Pages 149-160

In these pages we start with a story of Alberta’s father, Amos, working with the tribal police dealing with a lost car. Included in this section, we follow Alberta having lost her car and Connie driving her to the Dead Dog Cafe. The story then moves on to Dr. Hovaugh and Babo eating breakfast at the Dead Dog discussing their pasts and the plans for the day and then discovering that Dr. Hovaugh’s car is missing from the parking lot. Then we move to Lionel, Charlie, Bill, Eli, The Four Indians and Coyote in Bursum’s store encountering Bursum’s TV installation and noticing a change in their favourite Western film. Finally, this section ends with Thought Woman floating around making lists and ending up detained at Fort Marion in Florida. These pages, like most of King’s novel are packed with allusions and connections. I will investigate a few of them in the following paragraphs.

149-153 

This section opens on Amos Frank, Alberta’s father and a story of his time in the tribal police force. Amos is biblical character, a prophet who fought for justice and denounced the religious hypocrisy and idolatry that ignored and mistreated poor people of Israel. It is fitting that he plays the role of a tribal police officer in King’s novel. In The Book of Amos, a compilation of Amos’ messages, poems and visions, he declares, “let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” This water imagery fits beautifully into King’s story. 

Amos gets caught up in the disappearance of his friend Milford’s truck which is eventually found on the lot of a car dealership ready to be sold. This story gives a nudge to land claims and theft of Indigenous artifacts and remains, with Milford’s property being stolen and sold by someone else, and Milford being the one who ends up in jail after trying to take back his property. 

In this section we also see a common Indigenous stereotype play out. Peterson, the owner of the dealership, explains that probably the reason that Milford’s truck was brought in and sold and his name was misspelled on the bill of sale, was because he needed money and he was drunk. Amos explains that Milford doesn’t drink and Peterson replies, “so you say.” This stereotype of Indigenous people as drunks is still extremely prevalent in Canada. A recent example is demonstrated in the aftermath of the murder of Colten Boushie in 2016. When Boushie’s mother was told of his death by police, she fell to the floor and was told by police to ‘get it together’ and asked if she had been drinking. 

153-155

Dr. Hovaugh and Babo eat breakfast and discuss the day. Dr. Joe Hovaugh is an allusion to Jehovah which I covered in my previous blog post. At breakfast Hovaugh is unnerved by the Canadian landscape describing it in ways very similar to Moodie and Frye. Babo is a very interesting character within King’s story. Flick points out that Babo is a character in Herman Melville’s story Benito Cereno, who leads a slave revolt while ensuring the captain that everything is fine and normal (145). Babo in King’s story is not overly concerned with finding The Four Indians and it becomes clear that she knows them very well and is likely aligned with them. In another allusion to the Melville story, Babo explains that her great-great-grandfather was a barber on a ship and suggests that Dr. Hovaugh allows her to give him a proper shave some day with a straight razor. In Benito Cereno the character Babo gives Captain Cereno a shave and cuts his cheek in a climactic moment where Cereno’s life is literally in Babo’s hands. For King’s Babo to suggest a shave is a sneaky hint toward who has the power in this relationship. 

Babos suggests she and Dr. Hovaugh do some sightseeing to the Grand Baleen Dam, Parliament Lake and the reserve. The Grand Baleen Dam references The Grande Baleine Dam. This massive hydroelectric dam was part of the James Bay Project constructed in Quebec in 1971. The dam includes eight generating stations that provide pollution-free power. The project diverted nine waterways and flooded 11,500 km2 – approximately the area of much of the lower mainland: Vancouver, North Vancouver, West Vancouver, Richmond, Delta, Tsawwassen, Surrey, Burnaby, Port Moody, Pitt Meadows, New Westminster, White Rock, Abbotsford, Chilliwack, Hope, Squamish and Whistler.

Area calculated using mapdevelopers.com

Flick suggests that the name Parliament Lake may come from a connection to Elijah Harper and the Meech Lake Accord. The Meech Lake Accord took place in 1990 where Elijah Harper, an Indigenous member of the Manitoba Legislative Assembly, was the only member to vote against the accord. The accord was a set of constitutional amendments granting more legislative control to provinces, and recognizing Quebec as a distinct society. The accord did not consult with Indigenous nations or include them in the amendments. Flick states that “Just as Elijah Harper blocked the Meech Lake Accord, so Eli blocks development of the dam” (151). Choosing to call it Parliament Lake points to colonial legislation over Indigenous land. 

In final line of this section we have Babo watching Dr. Hovaugh as he stands in the rain realizing his car has gone missing. Babo cocks her head and declares “Now isn’t that the trick.” Throughout the novel I noticed that Babo exhibits coyote-like traits. She seems to have a connection to – or be a version of – Coyote. She is written as having a number of canine-like traits, including this cocking her head to the side and scratching (see page 139). Babo, like the Babo of Melville’s story, is also somewhat tricky like Coyote and often marvels at the tricks occurring in this story. 

155-159

In this section we have Eli, Charlie, Lionel and Bill Bursum in Bursum’s store along with the Lone Ranger, Ishmael, Robinson Crusoe, Hawkeye and Coyote. According to Flick, Bill Bursum is an amalgamation of Holm Busum and Buffalo Bill (148). Holm Bursum was a New Mexico senator who introduced the Bursum Bill in 1921 that appropriated Pueblo Indian land to non-native people if they could prove residency for over ten years. Buffalo Bill refers to William F. Cody who created Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show a travelling vaudevillian show that featured Indigenous people in exploitative roles for entertainment. These two people combine to bring us Bill Bursum, a lover of the Western Film genre and a casual racist.

The Lone Ranger, Ishmael, Robinson Crusoe and Hawkeye are all literary figures. All four of these characters have racialized counterparts who fulfill the stereotypical role of faithful savage companion. The Lone Ranger, a masked do-gooder character in books, television and radio had a Native American friend named Tonto. Ishmael from Herman Melville’s Moby Dick was good friends with Queequeg, a Polynesian harpoonist and cannibal. Check out this interview with Jonathan Lemalu who played Queequeg in the San Francisco Opera version of Moby Dick in 2012 and this scene from the 1956 Moby Dick film where Queequeg is played by Austo-Hungarian actor Friedrich von Ledebur. Robinson Crusoe of Daniel Defoe’s novel published in 1719 continues this theme of noble savage redeemed by white men by rescuing and befriending a native cannibal who he calls Friday. Finally, Hawkeye (also known as Natty Bumpoo) is a character from James Fenimore Cooper’s novels, The Leatherstocking Tales. Hawkeye has a companion named Chingachgook, a Mohican chief, who he converts to Christianity and who helps him on many of his adventures. It is an interesting choice King has made to have these Four Indians named after the white hero characters, as opposed to their Black and Indigenous sidekicks. It seem to me that this is both part of the playful mixing and swapping of roles that we see throughout the novel and also a powerful taking back of the hero titles.

