Lee Maracle writes:

In order for criticism to arise naturally from within our culture, discourse must serve the same function it has always served. In Euro-society, literary criticism heightens the competition between writers and limits entry of new writers to preserve the original canon. What will its function be in our societies? (88)

In the following paragraphs in her essay, Maracle answers her question describing what she sees to be the function of literary criticism in Salish society. Summarize her answer and then make some comparisons between Maracle and Frye’s analysis of the role of myth in nation building.

In her essay “Toward National Literature – a National Treasure”, Maracle illustrates her frustration and concerns on the fragility that Salish culture has become due to the dismantling of its people during the colonial period. While Salish land was being fought over and colonized by foreigners, their children – carriers of Salish stories, culture, and tradition, “subjects of transmission” (79 Maracle) – were also being removed from their home. “We have been deliberately disconnected from our bodies of knowledge” (79 Maracle). Disconnection of people also meant disconnection of knowledge, where the previous generation and its stories were not being passed down, while subsequent generations had little resources to learn their culture, and a lack of a real place to create discourse with one another, thus creating new stories. “Since there is no location, institution, systemic, for the ordered aggregation, synthesis and transmission of First Nation knowledge…”  (80 Lee), the new canon of storytelling was naturally overpowered by its European colonizers; completely changing the standards of how stories are critiqued and evaluated.

With that bit of Salish history established, Maracle discloses that the only ones that are qualified to make criticism “can only be done by those who live in the culture and study the base…” (84 Maracle).  Which eliminates any foreign party that isn’t truly immersed in Salish culture, but also ones that have not academically studied historical Salish text, roots and culture.

On a mythical sense, Salish stories were a way to learn and establish an entire community’s way of life, and also to reflect on it through discourse, mainly in a live environment. First is to “understand”, second to “see oneself in the story”, and lastly to see it’s community through the story. Subsequent Salish stories strive to transform and improve on the way of living through such methodology. Unlike European way of discourse, It’s not so much about penmanship and demonstration of literature mastery among other writers. Salish stories directly reflected their morals, principals and most of all mythology, and they were continually created orally to match its contemporary generation. The quote following illustrates that in this point, Northrup and Maracle’s thinking aligned, “literature is conscious mythology: as society develops , it’s mythical stories become structural principals of storytelling”. (234 Frye)

Frye’s approach to criticism drew similarities to what Maracle speaks of, he did not feel like it was the writer’s job to make “value judgement”, especially as a “starting point of criticism” (6 Hutcheon).Frye’s approach to evaluating literature was very much based on writer’s intentions in regards to their piece of literature and not what he thought it should be. This to me, was a pretty refreshing take in criticizing, evaluating and reading stories. Throughout my personal academic journey, especially since university, I’ve been taught repeatedly to approach stories without the author in the picture, and let the writing itself speak for itself. Anything taught about the author was discussed as back-stock knowledge, not so much essential artifacts of understanding the story itself. I understand the idea behind this as to respect an artists work as an isolated entity. But, I’ve also always felt that it runs the risk of losing layers of depth to a story without connection to the creator and their perspectives and intentions.

Comparing the answers of both Maracle and Frye, I find are not conflicting, rather a good compliment to one another. Both writers stress on the importance of understanding deeply of the story’s roots, rather than the stories itself. And its between that space of object of the story and subject where myth is created. Mythology overtime becomes foundations of storytelling. Stories closely imitate the principals and morals of current society, and society in return mimick the stories that are being told, and its my understanding that in that process of back-and-forth rallying is where myth lies.

Both Maracle and Fry’s brought me back to a Greek  Mythology class I took a few years back and the ancient Greek culture truly epitomized the idea of oral mythological story-telling. With the lack of science, technology or empirical data during its time, all things – tangible or ideological – were explained through Greek Gods and their stories of how and why things came to be. Obviously I can’t list all of its stories here, but, here is link that gives some of the best stories in Greek mythology. Here is also a documentary I’ve watched while I was taking the class for anyone that’s interested. It can be a little bit dry at times, but the commentary by its historians and mythologists were insightful in helping us understand its politics, culture and thought process during that time.

