The Immigration Act of 1910 was basically an extension of a similar legislation passed in 1906 which aimed to “sift the wheat from the chaff” (cic.gc.ca), so to speak, in regards to multi-ethnic immigration into Canada. Around the turn of the 20th century, the Canadian government was making a concerted effort to populate the Western provinces, and the prairies in particular. They were quite successful in doing this, perhaps too much so. Within a few years the population of the Western provinces had become increasingly non Anglo Saxon in origin, and the Immigration Acts of 1906 and 1910 were put into effect to curb the influx multi-ethnic immigration. One of the most notorious parts of the 1910 act was labelled Section 38, and stated that the Canadian government had the power to restrict “immigrants belonging to any race deemed unsuited to the climate or requirements of Canada.” (northamericanmigration.org) This remained the official policy for Canadian immigration law until 1967. Along with increasing the difficulty for people of certain ethnicities or nationalities to get into Canada, the Immigration Acts also increased the power of the state to deport immigrants whom they deemed undesirable. Grounds for deportation included “becoming a public charge, insanity, infirmity, disease, handicap, becoming an inmate of a jail or hospital and committing crimes of “moral turpitude”” (peoplescomission.org)

It can certainly be argued that Daniel Coleman’s theories on “White Civility” in Canada apply, in practice, to the Immigration Acts of 1906 and 1910. Particularly in the prairie provinces, these acts sought to erase or redefine a very recent history of settlement and land cultivation, one in which the principle players were Eastern European minorities. In collusion with the Immigration Acts, the Mennonites, Ukrainians, Jews, and Doukhobors who had spent years converting previously unfarmed land into valuable real estate were forced to assimilate to Anglo Saxon society or lose their land. Many Doukhobors chose to give up their homes rather than their culture, and relocated to British Columbia. Of course, the Indigenous peoples who had traditionally occupied the prairie lands were not made to be part of the new national identity, either. It is difficult, however, to evaluate the role of the Eastern European prairie settlers in the displacement of Indigenous peoples, because many of these immigrants were in fact refugees fleeing persecution, pogroms, and genocide.

The “fictive ethnicity” which Coleman describes was very much at work during the passing of the Immigration Acts. Coleman writes that a fictive ethnicity has to be constructed, in order to make a particular social structure appear natural. The Immigration Acts did this specifically – they ignored the contributions of peoples from Asian countries and of European minorities to the construction of the Canadian state through reinforcing the Anglo Saxon as the dominant Canadian ethnicity. The Acts also served to naturalize Anglo Saxon dominance over Indigenous peoples in regards to ownership of land. The irony of a settler population assuming it has a moral basis for excluding certain immigrants is something we still see happening today.

Works Cited:

“A History of Racism in Canada’s Immigration Policy” http://www.peoplescommission.org/files/poped/05.%20A%20History%20of%20Racism.doc.pdf n.d. Web. 25 Feb 2014.

“Forging Our Legacy: Canadian Citizenship and Immigration , 1900 – 1977”  http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/resources/publications/legacy/chap-3.asp. n.d. Web. Feb 25 2014.

“Homepage.” www.immigrationwatchcanada.org Web. Feb 25 2014

“Immigration Act (Canada) (1910)”  http://northamericanimmigration.org/141-immigration-act-canada-1910.html n.d. Web. Feb 25 2014.

“Komagata Maru” http://www.vancouverhistory.ca/archives_komagatamaru.htm Web.  Feb 25 2014

Paterson, Erika. “Lesson 3:1.” ENGL 470A Canadian Studies Canadian Literary Genres. University of British Columbia Blogs, 2013. Web. 7 Feb. 2014.

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.

As Carlson explains in his article, imposing European concepts of authenticit” onto Salish history challenges the fundamentals of Salish culture. The narratives which Salish people share are sacred, and the importance which is placed on their accuracy ensures that mistakes are not made during their telling. Authenticity, as we understand it, relies on material evidence. Applying this mode of judgement to Salish storytelling is not only pointless, but harmful to our understanding and acceptance of cultural diversity. The Salish stories emerge out of a culture which values accuracy in storytelling the same way in which we value it in our historiography. Carlson writes that “it is difficult to imagine a context in which a Salish person could intentionally modify a historical narrative… the community would not allow such an individual to get away with it even if they tried.” To impose a Western concept of authenticity is to discredit the strength of Salish tradition.

Further, the status of Salish oral histories is strong enough that it “cannot be easily challenged by either indigenous people or Non-Native newcomers and their competing chronologies of interpretation.” (59) By applying European methods of authentication we are supposing that these methods, and our opinions which derive from them, have any bearing whatsoever on Salish perception of their own histories. This may be an example of Europeans granting our opinions more merit than they actually possess. Salish stories belong to the Salish people. Salish concepts of truth exist independent from our scrutiny. To instill our own truth-telling devices onto Salish stories is to evaluate something which is not ours to do this with.

