PAGES 293 – 303, 2007 Edition

I argue that this section in Green Grass, Running Water (shortened to “GGRW” hereafter) works as the climax of King’s story with the focus on the conflicting claims of land titles and “uncivilized stories” of colonialism (Paterson).  Its significance also includes serving as not only a site of intensive intersections where orature and literature, literature and history, imagination and reality meet (Paterson), but a symbol of the departure from the colonial narratives.  Based on the discovery of the in-text allusions to some of the most prominent historical, literary, and mythological figures in the racial history of North America (Paterson), I am going to explore in this blog the connections between the four old Indians and other characters, including the inter-connections among those characters appearing in page 293-303. In particular, I will look at how Robinson Crusoe as a Western literary figure relate to other characters such as the Thought woman and Coyote as Native mythological symbols, in a story told by the Robinson Crusoe as one of the four old Indian characters. It might lead to the understanding of the ways in which “King tells stories that absorb and transform the narratives of Western literature, religion, history, colonialism…in order to “fix things””(Paterson); or precisely, to fix the Indigenous issues in North America through enabling narrative decolonization and thus achieve racial balance.

The connections among the four old Indians

The characters of the four Indians seem to share a considerable number of commonalities. First of all, they all represent fictional figures in well-received narratives of Western literature (Ishmael & Robinson Crusoe) and pop culture (the Lone Ranger & Hawkeye). For example, the character of Robinson Crusoe, as one of the FOUR Indians, comes from a novel which is arguably based on a Scottish castaway who lived for FOUR years on the pacific island, and recognised as one of the FOUR greatest in English literature (Wikipedia contributors). Moreover, these four Western literary symbols happen to be all white male characters displaying stereotypical White attributes. Take Robinson Crusoe for example: this character demonstrates a whole range of White or Anglo-Saxon spirits e.g. “the manly independence, the unconscious cruelty, the persistence, the slow yet efficient intelligence, the sexual apathy, the calculating taciturnity”, which is evident in his colonial attempts to “replicate his society on the island” “through the use of European technology, agriculture and even a rudimentary political hierarchy” (Wikipedia contributors). In the context of GGRW, the white Britishness such as economic individualism, enterprising spirits and religious didacticism that the character Robinson Crusoe represents seems to allude to the Scottish Loyalists who in English Canada played leading roles in business, politics, religion and education (Coleman 5).       

The connections between the four old Indians and the Natives

The archetypes of those four old Indians in GGRW are known to have companions of Native origins, i.e. the Lone ranger with Tonto, Ishmael with Queequeg, Robinson Crusoe with Friday and Hawkeye with Chingachgook. There is no exception here that the characterisation of those Western literary characters always favors them over the Native figures who can only play sidekicks roles to assist the White male protagonists. However, King manages to play with these Western cultural symbols and twist them into Aboriginal female characters. As a result, the privileged positions that Whiteness and the white patriarchal ideologies occupies are remarkably challenged.   

The inter-connections among Robinson Crusoe, Ishmael and the Natives

It seems that Ishmael and Robinson Crusoe as literary figures share plenty of similarities, which are employed in GGRW to counter colonial narratives. For example, in the original work, both of them run into shipwreck and come to be kind of social outcasts, a reference to the marginalised status of the Indigenous peoples in the society. The storyline that Robinson Crusoe survives the shipwreck and ends up in an island with THREE animals might be used as a satire by King against the historical racist statement that judged the Indigenous peoples as “unorganized societies..roaming from place to place like beasts of the field” (Chamberlin 10). They both turn out to be the only survivor of the marine accidents, a mockery to the historical and racist statements that suggest the Indian is a “dying” or “vanishing” race.  Ishmael and Robinson Crusoe both have encounters with Native characters who are assumed to be cannibals. The only difference is Ishmael has got saved because of his Indian shipmate while Robinson Crusoe saves Friday. In order to ridicule these storylines, King mocks Robinson Crusoe’s incivility through his dialogue with his fellow Indian characters in GGRW and Coyote’s dialogue with the story-teller. For example, while indicating the Western Robinson Crusoe’s Britishness, characterised by civility, by having him to say “..you can’t make any rude noises” (332), “..that wouldn’t be polite” (358) and “[w]asn’t Coyote going to do that (“offer an apology”) ?” (430), King has Coyote to jest in a typically British way that Robinson Crusoe is actually naked and thus “embarrassing” (294). The distance between the deserted island that Robinson Crusoe gets stuck in and the civil societies is illustrated by one of his anticipating lines “[i]n that car?” (King 106) and the other ones by Coyote saying “[h]e doesn’t have a car…[t]hat’s a bad point…he doesn’t have a television, either” (King 294). King also makes it explicit that it is Robinson Crusoe that needs to be rescued by pointing out his anticipation for rescue through some lines e.g. “[h]ow long do we have to wait?” (49) and “[w]e were better off standing” (106). In addition to the mockery against the Western literary metaphor, the rebellious aspects of the Native figures e.g. Queequeg and Friday, demonstrate King’s aims and techniques in narratives decolonization.

The inter-connections among the two Robinson Crusoe characters, Thought woman and Coyote

The Biblical aspects of the character name of Ishmael, the Puritan Christian characteristics of Robinson Crusoe and their shared shipwreck experience all indicate their representation of Christianity in GGRW that leads to their seeking of spirituality in a wilderness. This is in part that reason that it is Robinson Crusoe who tells of the story of THOUGHT Woman. The other reason might be his shipwreck experience closely associated with the water imagery that plays a critical role in both the Native worldviews and GGRW. The “reasonable” decision that Thought Woman makes, with “[a]ll things considered” (King 295), and that she would rather be floating than stay with Robinson Crusoe, embodying an Indigenous departure from the colonial narratives.

The ways that King parallels the Western Robinson Crusoe with his Native character counterpart in GGRW are very interesting. For example, the Native Robinson Crusoe acts as if a didactic Christian God, ordering his fellow Natives to “listen” up (King 15), coaching Coyote “[t]hat’s not the right dance at all” (King 274), concerning that the Native Lone Ranger claims himself “omniscient” (King 49). This resonates to the Western Robinson Crusoe who complains that “it has been difficult not having someone of color around whom I could educate and protest” (King 294), a reference to the assimilation of the Indigenous peoples in history. 

The interactions between the four Old Indians, particularly Robinson Crusoe, and Coyote seem to have determined who is the Creator of the world. As a representation of an enlightened European Christian in the original work, the Native Robinson Crusoe in GGRW raises the question “[w]hat about the light” (9) and then suggests that “[m]aybe Coyote can turn on the light” (230) with a further acknowledgement “I believe he did (turn on the light)” (233). This suggests that a Christian admits that it is Coyote who creates the light instead of the Christian God. The Creator status of Coyote is reaffirmed by the Native Lone Ranger, who tells the first and First stories in GGRW, who makes it explicit that they “won’t” (King293) and “didn’t want to” (king 357) START without Coyote.    