Works Cited

Maracle, Lee. “Toward a National Literature – “A Body of Writing”” Across Culture/Across Borders – Canadian Aboriginal and Native American Literatures(2010): 77-97. Print.

Hutcheon, Linda. The Bush Garden – Essays of the Canadian Imagination – Northrop Frye. Concord: House of Anansi, 1955. Print.

“Top 10 Greek Mythology Stories.” Owlcation. N.p., 15 Sept. 2016. Web. 8 Nov. 2016.

Greek Mythology God and Goddesses Documentary. 2013. Youtube. Web. 8 Nov. 2016.

In his article, “Godzilla vs. Post-Colonial,” King discusses Robinson’s collection of stories. King explains that while the stories are written in English, “the patterns, metaphors, structures as well as the themes and characters come primarily from oral literature.” More than this, Robinson, he says “develops what we might want to call an oral syntax that defeats reader’s efforts to read the stories silently to themselves, a syntax that encourages readers to read aloud” and in so doing, “recreating at once the storyteller and the performance” (186). Read “Coyote Makes a Deal with King of England”, in Living by Stories. Read it silently, read it out loud, read it to a friend, and have a friend read it to you. See if you can discover how this oral syntax works to shape meaning for the story by shaping your reading and listening of the story. Write a blog about this reading/listening experience that provides references to both King;s article and Robinson’s s  story.

As we’ve learned, there are certain elements to story-telling in orality that literature can not recreate. Story telling in the oral form can only take place when particular conditions are met, where there is both a story-teller and an audience that actively participates in the same temporal space. And when all the stars align, elements contingent of duality of both parties transpire. A story is told and listened to; there are intervals reserved for conversation, questions and reactions; participants are able to play off each other’s emotional reactions as the story graduates; the story-teller may create personal dynamics to the story through their voice, body language, timing and sometimes even music; and with that, a unique raw energy is created in the moment that is different every single time.

When these stories meant for the oral channel is materialized on paper, we get the chance to technically breakdown what, where and how some of these elements come to life when executed. Through “Coyote Makes a Deal with the King of England” by Harry Robinson, I was able to extract a few components I thought were interesting and play and integral part in oral syntax.

The first aspect that caught my eye was how the lines were broken down. Just like written poetry, lines are not broken down arbitrarily. When thinking about Robinson’s story meant to be consumed in the oral form, the line breaks provide for the story-teller to give a break, and fundamentally conducts the flow of the story. This story particular allows listeners to build imagery, and follow every step of the plot meticulously and in detail. An except that demonstrates the effectiveness of this line breaking would be,

“And for many years.
And the white people came from east
and they kept moving to the west coast.
All along the West Coast
And the white people, they got a boat,
And they go on the boat like from San Francisco.
And they go across the sea to Australia
Or, they go to China.
Go to New Zealand on the boat.
They always do that for a long time.” (64 Robinson)

Every subject and action is illustrated with moderately, from the boat, to where it’s going, which may seem sluggish on paper as a literature story, but gives the speaker range to build up and control imagery for the listeners in oral syntax. The second aspect I found – which is also in the excerpt above – is how the story is structured to allow emphasis for the story teller, with “And…And…And…” at the beginning of many lines consecutively for example. Once read aloud, the syntax naturally guides the reader to emphasize with a particular rhythm that makes sense with the story.  A similar affect goes for the spacing between lines. Each block of text seems to be a build up of one scene or image of the story when read aloud, and a space indicates a change in scenery which allows time for discussion, reactions from participants or even the story-teller to add their side notes. Which is what I did when reading this story aloud to a family member. Like King says, when we merely read the story’s in our minds, “we lose the voice of the storyteller, the gestures, the music, and the interaction between storyteller and audience” (186 King), but actually reading it aloud and preferably with an audience brings all of these invisible elements to life.

There’s also something to be said about the contents of the story’s themselves. Much of the story can seem repetitive when judged on a literature basis, but again, seems to add dramatic build up and allowance to understand the story better, since words can be misheard or misunderstood in a live story-telling platform. An example of this is the long passages when Coyote is speaking to the King of England and repeatedly questions whether he wants war or not.

Lastly, the story is also very conversational, often seeming like you’re listening to someone have a monologue, filled with rhetorical questions that are answered right after.

