137-139

Sergeant Cereno (137)

The character Sergeant Cereno refers to the story of a captain for a Spanish slave ship named Captain Don Benito Cereno. He is playing a lead role in a story about the slave ship becoming overrun by the slaves on-board in which they take control of Cereno and his crew. Both of them are characterized because they have leadership titles as Cereno in Green Grass, Running Water is a Sergeant in the Police. At the same time, Don Benito Cereno is a naval Captain.

Wounded knee (137)

Wounded Knee was a massacre that took place in 1890 between the United States Army and the Lakota Sioux peoples. The battle took place on what is now known as the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota and would take 300 casualties, including over half of them being women and children. The slaughter mainly happened due to the rising tensions between the Lakota Sioux community and the Federal government from the Sioux people practicing the Ghost Dance, which was viewed as a sign of protesting from the U.S. governments’ perspective. However, although it was a dance of resistance, they did it peacefully, and they believed the dance would cause all non-believers to disappear from their land.

Ahdamn and First Woman (139)

Ahdamn and First Woman are biblical references to Adam and Eve in the Genesis story of the Bible, who were known as the first man and woman. However, in Flicks notes, she also describes that First Woman is an allusion to North American Indigenous culture as she was the First Woman on Earth and fell out of the sky. Both allusions share very similar stories, like Adam and Eve in Genesis create the Garden of Eden while First Woman is also the creator of Turtle Island.

140-144

Lone Ranger (140)

The famous character from the early 1930s series “The Lone Ranger” also made appearances in multiple sequel movies. According to Flick, Thomas King admired the Lone Ranger in which he tried to incorporate his character into his literary works.

Ishmael (141)

Ishmael is another biblical allusion as he is Abraham’s son in the Genesis section of the Bible. However, Ishmael is also a recognized figure in other religions, including Judaism along with Islam. Flick also notes that Ishmael can also be viewed as an allusion to the novel Moby Dick as he is one of the lead characters throughout the story. Ishmael’s character falls under two of King’s allusion trends as he is a character in a Herman Mellville novel like Cereno and is apart of Genesis.

Robinson Crusoe (144)

It is a fictional novel that is about the life of Crusoe and his adventures of escaping to castaway islands for years and encountering local populations. Although the novel is told as a fictional tale, many believe that it is based on the similar adventures Alexander Selkirk took part in. In Flicks notes, it states that Crusoe’s “shirt with the palm trees” is a subtle reference King uses as a connection to the castaway islands.

145-147

Sky World (145)

A reference to the Heavens, known as the Sky World, where powerful forces reside according to the Anishinabe culture. They will often share many stories about the sky world, but it is common for communities to have a Wabeno-innin, also known as “The Men of Dawn,” who hold all the Sky World knowledge.

Big Canoe (147)

Another one of King’s Genesis allusions in which this one refers to Noah’s Ark, a large boat created to save Noah and his family and all the known animal species. As the novel states, “this canoe was a big canoe. And it was white. And it was full of animals” (147). The “canoe” was so big that it measured out to be a total of 510 feet long, whereas the Challenger space shuttle measured only 184 feet.

– KO

Works Cited:

“Benito Cereno.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 5 Jan. 2021, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benito_Cereno.

History.com Editors. “Wounded Knee.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 6 Nov. 2009, www.history.com/topics/native-american-history/wounded-knee.

“Ishmael.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., www.britannica.com/biography/Ishmael-son-of-Abraham.

Legends of America, www.legendsofamerica.com/na-ghostdance/.

“Lone Ranger.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., www.britannica.com/topic/Lone-Ranger.

Network, Canadian Heritage Information. “The Anishinabe of Central North America.” Indigenous Astronomy: The Anishinabe of Central North America | The Anishinabe of Central North America, Government of Canada, Department of Canadian Heritage, Canadian Heritage Information Network, www.virtualmuseum.ca/edu/ViewLoitDa.do;jsessionid=6567C79E816212CC0773C6533849593B?method=preview&lang=EN&id=5186.

“Noah’s Ark.” Ark Encounter, arkencounter.com/noahs-ark/.

“A Quarterly of Criticism and Review.” Canadian Literature, canlit.ca/article/reading-notes-for-thomas-kings-green-grass-running-water/.

“The Real Robinson Crusoe.” Smithsonian.com, Smithsonian Institution, 1 July 2005, www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-real-robinson-crusoe-74877644/.