Having undermined the supremacy of White civility, Christianity that Robinson Crusoe represents, King also use the inter-connections among the four old Indians and Thought Woman to dismisses the land claims that the European settler-colonists made in history. The storyline that Thought Women hits an island before she encounters Robinson Crusoe implies that there is going to be a clash of land claims await. Here Robinson Crusoe on the island symbols the “Scottish orphan” or homeless European immigrants to the Native lands establishing the nationhood of Canada characterized by the “fictive ethnicity” (Coleman 6). In order to counter the colonial narratives that describes Canada as a deserted land before the arrivals of the European settlers, King plays with the fictionality of the novel Robinson Crusoe, which is credited as marking the beginning of realistic fiction as a literary genre (Wikipedia contributors), and implies that the believability of the colonial narratives is questionable. For example, King embarrasses Robinson Crusoe’s bad memory by having his fellow Indians to keep reminding him how bad his memory is (9, 234), having him to remind himself “[w]e don’t want to forget that” (302) and boast his memory “[y]ou remember the last time you did that?” (416). King also set him up in mistaking Canada (22) for the tropical island (357) he has been to (22, 357)—another excellent and amusing example of Robinson Crusoe’s bad memory or he is just making up stories. The story told by Robinson Crusoe about himself surviving the shipwreck and the island life is implied as fictional, ironically, through his own lines saying “you can’t Tell it all by yourself” (King 14) and “you’ll be able to TELL your children and grandchildren about this” (King 387). The narrative technique that has Robinson Crusoe to tell his story in GGRW further reinforces the mythical aspects of the colonial discourse. In order to urge the younger generation of the Indigenous peoples not to forget the false land claims by the settler-colonists, King has the four Indians to give Lionel the George Custer’s jacket as a birthday gift (382). The Robinson Crusoe’s line “[w]e let Lionel borrow it for a while” seems to allude to the problematic aspects of the land treaties between the European settlers and the Natives. The joke around Robinson Crusoe’s red shirt, alluding to the Native skin color, appears to be not only a reference to the Native character he plays in GGRW but a mockery of the European settler-colonists’ effort in “indigenizing” themselves with the purpose of legitimizing their claims for land titles.  

Works Cited:

Chamberlin, Edward. If This is Your Land, Where are Your Stories? Finding Common Ground. AA. Knopf. Toronto. 2003. Print.

Coleman, Daniel. White Civility: The Literary Project of English Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006. Print.

King, Thomas. Green Grass, Running Water. Toronto:  Harper Collins, 2007. Print.

Paterson, Erika. “Lesson 3.3″. ENGL 470A Canadian Studies: Canadian Literary Genres Sept 2016. University of British Columbia Blogs. 2016. Web. 15 Nov. 2016. <https://blogs.ubc.ca/courseblogsis_ubc_engl_470a_99c_2014wc_44216-sis_ubc_engl_470a_99c_2014wc_44216_2517104_1/unit-3/lesson-3-3/>

ASSIGNMENT 3:5

2. Coyote Pedagogy is a term sometimes used to describe King’s writing strategies (Margery Fee and Jane Flick). Discuss your understanding of the role of Coyote in the novel.

In Green Grass, Running Water (shortened to “GGRW” hereafter), the Coyote figure serves as one of the literary devices for the author to carry out counter-narratives to the dominant colonial narratives and as a result pave the way towards narrative decolonization while asserting the Indigenous presence e.g. the Native worldviews.  

Coyote is a cultural symbol from the ”First Nations/Native American tales, an especially important personage in the mythology of traditional oral literature of Native North America; one of the First People” (Flick 143). Given the fact that Coyote often appears in Indigenous stories as a Transformer or Creator-of-the-world figure, such a character is employed in GGRW  as a vehicle to intervene and change the privileged status of Western literature, religion, history, colonialism, and the marginalised status of the Native traditions. In this sense, Coyote is not only a Native representation in this story but a revolutionary symbol of literary transformer of the colonial discourse. In the Native context featuring a transformative Coyote, King aims to revise narratives that affirm colonial dominance and redefine the histories articulated and defined for many centuries almost exclusively European/European North American authors (Cox 220).

As the Native God figure, Coyote distinguishes itself from the powerful and authoritative Western Creators with its unique attributes: they could be brave or cowardly, conservative or innovative, wise or stupid (Flick 143). The comic aspects of the Coyote figure is often related to the Trickster figures in Western literature who are known for turning things upside down and shaking up reality (“Lesson 3.2”). Given the Native identity as a powerful transformer and Western Tricksters quality of Coyote, it serves in King’s work as a subversive, Native humour dynamics to resist and destabilize the influence of colonial literary discourse. According to Flick and Margery, GGRW is full of jokes that fool around with “the Bible, literary canons” (134). The oral and amusing nature of the Coyote character, who plays a central role in those in-jokes, effectively decontextualizes and disables the Western written stories, making it “a Coyote’s story” and consequently facilitating the revisions and subversions of the invader’s discourses (Flick and Margery 136).

Given Coyote’s Native, transformative, subversive and oral characteristics, it also serves as a mediator between the Native and Western cultures, as well as the story-teller and the audience. More precisely, the character Coyote could work as a “pedagogical” catalyst that bridges the cultural gaps for the audience, facilitating their understanding of the author’s intensions, and thus engage them into the Native spirituality. According to Paterson, those readers who are familiar with Western literary traditions might find themselves encountering many cultural and subtle allusions to historical events and characters and symbols that may be foreign to them on their first time reading of GGRW (“Lesson 3.2”). In order to unpack the cultural cruxes across the novel, Flick and Margery suggest that one has to be prepared to “cross the political border between the two countries, the disciplinary borders between English literature, Native Studies, and Anthropology, the literary border between Canadian and American literature” (132). One of the most important borders is the one between “white ignorance and red knowledge” (Flick and Margery 132), which is a hard to cross especially for the Euro-North Americans as they are often inadequately informed of the Native culture as well as the colonial history. In this sense, the Western audience is likely to get bewildered with “a whole series of posed but unanswered questions” (Flick and Margery 131) throughout the book. Despite the potential issues of readers’ comprehension, the author seems to be intended to “entice, even trick the audience into” working out the meaning as well as the pleasure of a whole range of wit, pun and allusions for themselves (Flick and Margery 132). In this case, Coyote can be “useful” to serving as a dynamic “pedagogical” agent to enlighten the Western readers with Native knowledge that is required for them to not only “get” the text but gain breakthrough perspectives on colonial discourse about the settler-colonist history. The funny character is also there to help the audience to “pay attention” to the Native verbal art that might look alien to them and “listen” to the story-teller as another major Native representation in GGRW.

The significant roles that Coyote plays as a subversive Transformer as well as a pedagogical mediator are manifested in the beginning of GGRW which sees King revising the stories concerning origin and cultural identification. King starts his novel with a beginning story involving the waters, a shared cultural signifier for both Western and Native culture, and the Christian God and Coyote the Native God. In the European Genesis, it is the omnipotent God who creates everything including the waters. However, in King’s story, the Western God is created by Coyote’s Native dream—here King’s playing with the Western symbols and assumptions begins! In contrast to the colonial discourse in which both Christianity and the White settler-colonists occupied the powerful and privileged positions, the encounter of the two Gods in King’s narratives seems to make the Christian God think of himself “a little god” despite his ambition of being in charge of the world and being “a big god” (King 2). Whereas the Christian God is depicted as a noisy and angry character who is concerned about his losing control over the waters, Coyote as the Native God seems cool with what the Christian God thinks is “all wrong” about the natural waters (King 1). What Coyote wants is simply to discipline the Christian God, who behaves like a child with bad temper, so that he could go back to sleep—an amusing counter-narrative to the colonial canonical literature which argued that the “childlike” Native people needed to be “ordered” and “civilised”. The Trickster characteristics of Coyote are also reflected in his tricking the naïve Christian God into thinking himself as smart as a dog while joking with the Native story-teller that the Christian God “doesn’t look like a dog at all” (King 2)—the dialogic aspect of this story is also a subtle attack on the “Christian monologues” (King 21). This joke, along with Coyote’s comments such as “[t]hat Dog Dream has everything backward” or “[t]his dog has no manners”, confronts the colonial narratives where the settler-colonists with White supremacy undermined the Native culture as “primitive”, “uncivilised” and “backward” (Coleman 12). With the comically subversive revisions of the Biblical story centering Coyote, the European culture and colonial history conveyed in written literature is subsumed into an Indigenous framework of oral traditions (Flick and Margery 136), disrupting the discursive structures of the Western canonization of colonial narration. The character of Coyote also helps to “verbally” and effectively communicate the Native cultural knowledge such as the Indigenous respectful notions about the natural forces; it not only makes the Indigenous voice heard but challenges the audience to reflect on the Western and Native culture critically. The pedagogical role that Coyote plays might also be able to guide the readers of GGRW through the processing of the enormous cultural and historical allusions interwoven across the book.