159-160

In the final page of this chapter we read of Thought Woman and Coyote. Thought Woman is a figure from Navajo mythology, according to Flick (159). This figure also appears as Spider Grandmother in Hopi mythology and in Pueblo stories by the name Tse-che-nako. Thought Woman makes the world by thinking of things and thus creating them. This character is featured in Leslie Mormon Silko’s novel Ceremony. Here are a few lines from the novel, taken from an article by Suzanne M. Austgen.

Ts’ its’ tsi’ nako, Thought-Woman,
is sitting in her room
and what ever she thinks about
appears.
She thought of her sisters,
Nau’ ts’ ity’ i and I’ tcs’ i,
and together they created the Universe
this world
and the four worlds below.

Works Cited

Austgen, Suzanne M.. “Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony and the Effects of White Contact on Pueblo Myth and Ritual” Hanover Historical Review, vol. 1, 1993, https://history.hanover.edu/hhr/hhr93_2.html. Accessed March 26, 2021.

“Elijah Harper’s Vote of Protest.” CBC News, 1990, https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/1751911434. Accessed March 26, 2021.

Flick, Jane. “Reading Notes for Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water.” Canadian Literature, vol. 161/162, 1999, https://canlit.ca/article/reading-notes-for-thomas-kings-green-grass-running-water/. Accessed March 26, 2021.

Higgins, Jenny. “Meech Lake.” Heritage Newfoundland and Labrador, 2012, https://www.heritage.nf.ca/articles/politics/wells-government-meech.php. Accessed March 26, 2021.

King, Thomas. Green Grass, Running Water. Toronto, Harper Collins, 1993.

Legros, Christine. “Benito Cereno Characters: Babo.” LitCharts, 24 Jun 2019. https://www.litcharts.com/lit/benito-cereno/characters/babo. Accessed March 26, 2021.

Marsh, James H.. “James Bay Project.” The Canadian Encyclopedia, March 4, 2015, https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/james-bay-project. Accessed March 26, 2021.

Mlotek, Blair. “The Push to Bring Home Indigenous Artifacts.” The Walrus, May 21, 2020, https://thewalrus.ca/the-push-to-bring-home-indigenous-artefacts/. Accessed March 26, 2021.

“Moby Dick – A Bosom Friend.” Youtube, Uploaded by Seb Moura, March 9, 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBZSjiNy110. Accessed March 26, 2021.

“Moby-Dick Interview Queequeg: Jonathan Lemalu.” Youtube, Uploaded by San Francisco Opera, October 9, 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPX3v3xCM_E. Accessed March 26, 2021.

“Overview: Amos.” Youtube, Uploaded by BibleProject, May 7, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGgWaPGpGz4, Accessed March 26, 2021.

“Returning Indigenous Artifacts Part of Reconciliation but Still a Struggle.” APTN National News, March 13, 2019, https://www.aptnnews.ca/infocus/returning-indigenous-remains-and-artifacts-necessary-to-reconciliation-yet-still-a-struggle/. Accessed March 26, 2021.

Soliz, Sarah. “Pueblo Activists and Allies against the Bursum Bill of 1921.” School for Advanced Research, August 22, 2019, https://sarweb.org/pueblo-activists-and-allies-against-the-bursum-bill-of-1921/. Accessed March 26, 2021.

“Spider Grandmother.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, March 17, 2021, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider_Grandmother#cite_note-12. Accessed March 26. 2021.

“‘We’re Tired of Waiting’: Colten Boushie’s Mother says RCMP, Justice System Need to Change.” APTN National News, March 22, 2021. https://www.aptnnews.ca/national-news/were-tired-of-waiting-colten-boushies-mother-says-rcmp-justice-system-need-to-change/. Accessed March 26, 2021.

I have always loved reading out loud. I like being read to and hearing stories told. But I especially love speaking the words myself. When I read I am often hearing the words spoken in my mind or reading aloud under my breath to myself. For me this also connects to loves of singing and poetry. I think words are amazing and I think voices are uniquely powerful. 

Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water calls to be read loud. As discussed in previous posts, King is inspired by Harry Robinson’s oral syntax and often writes in a conversational or spoken manner, encouraging the reader to speak the text. Included in this effort to encourage his readers to speak, King’s novel is filled with allusions that can best be understood by being spoken. They’re basically puns!

Dr. Joe Hovaugh
Joe Hovaugh is an allusion to Jehovah. If, like me, you have very little religious knowledge, Jehovah is God’s true name in Jewish and Christian scripture. An English translation of the Hebrew word for God, Jehovah is revealed to be the name of God in The Bible. When we first meet Dr. Hovaugh, he sits behind his massive desk admiring his garden. This is the first of many connections to the Garden of Eden. Dr. Hovaugh represents a godlike figure in a number of ways throughout this novel. He is the head of the hospital where the four Indians are meant to be captive and he is tasked with tracking them down. He would, however, rather have their death certificates signed and be done with the matter. Quite a godlike action to decree that someone is dead without any proof. Marlene Goldman’s article Mapping and Dreaming, Native Resistance in Green Grass, Running Water also draws a likeness between Hovaugh’s massive wooden desk and the Tree of Knowledge. Cutting down the Tree of Knowledge to create what Hovaugh calls a “rare example of colonial woodcraft” (King, 11) creates a sense that colonialism has led to the destruction of knowledge. 

Sally Jo Weyha
Sally Jo Weyha is an allusion to Sacagawea, a Lemhi Shoshone woman born around 1788 who was a guide and an interpreter for the Lewis and Clark expedition from Missouri to the Pacific Northwest (1804-1806). 

[Image from Native-Land.ca where you can explore Indigenous territories, treaties and languages worldwide.]

Sacagawea was kidnapped by an enemy tribe early in her life and later became the property of (or was married to, depending on which text you read) French-Canadian fur trader Toussaint Charbonneau. Charbonneau was hired on to the Lewis and Clark expedition and Sacagawea accompanied (while six months pregnant and later with an infant). She is said to have been an integral part of the expedition and is held in high esteem in history books. History.com declares her one of the most memorialized women in the United States, and describes her impact as follows: “Her skills as a translator were invaluable, as was her intimate knowledge of some difficult terrain. Perhaps most significant was her calming presence on both the expeditioners and the Native Americans they encountered, who might have otherwise been hostile to the strangers.” In Green Grass, Running Water, Sally Jo Weyha is mentioned along with a number of other oral allusion names including Polly Hontas (Pocahontas) as Hollywood actors of various ethnicities (“Mexicans, Italians, Greeks, along with a few Indians, some Asians, and whites” (King, 93)) who are trying to make it in westerns and are stuck playing Indians every time. Sacagawea and Pocahontas both represent Indigenous people who are renowned in colonial history as helpers to white people. Their stories have been curated and morphed into fairy-tale-like narratives with a palatable Indigenous heroine, with mythical connections to the land and, as mentioned above, a ‘calming presence’. It is this stereotype of indigeneity that is working in Hollywood in King’s novel. If King feels that he is “not the Indian you had in mind”, Sally Jo Weyha likely is the Indian you had in mind.   