“Turtle Island.” The Canadian Encyclopedia, www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/turtle-island.

The identity of Coyote throughout Indigenous storytelling has become complex due to the fact some stories, Coyote is perceived as a trickster who will manipulate other characters for their benefit. For example, in Green Grass, Running Water by Thomas King, the reader learns throughout the novel Coyote’s intentions of carrying the fun-loving reputation but consciously knows that he is a polarizing figure that can become unpredictable at any moment. Although Coyote does not demonstrate an intention of manipulating other characters in this particular story, based on my previous knowledge of Coyote’s identity in other stories brought the belief to my head that Coyote is a powerful character and can cause mass chaos.

From my past experiences of reading King’s stories that incorporate Coyote like The Truth About Stories, Coyote is an opportunist that will take advantage of any scenario for their own benefit, in which they are successful due to their ability to cause destruction. For example, King tells a story about Coyote constantly taking feathers from the group Ducks with the masked intention of “protecting them” but wants them to benefit himself. In this story, King uses Coyote as a metaphor for the universal colonialist, and the Ducks are a metaphor for the Indigenous communities. As a result, the theme throughout this story is Coyote’s will to take advantage of the Ducks resort to “‘ Indian things.’ Feathers if you will. Indian land, Indian rights, Indian Resources, Indian claims” (King, 167).

However, when studying Coyote’s character in Green Grass, Running Water King does seem to carry over some similarities to Coyote’s identity in The Truth About Stories but seems to be more impudent while continuing to inflict chaos and harm. However, Coyote’s identity continues to embody the standard colonialist because they believe that the white man is racially superior to a First Nations individual. For example, when Coyote is discussing with the narrator if the name Hawkeye for Old Woman is ideal, the narrator comments, “it sounds like a name for a white person who wants to be an Indian,” in which Coyote responds, “who would want to be Indian?… Not me” (King, 166). For this reason, the reader cannot rule out that Coyote’s identity still embodies the colonial belief of having racial superiority in this novel.

 At the end of the story, the reader begins to see the chaos Coyote can bring into the world through the actions they commit in which they are impudent to the harm they caused. When Coyote uses the phrase “hee-hee” throughout the novel, it seems that is Coyote’s way of orally sharing with the reader their cheekiness. For example, when Coyote causes the earthquake from their dancing and singing, Coyote knows the damage they are inflicting; however, Coyote seems to share a moment of enjoyment when he states, “earthquake, earthquake! Hee-hee-hee-hee-hee” (King, 169). After Hawkeye explains to Coyote the damage inflicted by them in previous stories that they still need to clean up, Coyote simply replies with the same laughing statement, “hee-hee” (King, 176). Thus, it seems that Coyote either does not show remorse for their actions or utterly oblivious to the damage that they inflicted.

Works Cited:

King, Thomas. HapersCollins e-Books. HapersCollins, 1993.

King, Thomas. The Truth about Stories a Native Narrative ; 2003 Massey Lecture. CBC Audio, 2003.

Lukacs, Martin. “Canadian Government Pushing First Nations to Give up Land Rights for Oil and Gas Profits | Martin Lukacs.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 3 Mar. 2015, www.theguardian.com/environment/true-north/2015/mar/03/documents-harper-pushing-first-nations-to-shelve-rights-buy-into-resource-rush.

“OCNews.” Coyote, the Trickster | Okanagan College, www.okanagan.bc.ca/story/coyote-the-trickster.

I found it fascinating reading the first sentence of the CanLit Guides: Introduction to Nationalism defines “a nation” versus “a state.” The test defines, “A nation is a group of people who regard themselves as sharing the same culture; a state is a group of people governed by the same laws and political institutions” (Introduction to Nationalism, CanLitGuides.ca). This definition applies to how Canada developed because we are legally defined as a “nation” but carry out as a state due to the lack of cultural unanimity and division between Canada’s ethnic groups. The 1876 Indian Act is a textbook example of systemic injustice over certain racial groups that played a crucial role in constructing Canada due to the amount of political control the state leaders had overall Indigenous groups in Canada. The two sections of the Indian Act 1876 I want to discuss throughout this post are Sections 141 and sections 12 which correlate to Daniel Coleman’s argument in White Civility: The Literary Project of English Canada.

