The various allusions King weaves together throughout pages 126 – 136 create themes around power and control, and Indian stereotypes. For beyond the cheery and humorous storytelling is a dark and unsettling story of dominance, sexism, and racism.

The first of the two chapters takes place in Bill Bursom’s Home Entertainment Barn with the focus being on what Bill calls The Map. The tone of disrespect and domination is set immediately in the chapter when Bill doesn’t know how to address his employee properly, and responds with her correction with “Whatever.” He also assumes moral and intellectual superiority over her when his dismisses her as not being able to understand the “unifying metaphor” and the “cultural impact” of The Map.

Bill himself represents an oppressive force to Natives. His name is a combination of the names of two men known for their hostility towards Indians (22). Holm O. Bursum advocated for New Mexico’s mining resources at the expense of the Pueblos. There is a parallel between Bill creating The Map, and Holm having “his eye on the map of New Mexico…which aimed to divest Pueblos of a large portion of their lands and to give land title and water rights to non-Indians” (22). The “Buffalo Bill” part of his name alludes to William R. Cody who was known for exploiting Natives in his plays. Thus, Bill Bursom has links to individuals who oppressed and dominated Natives, with the latter also contributing to creating Indian stereotypes.

Bill oppresses Natives by selling televisions. Throughout the novel, television and t.v. watching is used like alcohol to Native people. It draws them into a false reality that they use to escape from the hardships they face. Lionel, Amos, and many other Natives in the novel resort to television when life becomes unbearable. It produces tropes of stereotyped Natives being dominated by whites. And behind the scenes of these movies and shows is a world that exploits and humiliates Natives like Portland. Finally, television is a defining thread in the capitalistic, materialistic, Western web that is antagonistic to the Native way of life.

Bill sees himself as a Machiavellian prince. He will unapologetically exploit Natives because they are a potential threat to stable Western culture and government. Like a Machiavellian prince he cruelly oppresses those who might threaten stability, and his tool of oppression is televisions. This is the “unifying metaphor” of The Map that Lionel and Ms. Smith don’t understand (128). The Map represents a North America that maintains power and control over internal dissent by television. Thus, for Bill, the “cultural impact” (128) of television is its use as a tool of oppression.

The next chapter continues expanding on the theme of power and control by narrowing its exchange between Native women and white men, and expands more on the issue of Native stereotypes.

Jeanette, Nelson, Rosemarie De Flor, Bruce are all active in the stereotyping of Canadian Indians (25). Although Jeanette is kind to Latisha, Nelson’s blatant sexual harassment sullies the exchange. He views her as an object and, like George Morningstar, knows she is a “real Indian” (130, 133). Both men dominate Latisha and see her for her Indianness rather than her individuality.

Like Bill, George represents a figure known to be hostile towards Natives, namely George Armstrong Custer (20, 33), who is known as a famous Indian fighter. His glib, spiritually empty character prevents him from seeing past generalizations and stereotypes. Although he appears intelligent and attentive, he really lacks understanding and can’t see anything more than an Indian stereotype.

5. Narratives assume, in Blanca Chester’s words, “a common matrix of cultural knowledge.” The Four Old Indians are perhaps the best examples of characters that belong to a matrix of cultural knowledge, which excludes many non-First Nations. What were your first questions about and impressions of these characters? How have you come to understand their place in the novel?

At first I was confused by the Old Indians. I wondered how they can both be telling a Creation story while also standing beside a highway and talking about being hungry. There seemed to be two separate narratives that were fragmented and interrupted by other stories. I wondered if the Old Indians where the same as the characters telling the story at the beginning of the novel. These two narratives also gave me the impression that they existed within two different realms. The first storytelling one left me with the impression that they were talking within a spiritual realm, or perhaps in a dream. The second set of narratives seemed to work within the real world also inhabited by Lionel, Charlie, Eli, and Alberta. These two realms seem to operate in parallel with one another.

As I read the novel, I began to see the Old Indians as a fusing of Native and non-Native worldviews. It struck me as peculiar that they had anti-Native names – that is, names associated with popular culture figures that represented Western elements that undermined and crippled the Native way of life. Yet the Old Indians were, at least to my mind, depicted as Natives in how they spoke and were treated by the other characters in the novel.

