As mentioned several times throughout our unit 3 lessons, Thomas King, in his novel “Green Grass, Running Water”, creates layers of stories with the expectation that the reader will choose to uncover them or leave them as unknown allusions. The first few characters in section 169-180 of his book follow the four Indians, Bill Bursum, and Alberta. What shocked me the most while researching the historical and literary symbolism was that even within these sometimes personal, sometimes culturally broader side stories, King’s social and political commentary is fixed on Western hierarchy and unequal representation of Aboriginals.

The four Indians, collectively, Ishmael, The Lone Ranger, Hawkeye, and Robinson Crusoe, follow King’s pattern of four directions (red-east, white-south, black-west, blue-north), the four stages of life (First Woman, Thought Woman, Changing Woman, Old Woman), and the four sections of the story.

The Lone Ranger, a character featured in numerous films, radio broadcasts, and TV shows, is a white male protagonist in a loose plot (varies because of the broad scope of stories he is featured in) that follows a hero and his Aboriginal companion Tonto, to rescue towns. While this historically troubling duo reflects on past cultural stereotypes and damaging character tropes, the film was recreated in 2012 by Disney. According to Margery Fee and Jane Flick in their essay “Coyote Pedagogy: Knowing Where the Borders are in Thomas King’s ‘Green Grass, Running Water’”, The Lone Ranger represents a hierarchical model in Western Literature, of the white man who is all-knowing—The Lone Ranger translated in Spanish means “He who knows”, and the Aboriginal sidekick  (referred to as marginalization outside of the movie business) Tonto, whose name in Spanish translates to “Numbskull” (Fee and Flick 135).

Yet again, Hawkeye is a white, male, antagonist with an Aboriginal sidekick (Chingachgook ) in the saga, “The Leatherstocking Saga” written by James Fenimore Cooper. Rather than focus on the hierarchical relationship already observed between The Lone Ranger and Tonto, perhaps King is commenting on the author, Cooper, who is credited for the concept of The Noble Savage (McGregor 120). This damaging idea positions Aboriginal people as primitive, common, problematic, something to be fixed.

Robinson Crusoe, the novel by the white, male, British writer Daniel Defoe, is also the name of the antagonist in Defoe’s story about a man stranded on an island, who befriends an Aboriginal man. The novel was believed to be an autobiography for years, before it was revealed to be based on the life of a Scottish man. Perhaps King finds this telling (and slightly hilarious) of the realistic possibility that Crusoe actually encountered cannibals and saved an Aboriginal man from a savage life. Similar to The Lone Ranger, his character presents a hierchical connection between white, male, antagonists in novels, and their Aboriginal sidekicks, or in this case, Crusoe’s Aboriginal project who he Christens.

Ishmael is a character in the story Moby Dick by Herman Melville. He too befriends an Aboriginal cannibal named “Queequeg”, and survives a flood by staying afloat on Queequeg’s coffin (Flick). In a novel full of Christian symbolism (Ishmael is taken from the Bible), Queequeg as a cannabil and pagan may symbolize the devil within Christian indoctrinated belief.

According to Fee and Flick, King relies on a Westernized embedded inability to see anything different from the norm as acceptable. That is why, the four Indians, who are represented as mixed-race pairs in Western literature, are looked over, and are not recognized for their sex–all four are female, or for their ethnicity—all four are aboriginal (Fee and Flick 135).

Bill Bursum, according to Flick, encompasses the hostility toward Aboriginals that Buffalo Bill historically did as well. King’s Bill Bursum embodies the idea that Aboriginals need to be eradicated, although, to a slightly smaller degree. Bursum is the first to buy property around the lake, and is unable to occupy it until Eli’s cabin is destroyed or moved. While he doesn’t show violent contempt toward Eli, his thoughts on page 267, when he claims Eli and his cabin “can’t stay there forever” suggest a similar attitude that Buffalo Bill violently up took as he hunted and killed buffalo in order to try and eradicate the Plains people.

