{"id":33,"date":"2020-02-09T16:12:57","date_gmt":"2020-02-09T23:12:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/sashini\/?p=33"},"modified":"2020-02-09T16:19:34","modified_gmt":"2020-02-09T23:19:34","slug":"assignment-24","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/sashini\/2020\/02\/09\/assignment-24\/","title":{"rendered":"Assignment 2:4"},"content":{"rendered":"

First stories tell us how the world was created. In <\/span>The Truth about Stories<\/span>, 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. \u201cThe Earth Diver\u201d story reflects a world created through collaboration, the \u201cGenesis\u201d 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 \u2014 a nice clean-cut satisfying dichotomy. However, a choice must be made: you can only believe ONE of the stories is the <\/span>true<\/span> story of creation \u2013 right? That\u2019s 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 \u2014 as he says, he purposefully tells us the \u201cGenesis\u201d story with an authoritative voice, and \u201cThe Earth Diver\u201d story with a storyteller\u2019s voice. Why does King give us this analysis that depends on pairing up oppositions into a tidy row of dichotomies? What <\/span>is<\/span> he trying to show us?<\/span><\/p>\n

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King emphasizes the dichotomies of the two creation stories because it is not about what is true or false, but that the way stories are told, are an influence on how society works.\u00a0 A creation story is a mix of imagination and reality to establish a political system and a way of life. As Tanya Gahr<\/a> \u00a0writes in the Indian Corporate Training Inc blog, creations stories pass down understandings about themselves and their landscape. \u00a0 I think King likes to emphasize the dichotomy of the stories, because the way they contradict themselves, only one would be \u201ccorrect\u201d, as King even says in The Truth About Stories, \u201cwe are suspicious of complexities, distrustful of contradictions, fearful of enigmas\u201d (King 25),.\u00a0 Hence, the reason for causing Native genocide by the colonialists.<\/span><\/p>\n

Now it is clear that King emphasizes the believably of one creation story over another; the believability of the \u201cEarth Story,\u201d because he is trying to show us how the Adam and Eve creation story has created a lot of animosity in human civilization.\u00a0 The Adam and Eve story would have helped bring a world where something is good or evil, where there is a hierarchy, fortune and punishment, right or wrong. Because of this, it would have paved the way for discrimination against anything outside of the norm.\u00a0 We see that with the way of the treatment towards Indigenous populations, through the establishment of residential schools to assimilate them into colonial populations, Native camps, and the establishment of laws such as the Indian Act of 1876, that sought control over the Indigenous way of life.\u00a0 Overall, there were grave consequences for Aboriginal communities, in that there was a loss in knowledge and storytelling, and culture inheritance. The First Stories, and the Indigenous way of life would have been a complexity and outside the norm for Colonialist life, thus in a hierarchy, it would be below them.\u00a0 Hence the need to control Indigenous populations.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

However, I am aware that King does not want us to attack one creation story over another, but to be aware of the consequences of a story. Stories establish a system and a way of life.\u00a0 I think he wants us to be more open minded and going beyond what we think as \u201cnormal.\u201d I think he wants us to rethink what we have accepted socially, and understand why we think the way we do.\u00a0 After reading the article, \u201cWhy do we have creation myths?\u201d<\/a> by Julian Baggini from the Guardian, I understand why we feel the need to create creation stories. We are trying to make a causal link between what we are and the world. We try to make sense of it by linking reality and imagination.\u00a0 It seems to be the way we cope in making sense of the world around us. Unfortunately, sometimes this way of thinking has more good than bad. It can lead to prejudice, and discrimination. Understanding our prejudices and discrimination, can help us be more open minded, because we are aware of the way we think and why we think the way we do.\u00a0 I think that is what King was trying to show us.\u00a0 By creating a tidy row of dichotomies between the two creation stories, he is able to emphasize the values being portrayed in both populations.\u00a0 The “Earth Diver” creation story emphasizes a world of accepting uniqueness, and collaboration.\u00a0 The Adam and Eve story emphasizes structure, dominance, and hierarchy.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Works Cited<\/p>\n

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Baggini, Julian. \u201cWhy Do We Have Creation Myths?\u201d\u00a0The Guardian<\/i>, Guardian News and Media, 27 Mar. 2006, www.theguardian.com\/theguardian\/2006\/mar\/28\/features11.g21.<\/p>\n

Gahjr, Tanya. \u201cCreation Stories – The Origins of Culture.\u201d\u00a0Creation Stories – The Origins of Culture<\/i>, 7AD, www.ictinc.ca\/blog\/creation-stories-the-origins-of-culture.<\/p>\n

King, Thomas.\u00a0The Truth about Stories: a Native Narrative<\/i>. House of Anansi Press Inc., 2010.<\/p>\n

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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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":70152,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/sashini\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/sashini\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/sashini\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/sashini\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/70152"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/sashini\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/sashini\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/sashini\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33\/revisions\/36"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/sashini\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/sashini\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/sashini\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}