Although this legislation today is viewed as the historical beginning of a constitutional relationship between the Canadian government and Indigenous communities, it is evident that the Act did try to propel a “white civility” ideology that Coleman describes. Coleman defines that in Canada, we remain a white civility state due to the fact we continue to be a fictive ethnicity as a critical principle to building our nation (Canada) along with systemically forgetting our nation building’s past to retain that fictive element within Canadian society (Patterson, para. 8). Thus, Canadian institutions have a historical trend of implementing policies in legislation like the Indian Act that targets specific racial groups in Canada. 

Section 141 of the Indian Act 1876 is a policy that made it illegal for any Potlach celebrations to carry out among Indigenous communities. The policy is deemed today as a racial policy due to its intentions to assimilate cultural traditions that were necessary to First Nations communities. Potlach’s were critical to Indigenous communities across Canada because it was an opportunity for different First Nations groups to share and distribute their wealth across regions (Indigenous Foundation, arts.ubc.ca). Section 141 is a critical policy in the developing foundation of Canada’s historical racial footprint of Nationalism. From Coleman’s perspective, this was the Canadian government’s fictive approach to “forget” other cultures across Canada through suppression and spread colonial traditions brought over from Europe to create the “Canadian Identity.”

Section 12 of the Indian Act 1876 is another policy that contributes to Canada’s dark nation-building past of racial and gendered approaches through targeting Indigenous women by revolting their First Nations status legally if they were to marry a man with no Indigenous heritage. This policy did not apply to Indigenous men though if they chose to marry a non-Indigenous woman, they would keep their status (Milloy, 2008). It was not until 1982 when the UN finally reviewed and stated the Act was in violation of human rights and was removed after the Indian Act was amended. 

While more policies can attribute to the historic systemic racism Canada is guilty of, these two policies were a clear indicator of the colonial system’s intent to create a national identity through an “imagined community.” The fictive ethnicity is what ties into the “imagined community” because, in Canada, we tend to unite ourselves around the “flags, national anthems, dances, food, folk tales, and venerated works of art and literature all contribute to the feeling that one belongs to the nation” (Introduction to Nationalism, CanLitGuides.ca). However, through these cultural traditions, we built as a nation, we tend to forget how we permanently affected other cultures through destruction in an attempt to construct our own “imagined identity.”

Works Cited:

The Indian Act. (n.d.). Retrieved March 13, 2021, from https://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/the_indian_act/

Introduction to nationalism. (n.d.). Retrieved March 13, 2021, from http://canlitguides.ca/canlit-guides-editorial-team/introduction-to-nationalism/

Milloy, J. (2008). Indian Act Colonialism: A Century Of Dishonour, 1869-1969. Retrieved from https://fngovernance.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/milloy.pdf

Montpetit, I. (2011, July 14). Background: The indian act | cbc news. Retrieved March 13, 2021, from https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/background-the-indian-act-1.1056988

Potlatch. (n.d.). Retrieved March 13, 2021, from https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/potlatch#:~:text=As%20part%20of%20a%20policy,and%20wasteful%20of%20personal%20property.

Women and the Indian Act. (n.d.). Retrieved March 13, 2021, from https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/women-and-the-indian-act#:~:text=As%20section%2012%20(1)(,and%20inherit%20property%20on%20reserves.

Here are my favourite 3 blog posts if you would like to check them out. I chose these three because I felt these were the most entertaining blog posts to write!

The Dragons Who Fell

2:2 Home is where the Heart is

2:6 This Roar Cannot be Ignored Anymore

Chief Justice McEachern’s way of handling the case Delgamuukw v. the Queen is a case that shows the evidence of how Canada has historically treated First Nations communities through legal disputes. Through Matthew Sparkes’ interpretation of this legal proceeding, it is evident that Justice McEachern did not seem to take the evidence the Wet’suwet’en and Gitxsan people provided to prove their sovereignty from the colonial governing bodies severe. As McEachern stated, “We will call this the map that roared” in eyes was a map that attempted that contrasted the cartographic perspective colonial peoples had on the Canadian landscape (468). Furthermore, Sparke interprets this comment made by McEachern sound like he was making a correlation to the satirical film “The Mouse that Roared” in the context that they were fighting a losing battle (468).

