmonton/listing/old-strathcona/.

I have a great story to tell you. This is a story about stories. It is a story about how evil entered our world. It was a child. Not a malevolent child. Not an angry child, not even a sad child. A curious child.

The children came to the same park every day, to climb the trees and to play in the snow. One day, because it was the dead of winter, night visited earlier than expected, and the children, not yet ready to return home for the evening, instead sat together around a small fire under their favourite tree. They sat in a circle and the oldest proposed a contest. A contest to see who could come up with the scariest thing. Some children made faces, contorting themselves into expressions of absolute agony and the most heinous of hideousness. Some of them screamed, shrill shrieks that echoed over the dusk laden land. Some of them left, feigning tiredness, but doubled back to pounce on the others.

It must have been exciting to watch.

Until finally, there was only one child who hadn’t yet taken their turn. The child was smaller than the others; scarf wrapped tightly, oversized hat slouching low so that none of the children could tell who this child was, or if the child was a boy or a girl. And all the child had was a story.

Unfortunately, the story this child told was full of new words, words previously unbeknownst to the group of children. The child talked of murder, bloodshed, and betrayal, sadness so gutwrenching it brought tears to the children’s eyes, hatred so unadulterated that the children could do little more than gape noiselessly, words lost. When the telling was done, the other children nodded, still wordless, in consensus. This child had won the prize.

“Okay, you win,” they said. “[B]ut what you said just now – it wasn’t so funny. It didn’t sound so good. We were doing okay without it. We can get along without that kind of thing. Take it back. Call that story back.”

But, of course, it was too late. For once a story is told, it cannot be called back. Once told, it is loose in the world.

 

I found this assignment really tough. I don’t consider myself a storyteller or a writer, and words often fail me when I’m forced to speak about something I’m not entirely confident with, so this was a new exercise for me. I found it easier to memorize a story when I broke it down and made the sentences simple. Most of my writing is academic, where the placement of a semi-colon can continue a sentence for lines and lines and lines, but I knew that that wouldn’t work for this exercise. Instead, I attempted to keep my sentences simple and to use alliteration (because it’s rhythm helps me to remember things) to my advantage. I stumbled a bunch while sharing this story, even in front of those people I’m most comfortable with. Sharing my own work is something I seldom do. Usually, my writing is shared only with the professor marking it, and so this entire course with it’s blogging and commentary, is new territory for me. I’m enjoying it though; it’s an encouraging way to ease into the sharing of one’s work. I’d run out of the room if I was asked to read this story in front of our whole class in a lecture hall, but there’s a comfort in being able to share and learn from others while still maintaining a degree of anonymity.

I also found it difficult to decide how to change the story. I thought about using animals as characters, but that felt like some vague form of appropriation because I’ve read so many indigenous stories about animals and their parts in creation stories. I settled on children because the dialogue in Silko’s story “‘Okay, you win,’ they said. ‘[B]ut what you said just now – it isn’t so funny. It doesn’t sound so good. We are doing okay without it. We can get along without that kind of thing. Take it back’” (King 10) reminded me of some of the conversations I overhear in the classroom, so I took that and ran with it.

 

Works Cited

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

Words. Chamberlin talks a lot about language, in particular the strangeness and wonder of how language works. Stories, he says, “bring us close to the world we live in by taking us into the world of words” (italics mine,1).  He describes learning to read and write as learning “to be comfortable with a cat that is both there and not there”  (132). Based on Chamberlin’s understanding of how riddles and charms work, explain this “world of words.” Reflect on why “words make us feel closer to the world we live in” (1).

I was drawn to this question for a couple of reasons. I’m an elementary/middle school teacher, and I’m fascinated by the minds of children. To sit back and watch the madness happen in a primary classroom, to see the connections, the battles, the daydreamers, the mathematicians, the artists, is incredible. In reading Chamberlin’s chapter “To Be or Not to Be” I found myself thinking of Piaget’s theory of assimilation and accommodation in cognitive development. Basically, assimilation is the easiest, we add new information to our existing knowledge base, with occasional reinterpretations, whereas with accommodation, one’s existing schemas are altered, and new information replaces old information. When Chamberlin describes his first experiences with school where it takes him a “couple years to develop faith in…[the] nonsense” of a cat being a cat while also not being a cat (131-132), I found myself considering how school, with its facts, binaries, and rules, might make it more difficult for children to comprehend these contradictions. Perhaps, if children were left to their own devices, we would not, in fact, end up with a Lord of the Flies situation, but one that embraces contradictions. Young children appear to naturally embrace the “both/and [mentality] rather than “either/or” (Chamberlin 127).

As a lover of words, I have always been drawn to rhymes and riddles where one has an opportunity to play with language. Rhymes and riddles are commonly filled with contradictions (a personal favourite: what gets wet while drying? A towel) and we are forced to think outside the box, to suspend our belief in what is fact and what is fiction. The nuances of language and the diversity in sound, rhythm, intonation contribute to our feeling at home with our words. Chamberlin introduces anthropologist W.E.H. Stanner’s work with Aborigines in Australia, explaining how the words we have for “home” in English cannot compare with the links Aborigines have with their homeland (79). Thinking closer to home, I considered how the Inuit have many more words for snow and ice than we do in English. Words make us feel closer to our world because languages develop to match the ideas and needs of its speakers; our values, beliefs, and ideals are reflected in our words

Our world is built around the shared belief in words, the “meaningless sign[s] linked to…meaningless sound[s]” (Chamberlin 1). When I first moved to Spain, I experienced the dislocation that arises when one is unable to communicate in our “world of words,” where I became one of the Chamberlin’s “babblers” (1). Our “world of words” can be both a welcoming and an isolating place. In reading Chamberlin, I found myself thinking about other instances where words influence how closely we feel to the world we live in. My mind wandered to preferred pronouns. As a teacher and a crisis line volunteer, it’s become more clear to me how tremendous of an effect these words can have on a person’s sense of belongingness and connectedness to the world. While not particularly related to Canadian literature, this example kept coming up as I was reading because, as Chamberlin illustrates with the dispossession of indigenous peoples lands, Jewish exile, and slavery, feeling “homeless” appears to be a common affliction for so many minorities, whether they be minorities because of race, religion, or sexual orientation. The “discounting of other people according to arbitrary categories of entitlement continues” today, and I think it’s worth thinking about how we function within these systems in our everyday lives (Chamberlin 49).

Works Cited

Chamberlin, J. Edward. If This is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories? Finding Common Ground. Vintage Canada, 2004. Print.

Cherry, Kendra. “Assimilation and Jean Piaget’s Adaptation Process.” Verywell Mind, Dotdash, 8 Oct. 2018, www.verywellmind.com/what-is-assimilation-2794821. Accessed 13 Jan. 2019.

“Inuktitut Words for Snow and Ice.” The Canadian Encyclopedia, 9 July 2015, www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/inuktitut-words-for-snow-and-ice. Accessed 13 Jan. 2019.

Robson, David. “There Really Are 50 Eskimo Words for ‘Snow’.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 14 Jan. 2013, www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/. Accessed 14 Jan. 2019.

“University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.” Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Resource Center, uwm.edu/lgbtrc/support/gender-pronouns/. Accessed 15 Jan. 2019.