Monthly Archives: February 2019

Frye writes:

A much more complicated cultural tension [more than two languages] arises from the impact of the sophisticated on the primitive, and vice a versa. The most dramatic example, and one I have given elsewhere, is that of Duncan Campbell Scott, working in the department of Indian Affairs in Ottawa. He writes of a starving squaw baiting a fish-hook with her own flesh, and he writes of the music of Dubussy and the poetry of Henry Vaughan. In English literature we have to go back to Anglo-Saxon times to encounter so incongruous a collision of cultures (Bush Garden 221).

It is interesting, and telling of literary criticism at the time, that while Frye lights on this duality in Scott’s work, or tension between “primitive and civilized” representations; however, the fact that Scott wrote poetry romanticizing the “vanishing Indians” and wrote policies aimed at the destruction of Indigenous culture and Indigenous people – as a distinct people, is never brought to light. In 1924, in his role as the most powerful bureaucrat in the department of Indian Affairs, Scott wrote:

The policy of the Dominion has always been to protect Indians, to guard their identity as a race and at the same time to apply methods, which will destroy that identity and lead eventually to their disappearance as a separate division of the population (In Chater, 23).

For this blog assignment, I would like you to explain why it is that Scott’s highly active role in the purposeful destruction of Indigenous people’s cultures is not relevant for Frye in his observations above? You will find your answers in Frye’s discussion on the problem of ‘historical bias’ (216) and in his theory of the forms of literature as closed systems (234 –5).

Northrop Frye describes literature as a “conscious mythology [which] creates an autonomous world that gives us an imaginative perspective on the actual one” (234). It is this argument that allows Frye to ignore the fact that Duncan Campbell Scott romanticizes Indigenous life while simultaneously implementing policies to destroy that very same culture.

Scott, who was the deputy superintendent of the Department of Indian Affairs from 1913 to 1932, played an active part in the establishment of residential schools and the subsequent removal of Indigenous children from their families, all with the ultimate goal to “to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic” (CanLit Guides: “Douglas Campbell Scott”). Meanwhile, he writes of a Native trapper with eyes like “jewels of content / Set in circles of peace” (Campbell 18-19) despite being chased by “whitemen servants of greed” (3). L.P. Weis sums it up nicely when he writes that Scott “consciously divided his life into two parts and wilfully ignored as a poet those morally objectionable aspects of the job he encountered as a bureaucrat” (Weis 27).

While many have tried to reconcile Scott’s words with his actions, or, at very least, have examined the discrepancies, Northrop Frye does not. For Frye, Scott’s actions are irrelevant because they exist outside of the closed system that is literature. Scott writes poetry about the “vanishing Indian”. Frye would say that Scott is giving an imaginary perspective on the conscious mythology of Canada (or the place that the nation of Canada happens to be) and that, although “primitive” in this case (i.e. an Indigenous woman who “took of her own flesh” (Scott 33) to bait a hook), is a closed form of literature. It isn’t necessarily real but rather the shaping of material (in this case, the historical entry into Canada by the colonizer, and the subsequent destruction of the Indigenous people- the “vanishing Indians”). For Frye, this is the beginning and the end, as the literary form of poetry produced by the poet Scott is unrelated (closed) to the historical and real actions of the colonizer Scott who is, in fact, shaping the material that he is then drawing from as a poet. The Indians vanish because they are being vanished by policies that have been penned by Scott, who then moves from the legislative system to the closed system of literature that is uninterested in his genocidal day job.

Historical bias enters into it when we look at how literature views the entry of poets into Canada. The mentality that they are experiencing (really providing an imaginary perspective on the experience and creating a myth from colonizing history) a harsh and unforgiving land and are reporting a romantic interpretation of that land is reinforcing the social beliefs valued by their (Western) culture. The historical bias is in favour of the people who did the colonizing, as they were also the ones colonizing an incipient national literary identity.

In many ways, it makes perfect sense for Scott to romanticize Aboriginal culture in his poetry while at the same time attempting to “get rid of the Indian problem”. As it’s pointed out in The CanLit Guides, “saying racist things in poetic ways makes them seem all the more true” (“Douglas Campbell Scott”). By romanticizing Indigenous culture, Scott is setting it in a mythological framework, and at the same time, removing this culture from the present; if Indigenous people and culture are portrayed as a thing of the past, as a romantic and mythological idea, it suggests that they no longer have a place in the present. Additionally, as The CanLit Guides also points out “the beauty of a poet’s expression is itself an ideological tool” (“Douglas Campbell Scott”).