Sparke perceives McEachern’s comments to be a “paper tiger” in which he knows that the mapping evidence provided appears to be convincing or threatening but uses his judicial power to make it appear not to be the “smoking gun evidence” needed (468). However, the Wet’suwet’en and Gitxsan people used the map to tell their story of their connection to the land and their territorial sovereignty long before English and French people came to Canada.

McEachern’s comment considers the map as a threat and contrasting view to the whole economic system they built as “the (First Nation) cartography’s roaring refusal of the orientation systems, the trap lines, the property lines, the electricity lines, the pipelines, the logging roads, the clear-cuts, and all the other accoutrements of Canadian colonialism on native land” (468). In this case, whether the plaintiffs had a substantial amount of evidence to prove their sovereignty on the mapped land, Justice’s like McEachern showed a lack of comprehension for the Canadian landscape’s real history based on their claims.

It is evident that Canada’s legal governing officials showed a lack of non-partisanship throughout these legal proceedings among Indigenous communities and only acted within their colonial interests through Sparkes’ lens. Chief Justice McEachern’s decision to not give legal recognition to the Wet’suwet’en and Gitxsan people’s land-based on the evidence they provide is systemic proof that Indigenous communities fail to be perceived as independent governing bodies legally. In contrast, Canada’s legal bodies see Indigenous communities like the Wet’suwet’en and Gitxsan as an integration into the colonial system. 

Works Cited:

“Econommic Activity in Canada.” GEO6HMS, 2016, geo6hms.weebly.com/economicactivity1.html.

Sparke, M. “Figure 1 from A Map That Roared and an Original Atlas: Canada, Cartography, and the Narration of Nation: Semantic Scholar.” Semantic Scholar, 1 Jan. 1998, www.semanticscholar.org/paper/A-Map-that-Roared-and-an-Original-Atlas%3A-Canada%2C-of-Sparke/2877846a8126623bd1bccddc415bd4cf59be357a/figure/0.

Sparke, Matthew. “A Map That Roared and an Original Atlas: Canada, Cartography, and the Narration of Nation.” Politics, 2017, pp. 481–514., doi:10.4324/9781315246512-24.

This era Lutz describes where Europeans and Indigenous people began to make contact with each other became a ground-breaking moment in Indigenous history because they had never made contact with people outside of North American territory. Lutz describes the perspective of how “many Indigenous peoples initially confused Europeans with supernatural beings” (Lutz, 32). You cannot blame them for sharing this initial thought as you could compare these moments in history to the phenomenon if humans ever made contact with alien species that are not from Earth. In both cases, it could become complicated for both parties to effectively communicate initially because both groups came from cultures that are “distant in time and alien in culture” (Lutz, 32).

Erika and Lutz make a valid point that it is more difficult for Europeans to understand Indigenous performances because of the different cultural attitudes both parties embody. Lutz’s reading emphasizes how Indigenous people tend to have a greater spiritual connection with the world understanding it as they “lived in a world where there was no firm divide between the natural and the spirit world” (Lutz, 35). In contrast, Lutz describes how the European explorers perceived the world during this era through a scientific lens that accustomed to their culture in which they had a troubling understanding of why Indigenous people lived the way they did.

I believe that the Indigenous cultural tradition of perceiving the world through a more spiritual lens contributes to Lutz’s assumption because Europeans’ first contact did not affect this perception. For example, Lutz explains that it was easier for Indigenous people to understand the First contact performances because “rather than destabilizing their traditional beliefs, the arrival of Europeans was merely part of the ongoing proofs of these beliefs” (Lutz, 38). As a result, many of these Indigenous groups already shared the belief that they would eventually contact these people from a foreign land in which once contacted, their way of life would not change; instead, it was a new story to share for many generations. Compared to a European cultural perspective, the contact made with Indigenous groups changed Europe’s cultural perspective of North America forever as they now saw a new opportunity for trade and exploitation.

– KO

Works Cited:

Lutz, J. S., Binney, J., Dauenhauer, N. M., Dauenhauer, R., & Maclaren, I. S. (2014). Myth and memory: Stories of indigenous-european contact. In Myth and Memory: Stories of Indigenous-European Contact (pp. 30-45). Vancouver: UBC Press.

The first story I read described the home as a place of experience yet, relaxation at the same time. Home to this person felt like they had everything they needed in this world. Many memories were made in their home, but then disease hit, and home became a “bunker” rather than a place of enjoyment. Home to them had changed a lot in recent times.