“His Name was TOH-MAH./ That’s all the name I know/ I don’t know his second name /Or, his first name/ Maybe his first name, maybe TOH-mah, maybe that was his second name/ Or maybe that was his first name, I don’t know. Only name I know, that was TOH-Mah.” (80-81 Robinson)

I think this type of storytelling provides the storyteller with a natural voice, exactly opposite to what we expect in a structured, written story, this plays well in a live environment as the audience follows the thought process along.

One thought that this question, and the articles have provoked is what does it take to be a good listener? We’ve learned many techniques as to how to be a good story teller, but it takes two to tango, and I feel like much of the burden is placed on the speaker/storyteller most of the time, while the listener plays a more passive role. After doing some digging, this Ted Talk really changed my perspective on the importance of the listener, and how it plays a vital role in effective communication.

Works Cited

Robinson, Harry. Living By Stories – A Journey of Landscape and Memory. Ed. Wendy Wickwire. Vancouver: Talon, 2007. Print.

King, Thomas. “Godzilla vs Post-Colonial”. Unhomely States: Theorizing English-Canadian Postcolonialism. Mississauga, ON: Broadview, 2004. 183-190

THe Power of Listening | William Ury | TEDxSanDiego. By William Ury. Perf. William Ury. TedXTalks. Youtube, 7 Jan. 2015. Web. 10 Sept. 30.

We began this unit by discussing assumptions and differences that we carry into our class. In “First Contact as Spiritual Performance,” Lutz makes an assumption about his readers (Lutz, “First Contact” 32). He asks us to begin with the assumption that comprehending the performances of the Indigenous participants is “one of the most obvious difficulties.” He explains that this is so because “one must of necessity enter a world that is distant in time and alien in culture, attempting to perceive indigenous performance through their eyes as well as those of the Europeans.” Here, Lutz is assuming either that his readers belong to the European tradition, or he is assuming that it is more difficult for a European to understand Indigenous performances – than the other way around. What do you make of this reading? Am I being fair when I point to this assumption? If so, is Lutz being fair when he makes this assumption?

I do think that to some degree Lutz  made an assumption on the profile of the reader, but a justified one at that, on the basis that we can conclude that this piece was primarily written for the academics foreign to the Indigenous worldview in the historical, cultural and spiritual sense. I believe this on the premise that Lutz himself is a history professor at the University of Victoria, and this piece has been (and is still) used as a scholarly discourse in Western post-secondary school circulations for quite a number of years. And “foreign” would have also included the European demographic who in this case, was a particular vital party in the European-Indigenous First Contact phenomenon.

When it comes to assumptions, I think that Lutz’s underlying message in “First Contact as Spiritual Performance: Encounters on the North American West Coast” is that the first encounters between Europeans and Indigenous people were full of them, and was perhaps not as innocent and open-minded as the term “First Contact” would lead some to believe. Lutz explains in First “Contact as Spiritual Performance: Encounters on the North American West Coast” and “Myths and Understandings: First Contact Over and Over Again” that both groups already possessed predisposed ideas of one another within their own cultural, and spiritual contexts even before initial interaction. To the Indigenous people, who saw “no firm divide between the natural world and the spirit world” (Lutz 35), the Europeans had a definitive place in their universe. Usually  inserting them into old mythologies, “these strangers were usually seen as being something old – the dead returned, ancient people or spirits revisiting.” (Lutz 3). This active process of familiarizing strangers into native would undoubtedly cloud the Indigenous’s perspective in their first interactions. Further evidence of this would have been the names and rituals created by different tribes that would make sense of European encounters, such as the title of “Salmon People”, and the “White Man Dance” created by the Tahsis (Lutz 37). Europeans, who played the explorer role, would similarly go into first interactions with expectations of discovering myths they would find. And these expectations again, “…situated their contact encounters around mythological and historical frameworks imbued and colored by spiritual beliefs” (Luts 32). For example, Christopher Columbus’s first drawn maps who Lutz details to have had influence from sources such as “Orientalism” and Marco Polo’s book.

