After reading more in depth about the story of Coyote and his twin brother, I definitely have a greater sense of the story.  In reading Harry Robinson’s version of the story, I was more concerned with the fact that the younger twin stole the paper and what that action said about that younger twin, versus what that action meant to Coyote.  I was so caught up in the younger twin’s actions, that I missed the fact that Coyote’s literacy was stolen after he was already literate.  I thought that it was stolen before he was given even the chance to be literate–which shows my ignorance.

After reading Keith Thor Carlson’s Orality about Literacy: The ‘Black and White’ of Salish History, I realized that I, along with most European settlers, was taught to believe that the European’s brought literacy to the Indigenous people of North America.  This assumption only further led me to believe that Coyote’s white younger twin stole literacy from Coyote even before Coyote was able to become literate.  Thus, my assumptions ran so deep that I misread Robinson’s story in the first place.

But, after reading about Salish history, I see the probability that “literacy [was] something indigenous that was itself once taken away” (43).  More importantly, “there was a time in Salish history, no matter how fleeting, when at least a few of their ancestors had working knowledge of literacy that preceded, and was therefore independent of, newcomer initiatives and influences.  They were literate because powerful forces from the spirit world had wanted them to be literate, and they would become literate again for the same reason.  Literacy is not, according to this version of history, something imposed on or introduced to Aboriginal people as part of the colonial process” (45).  Yet, this new development (for me) does not change my opinion of literacy being no more important than oral stories.  Bertha Peters, Salish elder, addresses this point by concluding that “literacy was not necessarily a source of knowledge or power in itself.  Rather, it was principally a tool for preserving certain kinds of knowledge that could have assisted Salish people during times of great distress, such as those associated with the arrival of Europeans.  White people’s mastery of literacy gave them an advantage not only in terms of preserving their own European knowledge but in terms of their ability and propensity to steal and profit from indigenous wisdom… [the] knowledge of medicine was taken away from the Indians by the white people because they didn’t write it down” (48).  Because Indigenous traditions put more emphasis on word of mouth/story telling than literacy, it is no surprise that certain things/ideas were stolen by the Europeans.  I find this fact very interesting because it is reminiscent of the whole ownership over land debate.  I feel like Indigenous people saw most things, including land and knowledge, as things that were not owned or patented.  There was no stealing of ideas, but rather knowledge was shared.  Conversely, I believe that the Europeans were more concerned with patenting ideas and having the pleasure of seeming superior and powerful by claiming Indigenous creations/inventions/ideas as their own.  This idea is especially heart-breaking when the only determining factor is the fact that the Europeans wrote things down.  Thus, generations of story-telling and information being passed down, meant nothing next to something being written down by a European settler later on.

In the end, the most important idea I learned was that literacy was not something brand new that was introduced to indigenous people, but rather something that was stolen and then brought back and embraced again by Indigenous people when their lives were threatened.  After all, “at least some Salish people believe not only that their ancestors were not necessarily awestruck by the arrival of Western literacy but that they embraced it as part of their historical identity” (52).

Works Cited

Carlson, Keith Thor. “Orality and Literacy: The ‘Black and White’ of Salish History.” Orality & Literacy: Reflectins Across Disciplines. 43-72. Print.

Robinson, Harry. Living by Stories: a Journey of Landscape and Memory. Ed. Wendy Wickwire. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2005. Print.