Their quest to fix the world led me to see them as bridging between myth and reality, and imagination and truth. My cynical side was snickering along with Lionel, expecting the Old Indians to prove ineffectual and fail to fix the world. They seemed naive and even delusional. After all, what chance do they have against a reality that has crushed and destroyed Natives for so long? My optimistic side, on the other hand, expected they would play a role in resolving at least one of the conflicts faced by the character inhabiting the real world. Wouldn’t it be great if the Old Indians really did now some power over the gears of reality? Maybe they have a monkey wrench up their sleeve after all.

Reading Blanca Chester’s ‘Green Grass, Running Water: Theorizing the World of the Novel’ deepened my view that the Old Natives serve as a fission between two worlds. She argues convincingly that King has created a syncretic narrative to show the power that stories have to impact the real world. She unpacks the “there is no truth only stories” idea that the narrator says to Coyote in Green Grass, by claiming that stories have the power to create multiple realities. By fusing together seemingly incommensurable elements, King has created a world that is very different from any of its aggregate elements. He has created a world qua emergent property from its constituent parts.

Chester interpreted King as making weak metaphysical claims about the interconnectedness between language and reality. Our experiences of reality provide the raw materials for our stories. Conversely, the stories we tell shape and mold the realities from which we experience. In this sense, we construct our own reality. However, I wouldn’t go so far as interpreting this as being a uniquely Native way of knowing since this is perfectly compatible with Western scientific ways of understand the interplay between language and experience.

In contrast, a strong metaphysical claim is to take the power the Old Indian have on constructing reality as literal and attributing this as essential to a Native way of knowing. In the story, the Old Native provided a bridge between storytelling and imagination, and real actual event and states of affairs. In the storytelling realm they tell and retell Creation stories, and in the realm or reality, they talk about fixing the world. This implies that their power to fix the world comes from telling stories which become true in the real world. For example, they tell of a new ending to the Western movie with John Wayne killing all the Indians which causes that new ending to happen.

I’m not sure how to interpret this story-reality fusion and what stance a Native way of knowing takes on this. How do take this claim by Armstrong that Chester uses:

“In the Okanagan language, perception of the way reality occurs is very different from that solicited by the English language. Reality is very much like a story: it is easily changeable and transformative with each speaker” (57).

In what sense is reality changeable and transformative?

Similarly, in what sense does a Native view understand language as retaining “the power to influence and construct multiple realities” (58)?

Works Cited

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

King, T. (2007). Green grass, running water. Toronto: HarperPerennial Canada.

1] The Quebec Act of 1774, and the BNA act of 1867 each document the historical ability of Britain, as colonial authority, to accommodate two founding nations in the interest of confederation. Shortly after confederation of the eastern provinces, in 1869, the Metis Nation of Manitoba created a provisional government and attempted to negotiate directly with the new government of the confederationto establish their territories as a province under their leadership. In the end, their leader, Louis Riel was charged with treason – as the CanLit guide puts it, “Canada at the time was not willing to accommodate more than two founding nations.”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. Use the CanLit guide and the summary of Coleman’s argument on the literary project of white civility to substantiate your observations. You might also find part of your answer in The Bush Garden. You should also take into consideration past discussions on ‘the civilizing mission’ of colonialism in Unit 2. Louis Riel also appears in Green Grass Running Water, and accordingly it is worthwhile to do a little outside research around Riel’s provisional government and its attempts to negiciate with the new Canadian government.

In 1869, Louis Riel spearheaded the Metis National Committee which was consolidated as a provisional government for the Metis Peoples. Essentially, the committee represented the Metis rejection of British-Canada’s authority to govern them and aimed to negotiate a settlement between the new Canadian government and the Metis people thereby granting them independence from colonial Canada. However, the Canadian government rejected the Metis demands as being recognized as an independent nation and began to use military force to pressure them into disbanding the committee. This strife with the Metis came at a time when there was both pressure from the American south, and from French Canadians who also wanted their own independence. Thus, it was a risky venture for the Canadian government to fall into conflict with the French sympathized Metis. Their reasons for rejecting the Metis claim of national independence must have been strong. So what were they?

In White Civility: The Literary Project of English Canada, Coleman argues that the Canadian identity was being modelled after an ideal of British whiteness.

“[W]hat has come to be known as English Canada is and has been…the formulation and claboration [sic] of a specific form of whiteness based on a British model of civility…whiteness has been naturalized as the norm for English Canadian cultural identity” (5).

The Metis peoples were seen as an alternative to this ideal. This, like other alternatives such as French and Eastern European worldviews, was considered a threat to white Britishness and had to be neutralized, or eliminated, if Canada was to continue to progress as an independent nation.

Coleman lays out what I will call the moral superiority argument.

