Prompt 2: In this lesson I say that our capacity for understanding or making meaningfulness from the first stories is seriously limited for numerous reasons and I briefly offer two reasons why this is so: 1) the social process of the telling is disconnected from the story and this creates obvious problems for ascribing meaningfulness, and 2) the extended time of criminal prohibitions against Indigenous peoples telling stories combined with the act of taking all the children between 5 – 15 away from their families and communities. In Wickwire’s introduction to Living Stories, find a third reason why, according to Robinson, our abilities to make meaning from first stories and encounters is so seriously limited. To be complete, your answer should begin with a brief discussion on the two reasons I present and then proceed to introduce and explain your third reason from Wickwire’s introduction.

As the prompt suggests, it is difficult for many Western audiences to achieve the proper understanding of First Nations stories. Many elements of the oral tradition of storytelling are lost when reading them in books such as Robinson’s, and the removal of children from their communities to put them in residential schools – recently classified as an act of cultural genocide – created a generation gap in which many of these stories ended up lost.

Although it wasn’t directly communicated by Robinson, I think the main challenge in communicating these stories is that the form of storytelling in Western culture differs greatly from Robinson’s style. Think about having dinner with a group of friends; swapping stories with each other is one of the main sources of conversation. This tradition of storytelling is greatly removed from Robinson’s. Firstly, it’s much more casual; anyone is allowed to be a storyteller, and the stories are generally off-the-cuff and not over-rehearsed. (As an aside, I tend to find these kinds of stories less believable the more rehearsed they sound!) For Robinson, however, storytelling is a trade or a craft that he spent years mastering, and indeed could not practice it fully until he had left his past career:

“A nagging hip injury caused him to retire completely [in 1973]… [H]e did not begin to tell stories until he was immobilized by the injury. While running his ranches, he simply had no time to sit for hours telling stories. ‘When I get older,’ he explained, ‘and nothing I can do but tell stories.’” (20-21)

This is also evident in the first stories Wickwire hears, in which “Harry told… without interruption or props beyond a continuous series of striking hand gestures that were choreographed into the narrative.” (7) It is a physically demanding job as well; Robinson mentions some of the longer stories take a lot out of him. (12) If our culture puts such little value on stories – they can be told by anyone, and traded for next to nothing – would anyone still be willing to spend years mastering the art of storytelling in order to make sure the stories were preserved? Robinson seemed to doubt it, worrying that he was “‘going to disappear and there would be no more telling stories.’ …[H]e perceived his death as a blow to the process of storytelling.” (29) There would be nobody left who is willing or able to carry the stories on.

Our storytelling tradition is also more transient. To return to the dinner party example, the stories I’m told by friends are generally short and pithy, reaching their climax or punchline quickly. Robinson expressed frustration with people who expected his storytelling to follow the same pattern:

“There’s a lot of people come here just like you do. Some of them stay two, three hours only. Well, I can’t tell them nothing in two, three hours. Very little. But some people, one man, we talk, I and he, for over twelve hours. So they come to know something of me.” (12)

His storytelling style demanded more investment than most of his visitors were willing to give, and it seemed as if they expected him to adapt it to fit their needs. I am reminded of the story in Chamberlin’s book, where [chief’s name]’s thirty-minute greeting is condensed into “damn glad too.” (Chamberlin, ) It’s easy to imagine an uninitiated listener hearing Robinson’s stories for the first time and asking him to get to the point, already, unaware of what the stories would lose in the process.

I feel like there could be hope for First Nations storytelling finding a new audience, as in the last few years, the general public has embraced long-form storytelling in a way Robinson never could have anticipated. With so many people willing to spend fifty hours to catch up on Game of Thrones, or secure a twelve-hour block of their weekend to binge the new season of Orange is the New Black, or wait impatiently for the next episode of Serial, I believe the length and style of First Nations storytelling may no longer be the barrier it was in Robinson’s time. If there are still other storytellers of his skill (which is another matter entirely) I wonder if one of these new formats could be adapted to present these stories to a new audience.

Works Cited:

Chamberlin, J. Edward. If This is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories? Toronto: Random House, 2003. Print.

Wickwire, Wendy. Living by Stories: A Journey of Landscape and Memory. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2005. Print.