It is important to recognize that we do not need to analyze the validity of Salish stories, because our evaluation of them ties in to a larger characteristic of Colonial-Indigenous relations. I am referring to the idea that the Indigenous culture has to be identified and made valid according to the value system of the colonizer. In reality, it is not necessarily our responsibility to do this, and I believe in doing so we assert that the colonial culture is inherently more valid than the indigenous culture. 

Works Cited:

“Enjoy Coast Salish Territory.” Sonny Assu. Web. 17 Feb 2014.

“Eurocentric.” Miriam-Webster Dictionary. Web. 17 Feb 2014.

Paterson, Erika. “Lesson 2:3.” ENGL 470A Canadian Studies Canadian Literary Genres. University of British Columbia Blogs, 2013. Web.77 Feb. 2014.

Carlson, Keith Thor. “Orality and Literacy: The Black and White of Salish History.” Orality and Literacy: Reflections Across Disciplines. Ed. Carlson, Kristina Fagna, & Natalia Khamenko-Frieson. Tornoto: U of Toronto P, 2011. 43-72.

Question 2: In this lesson I say that our capacity for understanding or making meaningfulness from the first stories is seriously limited for numerous reasons and I briefly offer two reasons why this is so: 1) the social process of the telling is disconnected from the story and this creates obvious problems for ascribing meaningfulness, and 2) the extended time of criminal prohibitions against Indigenous peoples telling stories combined with the act of taking all the children between 5 – 15 away from their families and communities. In Wickwire’s introduction to Living Stories, find a third reason why, according to Robinson, our abilities to make meaning from first stories and encounters is so seriously limited. To be complete, your answer should begin with a brief discussion on the two reasons I present and then proceed to introduce and explain your third reason from Wickwire’s introduction.

Due to our cultural and historical situation, our “capacity for understanding or making meaningfulness from first stories is limited for numerous reasons”. Two of these reasons are outlined by Dr Paterson. The first reason is the difference in the social process of storytelling between our current method and Indigenous tradition. In particular, the practice of reciting stories orally in special social situations is quite different from our standard mode of written, mass produced narratives. Rather than participating in the process, we become passive receptors to the story, diminishing its meaningfulness. The second reason which Dr Paterson outlines is related to the policies which the colonial government enacted to deliberately alter or erase Indigenous cultural practices. In particular, the outlawing of the potlatch ceremony and the forcible removal of children into residential schools dealt crushing blows to traditional methods of storytelling, and consequently to our ability to understand these stories and their implications.

In her introduction to Harry Robinson’s “Living Stories”, Wendy Wickwire presents another reason for our limited capacity to understand first stories. According to Wickwire, academics such as Claude Levi-Strauss and Franz Boas instituted anthropological definitions of storytelling which diminished the relevancy of first stories. Strauss, for example, identified first stories with “cold zones” of consciousness, which he identified as “resistant to change… timeless and ahistorical.” (11) In this way, indigenous stories were relegated strictly to the past, discounting their importance and validity. Indigenous stories became representative of an obsolete culture, one which was incompatible with European cultural characteristics of “constant, irreversible change.” (11)

In reality, Indigenous stories were not as static as Boaz and Levi-Strauss would like us to believe. As Wickwire points out, there existed many stories which addressed both the arrival of European colonizers and their origins as a people. The story about the white and black twins is an example of this. By creating a conception of Indigenous storytelling as situated strictly in the “deep past”(22), these anthropological analyses could fit with the overarching agenda of colonial powers to identify Indigenous culture, as a whole, as incompatible with change and progress. Europeans had both a “God-given purpose” and “science and reason” (Patterson, Web) on their side, something which Indigneous cultures could not have had if colonial practices were to be justified within Western consciousness.

Wickwire even points out deliberate doctoring of first stories in order to relegate them to the deep past. For example, the mention of a gun being traded with a deity-like being was edited out of a recording of a tale by Boas, “thus transforming what may have been intended as a historical narrative into the more desirable precontact myth”(23). I think it would be fitting to conclude that the traditional treatment of indigenous storytelling and first stories is congruent to a greater colonialist theme of discounting the validity of indigenous culture. This mentality served (and continues to serve) the justification of brutal colonial acts, including the institution of Residential Schools.

Works Cited:

Beehive Collective. The True Cost of Coal. 2013. Web. 15 Feb 2014.

“First Nations Potlatch” BC Archives. Web. 15 Feb 2014.