Works Cited

CanLit Guides. “Reading and Writing in Canada, A Classroom Guide to Nationalism.” Canadian Literature. Web. 24 Feb. 2019.

“Duncan Campbell Scott Plaque”. Whatever He Says. N.p., n.d. Web Image. 26 Feb. 2019.

Frye, Northrop. The Bush Garden: Essays on the Canadian Imagination. 2011. Toronto: Anansi. Print.

Salem, Lisa. “”Her Blood is Mingled with Her Ancient Foes”: The Concepts of Blood, Race and ‘Miscegenation’ in the Poetry and Short Fiction of Duncan Campbell Scott.” Studies in Canadian Literature / Études en littérature canadienne 18.1 (1993): n.pag. Web. 26 Feb. 2019

Scott, Duncan Campbell. “The Forsaken”. Poem Hunter. N.d. Web. 25 Feb. 2019.

Scott, Duncan Campbell. “On the Way to the Mission”. Poetry Nook. N.d. Feb. 25 Feb. 2019.

Weis, L.P. “Scott’s View of History & the Indians”. Canadian Literature 111 (1986): 27–40. Print.

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 the 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 story.

I chose to address this question in my blog for a few reasons. Firstly, I am a school teacher who focuses on literacy and Language Arts. It is my role to teach my students a variety of reading comprehension techniques. Some students respond well to reading silently, others comprehend better when they are listening. I figured this question would be a great way to explore the effects of various reading styles. Secondly, I truly enjoyed King’s “Godzilla vs. Post-Colonial”. His approach to the terms currently used to describe Indigenous literature, and the terms he used, really opened my eyes to the Euro-centric approach many (including myself, if I’m to be honest) have when it comes to Native literature. His discussion of Robinson’s story-telling method piqued my interest and had me wanting to know more. My third reason for addressing this question is more personal. My husband and I used to read aloud to each other all the time. Our lives are much busier now than they used to be, so unfortunately, reading to each other has fallen to the back-burner. I thought this would be a great excuse to get back to it!

I first read the story silently to myself.King describes Robinson’s writing as having an “oral syntax that defeats readers’ efforts to read the stories silently to themselves” (186) and this may well be the most accurate description of a piece of writing that I’ve seen. Reading Robinson’s story silently was like reading a story written in a language in which I had only the most basic fluency. The language sounds stilted and jumbled- take the example of the search for Coyote: “But when they can’t see him, what they gonna do? No more. And that’s for a long time. They try to find” (chap. Coyote Makes a Deal with the King of England). I found myself constantly having to re-read lines.

Next I read it aloud, alone. When I first started reading this story aloud to myself, I felt as though I were giving a monologue. I added pauses where I thought a pause should be. I added emotions. Despite me being alone, I read it as though I had an audience.And it got me thinking-  Courtney MacNeil argues that “orality is not the external and impersonal sound produced by the voice but rather a means through which an exterior drive toward communication is accessed”. So in this case, if I am reading aloud but am not communicating with anyone, is this an example of orality?

When I began reading it to an actual audience, I had the sensation that I was reading a transcript, a written version of a story originally told by someone else. Just like I did when reading it aloud alone, I added pauses and inflections. I also found myself speaking rhythmically, and often adding voices to the characters. I wanted to engage my audience.

When listening to someone else read the story, it comes across less as a transcript. Instead, it sounds like a story, a live event. There are many part of this story that don’t seem to translate from oral to written- when the narrator describes the book as being “about this long and this wide” and having a “little padlock, about that size” (chap. Coyote Makes a Deal with the King of England), it seems nonsensical to a reader. How on earth are we supposed to understand the size to which he refers? Yet, when I listened to the story, the reader (in this case, my husband) added gestures to demonstrate. Naturally, he interpreted the sizes in his own mind, but it still added an extra layer of life to the story. King seems to be aware of this, as he points out that one common problem with translating oral literature into written literature is the loss of the “voice of the storyteller, the gestures, the music, and the interaction between storyteller and audience” (186), but that Robinson overcomes these issues.

Listening to someone else read the story clarified it quite a bit for me. Robinson uses many colloquialisms; he is fond of using the term “ ‘em”. Sometimes this term replaces the pronoun “him” and sometimes it replaces the pronoun “them”. Reading it myself (especially silently), this often tripped me up. However, when listening to the story, I found that identifying the correct pronoun was far more intuitive.