Works Cited:

Flick, Jane, and Margery Fee. “Coyote Pedagogy”. Canadian Literature161/162 (1999). Web. 21 Mar. 2016.

Flick, Jane. “Reading Notes for Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water.” Canadian Literature161/162 (1999). Web. 21 Mar. 2016.

King, Thomas. Green Grass Running Water. Toronto:  Harper Collins, 2007. Print.

Coleman, Daniel. White Civility: The Literary Project of English Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006. Print.

Cox, James H. “’All This Water Imagery Must Mean Something’: Thomas King’s Revisions of Narratives of Domination and Conquest in Green Grass, Running Water”. American Indian Quarterly (2000). Web. 04 Nov. 2016.

Paterson, Erika. “Lesson 3.2”. ENGL 470A Canadian Studies: Canadian Literary Genres Sept 2016. University of British Columbia Blogs. 2016. Web. 5 Nov. 2016. https://blogs.ubc.ca/courseblogsis_ubc_engl_470a_99c_2014wc_44216-sis_ubc_engl_470a_99c_2014wc_44216_2517104_1/unit-3/lesson-3-2/

ASSIGNMENT 3:2

1.For this blog assignment, I would like you to outline the reasons why colonial authorities could not conceive of accepting the Metis as a third founding nation.

One of the major reasons that Indigenous groups were not accepted by an English Canada as a legitimate nation-founding force is due to the exclusive nature of the European settler-colonists’ ideology of Whiteness civility that framed the negotiations for the confederation. The concept of civility is characterised by “the temporal notion of civilization as progress that was central to the idea of modernity and the colonial mission with the moral-ethical concept of a (relatively) peaceful order” (Coleman 10). It is suggested that Colonial-era Europeans tended to believe that there was one path to civilization and social development (Coleman 12).  In the sense of such social evolution theories, the European culture was deemed “ahead” on the single timeline of civilization and thus “higher” than the Indigenous culture which were “delayed” or “backward” (Coleman 12). As Coleman pointed out, the colonial racial hierarchy “is clearly evident in the early legislation imposed upon Aboriginal people in Canada, such as the Act for the Gradual Civilization of the Indian Tribes (1857), the Civilization and Enfranchisement Act (1859), and the Indian Act (1876), which collectively viewed Aboriginal people as ‘uncivilized human beings whose cultures were decidedly inferior to British culture’” (13). While suggesting that the culture of “these others” at “the stages of primitiveness” could be civilized by the European civility which was “well advanced on the scale of modernity”, the European settler-colonists denied the Indigenous people’s access to something as civil as the “liberal democratic politics” as asserting that Indigenous people could not understand civility as an ideal form of government (Coleman 12). In this sense, the Matis’s claims for collective right were dismissed by the notion of the superiority of the bounded White civility which was legitimized as the foundational ideology of the emerging English Canada as a nation, as the Indigenous people were not considered as full members of the civil collective.  

In addition to “the history of White supremacy and colonial racism that are fundamental to the establishment of Canada as a nation” (Coleman 10), the other major reason that the Metis was excluded from English Canadian governmentality is the purpose of the settler-colonists to securing the privileges they occupied on the Native resources e.g. the land titles. What happened was the Indigenous claim included the inherent rights of prior-presence and they attempted to make it to the Constitution. This would have protected the Indigenous legitimacy of the Native land titles while clashing with the colonial interests. With the disregard of pre-contact history, the settlers underwent a process of “indigenization”, representing themselves as already the Native people of the Canadian soil and thus asserting their priority to latecomers or new immigrants. On the other hand, as mentioned above, the colonists claimed superiority to Aboriginals based on White civility (Coleman 16). With their “indigenous” as well as “civilized” status, the settler-invaders legitimized their dispossession of Aboriginals from their traditional land while the Indigenous presence in this land was denied and their claims for sovereignty were “legally” supressed.

The denial of the Indigenous representation in Canadian Federal Government in the late 19^th century is also due to the absence of Indigenous voice in the forging of the “imagined community” of Canada promoted mainly by writing schemes. Given the concepts of nationalism are established by a nation representing the collective narratives across times “as if they formed a natural community”, Coleman argues that “what has come to known as English Canada is and has been…a project of literacy (5). Given the European written traditions, Canadian nationalism, characterised by the English Canada’s fictive ethnicity of White civility, was constructed and reconstructed through settler writing. As a result,  White civility were naturalized as the norm for English Canadian cultural identity and  the normative concept of English Canadianness came to be established (Coleman 5). The collective awareness of White English Canadianness was reinforced by the canonization of settler literature. From the lens of settler-colonists, the “official symbolic history of Canada is a history of settlement” and according to this Loyalist version of history, “Canada was once a wilderness-wild, uncultivated, largely empty-until Europeans arrived and carved out a society.” (Coleman 29) This way of telling Canada’s story not only differed from the Indigenous historical oral accounts but misled people to “forget” the Indigenous prior-presence as well as the pre-contact history. However, such settler-colonial subjectivity as well as the privileged status of Whiteness was reaffirmed anyway through the narrative project of forming National consciousness enabled by the colonial literary productivity and print capitalism (Coleman 16). In contrast, the Indigenous cultural groups were marginalized in Canadian society due to their insistence on the story-telling traditions over the textual narrations and as a result a lack of literary representation in the National narratives. In fact, the emergence of the imagined collectivity called Canada involved not only a literary project but a racial project. There were numerous writings at the time when the Metis negotiated to be one of the founding nations of Canada that suggested the “Indians” were “incompatible with the national project of building a British-based civility”(Coleman 22). Moreover, the Natives were also considered in the then popular writings as a “vanishing race” that was doomed in the single timeline of civilizations (Coleman 29).  As a result of the colonial racism as well as the normative ideas of White superiority that was to secure settler-colonists’ privileges, which were legitimized by a literary project that was fundamental to cultivate the awareness of Nationalism, the Metis ended up failing to negotiate the sharing of political power of the emerging Federal Government of Canada.  

Works Cited:

Coleman, Daniel. White Civility: The Literary Project of English Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006. Print.

ASSIGNMENT 2:6

7] Following Carlson’s discussions on literacy as “part of a broader genre of transformation” (61), try to explain what he means when he says that transformation is an “act of literacy.” This can be confusing at first, but if you follow his discussion beginning with “how Salish people understand the process or act of transformation in relation to literacy itself” and pay attention to how he uses etymology to shape his insights, you should be able to extract an explanation for conceptualizing transformations as writing and as readable.

It is widely recognised that the Indigenous stories, particularly those transformative ones that look at the “beginning of time” (Robinson 7), play a critical role in the way in which we define indigeneity. The stories told by the Aboriginal elders or chiefs or prophets reflects not only what beliefs and values they hold as a cultural group but how they make sense of the world, their historical identity as well as the strategies that prepare them for continuing transformations in an ever changing environment. As revealed by the two Salish stories about transformation investigated in Carlson’s research study addressing how Indigenous orality relates to literacy, seeking the power of literacy has been the inherent motivation of the Indigenous people to “making the world right” (Carlson 46). In this essay I argue that in the Indigenous historical sense of transformation, to transform in a way means to perform the act of literacy.  