What that leaves us with is no true objective first contact between two communities of people alien from one another. Having read samples of both sides, it’s difficult to believe how each party was recounting the same events, which illustrates just how physical, tangible experiences are completely swallowed by an individuals cultural upbringing. So then, what we consider to be reality and experiences are really just “play-doh” that fit into our molds. Lutz here perfectly demonstrates the idea there is no true objectivity with social occurrence, the best we can do is collectively being objective.

I’d like to end this post off with a photograph that I found very powerful and relevant to our topic of conversation.

(Photograph by Alfred Hart)

This man standing is not one Indigenous to Canadian soil, nor is he looking over a Canadian railway. But I think the sentiment that this photograph portrays is similar to ones we’ve been reading and writing about in the Indigenous-Canadian First Contact occurrences. This photo was taken of a Native American between 1865-1869 looking over the Transcontinental Railway 435 miles from Sacramento, California. I think this photo perfectly encapsulates the concept of clashing stories and worlds. The Native American watches helplessly as his fabrics of his universe is being punctured by the ideals of another. One land, but different stories.

Works Cited

Lutz, John. “Contact Over and Over Again.” Myth and Memory: Rethinking Stories of Indignenous- European Contact. Ed. Lutz. Vancouver: U of British Columbia P, 2007. 1-15. Print.

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.

An Introduction to Edward Said’s Orientalism- A Macat Sociology Analysis. Prod. Macat. Youtube. Youtube, 16 June 2015. Web. 16 Oct. 2016.

Christopher Columbus: What Really Happened. Prod. DavidandRemus Bad Crayfish. Youtube. Youtube, 6 Nov. 2013. Web. 16 Oct. 2016.

After reading many of my peer’s take on the word “home” I’ve acquired a much wider understanding of the word on both a personal level, and a shared one. Many overlapped with my personal experience and definition of the word, but there were also interesting perspectives and iterations of the word that I gathered that I had not yet explored before.

One major ideal of home that overlapped mine and many of my peer’s definition including Patrick, Audrey, Chloe, Mikayla and Jenny’s is the sentiment that home is very much connected to the people that make it special. Patrick’s story of not recognizing Canada as much of a home as China, largely due to his family’s absence in Canada, I think, was a prime example of how place can be an empty structure without the people and stories that make it personal. In regards to stories, there’s also a sense of nostalgia that one can pull from what they would call home. I read many stories of growing up, family and friends that were all attached to home.

One of the most interesting points, and one I had yet to think of was the idea that “home is inside of every one of us” from Chloe. This is truly an extension of the cliche, “home is where the heart is”, and everyone has the potential to be someone’s home in the intellectual, emotional and spiritual sense. It got me thinking, how many people have I provided this level  of meaning and comfort to the point where they’ve tied a part of their home to me, and thus  also the physical place that I reside.  Another point she made, – and also one of the first references to home as a physical structure is that it’s a place of protection that allows her to “escape” from the rest of the world. It’s a point I very much agree with in that,  one sense of the word home is giving shelter, physically but also mentally and emotionally.

After reading a collective of opinions, one question that comes to mind is, if home is dependent on valued people, memories and stories, then are some people unfortunate enough to never really find home? Sure, there are private physical structures where people may eat, rest, and indulge in private affairs, but from the consensus of opinions including my own, that hardly meets the requirements of a home.

For some, memories, people and stories are scattered across different locations. And I also read a conflict of where home is, especially in Patrick’s blog. Even though I was born in Vancouver, as someone who’s family are immigrants I feel at least the derivative effects of having a sense of scattered home. And I believe many immigrants or people who have lived in more than one place in their life face the same conflicting feelings. Two shoes that I’ve been watching that tell the the narrative of the Asia-to-America immigrant story very well are “Fresh Off the Boat” that came out just last year and a new show called “Kim’s Convenience” that’s only couple months old. I resonate with both shows as it’s an immigrant narrative where people try to bring pieces of their old “home” and integrate it into their new “home” in America.

Works Cited

Woo, Patrick. “Canada Is My Home And Not.” We Are in the Same Boat. UBC Blogs, 3 Oct. 2016. Web. 4 Oct. 2016.

Lee, Chloe. “2.2 Home.” Chloe’s Blog for English 470. N.p., 28 Sept. 2016. Web. 4 Oct. 2016.