The Shagganappi Lounge, is referenced indirectly previously with the four Canadians who eat at Latisha’s café, one of which is P. Johnson, author of “The Shagganappi”. Pauline Johnson, a half Mohawk, half English writer, famously wrote “never let anyone call me a white woman”, and embraced her Mohawk identity, claiming in “The Shagganappi”,

“Oh, why have your people forced on me the name of Pauline Johnson?” she said…Was not my Indian name good enough? Do you think you help us by bidding us forget our blood? by teaching us to cast off all memory of our high ideals and our glorious past? I am an Indian. My pen and my life I devote to the memory of my own people. Forget that I was Pauline Johnson, but remember always that I was Tekahionwake, the Mohawk that humbly aspired to be the saga singer of her people, the bard of the noblest folk the world has ever seen, the sad historian of her own heroic race. “

Works Cited

Chester Blanca. “Green Grass Running Water: Theorizing the World of the Novel.”Canadian Literature 161-162. (1999). Web. April 04/2013

Fee, Margery, and Jane Flick. “Coyote Pedagogy: Knowing Where the Borders are in Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water.” Canadian Literature (1999): 131

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

I read “Green Grass, Running Water” for a previous English course at UBC. In fact, I read it twice, and I felt like I had thoroughly absorbed many of the allusions the book offered. In some ways, I probably did. And then I went on a road trip to Saskatchewan, and decided to read the book out loud to my friends for this course. I realized then how adamant King truly is about the power of oral storytelling, and the way he challenged readers to understand through listening, rather than simply reading, as mentioned in lesson 3:2. Blanca Chester discusses this in her article “Green Grass, Running Water: Theorizing the World of the Novel”, when she explores the influence of Harry Robinson’s form of storytelling in King’s novel. She claims Robinson’s storytelling “ultimately moves beyond either written or spoken word” (Chester 44), to ensure a dialogue is created between oral and written traditions in Native culture as well as Western literary work (Chester 45). Similarly, King draws from these oral traditions in order to push the reader to confront previous knowledge of Western allusions, with Native culture, and historically important occurrences in Canada. According to Chester, King’s oral storytelling strategy reveals “a dialogue with the past that moves into the present, a history of Native tradition that now includes European elements within it” (47)

While reading in the car, the first name that I spoke aloud which triggered an allusion was Dr. Joseph Hovaugh. Admittedly, going through lesson 3:1, I understood the connection of this character to Northrop Frye, but I could not understand why he was described as Jehovah, rather than the more popularly used term, God. King’s brilliant pun is only understood when said aloud, and as an even further reach of the power of spoken word, I was able to pick up on King’s juxtaposition of Dr. Joseph Hovaugh, and his interaction with the four natives, to Buffalo Bill Bursam, and his interaction with the four natives. At the beginning of the novel, Dr. Hovaugh is introduced as sitting behind his desk at the hospital. “It was a way to collect his thoughts, a way to get ready for the week. Every day, he sat a little longer. There was no harm in it” (King 16). Bursam, later on, is described as having recently cultivated “the habit of sitting behind his desk and watching the early morning costumers come into the store. It was a way to collect his thoughts, a way to get ready for the day. Each day he sat a little longer. There was no harm in it” (King 268). This deliberate repetition is King’s way of continuously reintroducing the cyclical idea of storytelling presented in the (by now) familiar Medicine Wheel (lesson 3:2). But what is he trying to allude to about these two characters in particular?

The aurality that King demands is necessary for King’s puns to be understood, offering “connections to yet another narrative” (Chester 54). The characters Louis, Ray, and Al, when read aloud, form the name Louis Riel, a key figure in Canadian Native history. Similarly, the Nissan, Pinto, and Karmann-Ghia allude to Columbus’ historic—and highly recognized Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria. Why does King choose to infuse Western Colonial allusions into Native narratives in this way? According to Chester, the oral resonance forces the stories to be read aloud in a Native oral tradition, as mentioned previously. Yet, it also suggests an assumed audience, and aspects of a storytelling performance (Chester 55). Reading aloud to my friends in the car, my sister would interrupt me suddenly and ask why certain characters had certain names, and inquire about literary allusions that she didn’t understand, because she didn’t have literary background knowledge. Only then did I understand the importance of Chester’s observation, when she claims “In creating a dialogue, or conversation, with the text the speaker/reader/listen enters into a highly contexted discourse where every name suggests a story and every story suggests yet another story” (55).

Throughout King’s novel, just as with the Medicine Wheel, he is challenging his readers to question everything, and look for the story within the story. His manipulation of oral puns and allusions is just another way he is allowing his readers a chance to probe beyond previous knowledge of Western allusions, toward a greater understanding of new narratives, such as the Native narratives he presents.