Paterson, Erika. “Lesson 2:2.” ENGL 470A Canadian Studies Canadian Literary Genres. University of British Columbia Blogs, 2013. Web. 15 Feb. 2014.

Robinson, Harry. Living by Stories: a Journey of Landscape and Memory. Compiled and edited by Wendy Wickwire. Vancouver: Talon Books. 2005. (1-30)

A wide range of ideas which make up home from reading the group’s blogs:

Family

Acceptance

Comfort

A place for growth

Friendship

Familiarity

Tradition

Bonding

The Natural Landscape

Throughout reading the blogs, it became apparent that home had many different meanings, depending on who was describing it. Home is not a fixed concept, and one of the most interesting things I found about my classmate’s stories were the ideas of what home was not. It was not, necessarily, a fixed geographical location. It was not something which can be identified and applied universally to all people – Home, it seems, is something which is created both by individuals and by groups of people – these groups can be families, friends, cultures, etc…
Canada, in particular, offers a unique understanding of home, because for many it is a place of refuge or escape. In this way, home can be defined relatively to somewhere else.
Yet I think it is important to remember that while Canada does offer refuge for people who are escaping hardship or suffering, this refuge is located on a land which once belonged to another people, and the history of its ownership is complicated and contradictory to many of our shared values.

There is a town, a village really, in the mountains to the east.  It is a secluded place nestled in a valley which runs east to west. There are legends that say this layout carried certain connotations for the first peoples in the area, so they would not settle there. But they certainly passed through, and as these people did not have a fixed location in which they lived year round, as we do now, it was as much their home as it could be.

The shape of the valley is such that it receives a great abundance of sunshine. Many years ago a group of refugees noticed this, and as they were looking for a place to live, and relied on the sun and the earth to cultivate crops for their livelihood, they decided to settle in the valley. This was after the first peoples had been forced to cease their traditional way of life, and did not pass through the valley anymore. And though the refugees, who had travelled halfway across the world just to be left alone, had a fixed concept of home similar to ours, their differences were enough to attract the attention of the authorities. This was mostly due to their language. The government’s idea of home was such that everyone who lived in the area which they decided was under their control had to speak the same language, and to adopt other cultural norms. But the refugees, who had already undergone great hardship at the hands of many governments, refused to abandon their language. And so a sort of battle began, one that was never really resolved, and was often fought in secret. But that is another story.

The refugees grew apples, raspberries, potatoes, and just about any fruit and vegetable you can think of. They built a factory to turn the fruit into jam and sell for a profit. They ran a cooperative where they sold their produce to the public. They even built a brick factory to make the material with which they built the houses in which they lived – large buildings which were home to several families. They also built their own schools out of these bricks, so that they did not have to send their children to government schools and lose their language. And though the government tried to destroy the refugee’s independence and strength, much of the philosophy and culture survived for generations, and even exists to this day. They still call the valley their home.

Long after the valley was settled by the community of refugees, a war broke out in a far off country. It was waged by a government which did not have the support of the young people who were supposed to be the ones fighting the war. The government adopted policies which forced young people to fight in the war, or be sent to jail. Rather than fight or be imprisoned, many young people fled north, some of them to the very same valley which I have been telling you about. Here they would not have to fight or be imprisoned, but could live in peace. The policies of the government which controlled this valley had loosened over time. Like the refugees who lived in this valley already, the young people just wanted to be left alone. They, too, made use of the valley’s extraordinary sunshine. But rather than growing fruits and vegetables, they grew special strains of a plant which has many uses. This plant could be used to make rope and many other useful things. It could also be smoked or eaten to alter an individual’s perception of themselves and their surroundings. This plant had to be grown and sold without the interference of the government, so an underground economy was created, and the valley became famous for its illegal export.

And so the people who called this valley home probably had a different understanding of what home meant than most of us do. For them, home simply meant a place where they could be left alone, where no one was going to impose rules or stipulations on them to which they were strongly opposed. Home was a place of peace, cooperation, and understanding. And many people who were born and raised in this valley grew up with this understanding of home, and though many left to see the world and to enrich their understanding of life in general, they carried this particular understanding with them. Wherever they went, as long as they held peace in their hearts, they were home.

Works Cited:

“Bob Erb 4 Herb Legalize It! Brian Taylor (Grand Forks) sings a marijuana song” YouTube. 13 Sept 2013. Web. 1 Feb, 2014.

Fructova School. 1912. Boundary Museum, Grand Forks, BC. Web. 1 Feb 2014.
“Jesse LeBourdais – I Go By The Sound” YouTube. YouTube, 3 July 2010. Web. 1 Feb, 2014