“Because Britishness for the English Canadians represented the most advanced form of political and social life in the world, it was therefore assumed as the civil norm to which non-British Canadians should assimilate” (19).

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Europeans where “classifying and stratifying humans into a hierarchy of racial types” (13) with the Indigenous peoples being viewed as “uncivilized human beings whose cultures were decidedly inferior to British culture” (12). Moreover, like uncivilized children, the Indigenous could not be bargained with, but rather, placated, manipulated, or forced into complying with their superior British-Canadian rulers.

The Metis where viewed as inferior and treated as such by the Canadian leaders. Riel’s attempts to earn Metis national independence through political, or “civilized”, means was either rebuffed, or, as in 1870 when the Canadian government sent a lynch mob to kill Riel after compromising with him to grant the Metis unique rights and freedoms.

A second thread to Coleman’s discussion is the necessary evil argument. English Canadians believed that there was a single path to civilizations and that through social Darwinian forces – i.e. that “better” societies devour worse ones – the alternative less evolved Indigenous and Metis societies were destined to be swallowed up by British-Canada. The Metis where viewed as being part of a “vanishing race” that was “doomed under the unstoppable wheels of progress” (29). By granting the Metis national independence, the Canadian government would be supporting a lost cause, an impending failure, while hindering its own progress.

“Civilized whites, therefore, must cherish evil memories of the necessary losses that have been incurred so that an enterprising, cultivated society could come into full flower” (30).

Do these myths still play in the Canadian subconscious? Is there an implicit assumption of moral superiority over Indigenous and Metis people, and do Canadians placate themselves with stories of necessity to justify the moral evils that occurred when creating this nation called Canada? Is forgetting and denial the only way we can call Canada home? Perhaps Ernest Renan was right in 1882:

“Forgetting, I would even go so far as to say historical error, is a crucial factor in the creation of a nation, which is why progress in historical studies often constitutes a danger for nationality. Indeed, historical enquiry brings to light deeds of violence which took place at the origin of all political formations, even of those whose consequences have been altogether beneficial. Unity is always effected by means of brutality” (8).

Works Cited

CBCnews, CBC/Radio Canada, www.cbc.ca/history/SECTIONSE1EP10CH4LE.html.

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

“Louis Riel.” The Canadian Encyclopedia, www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/louis-riel.

5] “To raise the question of ‘authenticity’ is to challenge not only the narrative but also the ‘truth’ behind Salish ways of knowing “(Carlson 59). Explain why this is so according to Carlson, and explain why it is important to recognize this point.

When two communities disagree over historical occurrences, they might appeal to a common pool of evidence as a way to resolve the disagreement. This is understood as a relatively straightforward (albeit rare) debate over the facts with the winner being the side with the strongest factual support. However, what happens when two communities disagree over what constitutes evidence? How are they to resolve disagreement if neither side agrees with the others’ evidence used to support their views? This problem is seen with the debate over the origin of the first inhabitants of North America. The scientific view argues that the first people migrated from Europe whereas the Indigenous view understands the first people as either originating in North America or migrating here through supernatural means. The problem is that neither side agrees with the others’ type of evidence used for supporting their views.

Carlson provides some insight into the Salish epistemic understanding of historical accuracy. He argues that for a story to be considered historically accurate it need not be considered authentic in the sense that it lacks any post-contact knowledge. So if a story that tells of the first people in North America contains things like paper, kings, and white people, it is no less a real historical description than a story made up entirely of “pre-contact temporal dimensions” (56). Carlson also goes on to claim that reality is also not a criteria for assessing historical accuracy. Does this mean these stories are true but not real?

Instead of reality and authenticity being criteria for historical accuracy, the Salish appeal to consistency and authority. If the teller changes the story from one telling to the next, the story is seen by the listeners as being inaccurate. And if the story is challenged or doubted, the speaker must appeal to his or her family for credibility.

Prima facie, outside perspectives such as the scientific community might outright reject these claims of truth on the ground that consistency and authority are neither necessary nor sufficient criteria for tracking truth. They might argue that it is more than possible to retell a historically inaccurate story over and over again, and that a person’s family lineage has nothing to do with whether what they say is true or not.

By restricting the criteria for historical accuracy to eliminate Salish ways of knowing, outside communities shut off the possibility of having a meaningful dialogue with the Salish. To avoid this, outside perspectives need to understand the importance these historical stories have for the Salish. The Salish views stories as being powerful for changing the world. For example, the Salish believe that one must be careful when telling stories about deceased people for if the story is altered or abused it could cause their spirit to be taken away. They are also keenly away of the power interpretations of the past have of shaping the future. Thus, for them, there is more at stake when telling stories than there is for outside communities. It can affect their spirit and reality.

