{"id":15,"date":"2020-02-04T22:28:02","date_gmt":"2020-02-05T05:28:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lisahouengl372\/?p=15"},"modified":"2020-02-04T22:28:19","modified_gmt":"2020-02-05T05:28:19","slug":"assignment-24","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lisahouengl372\/2020\/02\/04\/assignment-24\/","title":{"rendered":"Assignment 2:4"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is in response to prompt 2: \u201c<\/span>In Wickwire\u2019s introduction to <\/span><\/i>Living Stories<\/span><\/i>, <\/span><\/i>find a <\/span><\/i>third<\/i><\/b> reason<\/span><\/i> why, <\/span><\/i>according to Robinson<\/span><\/i>, our abilities to make meaning from first stories and encounters is so seriously limited.\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

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With the first reason being that \u201cthe social process of the telling is disconnected from the store and creates obvious problems for ascribing meaningfulness\u201d, I have a couple thoughts on the matter. First I feel that this was expanded upon well in lecture 2:2. It\u2019s the \u201ccollecting, translating, and publishing\u201d acts that lose some of the significance in the story. That\u2019s not to say that we can\u2019t take value in any translated works, however perhaps we need to be more cognizant of the process that these stories (or any story really) has gone through to get to our hands. In our lecture we are invited to think about the <\/span>who <\/span><\/i>and the <\/span>why,<\/span><\/i> and how that connects to the overall understanding of the story. I feel that this is an important lesson to remember. As we are encouraged constantly to search for credible sources in our science papers or literature analysis; we should also be more critical of how our history is represented in different texts. Personally, I find that I learn on a more critical and more meaningful level on First Nations culture\/history when I read text from someone with a First Nations background. Of course, this is not to stifle any other scholarly discourses from authors of other backgrounds, but it seems relevant to listen to stories as close to the primary source as possible. I wanted to mention the book <\/span>Celia\u2019s Song <\/span><\/i>by Lee Maracle (Canadian and from Sto:lo nation), as reading her novel has given me insight to talk upon the topic of <\/span>witnessing https:\/\/quillandquire.com\/review\/celias-song\/<\/a><\/span><\/i>. This leads into the second point of the prejudiced acts against First Nations communities.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Being that Canada has had a history with residential schools and criminalization of certain cultural acts, we need to maintain open ears for stories to be re-told. Being a witness might mean to be able to listen to a story, thus legitimizing the situation at hand. In Koptie\u2019s article on the idea of being called to witness, he states that \u201cthrough witness memory exploration… frameworks of compassionate reflective autobiographic narrative for assisting recovery from crimes against humanity such as the residential school experience (121, Koptie).\u201d This point was mainly directed to Indigenous scholars\/witnesses, but in his next point he references the role of the <\/span>witness <\/span><\/i>\u201cchallenges all humanity to accept responsibility for the inconvenient truths of \u2018events that produced no witnesses (122, Koptie).\u2019\u201d Koptie also interviews Lee Maracle for this paper, which I find really encouraging! Continuing on, the issue from this prejudiced history impedes on this role of witnessing stories, thus creating a causal effect on future <\/span>understanding <\/span><\/i>and enabling <\/span>meaningfulness<\/span><\/i> of first stories.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

From reading Wickwire\u2019s introduction, it seems that Wickwire has gone through a transformation of her own when it came to her reading of Robinson\u2019s stories. Interpreting this <\/span>third reason <\/b>from Wickwire truly baffled me for a while. I might not have fully encompassed the reasoning presented but here\u2019s my interpretation of it. Wickwire says that,<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHe (Harry) wanted to show the cultural importance of maintaining a full range of stories. If people – whites and \u201cIndians\u201d – knew that stumps could turn into chipmunks and that chipmunks could turn into \u201cgrandfathers,\u201d they would cultivate a very different relationship to the land…if they knew…Tom Shiweelkin who was wrongly killed by an early brigade of whites, they would carry a different view of their history.\u201d (29, Robinson).\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

My understanding of what is implicitly being said here is that us (non-Natives) do not hold the same point of reference when it comes to the essence of these stories. I\u2019m also not relating essence to the meaning of the story, but more the spirit of the story. Wickwire notes that there\u2019s this constructed notion on her part of the \u201csingle, communal account rooted in the deep-past (29, Robinson).\u201d That seems to be a false sentiment with Robinson as he does not care about the \u201ctwists and turns\u201d crafted into these stories with other storytellers. This makes me believe that the issue is that our frame of history as a single account might be too simplistic to make meaning of the first stories. There seems to be a space for interpretation and fluidity that might not be understood for those of us that seeks out the singular \u201ctruth\u201d.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

References:<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Brydon, Diana. \u201c<\/span>Imagining Community Resurgence: Lee Maracle’s Celia’s Song Revisions a West Before and After the West.\u201d <\/span>dianabrydon.com.<\/span><\/i> May 11, 2016.\u00a0 <\/span>https:\/\/dianabrydon.com\/2016\/05\/11\/imagining-community-resurgence-lee-maracles-celias-song-revisions-a-west-before-and-after-the-west\/<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Koptie, Steven W. “Indigenous Self-Discovery:\u201cBeing Called to Witness\u201d.” <\/span>First Peoples Child & Family Review<\/span><\/i> 5.1 (2010): 114-125.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Robinson, Harry, and Wendy C. Wickwire. <\/span>Living by Stories: A Journey of Landscape and Memory. <\/span><\/i>Talonbooks, 2005.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is in response to prompt 2: \u201cIn Wickwire\u2019s introduction to Living Stories, find a third reason why, according to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":69861,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lisahouengl372\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lisahouengl372\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lisahouengl372\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lisahouengl372\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/69861"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lisahouengl372\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lisahouengl372\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lisahouengl372\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15\/revisions\/17"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lisahouengl372\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lisahouengl372\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/lisahouengl372\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}