Ahdamn
Although Ahdamn’s allusion to Adam from The Book of Genesis is quite obvious, King sends an interesting message through Ahdamn’s contrasting character traits. Unlike Adam, Ahdamn is not first in the garden. It is First Women’s garden and Ahdamn lives there without a clear origin. “That good woman makes a garden and she lives there with Ahdamn. I don’t know where he comes from. Things like that happen, you know” (King, 23). Right away, Ahdamn is not the central character and First Woman is surely not created from one of his ribs. Ahdamn loses more credibility in King’s story by his inability to complete the godlike task of claiming and naming things correctly. Pronouncing Ahdamn’s name when reading out loud I found two interesting things. The first was that when I first pronounced Ahdamn like Ah-dam (as opposed to Adam like A-dum), Ahdamn sounds like a dam. There is, perhaps, a connection here to later stories of the Grand Baleen Dam being the ruin of homes and communities. Another connection is the phrase ah, damn. Not only does this phrase connect Ahdamn/Adam to the damning and exile from the Garden of Eden, traditionally seen as Eve’s fault, but is perhaps a phrase to be uttered upon exile. Or, in Green Grass, Running Water, upon Ahdamn’s introduction into the story. Ah, damn.

Reading aloud
What I found stood out to me most when reading aloud was that I caught the flow and repetition within the novel more clearly. For instance, characters from one story line answering questions asked by characters in another storyline and the repetition of phrases throughout the novel. “Where did that water come from” mentioned in my previous post is an example of this overlapping.

I think King pushes his reader toward reading aloud in order to honour storytelling traditions and to encourage the reader to become the teller and the listener – another cyclical aspect of King’s writing. I also think that reading aloud forces us to grapple with what we do not know. When reading silently it is easy to skim or skip, even without meaning to. I read aloud to my students often and I am shocked sometimes to find names or words in texts I know well, that I’m actually not sure how to pronounce. When reading to ourselves we do not stop to investigate and we do not fumble. Reading aloud asks the reader/speaker to encounter that which they do not understand. The Cherokee words at the start of the novel are a great example of this. They are simple enough to skim past: Oh, another language. Let’s move on.  But reading aloud we have to acknowledge that we do not know and are more likely to explore and research to find out. In addition when reading aloud we actually hold the words in our mouths and speak them into the world. “Higayv:ligé:i.” Hee..gay…vlee…giy…? No matter how fumbled or hesitant, the words exist when we speak them. They are words in the world, not just ideas of words. 

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Works Cited

Goldman, Marlene. Mapping and Dreaming: Native Resistance in Green Grass, Running Water. Canadian Literature, 161-162, Summer/Autumn, 1999, 18-41. https://canlit.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/canlit161-162-MappingGoldman.pdf. Accessed March 19, 2021.

King, Thomas. Green Grass, Running Water. Toronto, Harper Collins, 1993.

King, Thomas. “I’m not the Indian You had in Mind.” National Screen Institute, 2007,  http://www.nsi-canada.ca/2012/03/im-not-the-indian-you-had-in-mind/. Accessed March 19, 2021.

Native Land. Native Land Digital, 2021. https://native-land.ca/. Accessed March 19, 2021.

Potter, Teresa and Brandman, Mariana.  “Sacagawea”.  National Women’s History Museum, 2021. https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/sacagaweaAccessed March 19, 2021.

“Sacagawea”. HISTORY.COM, February 9, 2021, https://www.history.com/topics/native-american-history/sacagawea. Accessed March 19, 2021.

“Who is Jehovah?” Jehovah’s Witnesses. https://www.jw.org/en/bible-teachings/questions/who-is-jehovah/. Accessed March 19, 2021.

Thomas King’s novel Green Grass Running Water takes after Harry Robinson’s oral style in “Coyote Make a Deal with the King of England” in a number of interesting ways. The most obvious is the oral nature of both texts, even though King’s text is not actually spoken. This style is characterized by short sentences, many ‘and’s at the beginnings of sentences, and colloquial utterances like ‘okay’ and ‘you know’ scattered throughout the stories. This style is also punctuated by normal human errors or slips in storytelling such as forgetting details or needing to start over. Beyond these more obvious stylistic similarities, I’d like to focus on the fluid timeframe, the role of the listener and the storyteller, and characterizations of Coyote and God. 

Time
In Wendy Wickwire’s introduction to Harry Robinson’s Living by Stories she describes her journey exploring the timeframe of Indigenous stories. Robinson’s stories take place across a vast timeline from stories at the beginning of time that appear ahistorical and timeless, to contemporary stories with specifically historical details. Robinson’s stories also put Western conceptualizations of linear time into question. His stories are not told chronological order from the beginning of time to present day. They are told however he feels they need to be told. Contemporary details are also added to older more mythological stories like Wickwire’s example of Robinson learning about the moon landing and then adding Neil Armstrong into his story about Coyote son’s journey to the “upper world” (Robinson 29). 

Like Robinson, King’s novel Green Grass, Running Water exists in a fluid and changing time zone. One moment Coyote and God and First Woman are creating the world through a story that is both Indigenous and biblical, the next moment professor Alberta Frank is discussing Indigenous history in a lecture hall filled with embodiments of historical figures, and the next moment a gathering of iconic literary characters work to figure out how to tell the story of creation. What strikes me in this novel is the true fluidity of these settings. These stories are not distinguished by different chapters or even different paragraphs. They morph into one another seamlessly and overlap. If you lose focus for a moment while reading you’ve entered another story. At pages 49 – 50  fo Green Grass, Running Water we see a great example of this overlap:

“Where did the water come from?” said Alberta.
“Where did the water come from?” said Patrolman Delano.
“Where did the water come from? “ said Sergeant Cereno.
“Where did the water come from?” said Lionel.
“Forget the water,” says Coyote.

Alberta is referencing the pickup truck in water in a memory of her father. Patrolman Delano is asking about the water in Babo’s retelling of the story of creation. Sergeant Cereno is referencing water in a creation story retold by Dr. Hovaugh, and Lionel is referencing a puddle of water he’s stepped into while picking up hitchhikers. In this moment they come together across story lines to ask the same question and we see how they are, perhaps, not separate stories at all. Blanca Chester writes that in King’s work “fragmented texts contextualize each other, creating meaning in gaps that cannot be read linearly” (47). Like Robinson’s cyclical and tangential orality these stories become part of a whole understanding, as opposed to individual stand-alone pieces. 