For the Indigenous communities, the debate over historical occurrences and origin is more than just a debate over inert scientific facts. It is a debate over the indigenous way of knowing history since the scientific view largely dismisses the oral tradition as a reliable means of attaining truth. It is also a debate over identity, where some believe that migration “cleaves our link to our homeland and erases our identity” (“B.C. Indigenous people react to the resurfacing of 2 migration theories”, 2018)

Works cited:

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?

When King tells two factually incompatible creation stories, he is trying to show is that we have a reciprocal relationship with the stories we tell, and this relationship is coloured by our human needs, wants, and values, rather than our desire to express and believe truths.

“The truth about stories is that that’s all we are” (2).

We are our stories in the sense that we create them just as much as they create us. He uses the story of his father to show us that his need to understand why his father abandoned him and his family, and his anger he felt by this led him to construct a story that is meet these needs.

“Yet this is the story I continue to tell myself, because it’s easy and contains my anger, and because, in all the years, in all the tellings, I’ve honed it sharp enough to cut bone” (25)

Although the story of meeting his father in a bar is not true, this doesn’t matter because that is not what the story is for. He is motivated by anger and confusion when creating the story, and through years of telling the story, it has been pruned down to reflect those feelings and needs. He is the story, and the story is himself.

King extends this idea to religious beliefs. Many empiricists would argue for a copy principle of belief formation in that we experience the world in a particular way which leads us to form beliefs that correspond to these experiences. Our beliefs track truth. Therefore, the stories we tell that are constructed from these beliefs also reflect truth. Yet King argues that our motivations and emotions feed into the stories we create which is a version of social intuitionism. This view states that the evaluations we have of the world are largely based on gut reactions, and the reasons we often give for having these evaluations are largely confabulated. So King, like the social intuitionists, argue that religious creation stories are not told so much as an expression of believe – as beliefs are merely superficial in this sense – but rather, they are envincements of our motivational sets and emotional proclivities.

“Do the stories we tell reflect the world as it truly is, or did we simply start off with the wrong story.” (26)

For King, starting off with the wrong creation story involves approaching existential and moral issues will unsavory motives and emotions. The desire to dominate and justify this domination has fed into the Christian story of creation, and has been honed as these motives and emotions have been expressed throughout time. The Native story, on the other hand, reflects interdependence and harmony. Choosing between this story and the Native one is not really a matter of choosing between different versions of truth-telling. Rather, it is a choice between identities.

Works Cited:

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.

I’ve read through over six of your blog posts with the aim of trying to understand your assumptions and values about home. Although I know on an intellectual and superficial level that we are so very much different, experiencing this difference through your writing brings this understanding to a depth far deeper than any intellectual understanding can do. Yet we all share a common humanity. We all strive for belonging, close bonds, and a stable sense of identity.

All of you have experienced some degree of homelessness. On the one end is Rachel, who felt it when she changed rooms in her family home. This new room had not yet been turned into a home by creating memories with people she cares about. For her a sense of home “is found in human interaction and community.”

On the other end is J.T. has never felt connect to a place either here in Canada of back in his home country Korea. His homelessness comes from the alienation and disconnect he has feels. He has never felt valued by his peers in Korea or his family growing up. “I never felt like I belonged home, or anywhere else”

This theme of belonging was common to all but one. Lexis and Alexis have felt unbelonging because of how others’ view and treat them based on their ethnicity. For both of them there is disconnect between their multigenerational roots here in Canada and their “exotic” or Asian appearance. For Tamara and Suzanne, this unbelonging came from traveling and moving. Neither has stayed in one place enough to gain a deep sense of belonging. Tamara, like Lexis and Alexis, struggles with having consistent sense of identity given her complex historic ethnicity.

Yet we are all so different. Our experiences and relationships are what give us our individuality. Although it is our memories that either connect or disconnect us from our homes, each of our memories are so very different. Suzanne’s fond memories of her mother define her, just as J.T. painful memories of his father define him. However, the way they are defined by these memories are far more different than anyone can know.

Some of us have experienced racism while others’ have not, and the racism felt by those so unlike is unique and incommensurable. Sure we all share a sense of injustice, either directed upon ourselves from others or upon others by others, the emotional tones of this felt injustice is so very different because our experiences that make us who we are are different.