Uber, Mikayla. “Assignment 2.2 – A Sense of Home.” ENGL 470: CanLit Chronicles. UBC Blogs, 28 Sept. 2016. Web. 4 Oct. 2016.

Lu, Jenny. “2.1 Home: A Place for My Mind.” English 470A Insights. UBC Blogs, 28 Oct. 2016. Web. 4 Oct. 2016.

Kim, Audrey. “2.2 Home.” Storytelling for the Soul. UBC Blogs, 30 Sept. 2016. Web. 4 Oct. 2016.

Home is where the heart is. I probably broke about 46 rules to writing by starting with a cliche, but it’s quite the apt description on my feelings and definition towards the word “home”.  Unlike many indigenous people of Canada and their stories that we’ve been learning about, my attachment and stories are not nearly connected to land as they are to people. This perspective may gradually change as I grow, but my surroundings and environment has always played a the role of a facilitator that allows me to create stories with the people that I value.

The best way to illustrate this perspective and how it may differ from others is – of course – with a story:

I have fairly fond memories of my childhood. One particular location I have birthed many stories that have shaped my childhood was the playground of my elementary school. I still currently live close to that particular playground, but every time I pass by it, I can’t help but feel how my stories are buried among many generations of children that have since created stories on the same playground as well.

I have memories of myself meeting many of my first friends of my life for the first time.  Like how I met Daniel playing four-square on one side of the playground on one of my first days at this new school, and later on running in to him again in the soccer field, only to find out that it was Daniel’s twin brother David. A young Lucas that had not yet completely grasped the idea of “twins” briefly believed in teleportation that day.

I remember the first time I mustered up the courage to slide down the faux fire-man pole and twisted my ankle.

Or the man times I played grounders with my friends and ended up peeking when it was my turn. I never enjoyed that game, but as the new kid, I went along with it because everyone else was playing it. It’s where I met friends like Brendan, Alborz, Mitchell, William and Matthew.

The four-square court is where I really acquired some confidence as it was my best playground game and where I spent most of my recesses and lunch, after learning it in later years of my elementary school life.

I pass by that playground from time to time still, and it serves as a time capsule for me that allow me me to relive those stories, with those people, and momentarily grant me the feelings of the same innocence and youth.  But when I attempt objectively analyze my own sentiments and state of mind, I believe it wouldn’t matter which playground it was back then, and it the playground itself certainly has little personal meaning to me now.

To me, the opposite feeling of “homey” is loneliness.  I’ve undoubtedly felt homey in foreign places with the people I value. As a Canadian-born-Chinese, that was born and raised in Vancouver, I have little experience and stories with the city of Guangzhou, China, the city where my parents grew up and also where much of my family reside. I’ve probably been to Guangzhou less than ten times in my life for very short periods of time. But rarely have I felt unsafe or lonely in my time there as my family there to make it home for me, despite almost every other aspect of living being alien to me. And thus, I certainly have many stories tied to a place I’m also unfamiliar with. In a large way (but not fully), Guangzhou has been home for me.

On the flip side, I’ve also felt loneliness, unfamiliarity and barrenness in the very city I was born and raised in; including my very own home. Again, objectively speaking, I think it’s largely due to the people that I miss, who inserted life, stories and feeling into the place. If home is where the heart is, then I think my heart is with people.

Lastly, I’d like to leave you with a song I haven’t listened to in some time, but the prompt of this blog topic definitely allowed me to relive it. Hopefully some of you may share the same sentiment of “home” in the song as I do.

Cheers,
Lucas

Trip on Tube : China Trip (中国) Episode 15 – Guangzhou (广州) [HD]. Prod. Trip on Tube. Youtube.          Youtube, 24 Jan. 2015. Web. 28 Sept. 2016.

Magnetic North, and Taiyo Na. Song. Japan: Goon Trax/Media Factory, n.d. MP3.

This is the story about not exactly how evil came to be, but how evil came to be us.

Hundreds of thousands of years ago, our ancestors lived on another planet far, far away. Peace, harmony between men, collaboration, selflessness, equality. Happiness held a unanimous sentiment, not an individual one. All animals living harmoniously with its landscape – which was equally as important. There was no “good”, because there was no corruption. It just…was. It was what we’d describe today as a “Utopia”.