Listener and Storyteller

Both Robinson and King create a relationship between storyteller and listener (reader). Both texts have first person narrators  who sometimes speak to the audience referring to the reader or listener as “you.” Through this exchange, the reader is brought into the world of the story and, as Chester writes, “ultimately transformed into another character”(46). 

This voice of the narrator not only highlights the role of the listener as part of the story but brings the storyteller in the story. Robinson and King as storytellers are present within their works. Robinson’s unique voice demonstrates this well enough, but another example is when he is unsure of specific details within his story:

“Then, they have this book four of them.
That’s about, could be somewhere 1850.
Somewhere around that time.
I couldn’t be sure.
I like to find that out some of these days” (79).

Compare this with the following excerpt from King:

“So that’s the way the story starts,” I says. “That’s the way it is beginning.”
No, no, says that GOD. That’s not the way it starts at all. It starts with a void. It starts with a garden.
“Stick around,” I says. “That garden will be here soon.”
Hallelujah, says that GOD.
“Is Old Coyote going to make that good garden?” says Coyote.
“Not likely,” I says. “Can we continue?” (22).

Both narrators are working to express their stories clearly, grappling with memory and details, and letting us into the process of storytelling with them.

It is interesting to compare this present storyteller and included listener with Western history books that seem to have no storyteller and exist regardless of reader. These stories of history are treated as undeniable facts with no teller present, existing outside the possibility of human expression, forgetfulness, tangents or intention. 

Coyote and God

The characters of Coyote and God in the stories of King and Robinson are depicted somewhat differently, but it is the relationship between these two characters that is most interesting. In “Coyote makes a Deal with the King of England” Coyote is quite responsible and dutiful. He is given a task to complete from an angel of God and he goes to complete it right away without any hesitation. While meeting with the King of England he is clear and powerful, creating a threatening illusion with powers given by God. King’s version of coyote is a stark contrast: excitable, self-focused, and foolish. Coyote is often distracted and easily set off course by any mention of food. Robinson’s God is an unseen character within this story. Represented by an angel, God orders Coyote to do a job and bestows on him some powers to help him complete the task. King’s GOD is territorial, demanding and petulant, arguing about the way the story is being created. 

In Robinson’s story God and Coyote are written as separate characters but Robinson expresses a number of times that the words Coyote speaks are God’s thoughts. He reminds us of this multiple times, drawing a link between Coyote and God, perhaps not as separated characters as we had thought. King takes this a step further. GOD in King’s story is a version of Coyote, Coyote’s dream, who comes alive and wants to control the world. Coyote says that this dream cannot also be called Coyote but it could be a dog. But the dream becomes mixed up and instead becomes a god. Then, in a show of particular childishness:

But why am I a little god? shouts that god.
“Not so loud,” says Coyote. “You’re hurting my ears.”
I don’t want to be a little god, says that god. I want to be a big god!
“What a noise,” says Coyote. “This dog has no manners.”
Big one!
“Okay, okay,” says Coyote. “Just stop shouting.”
There, says that GOD. That’s better.

In Teresa Gilbert’s article entitled “Written Orality in Thomas King’s Short Fiction” King is quoted saying, “In reading Robinson, one is virtually forced to read the story out loud, thereby closing the circle, the oral becoming the written becoming the oral.” All three of the comparisons I made between the texts of Robinson and King point toward this cyclical nature. Time moves away from linear chronology toward a fluid setting that loops and cycles. Listener and storyteller emerge and converge as King described so aptly. And the characters of Coyote and God vary and overlap, Coyote speaking God’s thoughts and GOD born of Coyote’s dreams. 

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Works Cited

Robinson, Harry. Living by Stories: A Journey of Landscape and Memory. Compiled and edited by Wendy Wickwire. Vancouver,  Talon Books, 2005.

King, Thomas. Green Grass, Running Water. Toronto, Harper Collins, 1993.

Chester, Blanca. “Green Grass, Running Water: Theorizing the World of the Novel.” Canadian Literature, 161-162, Summer/Autumn, 1999, 44-61. https://canlit.ca/article/green-grass-running-water/. Accessed March 12, 2021.

Gilbert, Teresa. “Written orality in Thomas King’s short fiction.” Journal of the Short Story in English, 47, Autumn, 2006. https://journals.openedition.org/jsse/792#quotation. Accessed March 12, 2021.

For my midterm evaluation I have selected the following three posts.

[1.3] Schitt’s Creek and a World of Words

I think this post demonstrates a lot of thinking and processing of new ideas. Although using a sitcom like Schitt’s Creek could seem somewhat simple or banal, I feel that I anchored my thinking in something I knew in order to expand into this new and complex territory of Chamberlin’s world of words.

[1.5] Good and The Not Good Story – A Retelling

I chose this post because I really enjoyed creating this story and I felt proud of my work. I found that this process of retelling this story was a strong learning experience for me. It felt more active and experiential than other read-and-write assignments. I also thought the dialogue surrounding this assignment was very interesting. Comments I made on other people’s post actually got me thinking more deeply about my post. I edited my post to include these new thoughts.

[2.4] The Challenges of Making Meaning of The First Stories

This post and the associated readings really got me thinking. I made many connections to other stories and sources, which I think is evident by the extensive works cited list. This assignment and post felt like they got to the heart of why this course is important and started me on the path of HOW we work to decolonize, not just WHY.

Thanks!

The introduction to Roughing it in the Bush paints a vivid picture of Susanna Moodie’s experience of emigrating from England to Canada. As she begins to tell us the many stories of her time in Canada in the 1830’s, her writing also reveals the many stories she brings with her that shape her expectations and understandings of this new land. 

A Second Eden
Moodie begins her introduction by describing why someone would leave their life and home for an unknown land. She explains quite clearly that emigration is a “necessity, not a choice” and that it is not until hardships have become dire that one becomes brave enough to consider the daunting challenge of emigration. The poet Warsan Shire writes, “no one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark.” However, unlike Shire’s devastating and eloquent words on refugees, Moodie believes that upon her banishment from the Eden of her homeland, she will be given a second Eden and a more prosperous life. She describes the new land with “its salubrious climate, its fertile soil, commercial advantages, great water privileges, [and] its proximity to the mother country.” When she arrives it seems her vision of a second Eden is in some ways bruised by the great challenges of living in the  backwoods. It is clear that she expected Canada to be a new Promised Land. 

A Gift From God
Moodie appears to be led by her faith and by a duty to God. She explains that the “higher motive” of emigrants to leave their home countries is a “love of independence which springs up spontaneously in the breasts of the high-souled children of a glorious land.” After all her discussion of how emigrants leave their countries only when the hardships grow so burdensome or dangerous, she adds that in addition to desperation and necessity, the impetus to leave can also be spontaneous, but only for those who are chosen as worthy of this desire of independence. With other mentions of Providence, it seems that Moodie carries with her a belief that Canada was a gift from God made especially for her and the other “high-souled children.”