The second story didn’t describe home as a house that surrounded them but instead a special place where they felt connected with everything around them. They thought they indeed developed a relationship with the land that surrounded them and shared a mutual respect. Home to them was more about escaping the realities of life and getting their yearly “medicine” of entering their world of excitement and traditions.

The third story describes home as a comforting place that is built through memories. This story tells their first time moving out of their only childhood home, but they lose comfort in their new home. Although, it doesn’t feel like home until they unpack those boxes and set the scene; otherwise, the home can remain “boxed up.”

The fourth story describes their sense of home being developed through a tale of building everything from the ground up. However, they acknowledge that how we view home may not be the same perspective someone else has about that home. I think what they are trying to suggest is that spaces and places have different meanings to people; they just depend on how we interpret it.

The fifth story focuses more on how they have acquired so much knowledge of the area they lived in over the years. Home is more about the expertise and relationships they have formed with the land and people. This person’s story focuses on how their family interactions, regardless of location, are when they feel truly at home.

The sixth story describes the home as a place of “freedom” and giving them the ability to learn and try new things without repercussions of failure. The home was also freedom because they felt it was a place full of memory that they could escape to when other issues emerged in their lives. The home wasn’t always an exact location but was more of a mental value, they never had an actual residing land they call home, but the good memories they had growing up is what family is to them.

Commentary

Reading all these stories was very interesting, and I found that many of them shared a lot of the same values that I have when it comes to “home,” but some shared different values than me. I found that the fourth and fifth story was very similar to what I can think of when I reminisce my “home.” For example, these stories tend to value how their sense of home came through history and the hard work put in so they could call it “home.” It was also very similar because I find I do have a connection to the land where I called home, but in reality, it is more about the people I am with where I will feel like I am at home. I also shared different values of “home,” though when reading stories, some reports seem to see their home now as a place of safety from dangers rather than being a place of memories and enjoyment. I can understand why they feel like this because the home has become our entire world in which we need to escape it once in a while. It’s now a place where we do have to bring our work home and are forced to deal with the daily stresses of life in an area that we used to value for its comfort.

– KO

I grew up in Langley, B.C., all my life and have only lived in 2 houses just blocks away from each other until I moved away for university. I moved from my first house when I was only 5 years old and have very faint memories of the home, so I would consider my second home to be my real “childhood home” because most of my memories of “home” reside there. I would like to share four specific memories of home because these are the memories that helped me develop essential values applicable to life.

I’ll start this story off on a funny note because it is one of my first memories with the second house, but this property we were going to buy was an old farm that had a barn in the backyard, which was used by the previous owners for their horses. When we went over to look at the property before purchasing it, they had one of the horses in the barn, which I was very excited to see because I had never seen a horse before this experience. After spending about 15 minutes petting the horse, my parents told me that we had to leave; however, the horse was not ready for me to go. So, as I begin to walk away, the horse bites my shirt/back because he did not want me to leave but being a 5-year-old, I began to cry, assuming the horse tried to hurt me. At first, I did not want to see the horse again because I perceived him as evil. However, once I calmed down though, I was reassured by my parents and the previous homeowner that it was usual for the horse to do that when he expressed affection towards someone and doesn’t want them to leave. From this first memory of home, I was taught the value of forgiveness.

The home that we purchased needed to be completely rebuilt and the backyard was in no shape to have 3 little kids playing on. I can still remember when I was 5 years old, and we first bought the property, and I would spend every day outside with my Dad doing yard work on the property for example, helping him “drive” the excavator. Before we move forward, for reference, I would sit on his lap, and he would guide me operating the excavator; not a chance he was going to trust a 5-year-old drive a piece of machinery that size. However, I also would help him re-build his workshop along with other projects we needed to complete prior to being “settled” in. Regardless, some of my first memories of moving to that property helped my Dad construct it to what our family dreamed of it to be. This experience taught me the value that hard work pays off in the end.

We decided last minute while re-constructing the property that we wanted to put a hockey court in the backyard because my sister and I grew up playing hockey. The hockey court is a significant symbol in my memory of “home” because many of the memories I obtained growing up on that property came from playing in the hockey court with my friends. It taught me the value of having an excellent social network. For example, every winter, when the temperature was consistently below 0 degrees Celsius, we would freeze the hockey court over and turn it into an ice rink. When we froze the court, my sister and I would typically have our friends around and play ice hockey late into the evening and cap off the night with some hot chocolate. In the summer, my neighbours Alex and Brighton would play hockey in the court all day and sometimes have our friends over to have big hockey games. This was a time where I would get the opportunity to meet some of Brighton’s and Alex’s social network.