As their planet began to reach it’s capacity, it was naturally decided to look for expansion, a second planet to call home. So they found a smaller one, just like the one back home. Most of them stayed back home, but an adventurous, optimistic body of the group decided to come and find greener pastures. Bringing nothing with them but good faith and a few animals, our ancestors stepped foot on what they named “Earth” for the first time.

Little did they know, this planet already housed inhabitants.

Earth was home to a parasitic entity that would stay dormant until a host was found. Not animal, not paranormal, but somewhere in-between. Tricky as they were, these parasites could take different forms, including plantation and wildlife that our ancestors would mistaken for edibles back at home.

Like how darkness can’t exist without light, these parasites wouldn’t take its first real breathe until our ancestors became its surrogate. Feeding on their goodwill and naivety, for every pure quality that our ancestors brought, these parasites created an antagonistic counter-quality. These parasites infected the mind, with selfishness, dishonesty, and a thirst for chaos.

Some of them were completely lost and consumed to this parasite, others were strong enough to put up a fight, and most of them became a mixed bag. Torn between love and this other; harmony and this other; empathy and this other; the community of our ancestors were quickly dismantled by these parasites.

With no form of defense against such an enemy, our ancestors could only watch as everything they worked for crumbled to the ground. Helpless to the insanity, chaos ensued, they fought and killed one another, even slaughtered the animals they lived along sides as food, and developed an ethnocentric attitude with no regards to other life. The few that still held some semblance of their old identity at the time, coined this parasite “evil” as it set in motion the backwardness to their way of “live”(ing). Also naming the ones that were turned, “human” to symbolically set aside the identities they were losing; pretty soon everyone became a human.

Evil could only exist because there was “good”. Not an entity on its own, but the anti of all. Our ancestors did not create evil, but evil was created because of our ancestors.

Over the first few generations of this catastrophic event, the course of the parasites ran strong in our blood. But through a fighting will, it began to weaken and dilute in strength every subsequent generation. By consciously knowing what undesirable alien lived inside and among us, we’ve been able to make a conscious progress of separation. Now that you know the story, you – like all our predecessors that have been burdened with this story-  have responsibility of fighting the evil that runs in your blood, for yourself, for your family and so that our future generations will one day have the pure blood that once ran throughout our ancestors.

The first question I had before writing this story was, “what is evil?”. Not knowing if there was an objective or technical definition of what evil was probed me to do some research. And after a few articles and Youtube videos, I discovered an interesting and (what I find to be) fair definition. One interesting concept about this definition is that evil itself isn’t really an entity on its own, it depends on the existence of something else: what we think is “good”. That very much reminded me of the lifeforms of parasites which is what inspired the idea of “evil” being a parasitic entity.

Learning how greatly stories can affect our attitudes and approaches towards life from Thomas King and his book, made me carefully think about the motivations and reliability of the story that I was going to craft. The two qualities that I wanted to convey to my audience was a sense of individual responsibility and a strive to be better.

Reading the story outloud to my friends was something I’m unfamiliar with, so I took to some Youtubing for strategies on telling an orally engaging story. This one was in particularly helpful, especially using a world-class storyteller like Kevin Hart as a sample case. In case you’re short on time with watching the entire video, the point I found most applicable was commitment. Once I had my listeners engage, I did my best to not lose momentum orally.

Works Cited Page

What Is Evil? Prod. Apologetics Canada. Youtube. Youtube, 3 Mar. 2013. Web.
23 Sept. 2016.

Kevin Hart’s 3 Secrets To Hilarious Storytelling. Youtube. Youtube, 22 Feb. 2016. Web.
23 Sept. 2016.

“If This is Your Land, Where are Your Stories?” by J Edward Chamberlin has become one of my favorite books just after the first read. It was undeniably a challenge to understand the technical constructions of such abstract ideas that surround stories. But, I really took my time with the book as it was – at the same time – so enticing in how abstract and philosophical structures can govern concrete realities in communities. Three points that Chamberlin made in the last chapter of the book, “Ceremonies” that  stood out to me were:

1. It takes active participation and surrendering to particular realities to truly feel the intended effect of stories. That mental space is what Chamberline calls “the border”. This active component of the listener/reader is a factor I’ve never thought of previously. And it’s redefined my perspective on stories as an entity that only exists if the receiver allows it to. If we overstep the line, the illusion becomes too clear and it leaks into our reality.  Step too far away from the border and we  all too much become absorbed into the stories. Positioning ourselves on the sweet spot as listeners/readers creates “strangeness and contradiction” (223) which should be cherished but we end up often avoiding.