I haven’t really given it much thought, my sense of home. I think part of this is because I’ve never really worried about having it taken away. Another part is because I’ve lived a somewhat transitive life, especially during my formative years in adolescence. For instance, I went to four different high schools in four different cities from grade 8 to 12. But I think a key reason I haven’t thought much about my sense of home is because this sense is something that mostly exists in the primitive depths of my subconscious. I think my sense of home is like my sense of possession over a romantic partner, or my sense of threat when seeing a stranger brandish a weapon. These senses, these intuitive reactions, are integral parts of my self both as a person but mostly as a homo sapien. And I’m convinced that no amount of culture, education, or socialization will make these senses go away. They may get buried and become more easily controlled, and some of them I may not even like or want to have. But they are still there no matter what.

But this is course on stories not psychoanalytic theory or evolution psychology. What stories do I tell myself that connect me to this land we call Canada and make it my home? That’s a hard questions. Reflecting on this has led me down two paths. Let me start with the stories I have told myself that foster a sense of unbelonging to my home.

Since I can remember, I’ve always felt like a guest and a sojourner rather than an inhabitant or occupant. The first home I remember was as shabby apartment my mother rented from a smelly and shady manager in New Westminster. Even at a young age, I felt that we were merely staying there, and our stay was out of necessity rather than choice or want. I have felt that for every place I lived since. I am a tenant not an owner.

Living in over four different cities during high school was also out of necessity. It was necessarily determined that I followed my father on his journey. I followed him on his path of self-destruction toward a predetermined endpoint: death. And along the way, we stayed with various family members and in hotels as guests. Sure this was humiliating at times. But these keepers were frozen in time, watching us from the outside, as we travelled along on our existential road trip.

So maybe I don’t have stories that connect me to this land we call Canada. Or maybe I do but they operate in the background and as so obvious I don’t even notice them. Or perhaps they’re there but are unimportant to me. I’m really not sure, all this is new to me.

My second reflective path has taken me through the terrain of identity and Canadian patriotism. What stories do I tell myself that make it so I feel at home here in Canada? What stories do I tell myself that make me feel Canadian? For one thing, these questions only seem to come up either within (artificial) academic settings, or when my tribalistic instincts are being activated. Being a Canadian and having a Canadian home only matters to me when an outgroup member is threatening to take something away, or when creating esteem with an ingroup member. At least that’s how I look at it. Canadian identity is a relational property in that its existence requires an antagonist. Since we don’t face much conflict here within Canada, or between Canada and other nations, Canadians have little Canadian identity. The First Nations, on the other hand, face plenty of conflict, but their identity and cohesiveness has been systematically dismantled by their oppressors.

I am at home here in Canada because this is the place I happen to be born. I feel at home because this is my instinctual reaction to living here. The stories I tell myself about my Canadian home are like wet paper. I am an unsentimental Canadian.

Hello all!

Here is my story. Writing fiction is something I’ve almost never done so it was strange experience in the sense that this came from free association rather than rational (I hope) deliberation. It was also strange that archaic language cropped up here.

I have a great story to tell you. It’s about how evil came into this world. It all started with three brothers who hated each other. But their hate is not like the hate we know today. For during this time in the progress of humanity, hate was neither an act nor a word, but was a thought. It was something people kept inside at all costs even if it killed them doing so. In fact, this kind of internalized hate killed people all the time. It devoured them like cancer.

Hate was kept inside for one simple reason: externalized hate was thought to anger the powerful Eye in the sky. This Eye watched everything everyone did with a piercing judgmental gaze, mysterious and hungry. It was hungry for hate, and if fed, it would turn everything to ash. So everyone lived in fear of the Eye. They felt it watching and waiting. They felt it like they felt the air that suffocated them but was neither seen nor heard.

The brother that hated each other were like all people who lived during this quaint time. First off, they were polite and at times sweet. So sweet in fact that they made each other and anyone else who had a taste sick. They spoke with a frantic cadence, as if they were afraid to be caught saying something wrong or incorrect (which they did all the time as everyone knew but wouldn’t say). This matched their countenance of nervousness and agitation which left the impression that they were ready to explode like shaken up bottles of beer.

Like all people, the buzzing hateful thoughts devoured the brothers’ consciousness. It was agony but they could not release it for fear of the Eye’s wrath. This pitch of hateful thoughts was even more shrieking when the brothers were together in blood and body for all people during this era shared the peculiar quality of hating those most close. Sure they hated coworkers, clerks, Facebook semblances, and the like. But with these objects of hate, the brothers were able to release stabs of hate through polite banter and, put simply, showing off. Since kinships fell outside this convention of silent attacks, the hate the brothers felt for each other was all the more wild and intense.