Another piece to home that is significant in my memory is my Dad’s workshop built on the property. I would often use the shop to help my Dad fix a vehicle he was working on or start doing my own projects there. The shop is an essential piece to my home experience because it taught me many important life lessons, including that I need to try new things, fail, and learn from my mistakes. Many of the days I spent working in that shop could be very frustrating because I would come across situations that I thought were impossible to fix; however, my Dad always reminded me, “if there’s a will, there’s a way.” This is where I learned that I will come across multiple situations that I may fail or think it’s impossible to complete in life, but you always have to get back up and reassess how you can improve.

– KO

Works Cited:

Langley. (n.d.). Retrieved February 11, 2021, from https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/langley#:~:text=Langley%2C%20BC%2C%20incorporated%20as%20a,a%20separate%20municipality%20in%201955.

Ocean Home magazine, Gale, N., Springer, B., & Gutierrez, R. (2018, June 14). 10 good reasons to build your own home. Retrieved February 11, 2021, from https://www.oceanhomemag.com/outdoor-living/10-good-reasons-to-build-your-own-home/

A newly formed semi-professional hockey team named the Dragons is coming into the new season that had been on a winning streak all season long. They seemed to carry this streak all season long due to their positive attitude and noticed that they would continue to win if they kept it up. They would often continue this ritual by sharing stories of past hockey seasons they played where their teams were achieving great success and winning. Typically, they would carry out this ritual before their games started as an incentive to bring motivation to the team; however, it only worked if the players discussed their winning stories.

Their captain began the tradition where they shared a story before the first game of the season, explaining how their team in the previous season went on to win the state championship. The result of that game ended up beating the highest-ranked team going into the season by a blowout margin with a final score of 8-3. Before the next game, one of the assistant captains shared one of their stories of how they went on to have an undefeated season a couple of years, which resulted in them becoming the champions of their university league. The result of that game ended up in their favour as well, where they won the game 4-0, which was a more significant result because it was their goalies’ first shutout of the season. I can list each game where a player shared their individual story of winning; however, they all ended up with the same result.

However, as the winning streak carried on, the players noticed that their team members were beginning to run out of new stories they would share before the game, which put their pre-game ritual at risk. One teammate who never had a story of winning felt that they still needed to share their hockey experience with the team regardless of whether they won. The teammate did not seem to buy into the idea that he could only share a personal hockey story of them winning in order for their team to continue the winning streak. This player was not a big believer in pre-game rituals and felt that if they still shared a story of their hockey experience, regardless if it were of them winning or not, it would have no outcome on the game.

This teammate decided that this upcoming game, they would share the story of one of the most significant, most heartbreaking defeats they have experienced so far in hockey, which was losing the Varsity National Championship. The teammate knew that this story might change the pre-game ritual’s emotional appeal to the players; however, they believed that their story would bring a new type of motivation to the team. The player thought that telling the team a story about losing it would ground them again into believing that you cannot always win in a sport like a hockey.

The teammate discussed their story of how they lost drastically in the national championship, and immediately it brought a different mood among the team before the game. The teammate did not intend to tell the story to damper the team’s pre-game mood but instead share their perspective to the other side of the game where you can also lose. Long story short, the team suffered their first loss after that game, and the team’s season was winning streak did not just come to an end, but it was the start of a losing streak.

Did this teammate regret share the losing story as it brought them their first loss? Yes. Did the teammate begin to understand that this pre-game ritual did not just bring their team their first loss, but it also brought upon a gloomy atmosphere among each other? Yes. Regardless, for once a story is told, it cannot be called back. Once told, it is loose in the world.

My story takes a much different approach than King’s story; however, I found that I wanted to share it through a lens that could be relatable to the people I shared it with, which was through hockey. As many of us know who watch hockey, pre-game rituals are a big part of the sport among players, so I chose to incorporate it into my story. I wanted to use the concept of “losing” in hockey as a form of symbolism concerning King’s interpretation of “evil” in his novel. Furthermore, I wanted to use the Dragons team in this story to symbolize the world itself and how evil was brought into this team’s dynamic. I found that including players who shared stories of “winning” would almost bring an overall festive atmosphere to the team until the one teammate told a story about losing, which brought an “evil” atmosphere among the team affecting their results.