An Empty Wasteland
Moodie brings with her an expectation of a terra nullius, just waiting for Europeans to cultivate it. She is shocked still by how empty she perceives this new land to be and she describes it as if she has landed on another planet and wonders whether life is truly sustainable.” The necessaries of life were described as inestimably cheap; but they forgot to add that in remote bush settlements, often twenty miles from a market town, and some of them even that distance from the nearest dwelling, the necessaries of life which would be deemed indispensable to the European, could not be procured at all, or, if obtained, could only be so by sending a man and team through a blazed forest road,—a process far too expensive for frequent repetition.” If the necessities of life could not be procured at all, then surely no substantial life has survived in this place prior to their arrival. Which brings us to the final story that Moodie seems to carry with her.

The Vanishing Vanished Indian
There is no mention of Indigenous people in Moodie’s introduction. There is only God and the European Immigrants. Although Moodie speaks of encounters with Indigenous people throughout the rest of her book, they do not  make it into her initial description of this new land. Perhaps she thought that although her encounters with Indigenous people were interesting historical accounts to be included in her book, these people would ultimately become extinct and would not have a lasting impact on this land. 

Moodie’s Awareness of Her Stories

I think Moodie’s introduction demonstrates some limited awareness of the stories she carries with her in terms of her expectations of Canada and the opposing reality. She shows some understanding of how her story of a new Promised Land led her to believe this experience would be idyllic and how shocked she was to find her new life so challenging. I do not think, however, that this experience dispelled her story of a promised land and a gift from God, but merely adjusted it from gift to duty. Instead of this gift from God being given easily and perfectly (as perhaps expected based on the advertisements about Canada), through the toils of settler life she seems to learn that God has granted her and the other worthy ones a chance to fulfill a challenging duty – a sort of sacrifice – in the effort to build the new Eden for themselves. 

In other ways I do not think Moodie was aware of her stories, as I think many people are not aware of the stories they carry with them that influence their actions. Her description of how empty this land is and how inaccessible common necessities are, reads as surprise. She does not not appear to be aware of her own stories or expectations of this land as a terra nullius and how these may shape how she perceives this new experience. In addition, I don’t see Moodie as a master-manipulator trying to write Indigenous people out of her history book on purpose. So much of her writing seems observational and biased, based on her own story baggage, but not overly calculated or self-aware. 

Maybe I’m not given her enough credit! Maybe I’m interpreting her work too innocently. Maybe she wrote this introduction and this book as a well-planned out way to allow her stories and beliefs to be projected into the world to influence history and future generations perceptions of European immigrants and colonization. 

I’m inclined to think that she merely wrote about her experience, and her stories seeped into every word unbeknownst to her. As Thomas King says, “the truth about stories is, that’s all we are.”

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Works Cited

Moodie, Susanna. Roughing it in the Bush. Project Gutenburg, January  18 2004. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4389/4389-h/4389-h.htm#link2H_INTR. Accessed March 5, 2021.

Shire, Warsan. Home. Medium, September 11, 2017. https://medium.com/poem-of-the-day/warsan-shire-home-46630fcc90ab. Accessed March 5, 2021

Canada declared the Sinixt extinct. But the Sinixt say they are alive and well. CBC Radio, January 20, 2020, https://www.cbc.ca/radio/docproject/canada-declared-the-sinixt-extinct-but-the-sinixt-say-they-are-alive-and-well-1.5428244. Accessed March 5, 2021.

Dr. Paterson writes that our ability to make meaning of the first stories is limited. She indicates two reasons for this challenge. The first is that the re-telling is disconnected from the original story and wrapped in complexities of translation, editing and publishing. The second is that from 1880 to 1951 the telling of stories at the potlatch and other Indigenous gatherings and ceremonies were outlawed by The Indian Act. The third reason comes from Harry Robinson who describes storytelling and storylistening as a long and ongoing process. I believe that the third reason for this limited ability to make meaning of first stories is that we do not know how to listen. 

John Lutz discusses the concept of ambiguity as a key factor in our understanding of stories of first contact. Not only were the first contact encounters themselves ripe with misunderstanding and assumption, with each side making “what they pleased of the messages coming from the other” (Lutz 10), but the tellings and retellings of these stories are a breeding ground for ambiguity to this day. Translation is a catalyst for ambiguity and all first stories must be translated, if not from different languages, then through time. Lutz explains that even English language accounts from Europeans must be translated to fit our current understandings of language and the world. “We perform the role of translators when we enter the contact zone,” writes Lutz (11). Wendy Wickwire’s example captures another aspect of ambiguity in the editing and publishing of first stories. Wickwire explains her search for first stories that were similar to those of Harry Robinson – stories that offered unique variations on creation stories, references to white people, varied roles and personalities of Coyote, and a mix of prehistoric and specifically historic settings. When Wickwire finally found such a collection she noted that it likely had not been published along with the more popular collections because it did not fit within the desired narrative of indigenous myths “rooted in the deep past” (Robinson 29). First stories are a complicated game of telephone, filled with misunderstanding and ambiguity from their origin and passed down through translations, through time, and through personal intentions and bias involved in collecting, editing and publishing. 

The Indian Act is the second reason offered by Dr. Paterson as to why it can be challenging to make meaning of the first stories. She explains that this time between 1880 and 1951 created a major gap in the passing down of stories. The Indian Act’s purpose was assimilation of Indigenous people and it attempted to strip Indigenous communities of everything that held meaning for them. The potlach ban came into effect in the late 1800’s, along with the banning of numerous other gatherings and ceremonies in the following years. Potlatch were a foundational ceremony along the west coast. Not only did this ceremony involve the giving of gifts and the redistribution of wealth, which colonizers deemed excessive, it was a place to pass on family rights and inheritance, honour important people, celebrate marriages, births and deaths, and ultimately sustain First Nation culture through story. And the instigators of the Indian Act understood this significance. At a gathering of Kwakwaka‘wakw First Nations Chiefs after the ban of Potlach, one member declared, ‘We have come to say goodbye to our life.’

Dr. Paterson indicates this 71 year timeframe of the banning of ceremonies under The Indian Act because storytelling was specifically and intentionally targeted. However, in a broader sense the oppression and delegitimization of Indigenous people and Indigenous culture has continued long past 1951. Although storytelling is no longer outlawed, the ongoing effects of centuries of colonial violence are evident today in fights for land rights, lower life expectancy, widespread poverty, insufficient community resources, and shockingly high rates of Indigenous youth in foster care and Indigenous people incarcerated in Canada. These efforts to kill and quell Indigenous people and Indigenous culture created a chasm between first stories and present day. Surely many stories and storytellers have been lost along the way. The stories that remain have travelled through trauma to get here. It’s no wonder our ability to make meaning of these stories is challenged. 

Finally, I offer a third reason for our limited understanding of first stories. 