Works Cited

Chester Blanca. “Green Grass Running Water: Theorizing the World of the Novel.”Canadian Literature 161-162. (1999). Web. April 04/2013

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

The Indian Act of 1876 is considered to have a “long history of assimilation policies that intended to terminate the cultural, social, economic, and political distinctiveness of Aboriginal peoples by absorbing them into mainstream Canadian life and values”, according to the UBC Indigenous Foundations site. Previously, the act was a combination of past colonial legislation, including the Gradual Civilization Act of 1857 and the Gradual Enfranchisement Act of 1869. (Indigenous Foundations). The former, worked to integrate Natives into Canadian settler culture, while the latter elected Superintendent Generals of Indian Affairs, who held executive control over “indian” status, and were able to make life-altering decisions on behalf of Natives. For example, if a Native man passed away, the superintendent would decide if the wife of this man was able to keep her children, based on his personal opinion on whether or not she was “moral” (Indigenous Foundations).

The Gradual Enfranchisement Act also was the start of gender specific restrictions on Native status benefits, over ruled many band council powers, and restricted alcohol consumption by Natives. The Indian Act which followed, allowed for one legislation, which consequently disregarded specific treaty rights of different Native groups, placing them all under one legislation to be monitored (Indigenous Foundations).

Within the Indian Act, were laws such as the Potlach law which banned the ceremonious act, and which later banned other ceremonies such as the Sun Dance. As discussed in previous lessons, this law banned Natives from coming together to practice oral traditions, medicinal work, and many other culturally identifying activities. This law greatly served to assimilate Natives into Canadian culture. However, other laws seemingly contradicted assimilation laws, and helped bind Native women. Concerning Native status, the Indian Act contained a part of the legislation which took away a Native woman’s status, and consequently, her treaty rights, health benefits the right to be buried with her ancestors, the right to live on her reserve, and the right to inherit family property if she were to marry a non-status man. At the same time, if she was abandoned by her husband, or was widowed, she would also lose her status .

These acts and policies are very strongly based on discriminatory behaviour concerning the perceived racial inferiority of Natives, and their incapacity, as the Canadian government considered it, to assimilate into Canadian culture, and the mainstream view of nationalism. The very core of the Indian Act suggests Coleman’s argument on white civility is embedded in Canadian legislation, and has consequently created Canadian identity, and what is considered to be “whiteness”, offering “a position of normalcy and privilege in Canada”, as discussed in this lesson (lesson 3:1). Consider the diction used in the previous legislation that the Indian Act is founded on: “gradual civilization” and “gradual enfranchisement”, unapologetically states the motive of the legislation in the name itself. This plan to assimilate Natives into Canadian citizenry, completely works to create what Coleman calls a Canadian identity that is characteristic of being white and civil, and is based on a constructed sense of normalcy. For example, I mentioned above the Gradual Enfranchisement Act, which gave white males the power to make decisions for Natives. This decision-making was based on a colonial standard of living, and discretion used to decide if Natives were moral enough, or civil enough to suit Canadian legislation standards were based on normalcy and privilege offered exclusively to white settlers.

This colonial mentality is greatly observed in the Potlach law, as mentioned above, and in previous lessons. What the Natives saw as a ceremony to establish property, and serve in the distribution of wealth, Canadian settlers saw as a challenge to the assimilation of Natives away from an economic system of redistribution, to a private ownership system that ruled white Capitalist ideols. A first account testament, by Judge Alfred Scow, illustrates the ways these laws negatively affected Native identity, and forced a Canadian identity onto Natives.

 This provision of the Indian Act was in place for close to 75 years and what that did was it prevented the passing down of our oral history. It prevented the passing down of our values. It meant an interruption of the respected forms of government that we used to have, and we did have forms of government be they oral and not in writing before any of the Europeans came to this country. We had a system that worked for us. We respected each other. We had ways of dealing with disputes.

            The Indian Act, while attempting to create a Canadian Identity, such as the one Coleman believes exists, also created a Native Identity that is understood today to be “normal”. Coleman argues that there is no “normal” identity, but a fictive ethnicity that is based on a “necessary forgetfulness” of our history, and the acts which allowed for such a brutal breakdown of human rights.

Works Cited

The Indian Act. n.d Web July 4 2014.

http://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/home/government-policy/the-indian-act.html#origins

CanLit Guides. “Reading and Writing in Canada, A Classroom Guide to Nationalism.” Canadian

           Literature. Web. April 4th 2013.