It is clear that Robinson’s work uses elements primarily found in oral literature. In “The Nature and Kinds of Oral Literature” Albert Bates Lord writes that traditional oral literature includes a “pattern consisting of (1) absence of a powerful figure (or disabled elder), (2) devastation, (3) arrival (or return) of a powerful figure, and (4) justice or restoration of order”. I found these patterns in “Coyote Makes a Deal with the King of England”, where we start off with the powel figure of Coyote being absent from the live of the Indigenous people, followed by a devastation (sparked by the arrival of Europeans), followed by the return of Coyote. In the end, I suppose the idea of justice or restoration of order can be debated; the laws are returned to the Indigenous people, but is that truly restoration of order?

Like much other oral literature, Robinson’s story explores magic realism. Time is fluid (even the author seems unsure), and there are definitely anachronisms (such as the existence of the camera in what seems to be a time period centuries ago). Nothing seems to be set in stone; even Robinson fluctuates, often correcting himself in a very colloquial manner, like when he says, “And they give ‘em this book- the four of them, the three of them” (chap. Coyote Makes a Deal with the King of England).

Style add meaning. In the case of this story, I found the repetition, the familiar tone, and the use of colloquialisms creates a story that feels intimate with the reader. Unlike many other stories (I can’t help but think of King’s discussion on the Genesis story), “Coyote Makes a Deal with the King of England” does not seem to come from a place of authority. It comes from a memory, perhaps a shared memory, and is now being passed on to us.

 

Works Cited

“Aboriginal Concepts of Justice”. The Aboriginal Justice Implementation System. N.p., n.d. Web.16 Feb. 2019.

King, Thomas. “Godzilla vs. Post-Colonial.” Unhomely States: Theorizing English-Canadian Postcolonialism. Peterbough, ON: Broadview, 2004. 183- 190. Web. 15 Feb. 2019

Lord, Albert Bates. “The Nature and Kinds of Oral Literature”. The Singer Resumes the Tale. Center for Hellenic Studies. Harvard University.

MacNeil, Courtney. “Orality.” The Chicago School of Media Theory. Uchicagoedublogs. 2007. Web. 16 Feb. 2019.

Robinson, Harry. Living by Stories: A Journey of Landscape and Memory. Ed. Wendy Wickwire. Vancouver: Talonbooks. 2005. Kindle edition.

 

First stories tell us how the world was created. In The Truth about Stories, King tells us two creation stories; one about how Charm falls from the sky pregnant with twins and creates the world out of a bit of mud with the help of all the water animals, and another about God creating heaven and earth with his words, and then Adam and Eve and the Garden. King provides us with a neat analysis of how each story reflects a distinct worldview. “The Earth Diver” story reflects a world created through collaboration, the “Genesis” story reflects a world created through a single will and an imposed hierarchical order of things: God, man, animals, plants. The differences all seem to come down to co-operation or competition — a nice clean-cut satisfying dichotomy. However, a choice must be made: you can only believe ONE of the stories is the true story of creation – right? That’s the thing about creation stories; only one can be sacred and the others are just stories. Strangely, this analysis reflects the kind of binary thinking that Chamberlin, and so many others, including King himself, would caution us to stop and examine. So, why does King create dichotomies for us to examine these two creation stories? Why does he emphasize the believability of one story over the other — as he says, he purposefully tells us the “Genesis” story with an authoritative voice, and “The Earth Diver” story with a storyteller’s voice. Why does King give us this analysis that depends on pairing up oppositions into a tidy row of dichotomies? What is he trying to show us?

Thomas King is the first to acknowledge the different approaches he takes when telling the stories “The Earth Diver” and “Genesis”.  He describes his telling of “The Earth Diver” as using a “conversational voice [that] tends to highlight the exuberance of the story but diminishes its authority”. Meanwhile, the “sober voice in the Christian story makes for a formal recitation but creates a sense of veracity”.

King’s different takes on the telling of the two stories are representative of the culture from which each of these creation stories come. King tells the Genesis story in an authoritative voice; this makes sense, since this story is a product of Western Judeo-Christianity, a belief system that is monotheistic and hierarchal. In this system, information and knowledge is generally possessed by one authoritative voice- such as a priest or rabbi- who has the power to share this “wisdom” with his “herd”. The Genesis story contains a creator who knows everything, and it is a story that claims to explain everything- an idea that is reflective in Western culture, where objectivity, order, and the written word (or “facts”) are prized. In many Western belief systems, there is little room for interpretation, as many of their stories are meant to be taken literally; consider Catholicism, where followers are asked to believe that they are are truly drinking the blood of Christ.