But first, a note: For the purpose of this explanation I will refer to a collective ‘we.’ When I say ‘we’ I mean contemporary white settlers in Canada. I recognize this does not necessarily represent the ‘we’ of this class. I more so mean ‘we’ as a colonial culture. I more so mean the current systems of government and power. And I more so mean me and my experience that I know is shared by some.

In Wickwire’s introduction to Living By Stories she quotes Harry Robinson explaining that they need to meet for longer periods of time if she really wants to hear his stories. “It takes a long time,” he says. “I can’t tell stories in a little while” (12). Here is the heart of the third reason: stories take time and listening. Wickwire’s experience collecting Robinson’s stories in person took place over 12 years from 1977 to the year of his death in 1990. It was not a lecture that she could simply attend. It required lots of time and it fostered a deep connection. I believe that we have not been taught to take time like this. 

Beyond simply the committed hours of time one must dedicate to listening to stories, Robinson also stresses the importance of exploration and processing. Robinson encourages Wickwire to continue to re-listen through the recorded tapes of his stories “and think and look and try and look ahead and look around in the stories” (18). This reminds me of a poem I love by Billy Collins. Although Collins is talking about poetry and not first stories, he paints a beautiful picture of deeply exploring a text. I think Robinson would have liked the description of walking inside the poem’s room and feeling the walls for a light switch. Collins, like Robinson, points to our desire for quick and unequivocal understanding. 

As always, I am drawn to discussing education. And I believe that much of our inability to listen and our search of fast answers can be traced back to our schooling. The First People’s Principles of Learning were created by The BC Ministry of Education and The First Nations Education Steering Committee (FNESC). Originally created for the course English 12 First Peoples, The First People’s Principles of Learning are now widely shared across schools in BC and intended for use across curriculum. One of the principles states ‘Learning involves patience and time.’ Although schools and teachers are working to use these principles to guide them and change their teaching and learning structures, our education system traditionally does not adhere to these principles. It is tough, as a teacher, to use these principles as a guide within a system that is built on contradictory values. For a great demonstration of these contradictions, check out the chart on page 29 of this article. 

 This year the school I work at moved to a quarter system where each course lasts only 10 weeks. Although there are some benefits to this schedule, I found it so difficult with regards to the First People’s Principles of Learning. You cannot take time when you only have 10 weeks. You cannot tell and retell and compare with only 10 weeks. You cannot, as Robinson says, “look around at the stories” (18) with only 10 weeks. I offer this personal experience as an example of how our current education system (and colonial culture beyond school) devalues the time it takes to process and explore new knowledge. 

So, it is not easy to make meaning of the first stories. So much ambiguity and misunderstanding has occurred. Time and translation have warped and morphed stories. Oppression and genocide have attempted to sever the lines of stories passed through generations. And colonial culture has not learned how to take time and listen deeply enough to actually take in the first stories and find meaning.

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Works Cited

Cecco, Leyland. “‘National travesty’: report shows one third of Canada’s prisoners are Indigenous.” The Guardian. January 22, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/22/one-third-canada-prisoners-indigenous-report#:~:text=’National%20travesty’%3A%20report%20shows,of%20Canada’s%20prisoners%20are%20Indigenous&text=More%20than%2030%25%20of%20inmates,released%20by%20a%20federal%20watchdog. Accessed February 22, 2021.

Chrona, Jo-Anne L. “Learning involves patience and time.” First Peoples Principles of Learning. WordPress, April 2016, https://firstpeoplesprinciplesoflearning.wordpress.com/learning-involves-patience-and-time/. Accessed February 22., 2021

Collins, Billy. “Introduction to Poetry.” Poetry Foundation. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46712/introduction-to-poetry. Accessed February 22, 2021.

“First Peoples Principles of Learning.” First Nations Education Steering Committee. http://www.fnesc.ca/wp/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/FNESC-Learning-First-Peoples-poster-11×17-hi-res-v2.pdf. Accessed February 22, 2021.

Hanson, Erin. “The Indian Act” Indigenous Foundations. University of British Columbia, 2009, https://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/the_indian_act/. Accessed February 22, 2021.

Hanson, Kelly. “The First Peoples Principles of Learning: An Opportunity for Settler Teacher Self-Inquiry.” LEARNing Landscapes, Vol. 12, Spring 2019, https://www.learninglandscapes.ca/index.php/learnland/article/view/983/995. Accessed February 22, 2021.

Lutz, John. “Myth Understandings: First Contact Over and Over Again.” Myth and Memory: Rethinking Stories of Indigenous- European Contact. Ed. Lutz. Vancouver, University of British Columbia Press, 2007. 1-15. http://www.law.uvic.ca/demcon/documents/Lutzpaper.pdf. Accessed February 22, 2021.

Paterson, Erika. “Lesson 2.2.” English 372 99C Canadian Studies. UBC Blogs. https://blogs.ubc.ca/engl372-99c-2020wc/unit-2/lesson-2-2/. Accessed February 22, 2021.

Robinson, Harry. Living by Stories: A Journey of Landscape and Memory. Compiled and edited by Wendy Wickwire. Vancouver,  Talon Books, 2005.

Rosner, Frances. “Canada’s Response to the Overrepresentation of Indigenous Children in Care.” BarTalk. The Canadian Bar Association, February 2020, https://www.cbabc.org/BarTalk/Articles/2020/February/Columns/Canada%E2%80%99s-Response-to-the-Overrepresentation-of-Ind. Accessed February 22, 2021.

“Virtual Tour” Living Tradition. U’mista Cultural Society, https://umistapotlatch.ca/visite-tour-eng.php?nojs=true&pano=4. Accessed February 22, 2021.

I read through all of your home posts. I meant to only read 6, but I became very interested in tracking our similarities and differences, so I read them all. 

Here are some shared assumptions, values and stories. These are not necessarily shared across all blogs, but common threads I found among your posts:

Home is roots. Many of your stories focused around the place you were born and how this creates identity.  A number of stories focused on family roots and ancestral history in a specific place. Leo’s post put this idea into question, exploring the complexities of origin and ethnicity and cultural belonging. 

Home is where you grew. So many stories featured language of change, transformation and growth. This idea of home seemed very connected to our experiences of learning and becoming independent. I wonder if this would be different if our age average was older than I assume it is. 

Home is family.  A common thread among our posts is how family creates home. Beyond simply parents and siblings, a number of people expressed home as a community of people who make them feel loved. 

Home is joy and love and relaxation and being yourself. I was honestly surprised by the mostly very positive depictions of home that I read on your blogs. Most blogs connected their idea of home to experiences of love and happiness and calm. I know this is not the case for everyone and that home can be quite a challenging idea for many. I completely understand that this public blog site might not feel like a space to delve into your complex or painful experiences with the concept of home. Despite this understanding, I was surprised by the amount of positivity I read in your posts. 