Both of the two Salish transformative stories studied in Carlson’s article, regardless the “great diversity exists among the speakers of the twenty-two mutually unintelligible Salish languages” (Carlson 45), demonstrate the critical role that literacy plays in the historical consciousness of the Indigenous people. First of the all, the divine nature of literacy in the context of Indigenous cultural values is identified in both historical accounts. For example, in Bertha Peters’ narrative, the three Indigenous chiefs were taught to write by the “Great Spirit”, a God figure, implying that the “powerful forces from the spirit world had wanted them to be literate” (Carlson 45); whilst in Robinson’s narrative, a confidential “written document” was kept by God who assigned Creation tasks to a pair of twins who were claimed to be the forefathers of the Indigenous and British people (Robinson 9). Here literacy is considered as much powerful as the Creation forces in history. Moreover, both stories make it explicit that any attempt of the monopoly of this intangible public property will be punished. For instance, in Bertha Peters’ narrative, the three chiefs who acquired literacy from God were “turned to stone” for failing to share and pass on the writing skills (Carlson 43); whilst in Robinson’s narrative, the younger twin who stole the “paper” and refused to reveal the contents of the written document was “immediately banished to a distant land” (Robinson 9). These similar storylines seem to suggest that literacy is so essential that a shared ownership of such knowledge should be protected. Furthermore, both stories indicate profound and bitter consequences are to be expected if literacy being denied or stolen. For example, Bertha Peters’ story points out that, given the three Chiefs’ failing to teach their people literacy skills, the Indigenous people would remain illiterate and therefore becomes vulnerable for the situations where the Native things such as the knowledge of literacy, the Native land and resources and governing authority would be taken away from them. Similarly, Robinson’s story implies that the loss of literacy for the descendants of the elder twin leads to the killing of their lives as well as the stealing of their land by the descendants of the younger twin. Nevertheless, one of the most effective remedies addressing the issues of interracial balance, as suggested by Robinson’s story, seems to be associated with something in readable and written form – the “Black and White Law” jointly produced by the two heads of the two races (Robinson 10). The distribution of the three copies of this Law to both parties, as the story goes, seems to symbolise the repatriation of literacy to the Native people and as a result, the interracial balance that was earlier disrupted has been restored (Carlson 44).  The fact that in Indigenous stories “literacy is shown to be a powerful force, capable of precipitating transformations in people’s lives not unlike the transformative power associated with Coyote” (Carlson 51), goes to show the historical understanding of the Indigenous people who embrace literacy as part of the historic transformations as well as their own historical identity. More significantly, the Indigenous people seemed to believe that the transformative power of literacy might determine whether one culture fails or continues to thrive.

Given their post-contact content, it is argued that the Indigenous historical narratives, where literacy is prominently featured, were likely to be informed by some historical factors such as the smallpox epidemics and subsequently the early encounter between Indigenous people and the Europeans (Carlson 56). It was the time, according to Paterson, when the Indigenous traditional stories were required to make sense of the new reality that the Indigenous society was facing (“Lesson 2:3”).  More precisely, the historic changes demanded that the past experience needed to be resymbolized and reinterpreted in relation to present situations in order for the Indigenous people to survive the changing environment (Gamlin 19). As a result, the transformative stories re-told by the Aboriginal prophets drew upon the power of literacy, which is illustrated the prophetic literacy as well as the Indigenous etymology. The nineteenth-century Salish prophets are believed to have acquired literacy and “used this medium to prepare Salish people for the profound changes associated with European colonization” (52). It is argued that the prophets, who were the major story-tellers, expected the arrival of the newcomers, who possessed literacy skills, to “bring positive change to a chaotic world in the aftermath of smallpox epidemic” which might be assumed to be caused by the lack of literacy (54). This historical factor is paralleled with the previously mentioned two transformative stories that stress the significance of the loss as well as the repatriation of literacy. Interestingly, the creditability of the prophets’ predicting “the impending arrival of white people” lies crucially in “a piece of paper” which “was so valued that it was passed from son to son” (Carlson 54). However, it was also the printed words that the prophets told stories with prompted the Native people to “welcome and make room for the white people” and as a result led to their marginalization (Carlson 56). In this sense, literacy seems to be a determining factor that affects the way the Indigenous cultures understood and coped with transformations. In addition to prophetic literacy, some etymological evidences that demonstrate the close relationship between transformation and literacy in the context of Indigenous culture have also been identified. Carlson found out that the Indigenous terms referring to the names of the Transformers, the acts of transforming share similar root words with the word of literacy (61). That is to say, to transform is to read and write in the Indigenous sense of literacy.    

Works Cited:

Carlson, Keith Thor. “Orality and Literacy: The ‘Black and White’ of Salish History.” Orality & Literacy: Reflectins Across Disciplines. Ed. Carlson, Kristina Fagna, & Natalia Khamemko-Frieson. Toronto: Uof Toronto P, 2011. 43-72.

Paterson, Erika. “Lesson 2:3”. ENGL 470A Canadian Studies: Canadian Literary Genres Sept 2016. University of British Columbia Blogs. 2016. Web. 18 Oct. 2016. https://blogs.ubc.ca/courseblogsis_ubc_engl_470a_99c_2014wc_44216-sis_ubc_engl_470a_99c_2014wc_44216_2517104_1/unit-2/lesson-2-3/

Robinson, Harry. “Introduction.” Living by Stories: a Journey of Landscape and Memory. Ed. Wendy Wickwire. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2005. 7-30.

Assignment 2:4

First stories tell us how the world was created. In The Truth about Stories, King tells us two creation stories; one about how Charm falls from the sky pregnant with twins and creates the world out of a bit of mud with the help of all the water animals, and another about God creating heaven and earth with his words, and then Adam and Eve and the Garden. King provides us with a neat analysis of how each story reflects a distinct worldview. “The Earth Diver” story reflects a world created through collaboration, the “Genesis” story reflects a world created through a single will and an imposed hierarchical order of things: God, man, animals, plants. The differences all seem to come down to co-operation or competition — a nice clean-cut satisfying dichotomy. However, a choice must be made: you can only believe ONE of the stories is the true story of creation – right? That’s the thing about creation stories; only one can be sacred and the others are just stories. Strangely, this analysis reflects the kind of binary thinking that Chamberlin, and so many others, including King himself, would caution us to stop and examine. So, why does King create dichotomies for us to examine these two creation stories? Why does he emphasize the believability of one story over the other — as he says, he purposefully tells us the “Genesis” story with an authoritative voice, and “The Earth Diver” story with a storyteller’s voice. Why does King give us this analysis that depends on pairing up oppositions into a tidy row of dichotomies? What is he trying to show us?

In “The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative”, Thomas King demonstrates, in the way of story-telling, the problematic aspects of the monotheism-based dichotomy, where different cultural beliefs exist in competing and hierarchical relationships. He suggests that such an “easy” way of thinking might lead to situations where cultural complexities and choices of beliefs are at stake (King 25). In the context of cross-cultural exchange informed by the monotheism-based divisions, according to King, cultural complexities are likely to be reduced to simplified and opposed terms, such as “civilized/barbaric”, with superiority as well as negative connotations involved (25). Such dichotomy-based conceptions with egocentric and dismissive characteristics, as identified as “the elemental structure of Western society”, might lead to the distrust of the cultures of “them” which seem to contradict those of “us” (King 25).  In the context of Christian-monotheism-based dichotomy, for example, if the Christian Creation stories are accepted as “sacred”, then the Creation stories BY the Native North American people, which also claim to be authentic, will be automatically categorized as “secular”. Such categorization implies the Christian European’s cultural hegemony that undermines the First Nation stories’ credibility as well as their status; despite the fact that “these two creation stories are essentially the same” from a theologian’s perspective (King 23). In King’s words, “if we see the world through Adam’s eyes, we are necessarily blind to” the Native stories (25). In my own words, given the “omnipoten, omniscient, and omnipresnt” (King 24) and “martial” (King 26) nature of the Christian God who insists that “there’s only one rule” (King 21) and “a single deity” (King 24), the Native Creation myths have to be eliminated in order to be “invisible” to Adam’s eyes.