In “The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative” by Thomas King, King presents two stories that are vastly different: one, based on Native myth, about Charm and the animals that helped create the earth with her, the second, based on Judeo-Christian doctrine outlining the hierarchy that is God, who created the earth, and placed man to rule the animals in it. From the get-go, our background knowledge of the stories we’re told predispose us to internalize one of these stories as more credible, and the other as not, even though both, according to Lutz, are equally based on irrational mythologies and beliefs (Lesson 2:2). In terms of Western belief and culture, according to King, we have a “perfectly serviceable creation story”, that consequently means when it comes to non-Christian monologues and Native creation stories, “we listen to them and then we forget them” (King 21).

King, like Chamberlain, believes in the importance of meeting each other in our misunderstanding and bridging our stories to eventually bridge the gap between “us” and “them” (Chamberlain 233). It seems rather misleading then, that King would encourage binary thinking when it comes to creation stories. His claim that if we are “to believe one story to be sacred, we must see the other as secular” (King 25), seems to contradict the previously stated beliefs. However, King may be presenting these dichotomies as a warning of the dangers involved in such cut and dry, black and white, worldviews. He calls these dichotomies—and our tendency to love buying into them—an “elemental structure of Western society”, which we trust simply because they are easy, unlike those pesky complex enigmas which take time, tolerance, and patience on both parts, to understand (25).

This detrimental tendency to categorize everything into dichotomies, reaches beyond the boundaries of storytelling, and underlines the first encounters between Natives and Europeans, as well as underlines the rest of the events between Natives and Europeans. King’s warning against binary thinking is a fair and justified one when we consider the ways Western doctrine has negatively led to the violence against Natives. Concerning the treatment of Natives by Europeans, in this lesson, we were asked to “stop and ask yourself, how would you answer these questions — using the stories you already know?” The only justification I could possibly conjure and jot down was that the Western people felt what they were doing was not a punishment but a treatment option. Even while trying to be as sensitive as possible, and as open-minded as possible to “step outside and see one’s own culture as alien” (Lutz 32), my language, suggests I am still justifying and sympathizing with engrained European belief. Why am I defending their actions at all? It is binary thinking that leads to such devastating consequences for the side deemed unfit, barbaric, and in need of intervention. No matter the intention, when dichotomies are created, ignorance and misunderstanding are sure to follow.

Considering the idea of why such violence was used against the Natives, and considering my own response and justification, a story came to mind by Leslie Marmon Silko, titled “Lullaby”*, about a Native woman who had her children taken from her because they were being treated for Tuberculosis. Overtime, the children learned to speak English, and consequently forgot how to speak in their native tongue—the only language their mother understood. This violent separation was beautifully chronicled, and presented an example of how binary thinking, no matter how good the intention, can have such detrimental effects on the personal lives of the people it tries to “fix”. While our Western tendency, influenced by our Christian roots, is to accept our own truth as the one and only healthy, correct, freeing truth, King’s example suggests there are consequences to this way of thinking.

Even now, in our course, and in our individual pursuits of a higher education, there are binary systems ingrained in us that must be met with a serious effort to understand and meet each other on another level besides opposing.

*I know it may seem long and unnecessary, but please do read “Lullaby”, it was a really eye-opening story, at least for me personally.

Works Cited

Chamberlain, J. Edward. If This Is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories?. Toronto: Random House. 2004. Print.

King, Thomas. The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative. Peterbough:Anansi Press. 2003. Print.

Lutz, John. “First Contact as a Spiritual Performance: Aboriginal — Non-Aboriginal Encounters on the North American West Coast.” Myth and Memory: Rethinking Stories of Indigenous-European Contact. Ed. Lutz. Vancouver: U of British Columbia P, 2007. 30-45. Print.

1. Home is a concept that is continuously changing, and in turn, affecting the way we perceive our self-identities. As Lian Lister observed on my post, “we grow, we learn, we unlearn, and we have to adjust our concepts on home to accommodate our new knowledge and experiences”. 

2. 3/5 of the student blogs I read happened to associate ideas of home with the physical presence of a house. I think this is partly due to the cultural importance our society places on permanent places of residence that you can “come home to”, but I think on a more personal level, our places of residence bring with them memories of the other people who may be residing or may have resided there with us. In one of the blog posts, ancestry played  a great role in the physical building of the home as well as living in it. This generational settling created an image of home that had to do with both the physical home, as well as the conceptual home.