Home is nostalgic.  Many people, myself included, seem to have reached into their past to come up with an answer for this blog post. Many posts discussed this feeling of longing for your childhood home, and how much our sense of home is related to memories.  A few posts focused on people’s current homes, but most seemed to be filled with remembering.

Home is land, ocean, mountains, seasons. There was some talk about the natural landscape of our home places. The ocean was mentioned many times. 

Home changes. This was a big one. Lots of people expressed that home was an ever-changing idea, as opposed to a fixed-address. Holly mentioned her parent’s divorce as a major shift in the idea of home. Lenaya said home was “more feeling than physical place.” Zac discussed his family home and his adult home and the push and pull of those two forces. Aidan described their sense of home as “ambidextrous,” saying that the West Coast was their home when thinking of land, and Toronto was their home when thinking of people. Mia wrote “ My mind became my home, a place I could escape to, that held all of the most precious moments and people I cared for.” Victoria described moving into her first home away from family. Leo summed their post up with this beautiful phrase: “Home is contradictory; it is elusive and unstable.”

My reflections…
I found it interesting, but I was not surprised,  that many of us wrote about our childhood homes. An assumption I have made is that our class is mostly under the age of 30 and mostly do not have children. I am sure this is not true for everyone! For example, I am not under 30. When reading your blogs I kept wondering at what point you feel like your home is the place you live, and not the place you grew up. I’m sure if asked to describe her home, my mother would describe her current home, not her childhood home in Ireland. But then again, she has raised 3 children in that home and been divorced and remarried and built a garden and renovated the garage and had more birthday parties and family gatherings than could be counted. So no wonder, I guess. 

There were many values that seemed shared across our blogs – family, comfort, safety, the nostalgia of childhood, connection to land, ease – but the sense of belonging stood out to me. So many blogs spoke about feeling surrounded by love and feeling able to be one’s true self. I think this is belonging. And I considered, through writing my own post and reading all of yours, the difference between feeling like you belong and feeling like something belongs to you. I don’t feel like my home town belongs to me. I don’t even feel like my childhood home belongs to me. I don’t feel like my current apartment belongs to me. But I feel a sense of belonging in these spaces. 

Finally, I thought about privilege as I wrote and read. I think our posts about home indicate some privilege within our class. The joyful and seemingly peaceful reflections on the idea of home are a privilege, as are easeful family relationships. Having a safe childhood home to reflect back on is an indicator of privilege. You could say there is also privilege simply in feeling like you belong somewhere.

Thanks for sharing all your stories of home. I really enjoyed reading them and learning a little more about you all.

I know about the mountains. Or more accurately, they know about me. 

I know about slowing. About quite small streets and familiar faces and a quick walk to the grocery store. About the walk along the tracks overlooking the lake. About meeting a friend on the corner and going for a beer. About walking home up steep hills and feeling your breath find rhythm.

I know about knowing. About the restaurant that was here before this one, and the one before that. About how we used to drive half an hour to go to Tim Hortons for fun. About how it was always impossible to run a quick errand with my mom because every second person knew her and stopped to chat. About my sister getting kicked out of a bar because she used my ID and the bouncer went to high school with me. About the house my first love lived in. About the smell of the theatre before the audience arrives. About the best breakfast buns in the world. 

I know about what you say. About the charm of this place. About a mecca for outdoor sports. About a hippie haven. About yoga. About raves. About weed. About natural beauty. About craft breweries and local coffee. About coming for a weekend and buying land and never leaving. 

I know about change. About zero percent occupancy rates and increasing rates of people experiencing homelessness. About fentanyl killing off young people. About severe wildfire risk. About the ongoing conflict around transphobia and inclusivity of trans and non-binary people at the local women’s centre. About growing up knowing nearly no people of colour. About growing up knowing nearly no queer people – especially not young queer people. And I know about watching the Pride Parade as an adult, led by openly queer high school students, and weeping with relief and hope. 

I know about belonging. My own belonging in dressing rooms and choir rehearsals and my mom’s kitchen. And others who belonged before me. Draft dodgers from the Vietnam war looking for a more peaceful existence. Doukhobors fleeing persecution in Russia in the late 1800’s. The Ktunaxa, the Syilx, and the Sinixt peoples who have lived on this land for thousands of years. The Sinixt, or the people of the bull trout, whose territory stretches from what we know as Revelstoke to what we know as Washington. The Sinixt who were declared ‘extinct’ in 1956 by the federal government and are fighting to prove their right to land, and their existence, to this day.

I know about family. About my mom who gave out apples for Halloween because of my diabetic brother. My dad who was better than Google and knew about everything. My sister who used to cover her room in posters of Good Charlotte. My brother who throws a wicked snowball. My mom who we say gets more done by 9am than the average person does in a day. My dad who introduced us to jazz and Paul Simon. My mom who insisted her second wedding have a huge dance party. My dad who lives alone and bikes to work and appreciates a good mezcal. My stepdad who works to better the world and this small town. My sister who knows how to make any room cozy and beautiful. My brother who wept through his whole wedding. My stepdad who has an astounding memory for dates and a baffling taste in movies. My mom who swims in the lake in the winter. My dad who started going to counselling at age 74 to know himself better. My sister who is my truest soulmate. My brother who sings to his baby in the bathtub while talking to me on Zoom. 

I know about the land. About coming around that corner on the highway and seeing the city and the bridge across the lake. About Pulpit Rock and the innumerable times I’ve trekked or meandered to the top to look out over the city and point to my house and my school. About the sound of the trees in my mom’s backyard – trembling aspen – rustling softly even without wind. About the deep silence of a heavy snowfall. About the astounding darkness of 7pm. About stars. About the lake. Oh, the lake. Cold and clear and cherished. 

And I know about the waterfall bursting with spring runoff. 

And I know about the glacier dazzling in the distance on a clear day. 

And I know about the old growth forest and the salmon spawning. 

And I know about the mountains. Or more accurately, they know about me.

[View from Pulpit Rock. Taken by me. ]

[Photo taken by my dad, Bill Metcalfe.]

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Works Cited

Levin, Dan. “With Flood of Urbanites, a Canadian Hippie Haven Tries to Keep Its Mellow.” The New York Times, Dec. 11, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/11/world/americas/nelson-canada-hippies-urbanites-british-columbia.html. Accessed February 10, 2021.

Mangelsdorf, Rob. “Paradise, thy name is Nelson.” Vancouver Is Awesome, Dec. 12, 2017, https://www.vancouverisawesome.com/courier-archive/living/paradise-thy-name-is-nelson-3063745. Accessed February 10, 2021.

Metcalfe, Bill. “Four members of Nelson and District Women’s Centre board resign.” BC Local News, July 6, 2020, https://www.bclocalnews.com/news/four-members-of-nelson-and-district-womens-centre-board-resign/. Accessed February 10, 2021.