The consequences of the European ideas of monotheism-based dichotomy were devastating to the Indigenous people and their cultures which are known for diversities (“Lesson 2:2”). The European settlers saw the Indigenous traditions “through the lenses of their ancient stories” (Lutz 3) informed by “firm and distinctive hierarchies and divisions” (“Lesson 2:2”). From this peculiar dimension, the “Indians” were immediately assumed to be “originated outside of the Garden of Eden” and conveniently classified as a kind of primitive species from “somewhere between the realms of man and animals” (“Lesson 2:2”), as opposed to the Europeans who were proud to be descendants of Adam and Eve. Once the dichotomy was readily established, the European colonizers, armed with the supremacy of science and reasons, were determined to enact “God’s will” that might include a “divine” plan of excluding the “Indian” oral traditions just because they did not seem to fit into the European “cosmology, mythologies, and histories” (“Lesson 2:2”) under the circumstances of the “Christian monologues” (King 21). According to Paterson, in a 75 years’ time between 1880 and 1951, the First Nations institutions such as telling and retelling of stories at the potlatch were outlawed by the Indian Act (“Lesson 2:2”). Moreover, the continuity and credibility of Indigenous oral traditions were seriously disrupted as First Nations children were “cut off from their community and family stories” due to their mandatory attendance of the residential schools (“Lesson 2:2”). The major cause of such a brutal genocide of Indigenous cultures is very likely to be rooted in the ethnocentric notion of monotheism-based dichotomy that creates fierce tensions and inequitable power relations between distinctive worldviews held by different cultural stories.

In order to prompt his readers to reflect on the conventional Western paradigm of monotheism-based dichotomy critically, King retells the two Creation stories, one attributed to the Christian Europeans and the other Indigenous people, by pairing them up in a binary opposition in a subversive way. Despite the centrality of the Christian Genesis and the marginalised status of the First stories in reality, in King’s story-telling narratives, the believability of the Native Creation story is instead given more credits while the Christian one’s seems to be undermined. Such a creative dichotomy that frames the story-telling narratives is further reinforced by a neat analysis of the contrasting characteristics of the two stories, in which the values that the Indigenous myth represents, as opposed to the Christian ones, continue to be favoured in a contemporary paradigm. For example, being influenced by “different strategies in the telling of these stories”, a general modern audience is very likely to find themselves identifying more with the imagery of a “comic” world of equality and cooperation and balance crafted in the Native story, than the authoritative, hierarchical and chaotic world in Christian Genesis (King 22-24). Then the story-telling ends up abruptly with a tough question: here are the choices and which one do you choose? At this point, it manifests itself as a false choice based on a simplistic and exclusive dichotomy. The interpretation of the values that claim to be characteristic of respective stories seems to be deliberately selective for the sake of making up a binary opposition, overlooking the cultural complexities of each story; not to mention that the distinctive values of both stories are not mutually exclusive, as one may argue that a world of competition and a world of co-operation simply represent two sides of one coin. After all, Creation stories are ONLY stories that are used by different cultures to “understand the world in which they exist” (King 10), with no issues of believability or authenticity involved. In this sense, both the Christian and First Nations beliefs that “define the nature of the universe” (King 10) from divergent dimensions make equally perfect sense. In my opinion, they could also work together in an cooperative way, contributing to providing diverse and comparative perspectives for human beings to make complete sense of the complex world.        

Works Cited:

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

Lutz, John. “Contact Over and Over Again.” Myth and Memory: Rethinking Stories of Indignenous- European Contact. Ed. Lutz. Vancouver: U of British Columbia P, 2007. 1-15. Print.

Paterson, Erika. “Lesson 2:2 First Stories”. ENGL 470A Canadian Studies: Canadian Literary Genres Sept 2016. University of British Columbia Blogs. 2016. Web. 7 Oct. 2016. https://blogs.ubc.ca/courseblogsis_ubc_engl_470a_99c_2014wc_44216-sis_ubc_engl_470a_99c_2014wc_44216_2517104_1/unit-2/lesson-2-2/

Assignment 2: 3

Read at least 6 students blog short stories about ‘home’ and make a list of BOTH the common shared assumptions, values and stories that you find and look for differences as well; look to see if you can find student peers who appear to have different values then yourself  when it comes to the meaning of ‘home.’ Post this list on your blog and include commentary please.

After taking a look through most of the essays addressing the sense of home for my student peers, I have noted a whole variety of aspects of this conception, which are different than my perspectives, has been explored. However, regardless the divergent facets of home we looked into, a common ground has also been identified. It is illustrated by our writings that home is defined by both conceptual and physical terms simultaneously.

Just like me, the ideas about home for some of my fellow students start from their childhood with something tangible involved. As children, their sense of home is naturally tied to the house where their family resided (Westerman; Lu). Here the sense of home engages not only the dwelling place but people, be it parents (Koivukangas) or sisters (Heathwood). However, from the ways they connect their sense of home with their relationships with their families, it seems to be “a feeling of completeness” they are referring to (Heathwood). You are home when you are surrounded by those loved ones who complete you (Heathwood; Wagner). This resonates with me as I maintain that a house cannot be made home without a family.

While I examined the way in which my understanding of home changes from “A man’s home is his castle” to “home is where my family is”, my student peers explored the change of the concepts of home in a different way. They seem to argue that the ideas of home ever evolve as we grow and change (Westerman; Lu; Koivukangas; Bachynski). It seems that most of them share similar experiences of moving out of their childhood home when they became adults. Then one may be aware that the childhood home “was my parents’ home but it was just my house” (Wagner). They also came to realise that one’s home is in a sense up to the individual him/herself to create and build up when you are independent of your family and getting adapted to real-life situations (Wagner; Chloe Lee; Higgs). However, it does not mean that homes are mutually exclusive. Instead, it is argued that both our childhood homes and our new homes are  worth embracing and feeling blessed of (Walker; Bachynski). Such a notion corresponds with mine which in a way recognizes both my China home and Canada home.  

Although some of my classmates emphasized the conceptual aspects of the sense of home by arguing that “home lies within my own thoughts” (Westerman) and that home is only “a state of mind” and “inside of every one of us” (Chloe Lee), the ways they defined their sense of home appear to contradict their denial of the connections between a home and a place. For example, both statements of “[r]egardless of where my home physically is, it has always been a place of acceptance, freedom, and love” (Westerman) and “[i]f you have both a place and a community and you are wanted in that place and you want to be in that place, then I would say that is a home” (Chloe Lee) demonstrate that the concepts of home always go side by side with physical spaces. In addition to geographical locations, the sense of home is also tied to relationships with people as shown by the portrayals of feeling at home such as “I can feel at home in many places, and so long as I feel safe and content with people that I care for, then I am home” (Westerman) or “Home is where I feel I belong and know that people there will say you belong to them, no matter the situation” (Chloe Lee).

Apart from the connection of the sense of home with places and people, the other intersection that conceptions and reality meet up and contribute to the idea of home is identified in the relationship between memories/stories and particular places/people. It is suggested that one of the main reasons why a place is remembered as a home is it holds not only fond memories such as one’s childhood (Lu; Westerman) but beautiful stories tied to the unforgettable experiences with other people such as your family (Koivukangas). In this sense, you can call one place home even if you are no longer living around there (Hui). As a result, both Hui and I celebrate Guangzhou as our common home even though neither of us resides there. Likewise, when some of my coursemates identified a country or a city as their homes, it is likely that what they actually feel belonged to is something intangible associated with that land e.g. its culture norms and values (Westerman; Izat) or a song such as the national anthem (Vernon).

