1:3 STORY & LITERATURE
by maya sumel
Hey everyone! Welcome back to my blog. For this blog post, I will be focusing on story and literature and addressing a question that I found to be very interesting in my opinion. I will be writing a summary of three significant points that I found most interesting in the final chapter of If this is Your Land, Where are Your Stories? The final chapter of this book by Chamberlin is chapter eleven, which focuses on ceremonies. First, I will provide you all with a link to the writers cafe website where you can learn more about Chamberlin and this book I am discussing by listening to one of his interviews. I hope you all enjoy this! I listened to it in Unit 1 before making this blog post and I really liked it.
The first most significant point I found interesting was the story about the Gitksan and the destruction of their valley seven thousand years ago. In this story, they discuss the power of storytelling. The Gitksans took the valley for granted many years ago, and it was destroyed by grizzly bears. Chamberlin described their storytelling as having the ritual it required to the court to assert their claims to the land. Their story required belief, which is why they told it with ritual and ceremony. I found this one example to be interesting and understood the power of storytelling and having others believe what you are saying. Without belief, it would have been very difficult for the Gitksan peoples to assert their claim to the land and valley. We can relate this to a lot of the stolen land from Indigenous peoples across Canada as well, and how unfortunate it is that they have to fight for land that was stolen from them – this is an example of why storytelling is so powerful.
A second point I found to be interesting was that each story has two truths. The first truth would be the allegiance to the facts of experience, which are part of us. The second truth is the formalities of expression, which are separate from us. I found this to be interesting since this applies to most aspects of life. There are always multiple ways to interpret something, tell a story, or view a situation. It ultimately lies upon the way the story is told, which will then largely determine how we will interpret it.
The last point that I found fascinating is that stories have the power to take us to a place where things happen, but in reality, they do not. Stories offer us a choice between believed spoken words, or a visual world. A real-world example that I thought of when reading this was the way we describe ‘Canadian Land’, and what it means to be Canadian. I thought of the Molson Beer commercial I am Canadian. When thinking of this, I thought of the colonization of land and how the story of what it means to be Canadian is told, and whether the audience chooses to believe the words they see or the world they live in. The choice between the reality that we live on stolen land, or the story that being Canadian is exactly what this commercial says it is.
I hope you enjoyed reading my perspective and I look forward to reading the comments!
Thanks,
Maya 🙂
Works Cited:
Chamberlin, Edward. If This is Your Land, Where are Your Stories? Finding Common Ground. AA. Knopf. Toronto. 2003. Print.
Chamberlin, Edward. “Interview with J. Edward Chamberlin”. Writer’s Café. Web April 04 2013.
Courtney MacNeil, “Orality.” The Chicago School of Media Theory. Uchicagoedublogs. 2007. Web. 19 Feb. 2013.http://lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/mediatheory/keywords/orality/
- Am. Canadian! By Molson – CBC Archives. https://www.cbc.ca/archives/entry/i-am-canadian-by-molson
Hi Maya!
Thanks for your response! I was thinking about what you said about how storytelling and the power it has. I was responding to another blog on the first prompt and how oral language is acts as a form of delivery. I think story telling has the capability to keep culture alive. Not only that but the essence of preservation of the language itself is also a mark in keeping culture protected.
I’ve been thinking about the second point of the chapter. I was hoping you might have more insight for me. Do you think that the two truths is a matter of semantics? Or do you think that Chamberlain means that there are two sides on a matter? I can’t quite discern if the two truths are meant as arbitrary or if truth is always polarized.
Also on your last point, the Molson Canadian commercial is such a good example. I even remember being really intrigued by it when I was younger. I do think visual-storytelling has a significant effect on people. What do you think would be a more accurate portrayal visually on our identity?
Thanks Maya 🙂
Hi Lisa!
I also think that storytelling has the capability to keep culture alive. I think a major way that culture is transmitted, which I learned in my cultural psychology class, is through social beings and sharing the stories. We, as humans, learn things from each other.
I do think that Chamberlain is being arbitrary when he says there are two sides to a matter, but the general idea is grasped from him. And thank you! I also agree visual-storytelling is extremely powerful, especially when you may not understand the whole context of things.
Thanks 🙂
Hi Maya,
I was struck by the Gitksan story of the bear creating a landslide too. It was the intersection between the story of the Gitksan people and the story of scientists (http://ammsa.com/publications/windspeaker/pollen-study-confirms-legend-0) that caught my attention the most. While the narratives likely had some differences in what they considered to be truths, both stories were centered around the occurrence of a landslide. I think this is interesting to consider in the context of the second point that you found to be interesting in Chamberlin’s last chapter (the idea that each story has two truths).
The scientist leading the geological research said that this intersection of Western story and Indigenous story “illustrates the value of taking oral histories seriously” (Eberle, para 8). While I agree with the sentiment behind this statement, I also think that it highlights the ways in which settler-colonialism has led to the dismissal of Indigenous oral traditions. In order for the land claims of the Gitskan people to be taken seriously, their traditional oral narrative had to be “verified” by a Western narrative (a story that was based on Western scientific practices). Do you believe that this is the case too?
