Yours, mine and…ours?

Coyote’s twin brother stole the “written document” and when he denied stealing the paper, he was “banished to a distant land across a large body of water” (9). We are going to return to this story, but for now – what is your first response to this story? In context with our course theme of investigating intersections where story and literature meet, what do you make of this stolen piece of paper?

Think back to the time your parents told you a story. Perhaps one about your history, your origin and your ancestry. Do you question this story, or do you take it as your truth in defining your past? I asked myself upon finishing this week’s readings whether I’d be accepting of being told my past was a stolen one. Does it even matter if it was one that lacked authenticity? The “alternative explanations” of the origins of ‘Europeans’ can be like the many versions of your past, history and ancestry. Where your family is from, who they were and what defined them. A stolen piece of paper becoming a part of your identity can be troublesome but, my first thought was…does it even matter that it was stolen? Can this “stolen piece of paper” make way for the sharing of truths among people of all origins? Perhaps more importantly, has this “stolen piece of paper” come to shape the way we tell and pass on these respective ‘truths’ of origin in both written and oral form? I made a natural connection between story, literature and history with this in mind.

The stolen piece of paper implies a sense of certain original ownership, and I think this idea of ownership is interesting in our quest of looking at origin stories. The naming of places, land and people creates a natural “link of ownership between people and the places” Yours, and mine. However, even something as valuable as an identity or origin story, can grow to not have one meaning, or one truth, but rather distinct and co-existing truths. Yours, mine and ours. The stolen piece of paper implies a certainty about the form of written history. Something written in stone, hard evidence and worthy of stealing. However, I do not believe the victims of this theft are at a loss, especially with the power of oral histories, where co-existing truths can exist, your story and mine. Thinking back to my own personal experience, the story telling process in my family was always an oral one. By the dinner table or by the living room couch. Just because our childhood stories aren’t written on a piece of paper, doesn’t make it less true to you or me. Does writing (written or print culture) differ from oral culture in this way? Brian Thom and his writing on ‘adaawk’ as oral histories that had “equal evidentiary weight as written history” proved the notion of a valid oral truth to me (Thom 7). There’s a part of me that doesn’t feel so bad about a stolen piece of paper potentially altering history and the history of literature, with its counterpart of oral story-telling having the same if not more gravitas as written. Grenier in her article made it clear that these oral traditions served as more important than it would have been on a piece of paper, with the ability of the ‘adaawk‘ in transcending time and generations:

“These are our titles, the names we hold that are derived from these stories and therefore connect us directly to our history. We received them from our Elders and we will pass them on to our children’s children”

(Margaret Gildewt Grenier, In the Space of Song and Story: Exploring the Adaawk of Hagbegwatku Simgeeget Sigydmhana nah Deth when sim Simgeeget)

Boas summed it up nicely for me when he wrote that “each community owns a distinct myth of origin” (Thom 7). I would like to believe that there is a way in which even a stolen piece of paper can be authentic and true to all, coexisting. Whether it is the European ‘thief’ (I choose to use that word carefully), or the victims of a sense of ‘origin/identity theft’, stories live on and carry on.

I challenge you to not be scared of your past or origins, however dark they may be. Instead, do as Lutz would: “step outside and see one’s own culture as alien and to discern the mythic in the performances of one’s own histories” (Lutz 32).

Works Cited

Grenier, Margaret G. “In the Space of Song and Story: Exploring the Adaawk of Hagbegwatku Simgeeget Sigydmhana Nah Deth When Sim Simgeeget.” Thesis. McGill University, 1997. In the Space of Song and Story: Exploring the Adaawk of Hagbegwatku Simgeeget Sigydmhana Nah Deth When Sim Simgeeget. Simon Fraser University, 2006. Web. 4 Feb. 2015. <http://summit.sfu.ca/item/6185>.

Thom, Brian. The Anthropology of Northwest Coast Oral Tradition. Department of Anthropology – McGill University, Mar. 2000. Web. 4 Feb. 2015. <http://www.web.uvic.ca/~bthom1/Media/pdfs/ethnography/nwc-myth.htm>.

Lutz, John. “First Contact as a Spiritual Performance: Aboriginal — Non-Aboriginal Encounters on the North American West Coast.” Myth and Memory: Rethinking Stories of Indigenous-European Contact. Ed. Lutz. Vancouver: U of British Columbia P, 2007. 30-45. Print.