King’s telling of “The Earth Diver”, on the other hand, demonstrates a more pluralistic view, and it is a story that is clearly meant to be told orally- King even explains how the story might change when he tells it to little children.  

Both King and Chamberlin warn us to be careful with binary thinking, yet the analysis he provides requires “pairing up oppositions into a tidy row of dichotomies”. Why? I believe there are a few reasons for this approach.

1. We Live in a World of Opposites: “Genesis” and “The Earth Diver” are two very different approaches to the world’s creation but they both are filled with dichotomies. Genesis speaks of night and day, sun and moon, man and woman. “The Earth Diver” includes light and dark twins who create plains and forests, winter and summer, sunshine and shadow. It is interesting that while both stories reflect very different human behaviors, they both highlight contrast in the world. While there may be spectrums and intersections, our world is ultimately one that contains many opposites. The danger with binary thinking is that it can lead to a separation between “them” and “us”. However, King’s stories- told in very different ways- highlights that fact that dichotomies are actually a shared value in Aboriginal and Western belief systems.        
2. Incongruity Theory: King’s writing is one that I find to be quite tongue-in-cheek in style. The Incongruity Theory suggests that “one way for a speaker to get a laugh is to create an expectation in the audience and then violate it” (Morreall). I feel that by pairing up these two stories in “a tidy row of dichotomies”, he is (albeit subtly) speaking to the rather extreme approach to creation stories that Western culture has adopted. By keeping “Genesis” so short and tight (versus the long, flowing style of “The Earth Diver”), King highlights the absurd rigidity of Western culture’s approach to rules and order.                                           
3. The Audience: Traditional Western academia is a fond of binary thinking. As Edward Chamberlin puts it, “a lot of our contemporary literature seems to be in the business of confirming this theatre of Them and Us, with its chronicles of difference and historical distress” (49). Despite King’s own background, and his own approach to binary thinking, a large part of his audience could very well be “traditional” academics- individuals who studied and were raised in a system where binary thinking is widely used. Could it be that King’s approach was selected in order to make his arguments more “accessible” to a wider audience?

 

Works Cited

 

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

 

Hans, Mike. “The False Audience-Content Dichotomy.” 7 Aug. 2018. Admonsters. Web Image. 6 Feb. 2019.

 

King, Thomas. The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative. University of Minnesota Press, 2005.

Marsden, A.J. & Nesbitt, William. “Myths of Light and Dark”. Psychology Today. 8 May 2018. Web. 4 Feb. 2019.

Morreall, John, “Philosophy of Humor”. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2016 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.) Web. 5 Feb. 2019.

Read at least 6 students blog short stories about ‘home’ and make a list of BOTH the common shared assumptions, values and stories that you find and look for differences as well; look to see if you can find student peers who appear to have different values then yourself  when it comes to the meaning of ‘home.’ Post this list on your blog and include commentary please.

Shared Assumptions, Values, and Stories

At first, when comparing several stories about home, I found myself with a very long list; it seemed like we all shared so many assumptions and values regarding our definition of “home”. However, upon closer inspection, I realized most of these ideas could fall into two general commonalities:

1) A Search for Home

One major commonality among us is the assumption that home is not a given- it is something that must be found. Many of us have spent much of our lives searching for “home” and questioning what home means to us. Initially, I thought this was because of the assignment. Yet that doesn’t seem to be the case. There are many examples of us as children or teenagers, or young adults backpacking around the world, and even back then, it seems we were struggling to figure out our home. Many of us no longer live in the place where we spent our formative years, and have wrestled with the concept of “finding home”. Tamara Ensor writes of moving around when she was younger, feeling like she “never really belonged anywhere”. Kevin Hatch describes his search for home, referring to it as something that had “picked up and rumbled across the land”, and that it was up to him to pack up and follow”.

Lexis Mellish discusses her quest to find a community where she could “feel a part of something”.

2) Home is an Emotional Response

Despite a wide range of definitions for home, for the most part we agree on the idea that home is found inside us, and it is an emotional response. Home is not a house, a city, or even a country- it is a feeling. For some of us, it is a response to a relationship– home is with a partner, children, our parents, and/or our siblings. For some of us, it’s a response to our land. For others, it’s the way we feel when we are among a certain community. Because home is not a specific physical location, it can grow and shrink and move with us. Kevin Hatch puts it nicely when he writes that he prefers his home to be something he can take with him, “like a hermit crab”.