Schafer, Timothy. “Vacancy rate drops to zero in latest Report card on Homelessness.” The Nelson Daily, October 14, 2018. http://thenelsondaily.com/news/vacancy-rate-drops-zero-latest-report-card-homelessness. Accessed February 10, 2021.

Wood, Stephanie. “I wanted to show them I wasn’t extinct.” The Narwhal, October 31, 2020. https://thenarwhal.ca/sinixt-people-fight-extinction-supreme-court-canada/. Accessed February 10, 2021.

Commentary
I really enjoyed this process. I write quite a bit of poetry but I rarely write stories like this, so it was an interesting adventure. I struggled at first to figure out how to change the story. I tracked down what I think is the original by Leslie Silko and this definitely informed my writing. Once I landed on this creature called Good and the nature imagery, my poetry mind was running and the rest came together quickly.

My original version ended after the voice told its terrible story and the crack in the earth closed up. This seemed to be where Silko’s story had ended and where King’s retelling also left off. The story was let loose and that was that. I shared my first draft with my partner and he said, ‘that was good! I mean… it was not good. I mean I didn’t know it would end so badly.’ I thought about this for a while and kept getting stuck on the idea that this story (and my first version in particular) almost held the message that stories are evil. I felt that the intended message was that stories are powerful, or even that stories are dangerous. But not that stories are evil!

So I figured that Good, being so good, would likely want to do something about this. And I figured that the only thing to do would be to offer other stories into the world. I wondered if this ending seems sappy, or if it indicates a discomfort with a more harsh and realistic ending. But I also felt that Silko’s story and my process of retelling felt very relevant to our world and my life. And I want to write hope into my story and our story. So that’s what I did.

I did something that was new to me for this project. I have a theatre background and lots of experience memorizing text, so initially I had planned to just memorize it. However, thinking about our focus on oral storytelling and inspired by Thomas King’s and Roy Henry Vickers’ ease and authenticity in storytelling, I chose to do this a new way. I worked to avoid word-for-word memorization. Instead I wrote down my story in bullet points and then I just started speaking it. I spoke it to myself in the car driving to work a few times and in the shower. And the great thing was that it was a bit different each time. It grew and developed more nuance than the original text held. It felt more like telling story than speaking a chunk of memorized text. 

Thanks for listening.

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Works Cited

Silko, Leslie. “Long Time Ago.” Little Flute, Angelfire, https://www.angelfire.com/md/LittleFlute/first.html. Accessed Feb. 3, 2021.

Vickers, Roy Henry. “Roy Henry Vickers: Peacedancer (NFB/Cedar Island)” Youtube, uploaded by Henrik Meyer, Sept. 29, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMkb1C3H5XU. Accessed March 8, 2021.

All of us have, at some point, been transported by a good book: time loses its meaning, our earthly struggles dissipate, the room around us dissolves…

I think this place we are transported to is the world of words that Chamberlin describes. This is the world of the text that becomes suddenly very real, although we know it is not. I appreciated Chamberlin’s question of whether stories can actually make change. “Stories don’t really help, do they?”, he asks. I ask this of my students often – can words make change? I think it is in the journey to and from this world of words that stories are able to affect change. 

To illustrate my point I want to use the multi-award winning Canadian TV show, Schitt’s Creek. If you haven’t seen it, put it on your list. It is such a gem. Schitt’s Creek follows a previously wealthy family, having recently lost all their money and their home, as they start a new life in a small town. The aspect of the show that I want to focus on is how it engages with gender and sexuality. David Rose, the son in the Rose family, is pansexual and dresses in a unique and bold style that he wears as confidently as his gender and sexuality. In the first episode of Schitt’s Creek I took in David’s flamboyant personality and I predicted the story that was to come. One where a liberated, confident, city queer moves to a backwoods nowhere town and is attacked by vicious conservative homophobes. Or well-meaning, sweet-seeming, church ladies. Or tough-looking, proudly masculine tractor-riding farm boys. And the flamboyant city queer suffers and suffers and then, through great labour, manages to turn this stupid town around and get on with their life. Or something like that. Do you know that story? 

The story told by Schitt’s Creek was so different than I expected. David’s sexuality and gender are not a main plot point at all. They are not a point of conflict. They’re woven into the fabric of the story as other character traits and personal experiences are. People are not frightened or judgemental. Nobody gawks or stares. Everyone’s parents are accepting and only want the best for their children. In one particularly charming scene, David casually explains his sexual preferences to a woman he slept with the night before. This is not the story I thought it would be. 

This is a world without homophobia. This, I believe, is the world of words that Chamberlin is talking about. A world we are transported to while encountering a story. And then we return. And our “real” world looks different. It is a sort of riddle and it “requires us to make sense of what seems like nonsense” (Chamberlin, 168).  I think it is this journey to and from the world of words that allows for words to make change. “It is in such riddles that we find faith. Or lose it” (Chamberlin, 183). I surely found some faith in the riddle of Schitt’s Creek. 

Chamberlin loves to destroy our many perceived dichotomies – settlers and nomad, doers and dreamers, reality and imagination. I believe that the more we depart to the world of words (imagination) and return to our daily lives (reality) the shorter this distance becomes. I would like to believe that the fact that thousands of people watched Schitt’s Creek means that the distance between a world without homophobia and our current world has became a little bit smaller. 

My final thought leads us away from Schitt’s Creek and back to a conversation I was having in a comment thread about land acknowledgements and their purpose. If what I’ve said is true – that we travel to a realm created by stories and then return to our lives and reckon with the differences, ultimately bringing imagination and reality closer –  perhaps land acknowledgements do the same. Maybe part of their power is to transport us collectively over and over to this world of words, where indigenous sovereignty is honoured, and then ask us to reckon with the reality upon our return. 

Works Cited

Chamberlin, J. Edward. If This Is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories?: Finding Common Ground. A.A. Knopf, 2003. 

Ivie, Devon. “Dan Levy Explains Why Homophobia Will Never Infiltrate Schitt’s Creek.” Vulture, 18 Nov. 2018, www.vulture.com/2018/11/dan-levy-explains-why-schitts-creek-has-no-homophobia.html.

Minutaglio, Rose. “Sorry to Moira, But David Is the True Style Icon of ‘Schitt’s Creek’.” ELLE, 5 Feb. 2020, www.elle.com/culture/movies-tv/a30757231/schitts-creek-dan-levy-david-rose-fashion/. 

“‘Schitt’s Creek’ Star Dan Levy On Playing Pansexual.” YouTube, uploaded by Larry King Now, 18 Mar. 2016, www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4IXXM0A6vg.

“Schitt’s Creek | David and Stevie Discuss Their ‘Wine’ Preferences.” YouTube, uploaded by CW Seed, 9 Aug. 2019, www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5dIClRkmfc.