From reading through my fellow students’ blog posts addressing their sense of home, an evolving and adaptable quality of the home conceptions has been identified. Their early notions of home is tied to their childhood homes as well as the relationships with their families that make them feel a sense of completeness. Such a concept, however, is destabilized as they grow up and become aware that they get to build up their own homes as opposed to their parents’ homes. Their ideas about what makes a home become increasingly fluid and conceptualized as they move around, no longer being confined within four walls (Higgs; Chloe Lee). However, my findings drawn from my student peers’ essays have shown that their feelings of home are always defined by both spiritual and physical terms. They engage specific places and people as well as the memories and stories they give rise to. It is evident that one’s sense of home is always situated in the intersection of something both tangible and intangible.  

Works Cited:

Bachynski, Jenny. “Shifting: Assignment 2:2”. Canadian Studies: Exploring Genres through Canadian Literature. Oct 2016. University of British Columbia Blogs. 2. Web. 03 Oct. 2016. https://blogs.ubc.ca/470acanstudies/2016/09/28/shifting/

Heathwood, Bryony-rose. “2:2 ‘Home’ grows just as we do”. Bryony-Rose Heathwood’s English 470 Blog. Oct 2016. University of British Columbia Blogs. 2. Web. 03 Oct. 2016. https://blogs.ubc.ca/bryonyroseheathwood/2016/09/28/22-home-grows-just-as-we-do/

Higgs, Kaylie. “Is This Home?”. Creating Connections—Exploring the Impact of Stories on Identity, Place and People. Oct 2016. University of British Columbia Blogs. 2. Web. 03 Oct. 2016. https://blogs.ubc.ca/kaylieandautumn2016/

Hui, Lucas. “Blog Post 2.2 – “Home” Is Where the Heart Is”. ENGL 470A. Oct 2016. University of British Columbia Blogs. 2. Web. 03 Oct. 2016. https://blogs.ubc.ca/lucashui/2016/09/28/blog-post-2-1-home/

Izat, Alison. “2:2 Home Sweet Home, Country Sweet Country”. The Power of Stories Alison’s Blog—For ENGL470A Canadian Studies . Oct 2016. University of British Columbia Blogs. 2. Web. 03 Oct. 2016. https://blogs.ubc.ca/alisonsblogstoriesandremembering/

Koivukangas, Karoliina. “Assignment 2.2 Home?”. Karo’s Thoughts On Canadian Lit. Oct 2016. University of British Columbia Blogs. 2. Web. 03 Oct. 2016. https://blogs.ubc.ca/karoscanlit/2016/09/28/assignment-2-2-home/

Lee, Chloe Coco. “2.2 Home”. Chloe’s Blog for English 470–My Exploration of Canadian Literature | Winter 2016. Oct 2016. University of British Columbia Blogs. 2. Web. 03 Oct. 2016. https://blogs.ubc.ca/470chloe/2016/09/28/2-2-home/

Lu, Jenny. “2.1 Home”. English 470A Insights. Oct 2016. University of British Columbia Blogs. 2. Web. 03 Oct. 2016. https://blogs.ubc.ca/jennytlu/

Wagner, Hannah. “Assignment 2.3 – Stories of HOME”. A Look at Canada-Exploring Canadian Literature, Stories and Identity. Oct 2016. University of British Columbia Blogs. 2. Web. 03 Oct. 2016. https://blogs.ubc.ca/hwagner/

Walker, Madeline. “One Great City”. Canadian Studies—Reading (and Writing) Canadian Stories. Oct 2016. University of British Columbia Blogs. 2. Web. 03 Oct. 2016. https://blogs.ubc.ca/walkermad470/2016/09/26/one-great-city/

Westerman, Hannah. “Assignment 2:3”. Hannah’s Blog | ENGL 470 – Canadian Studies. Oct 2016. University of British Columbia Blogs. 2. Web. 03 Oct. 2016. https://blogs.ubc.ca/engl470westerman/

Vernon, Danielle. “Home”. Exploration Of Canadian Literature–Just Another UBC Blogs Site. Oct 2016. University of British Columbia Blogs. 2. Web. 03 Oct. 2016. https://blogs.ubc.ca/cdnlit/2016/09/28/home/

Assignment 2:2

Write a short story (600 – 1000 words) that describes your sense of home; write about the values and the stories that you use to connect yourself to, and to identify your sense of home.

My initial sense of home comes from the land and above it the dwelling place to which one’s memories of home are attached. It started from Haifeng, my father’s hometown which is over four hours’ ride from Guangzhou my place of birth. He left Haifeng and removed to Guangzhou at around eight upon his parents’ early death. When I was little, my father would take me back to his birthplace for the annual “celebration” of Qingming festival, which is intended for commemorating our ancestors. I was always intrigued by how different he looked in his hometown than in Guangzhou where he could be identified as an immigrant for however long he has been around there. I guess the reason he was more than excited was he felt like he was home in the deepest sense. As the festive ceremonies went on, he would show me around his parents’ house and shared with me his own stories as well as the stories he was told of. His favourite story, which was told by one of the elders, is how my grandfather, a rice trader and a then head of the village, negotiated between several military forces with the rice as briberies and thus protected his homeland from being sacked and looted during WWII. My favourite story of his is, however, tied to his limited living experience with his parents in their house. There was one year my grandfather dressed my father up on his birthday like a Western body from a well-off family and took him some pictures at home. This was absolutely unusual as it happened in a farming community where things did not change much over centuries, given its remoteness from the political, economic and cultural centres such as Guangzhou. Then I found one of the answers to the question why my father and I would identify more with the Western cultural values than its Chinese counterparts in many cases. At that very point, I came to recognise it is not only my father’s home but mine as it helps us figure out where we come from and who we really are. The presence of the house is so important for sustaining all those fond memories as well as securing the sense of home that my father and his little brother keep an annual plan for the maintenance of the house which is now actually left vacant and remains functional only for celebrations of some festivals. The idiom “a man’s home is his castle” makes perfect sense here.

However, one may argue that the sense of home is not complete if the man is not living with his family in the castle. I did not realise that I had actually been homeless in Canada until when my father was recently diagnosed with lung cancer at the late-stage. I went back to Guangzhou to look after him and saw him through some tough medical treatments in the past summer. When considering the final arrangements, he asked me how to deal with the flat, which is literally my birthplace, when he and my mother are both gone. I replied, “I have no idea. What I am certain about though is the place will become meaningless to me when you are not around.” When the time came that I had to get going back to my Canada home, I broke down. I cried, really hard, when I saw my father waving good-bye to me from across the street in front of the hospital in his wheelchair with my mother standing behind him shedding tears. Then I knew I was leaving home rather than coming (home in Canada). In the sense that home is anywhere my family is, Canada is not my home as my parents live over 6,000 miles apart.

Having said that, the multi-cultural Canada does make me feel at home in the way in which this country opens up for cultural diversities. Take languages for example. I still remember the degree to which I was shocked by the trilingual characteristics of YVR airport when I arrived at Vancouver on day one. Although I personally do not feel right about the Chinese language being paralleled with the two official languages of Canada in public properties, I cannot deny the fact that the appearance of my home language does make me feel closer to home and in part leads to my decision of settling down in Vancouver permanently. That may also be the reason why a growing number of Chinese middle-class families, who have been to many places around the world, are making the same decision building up their new homes in here. The other moment which made me feel more identified with my Canada home is when I heard the broadcasters saying “ngo gwok”, meaning “my/our country” in Cantonese which is my mother tongue, when they mentioned Canada in a news programme at a local Cantonese TV station. For example, “’Ngo gwok’ athletes won another two gold medals today at Rio Olympics.” Then I found myself celebrating not only the Chinese Olympics team’s success but Team Canada’s, with two homes living in harmony in my heart via the language that speaks the best to it.