Regardless of this, it seems certain that the intersection between Western narratives (specifically science-based ones) and Indigenous oral traditions has the potential to empower oral narratives. Further examples of such intersections can be seen in this CBC article (https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/science-first-nations-oral-tradition-converging-1.3862041) In the article, Kim Tallbear, a Native Studies professor at University of Alberta says, “I think it’s good, and I think it’s progress. But Western knowledge … [is] privileged over Indigenous knowledge” (Mortillaro, para 14).
I am curious to hear your opinion on this idea!
Thanks for your interesting post.
Eva
Works Cited:
Eberlee, John. “Pollen Study Confirms Legend.” Aboriginal Multi-Media Society, ammsa.com/publications/windspeaker/pollen-study-confirms-legend-0.Mortillaro, Nicole.
“Science Is Finally Backing up What First Nations Oral Tradition Has Been Saying for Centuries | CBC News.” CBCnews, CBC/Radio Canada, 22 Nov. 2016, http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/science-first-nations-oral-tradition-converging-1.3862041.
Thanks Eva, I was just about to go hunting for some citation for Maya on this 🙂 That was an amazing court case, and I remember the celebrations well when the judge declare oral testimony acceptable! A “LANDSLIDE’ decision – you could say.
Hi Maya,
Your response made me consider a great deal of the way in which you discussed the two interpretive frameworks which stories can contain. The CBC article that you linked about the Molson Beer commercial actually highlighted that, as it is an example of how viewer belief, which in this case is in the settler-colonial narrative of Canada, influences how stories are constructed. In this case, the Molson beer commercial, like all advertisements, has been designed to represent Canada in a way that will appeal to a large population of Canadians, which will incentivize consumers to purchase Molson beer, as they will connect it to this video. Ironically, the use of national narratives to sell a product is a tactic I am very familiar with as someone who grew up in the United States, I found a commercial here from Budweiser which in a while in a less explicit way, uses concepts of what it is to be American to sell the same product. Additionally it uses an American holiday which has what could almost be conceived of as a ritualized pattern of celebration, since fireworks, grilling meat, beer are expected activities in a Fourth of July celebration. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75_GgHD0wDo )
Both of these adds utilize patriotic narratives which emphasize certain aspects of the Canadian and American national narratives, and likewise ignore truths regarding colonization and the Indigenous Peoples whose land was taken to create Canada and the United States. My question for you is how do you think patriotism and nationality connect to Chamberlain’s conceptualization of stories?
Source:
YouTube, 4 July 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75_GgHD0wDo.
Hi Sophie,
Thank you for providing a link of the Budweiser commercial! I do agree it is less explicit and obvious than the Molson beer commercial, but it is a great example and a known tactic. The media wants the viewers to see a specific perception of what it ‘means to be Canadian’ or what it ‘means to be American’, so they portray that to the masses through mass consumption of technology. It is unfair, and it is not a true representation of what being Canadian really is, or what this land was before it was stolen from Indigenous peoples.
To be completely honest, I think that in Canada we view nationalism more like patriotism as a whole. They relate in the most obvious sense that the patriotism of Canada and what it wants to be portrayed as in terms of nationality is only one of the two abstract truths that Chamberlin went over. This story being told may not be the truth, but once a story is told, it can never be taken back. The more we talk about it and tell these stories to mislead others, they start to believe it.
Thanks! 🙂
Hi Maya!
It was really fascinating reading your perspective on how story is told! 🙂
On your last point, you mentioned that stories offers a choice between believed spoken words and a visual world. What would you think is best for the case of indigenous people in Canada? Would they benefit more in believed spoken words or a visual world in preserving their stories?
Hi Joseph,
Thank you! I am glad you enjoyed reading my perspective on how a story is told. I do think that stories offer a choice between believed spoken words and a visual world. I think that a visual world is best for the case of Indigenous peoples in Canada, because there is little being done at the moment, even though there is talk about ‘action’. If we do not see change, it is not there. if we do not see the effects, we are blind to it.
Thank you!
Thank you for a great story Maya, I too appreciated the conversational ‘a la King’ style – and couldn’t help thinking about the ‘second truth’ you talk about in your previous blog : The second truth is the formalities of expression, which are separate from us. King writes in a story-telling style, a conversational style – this is a ‘formality of expression – otherwise called a ‘genre’: the story-telling genre of literature. This is actually quite a complex conversation. Because categorizing, which is what we are doing when we ‘make’ genres’ and then expect writers and readers and story-tellers to stay inside of the ‘formalities of expression that each category we make requires in order to be ‘truthful’ or ‘correct’. A little like Chamberlin eating his pees with the fork (was it a fork?), at any rate, it was the ‘incorrect’ way to eat pees according to the formalities of that table’s eating practices. The point here being: genre making is a powerful tool which can both oppress and liberate ‘stories’. And as such, this is a good thing for us to be thinking about in the effort to understand colonizing narratives. Thank you.