Month: February 2019

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.