Assignment1:5

Your task is to take the story about how evil comes into the world, the story King tells about the Witches’ convention in Chapter One of The Truth about Stories, and change it any way you want, except the ending. You can change to place, the people, the time – anything you want. But, your story must have the same moral – it must tell us how evil came into the world and how once a story is told, it cannot be taken back.

First, learn your story by heart, and then tell the story to your friends and family.

After you have told the story a few times,  post a blog with your version of the story and some commentary on what you discovered about story telling.

“It was witch people. Not Whites or Indians or Blacks or Asians or Hispanics. Witch people. Witch people from all over the world, way back when, and they all came together for a witches’ conference. In a cave. Having a good time. A contest, actually. To see who could come up with the scariest thing. Some of them brewed up potions in pots. Some of them jumped in and out of animal skins. Some of them thought up charms and spells. It must have been fun to watch. Until finally there was only one witch left who hadn’t done anything. No one knew where this witch came from or if the witch was male or female. And all this witch had was a story. Unfortunately the story this witch told was that human beings were created. Unfortunately the story this witch told was that human beings were created. As a result, the faith in God(s) as being the creator(s) would be perpetually doubted whilst the witches being imprisoned in oral tales and written literature And when the telling was done, the other witches quickly agreed that this witch had won the prize. “Okay you win,” they said. “[B]ut what you said just now — it isn’t so funny. It doesn’t sound so good. We are doing okay without it. We can get along without that kind of thing. Take it back. Call that story back.” But, of course, it was too late. For once a story is told, it cannot be called back. Once told, it is loose in the world (italic and underlines mine, King, 10).”

I admit that I thought it was a crazy idea to make up a Creation story of my own when I came across the assignment of rewriting Thomas King’s story about the Witches’s convention in Chapter One The Truth about Stories. It is not only because I had never thought of the origin of the world beyond the terrain of science but it feels kind of transgressing a sort of divine law or offending a divine providence.  I mean it is a subject that is too deep for an ordinary person like me to consider or a job that is too “sublime” to do as stories may contribute to creating the world and in this sense the imagination might become reality (“Lesson 1:3”). In fact, I found myself ending up with futility when I tried to reproduce a story about how evil came into the world that is completely different than King’s version, no matter how hard I pushed myself to. Then I began to blame the Chinese Creation tales which provide only simplistic roles of evil, comparing to for example the characterisation as much distinctive and complex as that of Satan in its Western counterparts. The under-portrayal of the evil presence in the Chinese culture did not seem helpful when it came to conceptualise how evil is brought to this world with a story.

However, as soon as I managed to rewrite the story by making some minor alteration of the original text, I found that I could have felt less uneasy if I was aware that actually the story “is all we are” and that “we are the stories we tell ourselves” (King 153). It implies, in the case of writing or re-writing a kind of Creation story, we are actually and symbolically demonstrating how we make sense of how the world works, or simply using the story to parody the reality; rather than offering an explanation of what we believe has exactly happened. So rewriting King’s story offers an opportunity to communicating my values and beliefs. For example, when I had the witches all to agree that the creation of human being is the scariest thing in the world, I was suggesting that I personally think that humans themselves are actually the cause of evil, which is in a way illustrated by the conflict between the desire for profit and the Aboriginal resistance as shown in the news posted by the course instructor (“Canadian”). Having said that, the alteration also demonstrates my critical thoughts on the “evilness” of mankind by having the witch to say that the reason human beings are scary is they are capable of critical thinking about such as the conceptions of God(s) and witches. By linking human beings’ “flaw” of losing the faith in providence with their abilities of being critical, I intend to leave the readers of this altered story contemplating the complex relationships between stories, values, beliefs and humankind.    

In addition to the story-rewriting experience, the experience of preparing myself for telling a story also struck me as interesting. I was aware that telling a story could be found more challenging than writing or rewriting a story when I was preparing to tell the above story. Although I have not got the chance of telling someone else the story in question yet, I came to realise that whereas the text of the story could be kept to the writer him/herself and edited in whatever way one wants before it is made available to the readers; “once a story is told, it cannot be called back” (King 10). So you as a story-teller would better off being careful with the story you are going to tell and subsequently lose control of. This, I guess, tells a lot about the fascinating power of stories as manifested during the process of my seeking to rewrite and tell King’s story.   

Works Cited,

“Canadian First Nations, U.S. tribes form alliance to stop oil pipelines.” 23 Sep. 2016. YouTube. Web. 22 Sep. 2016.

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

Paterson, Erika. “Lesson 1:3 Introduction To Thomas King and Story”. ENGL 470A Canadian Studies: Canadian Literary Genres Sept 2016. University of British Columbia Blogs. 2016. Web. 22 September 2016. https://blogs.ubc.ca/courseblogsis_ubc_engl_470a_99c_2014wc_44216-sis_ubc_engl_470a_99c_2014wc_44216_2517104_1/unit-1/lesson-13/

Assignment 1:3

Explain why the notion that cultures can be distinguished as either “oral culture” or “written culture” (19) is a mistaken understanding as to how culture works, according to Chamberlin and your reading of Courtney MacNeil’s article “Orality.

The characterisation of cultures as an “oral” or a “written” one is a problematic conception in the sense of its implications that lead to the tension and inequitable relationships between genres of communication and cultures.

First of all, the way in which cultures are divided by written or spoken language may widen the gap between the two ways in which information is exchanged, with a competitive relationship in-between being created (“Orality”). It seems to be a common way of thinking that writing by nature is considered “cultivated” and “complex” (Chamberlin 19) as it “frees the mind for original, abstract thought” . However, the dialectical relationship between printed and spoken words suggested by some scholars in effect makes speaking seem comparatively “primitive” and “underdeveloped” as opposed to writing (“Orality”). It also entrenches the idea that oral traditions can only exist in an aesthetic sense (“Orality”) due to their “naturalness” and “naiveté”, consequently dismissing the practicality of oral language (Chamberlin 18). However, such a misconception has been challenged by Chamberlin who argues that the oral words in the story-telling traditions can also perform abstract work effectively such as communicating the knowledge of religion, science, history and the arts or “give meaning and value” to the reality that we could hardly make sense of without imaginative perspectives (1). It can also, according to Chamberlin, reveal truths of the world we live in as much as scientific knowledge written in texts can do and in a way bring us close to it (1). In addition to the equivalency between writing and orality which is evident in terms of their practicality and effectiveness in communicating abstract information, Paterson suggests that orature as a way of passing on stories might be more complex than written literature which begins with stories as far as the dynamics of readership and listenership is concerned (“Lesson”). She demonstrates that listeners in the context of story-telling can literarily change the story according to factors such as the time and space and people involved in the speech performance and therefore make new and contemporary meanings with that transformation; whereas readers of a text can do nothing about the story when it becomes textual and as a result static (“Lesson”). Although Paterson applauds the strength of orality over writing in terms of its power in empowering people to make changes on stories happen, she suggests that both forms of communicating stories should exist in a symbiotic relationship (“Lesson”). Such a conception is echoed by MacNeil who maintains that neither orality nor writing should be privileged (“Orality”).

