Question 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.

Much of the issues that Indigenous people today are faced with is generational trauma. Many Indigenous people in Canada have endured many different types of traumas that have limited their ability to grow, tell stories, and maintain culture. Due to how the government treated Indigenous people in the late 1800s and throughout the 20th century it is not hard to imagine that force and criminality had a major impact on the lives and social setting. Family and occupational life would not be easy for those that went through intense traumatic events. Those attitudes would be pushed on their children who would then undergo traumatic events of different natures. The pain of residential school, losing language, identity and family. Once relieved from these schools, the trauma carries throughout their lives. Even if that person’s children do not go to residential schools, they can project their anger and frustrations on their children making it a traumatic living environment for the children. Those children could then pass on their frustrations to their offspring. I am generalizing in a way. This generational trauma is not particular to residential school survivors but rather can be put on anyone who has undergone serious trauma like the Holocaust, Great Depression or the Vietnam War.
In this context, examining first stories is a difficult task from our point of view. As a white male with European background, schooling and upbringing, I cannot fully understand and appreciate first stories. There are a couple of reasons for this. If I were to hear a story from an Indigenous storyteller who has carried the story down through generations and ascribes meaning to the story, my own context will be unable to fully grasp the spiritual and enlightened purpose and meaning. However, The storyteller brings his or her own meaning to the story as it only can be meaningful in the oral sense. There needs to be physical movements to the story as well as voice and tone that are essential to the story. In the written form, the story cannot hold meaning for that very reason. It is meant to be told orally and without “european” influence in translation.
For this very reason, so much of the oral tradition in the indigenous culture has been lost. The Government has silenced the race and forced traumas that make individuals keep quiet. Generations no longer pass down the stories to each other. As mentioned prohibitions to stop the stories has led to extinction. It would not be as easy as trying to write these stories down because they would lose all meaning. The stories must be oral.
When Wickwire communicates with Harry Robinson, he tells plenty of stories that really communicate the lives in the post-contact era and how storytellers justified the newcomers. Other stories seemed to draw on inspiration from the bible with and Indigenous twist. Wickwire had heard stories from Harry, were they myths or facts? She would do some digging and found stories that were quite similar to Harry’s. Although some specifics were different. Were these stories edited by a translator to give them a pre-contact feel, did they evolve over time to add post-colonial elements? Did centuries of Christian missionaries and forced belief change the stories to have catholic elements? All these questions present the argument of generational trauma. It is clear through the stories that Wickwire presents from Harry Robinson that there was a need to justify the white newcomers and prove a sort of superiority over them. The story of the twins and the piece of paper is a great example of how Robinson wanted to represent the “Indians” versus the whites. Even in that story, it might open a can of worms that the whites had been in North America long before and happened to come back.
It is a shame that studying these stories is with a large asterisks. Like I mentioned, the stories are hold much more meaning when told orally. The fact that we must rely on printed versions that may or may not have been edited by “European” understanding is difficult. Wickwire was able to find multiple tellings of the same story to begin the process of understanding and how the role of the colonizer has influenced the stories.