3. Like Erika ‘s story, as well as my own, the idea of ethnicity and identity based around it shifts to match who we want to be, and how we want to be perceived. Erika chose to identity as Swedish at some points because Swedish people are beautiful, and Irish at other points, because Irish people are smart. For myself, working in a restaurant, when people see the name “Milica”, their first question is always “where are you from?/what are you?”. And I almost never respond Serbian/Croatian. I always respond with one or the other, depending on the day, or which one I think of first. Sometimes, if I say Croatian, people will jokingly say “do you hate Serbians?” (I’m not kidding), and sometimes, if it’s a Croatian or Serbian person, they’ll get quiet if I choose the wrong one. So much of what we identify as personal traits, actually seems to be tied to ethnicity, and what people perceive an entire nation to be.

4. Personal growth and experience changes the way we may perceive the same place. By keeping an open dialogue, bouncing ideas off of one another, and keeping our minds open to the different ideas of home, and what this could mean for different individuals living in the same place, a common ground is gained, that isn’t necessarily built on common views shared, or common experience, but on a mutual level of respect. This is more-so an observation I gained from reading the comments and dialogue, rather than the stories themselves.

I was 20 days old when my family left my birthplace of Mostar, Bosnia and Hercegovina because tensions had finally led to a devastating blow-out between Croatians, Serbians, and Bosnians. One of the pivotal cities being fought over was my hometown. My mum was a Croatian woman, my father a Serbian man, and because of this, we really didn’t have anywhere to go but out.

My family, to this day, refuses to talk about all of this, so the little information I do know, I have pieced together myself, and because of this, my frame of reference is based around when I learned it. With no one willing to talk, I replaced explanations with personal logic and meaning, and now, my identity is weaved with my 5 year old logic that Bosnians were the bad guys, and my 13 year old shock that I am part Serbian, and my 22 year old dismay that the idea my dad adamantly supports is the same idea that at one point, justified killing hundreds of people in a barn. 

I never knew what I was or where I came from. When I showed up to kindergarten as the new kid, the first question a boy asked me was why my English sucked and where I came from, because it sure wasn’t Canada. I didn’t know how to answer him. It didn’t help that my former country of Yugoslavia, at the time, was being diced and sliced, and that borders, like in so many other cases, are easily drawn on maps, but are detrimental for the ethnic groups that need to reconcile them on the ground. I remember the first time the reality of this sunk in for me. I was in my first year of college and had just read Thomas King’s “Borders”, and the idea that my identity, and everyone else’s identity for that matter, had nothing to do with the lines drawn on a map, hit me like a ton of bricks.

My identity seemed to always be shifting. Growing up, my mother told me I was Croatian. My father, rather than correct her, worked to challenge her through my sister and I. From a young age, instead of using the Serbian/Croatian term for dad, he told me to call him Babo, a term of endearment used by Muslims in Bosnia. In 1995, he took me to a protest at the Vancouver Art Gallery against Western intervention in the Bosnian war. The only thing I knew was that my Babo was always right, and that whatever he was, I was too. I was 12 years old before I finally found out, ethnically speaking, that I was half Serbian. Suddenly, I needed to make room for a new identity, but that was alright, because for once it was supported by real evidence, and not the justification that it was my dad pissing off my mum. I could finally explain to people that I was born in what used to be Yugoslavia, but that the country was divided up, and for now, I’m born in what is Bosnia and Hercegovina. I am not Bosnian, because that is a term used by Muslim’s who are native to the land, but do not identity as either Croatian or Serbian. Is your brain hurting yet? Mine has been for years.

This is who I am by birth. But at a young age, I welcomed the idea of being Canadian with such open arms—partly because everyone around me seemed to be Canadian, and partly because it encompassed such simpler borders, both geographically, and figuratively. The price of giving up my Serbian/Croatian cultural roots seemed fair, for the chance to rid myself of oppression, war, and lies. All I knew was, that watching a Canadian beer commercial, I felt a sense of loyalty, to the simple ideas it presented. It looked so easy to be Canadian. Give us hockey, mountains, and beer, and we don’t have to talk about the oppression, the war, and lies, that seem to make up every country.