The misconception that writing is more superior to orality might lead to hierarchical relationships as they are employed to frame and differentiate cultures. The categorisation of the “oral culture” and “written culture” implies that people who have writing skills are more intelligent, than those who rely on orality, in terms of their “self-reflexive” abilities that can generate “real thought” (Chamberlin 19). The subliminal bias that writing literacy holds the key for the development of human civilization while oral traditions are not able to “accommodate civilized thoughts and feelings” (Chamberlin 13) is very likely to give rise to the racist assumption that Indians, in the historical context of colonial Canada, should be educated; as a result, this group of people who are identified as having “primitive consciousness” (Chamberlin 19) or having a childlike state of mind or even “beasts of the field” (Chamberlin 10) can push through “the chronological progression” (“Lesson”) and become civilised. Such an understanding implying the hierarchical relationship between the Canadian Aboriginal cultures and the European cultures leads to the idea of replacing the Indigenous languages with the European ones (Chamberlin 18). Another implication of the division of the “oral” and “written” culture is that the societies who have the traditions of written literature are more “advance”, than those “whose major forms of imaginative expression are in speech and performance”,  in terms of the evolutionary process (Chamberlin 19). The underlying ethnocentricity in this colonising discourse lead to the justification of the legitimacy of dispossession, including the new comers from Europe taking the land away from the native inhabitants, and worse, enslavement of Aboriginal people in the Canadian history. The unequal dichotomy of the “oral” and “written” culture eventually causes the division of “Them and Us” (Chamberlin 4).

Works Cited:

Chamberlin, Edward. If This is Your Land, Where are Your Stories? Finding Common Ground. AA. Knopf. Toronto. 2003. Print.

Courtney, MacNeil. “Orality.” The Chicago School of Media Theory. Uchicagoedublogs. 2007. Web. 16 SEP. 2016.http://lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/mediatheory/keywords/orality/

Paterson, Erika. “Lesson 1:2 Story & Literature”. ENGL 470A Canadian Studies: Canadian Literary Genres Sept 2016. University of British Columbia Blogs. 2016. Web. 16 Sept. 2016. https://blogs.ubc.ca/courseblogsis_ubc_engl_470a_99c_2014wc_44216-sis_ubc_engl_470a_99c_2014wc_44216_2517104_1/unit-1/lesson-12/

Assignment 1:1

Following the instructions in this lesson, set up your blog and write a short introduction (300 – 400 words) that includes at least two hyperlinks and a visual. This introduction should, 1) welcome your readers, 2) include a brief description of the course, and 3) some commentary on your expectations for this course of studies.

Hello Everyone! My name is Junyi Wu but you can call me Patrick if you want. I came to live in Vancouver last year and have since been engaged in the studies in UBC working towards my degree in Education. Other than fulfilling the English credits as the prerequisite of the teacher education programme, my selection of this course is mainly to do with my multi-cultural background and experience.

I come from Guangzhou, or Canton, the historic status of which chartered as the only Chinese port for overseas trade (1757-1842) has made it a distinguished intersection of Western and Oriental culture as the European and Arabian and Persian traders settling in. Known as the “cradle” of the Chinese modern revolution, Guangzhou also saw the departure of the country from its last imperial dynasty (of the Qing from 1644-1912) making its way through to the first ever modern nation-state in the mythical five thousand years of Chinese history (Sigel 283). Along with those critical historical events, there emerges the distinctive Cantonese culture which impacts the development of contemporary Cantonese literature. Such a multi-cultural background of mine enables me to develop an initial understanding of ENGL470 which is, in a way, to investigate how the Canadian Aboriginal culture characterised by story-telling and the colonial European literary culture encounter and interact over the process in which Canada as a nation and Canadian literature as a genre come into being.

The Canadian Indigenous studies are also relevant to my multi-cultural experience working on the Swedish Ship Götheborg, a replica of a 18^th century merchant vessle owned by the Swedish East Indian Company. I suppose its voyage to Guangzhou in 2006, in remembrance of the history of the trading between Sweden and China, would NOT have been much celebrated by the Cantonese had it been operated instead by the British East India Company which is arguably involved in the opium sales that lead to the first Opium War, or the Anglo-Chinese War, taking place in Guangzhou (Robins 81). Although Guangzhou did not end up being colonised as happened to Hong Kong, the kinship between the two Cantonese cities facilitates the exposure to the conflicting stories informed by divergent dimensions including the native mainland China ideology, characterised by the sense of a victim of Western imperialism, and in contrast the British colonizing narratives which defend the legitimacy of gaining territorial rights over Hong Kong. My understanding of the history of the British colonization of the Chinese land as well as my experience of dealing with the complexity of stories developed from different sources and presented accordingly in different ways might effectively enable my critical approach to the Canadian Indigenous history, which appears to be one of the major components of this course of Canadian studies.

One of the most significant characteristics of the Canadian Indigenous history seems to be the systematic and enduring discrimination that the Canadian Aboriginal people were subject to in Canada’s colonial history. The miserable experiences and painful feelings of the First Nations caused by institutional racism could be well identified with the Chinese who had to face the discrimination manifested through the Chinese Immigration Act of 1923, or the Chinese Exclusion Act (Chinese), regardless the contribution they have made towards the growth and prosperity of the Canadian society e.g. in opening the virgin land of British Columbia (Brief). Personally my experience with discrimination did not happen on the Swedish sailing ship, nor in Britain where I studied my MSc and worked in the hospitality industry, but unfortunately here in Canada. I saw a man, who appeared to be a white and a drunk, shouting at a bunch of young individuals and saying something like “speak English or go home to China”. It now prompts me to wonder if this gentleman knows anything about the Indigenous “beginning” stories in addition to the European Genesis (King 10). If he did, would the power of the native orature help open up his mind for the variety of cultures that contribute to the creation of a multi-cultural Canada as it is today? If Canadians from all walks of life bear the awareness of the diversity of Canadian literary genres in mind, would they be able to find the common ground that makes one land home to all of us, including the natives and newcomers (Chamberlin 4)?

Hopefully I could explore those questions in constant and structured dialogues, enabled by the blogging assignments, with my fellow students who may have a large number of fascinating stories and critical insights to share. In return, I hope my own stories and ideas could offer up a range of distinctive perspectives into the class readings, thus contributing to the collective knowledge property of this weblog community. With the posting of this very first blog in my life, I am feeling incredibly excited in joining you in the same boat in search of the past and the future of Canadian literature.

WORKS CITED

A Brief Chronology of Chinese Canadian History: From Segregation to Integration. n.d. Web. 10 Sep. 2016. <http://www.sfu.ca/chinese-canadian-history/chart_en.html#>

“Canadian Aboriginal History: “Did You Know”?” 27 Jul. 2011. YouTube. Web. 10 Sep. 2016.

Chamberlin, Edward J. If This is Your Land, Where are Your Stories?: Finding Common Ground. Toronto : A.A. Knopf Canada, 2003. Print.

King, Thomas. The Truth about Stories: A Native Narrative. Toronto : House of Anansi Press, 2003.Print.

“Lakota Origin Story by Elder Duane Hollow Horn Bear.” 4 Sep. 2016. YouTube. Web. 10 Sep. 2016.

Robins, Nick. “Loot: In Search of the East India Company, the World’s First Transnational Corporation.” Environment and Urbanization 14.1 (2002):79-88. Print.

Sigel, Louis T. The Reform and Restructuring of the Guangzhou Economy: The Question of National Applicability. Ed. Yu, George T. China in Transition : Economic, Political, and Social Developments. Lanham, Md. : University Press of America, 1993. UBCLibrary. Web. 10 SEP 2016.

SOIC: The Swedish Ship Götheborg. n.d. Web. 10 Sep. 2016. < http://www.soic.se/en/our-story/>

The Chinese Experience in British Columbia: 1850-1950, Immigration: Chinese Exclusion Act. n.d. Web. 10 Sep. 2016. < http://www.library.ubc.ca/chineseinbc/exclusion.html>