2. Chamberlin describes the purpose of stories as being to create a “common ground” between people. Whether if it’s a brief moment where we sing the same lyrics together at a concert or a lasting treaty between countries, having shared stories means having shared realities, having shared realities means having shared rules and boundaries, and that creates structure, thus creating what we call community. Chamberlin also suggests that while we may not celebrate every story, it’s at least imperative to know that it’s fruitless to compare stories to one another; it’s the easiest way to create misunderstanding. “We may not eat together at the end of the day, but at least we can show some respect for each other’s table manners” (227).

This idea reminded me of the Dakota access pipelines story that I’ve been following in recent news, where the indigenous people of Dakota and new-comers have very different stories about the narrative of the land and it’s future purpose. And I can’t help but feel disheartened as the two parties fight literally and metaphorically for the “common ground” that Chamberlin speaks of.

3. Chamberlin brought an interesting perspective to the word “names” in regards to it’s usage and functionality in community. We use agreed-upon names to describe ideas, things, people, and places because words and language, guide and limit the way we think. So, when we use the same words, we’re subconsciously signing an unsaid contract that we’re speaking about of the same version of the same idea or thing. In the event when we use different names to describe the same reality, the context of that idea could be astronomically different as the words used to describe were overwhelmingly distant. Chamberlin illustrates this with his example of Gitskan people’s story of the rock slide that occured in Temlaxam in comparison with the scientific approach that explained the exact same happening.

A logical idea that stems from this point is the ever-changing definitions of words and language, the usage of them and their position in language. One particular case of this phenomenon is the concept of “bad words“. What makes a word bad by nature? How do these “bad words” change over time? These questions are all imperative to learning how we instinctively create language as a community and how they shape our thinking.

__

Works Cited

Chamberlin, J. Edward. If This Is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories? Toronto: Vintage Canada,              2004. Print.

Dakota Access Pipeline Company Attacks Native American Protesters with Dogs & Pepper Spray.
Youtube, 3 Sept. 2016. Web. 15 Sept. 2016.

Why Are Bad Words Bad? Youtube, 28 Nov. 2013. Web. 15 Sept. 2016.

About the Course

ENGL 470 Canadian Studies: Canadian Literary Genres aims to provide a historical context of Canada through stories extracted from it’s eclectic cultures, people and places. Unlike many nations who began with a unified narrative (for the most part), Canada’s identity is stitched together from stories of the indigenous people and it’s visitors who come from wide span of cultures. Their stories individually and intertwined together create unique “blending pot” of Canada. Over the years, defining voices of the past that made Canada what it is today have been muffled or disarranged, and it’s part of this course’s objective to – once again – re-discover them for a few reasons: 1) To learn the stories of our predecessors, 2) To find befitting places for their stories in today’s context and, 3) Accordingly add new discourse and stories of our own into the conversation

About the Author 

My name is Lucas, I am a 3rd year English Literature student. As someone who often views the world through the lens of “stories” I’m very excited to take this course. To me, stories can be extracted from just about anything, from people, to places, to objects. Two main personal objectives I have for this course are acquiring new stories I’ve yet to hear so that I become richer in knowledge and understanding about Canada, and how stories are told so that I become not only a better writer in literal terms, but also an individual that can create my own ideal stories.

Aside from this blog, I also have one of my own which I use to document my growth as a student, son, artist, writer… and all the other identities that are me. Another passion of mine is fashion. I graduated in Fashion Merchandising at Blanche Macdonald in 2015 and plan to have a serious career in the industry. Literature and power of stories have played a huge role on how I approach fashion, as I see stories in clothing as well, whether it’s new street-wear trends or old couture. Feel free to check out my Lookbook for those of you who are interested 🙂

Looking forward to conversing with you,

Cheers,
Lucas