I’m coming to terms with the fact that like my Serbian/Croatian identity, my Canadian identity—what I consider to be my home and my values, is constantly changing, and I am constantly learning. Most importantly, there is an underbelly to everything, and I have to acknowledge it if I want to lay any claim to it, because I need to claim it as a whole, faults and all.

I have a great story to tell you. It’s about how evil came into the world. One day, ages and ages ago, a group got together, of 4 of life’s children (not figuratively, but literally. Life gave birth to four of them and they all came out a little wonky). Every night, they got together and drew from a lottery the name of one person whose life they would try and ruin. So on this night, they drew the name of a woman, and after passing it around for a while, and thinking long and hard, they started talking about the worst possible things that they could come up with.

The first, War, cried out, “I’m going to blow through her country and destroy every place she’s ever loved.”

This plan received several nods of approval. But of course, Poverty being poverty, not waiting for the right time or place, cut in saying, “that’s nothing. Once she flees her land, I’m going to take away everything she owns, and make her struggle to support her family until the day she dies.”

Divorce clapped her hands gleefully, knowing where there was poverty, she was sure to follow. Impatiently, she yelled out “and then I’ll rip their family apart and they’ll scatter into different homes and different cities!”

“Think of the children”, cooed Insanity.

“Why? You never do”, Divorce shot back.

“You’re right”, chuckled Insanity. I guess after you’re done with her, it’s my turn. I’ll tear through her mind and leave her traumatized from everything you heartless things have done to her. But of course you know I’m the worst, so I’ll throw in some depression, and when her kids have reached their own end, my grand finale will be Schizophrenia.”

“Harsh, but I think we have our winner” Poverty and War chimed.

“At least she’ll have something to write home about. Or at least enough to write a memoir about”, Divorce threw out.

As they were all getting their coats on and getting ready to leave, in walked Life’s last child. After all, she always undoubtedly showed up at the end.

“Sit down”, she said.

Here’s what I’m going to do. War, after you’ve taken her security, and after Poverty has stripped her of her possessions (a little weak if you ask me), Divorce will come in, as always. Is no one else getting bored of the same repetitive things happening to these silly people? At least Insanity will spice things up with the shear chaos of depression and schizophrenia.

And here is where I come in. After all of this, I’m going to convince this woman that nobody is going to believe her; that nobody cares. She’ll stop telling her stories. She’ll think that people have stopped listening. And then she should be as good as dead, because we all know we are our stories.

“That’s dark”, whispered Insanity.

“Brilliant”, said War.

But it can’t happen, they all agreed. You can do whatever you like to someone, but you can’t take away their truth, and their stories.

We can get along without that kind of thing. Take it back. Call that story back, they all said.

Doubt coyly smiled and shrugged, knowing it was too late.

For once a story is told, it cannot be called back. Once told, it is loose in the world.

The story I decided to tell was one that helped me sort through my own truth in a way. Edward Chamberlain, in the previous novel that we studied “If This is Your Land, Where are Your Stories?” suggests that

“We hold to stories and songs that chronicle the things we dread

precisely because they provide us with some sense of order.”

       While the story I told of my mother’s life and the introduction of evil to it, as I have seen it, may be different from the one she would tell, it is still a true story in the sense that it is my truth. It converges the reality of imagination, where the facts of my experience are balanced with the formalities of my expression (222).

Which brings up the question of why, when having to tell a story, I turned to my own life experiences to explain something as seemingly universal as “evil”? Here is where Thomas King’s idea, in his narrative “The Truth About Stories”, rings true for me. King claims that “the truth about stories is that that’s all we are” (2), helping justify my immediate reaction to explain an idea through personal experience because experience is all I have to reach in to.

King asks the question, “do the stories we tell reflect the world as it truly is […]?” (26), but for me, the question becomes: do the stories we tell reflect ourselves as we truly are? Can we as individuals, or as a nation, create and recreate our identities however we see fit?

Works Cited

Chamberlain, J. Edward. If This Is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories?. Toronto: Random House. 2004. Print.

King, Thomas. The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative. Peterbough:Anansi Press. 2003. Print.