These brothers hated each other more than anyone has hates anyone else before because they were nearly the same person. Triplets at birth, they grew up with the exact same likes and dislikes, friends and enemies…They were so identical that the hatred between them blurred into the most intense kind of hatred of all: self-hatred. Now this hatred was multiplied by three and reached a pitch that no mortal could bare. They needed a way to release it without angering the Eye. And they did. They discovered a way of saying what they mean without really saying what they mean. They invented fiction and the story. They learned how to evince their hateful thoughts through the stories they told. And so evil, through untrue-true acts and words, was unleashed onto the world forever.

Why is it hard for so many of us to consider Canada home? How is it that the First Peoples of Canada feel homeless in their homeland? And why do multi-generational Canadians feel not quite right about calling Canada home?

According to Chamberlin it has to do with the stories we tell ourselves about Canada. These stories are what tie together reality and imagination, and what connects people to the land they inhabit (3). The realities that fill the stories are the actual states of affairs and geographic locations that have to do with home, whereas the imaginings are the values and meanings people attribute to home.

Problems arise when there are contradictions between realities and imaginations (74), and between stories. The realities and imaginings the First Peoples had that tied them to the land had been erased, systematically and intentionally, by the Canadian government. Without these stories, they have been left homeless in their homeland.

For non-indigenous Canadians, there are two contradictory stories we can tell ourselves. On the one hand, is the story of the pioneer who came to Canada to tame the “open”  wilderness and create a society that is now Canada. One the other hand, this “taming” essentially involved dismissing and discrediting the First People’s stories that tied the to their home (78). Their story was replaced by the pioneer’s story.

This second way of looking at the Canadian story creates another contradiction. Stories are what tie people to their land, but this story is one that severs Canadians from this land. It’s a hard pill to swallow that Canada was made our home by making others homeless. It creates tensions within our stories, such as whether Canada’s first prime minister was a national hero or a genocidal criminal.

Consequently, many Canadians don’t feel quite at home in Canada. For some, this is because they haven’t lived in one or any part of Canada long enough to internalize the unique stories that are needed to connect them to the land. For others, it is because they see themselves as descendants to thieves and are thereby complicit in the “unremittent horrors” the indigenous people faced (75) and continue to face today.

Perhaps this is a reason Canadians are so sensitive about criticizing immigration. Perhaps there’s part of us that feels like we’re being hypocrites by telling other they can’t come here to make their story. We know vicariously what kind of horrors this can unlock.

Works Cited

Welcome to My Blog!

My name is Ryan Littlechilds and I am happy to welcome you to my blog for English 470: Canadian Studies: Canadian Literary Genres.

This a course about the Canadian story – who tells it and how they tell it. Specifically, we will focus on the differences and similarities between Indigenous and European literary and oratory traditions. Our study moves beyond the story itself, however, by also including meta-literary issues of whose stories “we” as “Canadians” hear and those “we” ignore. This course will address Canadian history and identity, racism, colonialism, canonization, and power.

The process by which we study these complex issues is by interacting through our blogs. Our professor, Dr. Paterson, has provided assignments that we post on our blogs. Students’ are expected to comment and respond on each other’s blogs, creating an interacting web of insights and questions. In short, this course involves two streams of learning. We will learn about important core Canadian issues through the power of stories. We will also learn how to effectively use collaborative online work spaces.

So what are my expectations of this courses? I have taken Dr. Paterson’s ENGL 301 before and it was the best online course I have taken yet because it was highly structure and practical. My advice to fellow students is to be vigilant on keeping up with the assignments. Although they are frequent, they are chunked in a way that if you spend about an hour a day on them, you should be able to keep up and do well. I have not come across an online course yet that chunks the assignments so well. ENGL 301 was also practical. I still continue to use what I learned in that course in my life (here’s an assignment we did). I am optimistic that this course will be the same.

I also expect to expand my knowledge about Canada and use this knowledge in my life and in my future career as a high school English teacher. I am very excited about this!

Nevertheless, I approach this course, as I do with all humanities courses, with a measure of skepticism. This course’s cannon of knowledge has been filtered by our professor and academia in general. There is no pure knowledge in the humanities. If there truly is a leftist bias within the humanities, then this course and all the others we have taken up to this point, has provided a mere shade of the spectrum of colours that make up the reality we think we know.