This was one of the first times I have taken a shot at revising a story and re-writing it myself, but I found that it can be very self-satisfying if you can put it into a context you are passionate about. After memorizing it, I shared it with my roommates, and they seemed to lack an understanding of the moral of the story. However, they found it interesting because it related to a field they were interested in. I find that each story we learn and tell will appeal to a particular audience, whereas it can also not impact other audiences. For example, if I were to share this story with my geography class, not all of the students may be interested in hockey, so they may not value the story as much as I would. Regardless, I enjoyed this assignment because I had the opportunity to re-write a story through a field I enjoyed along with my peers.

– KO

Works Cited:

King, Thomas. The Truth about Stories a Native Narrative ; 2003 Massey Lecture. CBC Audio, 2003.

Response to question #6: Write a summary of three significant points that you find most interesting in the final chapter of If This is Your Land, Where are Your Stories?

Chamberlin raises numerous valuable points in his final chapter of If This is Your Land, Where are Your Stories? which I think are important to look at especially in a Canadian context. These points he make are important to understand at Canadians because we are a society full of diversity and need to know how to work together in order to progress forward as a nation.

1. Chamberlin seems to signify one of the main points in the “ceremonial” chapter: everyone tells stories of their lives and cultures in different forms. Through science, others through literacy and even oral, regardless, all must be taken into important consideration. Chamberlin is trying to highlight this point throughout the chapter because different cultural groups must understand the importance of how other groups share their knowledge among society. For example, our higher education institutions across Canada, including UBC, tend to share their knowledge with Canadian society through a scientific lens using raw data as the core argument. These institutions seem to take a Logos approach if we look at it in this context. However, Chamberlin uses the Gitksan people to illustrate how other cultures in Canada will take a more Pathos approach to share their knowledge through language and stories. Regardless of which may be more accurate, Chamberlin makes a good point about how these stories are highly valued among their culture using the Mediik story, representing their land. He states, “The Gitksan believe both of them. Both, for them, are true. Bear and bear, as it were. Both help their people live their lives. And both are revealed in stories” (Chamberlin, 327). This quote accurately describes how this group relies on these stories for life to progress in their society in the same sense that we use science to progress areas of our society. 
2. Another good point that Chamberlin brings up in the final chapter of this book is that although different cultural groups may see knowledge from a different light, it is important as humans to come together to solve the large issues we face as a society today. Chamberlin also uses excellent examples to ensure this point stands out to the reader; for instance, he tells the story about how the fishing waters were crucial to both the Gitksan members along with the “cowboy” frontier chaser during a community meeting. Both used different dialogue forms to share their stories of why the fishing regions were important to them and how they relied on the salmon in those waters. Chamberlin explains how “they left disagreeing about almost everything else, including whose land they were protecting. Nevertheless, they were one in wonder, and like the Gitksan elder and the government foresters, they agreed on how to protect some things of meaning and value in their lives” (Chamberlin, 354). Chamberlin leaves this point on a high note, explaining that they shared one common goal regardless of their disagreements. This goal both groups have respect for the land they used and wanted to ensure that the land will be protected for the sake of their own lives and for future generations to come. 
3. Chamberlin’s last important point in this chapter of the book emphasizes that we have to understand the truthful meaning behind knowledge versus what we see through a socially constructed lens. Often, we tend to come to conclusions around knowledge based on the social constructions we learn about different phenomena, which is how we understand it. Chamberlin lays out the example of how two painters are sitting in different views of a ship across the harbour and are drawing out their view of it. Although both painters depict the same ship, both come out with completely different works based on their ship position. This can be related to knowledge through a constructivist lens that we only see truth based on what we really know rather than seeking all knowledge or “positions” on the subject before concluding the real truth. Chamberlin emphasizes that although both pictures may or may not be accurate depictions of the scenario, both must be considered because one painter saw it from this perspective while the other saw it differently.

Let me know your thoughts! Is there a crucial point that I might’ve missed reading this chapter or do you think there is more to add to one of these points Chamberlin emphasizes in the final chapter?

– KO