Using two great examples from history, Chamberlain suggests that concerning stories, there needs to be a balance between reality and imagination, the real and the believed. His first story outlines the way the Gitksan people fought for their land by ceremoniously telling the courts of a story where the great grizzly bear Mediik brought down the mountain and buried the river. In addition to this historical retelling, the Gitksan people decided to confirm their legendary story with geologic evidence dating the debris under the earth of their town to match the material at the top of the mountain. While the courts saw this geologic evidence as factually stable and convincing, the Gitksan people were disheartened that the evidence was not taken alongside the previous evidence provided. Within Gitksan understanding of storytelling, what seemed to back their story was a tradition of performance as well as a history of events; reality and literary imagination (Chamberlain 198). According to Chamberlain in the previous chapter, the Gitksan’s legend should have been just as valid because the ceremonies of belief that bring about a revelation of reality are just as valid as any “truth” or “factual” evidence (208). These stories and legends chronicle historical events and create a sense of order, not in a scientific way, but in a faithful way (201).

This idea of faithful observation versus factual observation is illustrated in the second story Chamberlain tells, of two painters creating an entirely different picture of a boat on water. The first painter strives to paint “truthfully”, and goes off of the knowledge she has of the boat, such as the fact that it has exactly 27 portholes. The second painter paints what he can see, which is 7 portholes. Both paintings are credible because of the truth that lies within each observation. Both portraits are true in that they each tell a certain type of truth (222)

Chamberlain presents these examples in order to begin bridging the gap between “them” and “us”, claiming the common ground between facts of experience and the formalities of expression can both coexist, just like borders must be crossed, as well as acknowledged when it comes to storytelling and art itself (223). Once this is recognized in our own culture, we are able to recognize it in unfamiliar cultures as well, so that “the act of believing in these stories and ceremonies rather than in the particular belief itself” causes us to come together (224).

The idea that these stories and ceremonies offer a possibility of understanding the nature of belief through the correctness of names or more broadly, the correct use of language, has ties to Confucius’s “The Analects”. Chamberlain makes this distinct connection because he believes discipline is needed to better believe ritual and ceremonious acts. Hui Ching Chang briefly outlines some of Confucius’ principles. These principles once again suggest “when names are not used properly, language will not be used effectively” (224), but when they are used correctly, Chamberlain claims the ceremonial moment when we cross the border will occur, and ceremonies that would normally be questioned, such as communion, rock concerts with questionable lyrics (Red Hot Chili Peppers anyone?), and national anthems.

The two stories that make up Canada: our ceremonies, our contracts with one another, and our agreements between Aboriginals and Canadian settlers, are either a chronicle of events or a ceremony of belief. Both, according to Chamberlain are true, in that the two paintings of the boat are true, and both hold equal validity just as the Gatksan legend, as well as the scientific evidence, are useful. While Canada has a story title which is based on the settler story, Chamberlain suggests we must change the underlying title to “aboriginal title”, in order to constitute a new story, and change the way we see the origin of our nation, and the purpose of our nation.

Hello fellow classmates, Erika, and anyone else who may have stumbled across my blog using  google. Thanks for stopping by, and I’ll hopefully be hearing from you shortly via comments, facebook, and online sharing. I’ll start with a little introduction of myself. I’m a fourth year student at the University of British Columbia studying English and will continue on to Aboriginal studies at the University of Northern BC. I’m sure all of you have checked out the UBC website as students, but you should check out the UNBC as well. http://www.unbc.ca/

I’m a lot of things beside a student as well. I work as a server in my great city of Richmond, which has really helped get me through university. It’s also where most of my friendships have come from. I love the Vancouver Canucks and am a really big fan of hockey. Don’t know how your team’s doing in the playoffs? Have a quick look. http://www.nhl.com/. Can we all agree that Chicago’s going to win this year?

On a more serious note, and one on which there will probably be a greater consensus, I’m looking forward to working with each of you and going through this course. As someone who really has a passion for Aboriginal culture, as well as sociological issues, I’m excited to delve into a course that looks at both of these topics with literacy in mind. As an English major, I clearly enjoy literature as well as storytelling, and I’m fascinated to learn the many ways these are interconnected to our Canadian history, including the racism, the colonialism, and the cultural diversity that makes up our national identity. I’m most excited for Thomas King’s “Green Grass Running Water”, because I absolutely love trickster characters, and King is an absolute genius at merging traditional culture with present day politics.

Hopefully, as we go through this course, I’ll be able to make some connections on an academic level with all of you, so that 1. We can learn from each other, and 2. I don’t get left out of a research group. It’s that fear of being picked last for the kickball team that sticks with you well into your twenties. I’m hoping to shake it soon!

Thanks for reading, and I look forward to working with all of you.