Differences: How are my values different from some of my peers’ values?

Most of the stories I read included a focus on heritage; for many, it seems, a part of identifying oneself and their home includes identifying their ancestors and the the lands from which their ancestors came. Many of the students in the class were raised with stories of their ancestry. I loved reading about my classmates’ heritages, but it made me realize that I did not discuss my heritage at all. I did not bring up my physical appearance, the language(s) that my family spoke, or where my parents or grandparents or great-grandparents were born.

And I found myself asking why not?

My father (born and raised in Montreal), since retiring, has become quite focused (I’m being generous here- “obsessed” might be a more accurate term) with exploring the “family history”. He has scoured the internet for photos and news articles and assorted tidbits related to his ancestors, most of whom come from England, Ireland, and Scotland. He constantly shares his findings with us, and one Christmas gave me and my siblings a USB key with all of his findings.

I must admit, I have not opened it.

I don’t have an interest in it.

Maybe I will one day, when I’m older. Maybe if all of the information on this USB key wasn’t related to a white, European, Catholic background- people whose history has been so prominent in mainstream education and culture that I already feel saturated- maybe then, I would have more interest.

But right now, for me, my exploration of home centers on my present life. The people and relationships I have in my life today. The communities in which I am a part of- or hope to be a part of- at this point in my life. The land in which I live on now, and the issues that we- as Canadians and as residents on this planet- face today.

Currently, I’m reading A.J. Jacobs’ It’s All Relative, a memoir around the author’s attempt to fully map out his family tree. In his book, he refers to a study  which concludes that children who know their family’s history are more well-adjusted than those who are unaware of their heritage. Perhaps this knowledge helps individuals feel more “rooted”, more “at home”?

I’m curious to know what you think, after considering the intersection of heritage and home- do many of you believe that your “home” is inherently linked to your heritage, in one form or another?

Commentary

I will repeat what nearly all of us have said: home is very difficult to define, and it is going to be different for each and everyone of us. As a Canadian of European descent, it is especially difficult. The truth is, if I am to use the more general of definition of home (“the place where I come from”), I have to tell people that my home is a stolen land. I have my home because people stole it from others. I was not responsible for these actions, and growing up as a child who knew little of our country’s harsh past, I had no reason not to proudly say, “My home is Canada”, in the same way that a child riding in a car that was, unbeknownst to the child, stolen by her parents, would proudly say, “This is my car”. I did not choose my past. I did not choose the country in which I was born. But here I am. And now it is my responsibility to be an Indigenous ally and to make amends for the actions of those who came before me, so that I can make Canada a place that my children can say- with deserved pride- is their home.

Thanks to Kevin Hatch, Tamara Ensor, Lexis Mellish, Georgia Wilkins, Cassie Lumsden, and Maxwell McEachern for their blogs; I focused on these ones for this response, but my goal is to read everyone’s!

Works Cited

Deer, Jessica. “Montreal non-profit launches toolkit on how to be an Indigenous ally.” CBC. 23 Jan. 2019. Web. 30 Jan.2019.

Ensor, Tamara. “Home…” .Web blog post. UBC Blogs WordPress. Canadian Lit Eh. 29 Jan. 2019. Web. 30 Jan. 2019.

Hatch, Kevin. “Home is Where Your Rump Rests”. Web blog post. ENGL 470 99C Blog: Oh! Canada? UBC Blogs WordPress. 28 Jan. 2019. Web. 31 Jan. 2019.

Jacobs, A.J. It’s All Relative. New York: Simon & Shuster. 2017.

Marche, Stephen. “Canada’s Impossible Acknowledgement.” The New Yorker. 7 Sep. 2017. Web. 30 Jan. 2019.

Mellish, Lexis. “Re-shaping Home”. Web blog post. Swamp Mama. UBC Blogs WordPress. 28 Jan. 2019. Web. 31 Jan. 2019.

“National Air Cargo: We Deliver”. N.p., n.d. Specky Boy. Web image. 31 Jan. 2019.

Rollins, Judy. “The Power of Family History”. Pediatric Nursing 39 (2013). 113-114. Web. 30 January 2019.

Rough Trade Records. “Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeroes- Home (Official Video). YouTube. YouTube. 17 May 2010. Web. 31 Jan. 2019.