{"id":105,"date":"2016-07-29T11:24:04","date_gmt":"2016-07-29T18:24:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/summercanadianstudies2016\/?p=105"},"modified":"2016-08-12T13:31:33","modified_gmt":"2016-08-12T20:31:33","slug":"assignment-3-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/summercanadianstudies2016\/2016\/07\/29\/assignment-3-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Assignment 3.5"},"content":{"rendered":"

Describe how King uses the cyclical paradigm (recurring example) of the Medicine Wheel (and a little help from Coyote) to teach us to understand, or at least to\u00a0try\u00a0to understand the power behind the stories we tell ourselves.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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The Native Americans view the medicine wheel as a pathway to truth, peace, and harmony.\u00a0These are also three themes Thomas King strings into his novel,\u00a0Green Grass, Running Water<\/em>.\u00a0The medicine wheel is based off of color, direction, and elements.\u00a0The medicine wheel is an integral part of Native American spirituality and Thomas King\u2019s\u00a0Green Grass, Running Water<\/em><\/p>\n

There is no doubt that King wants us to work to get the story. Personally, it took me a good amount of research and help from other scholars to wrap my head around this hugely metaphorical book. \u00a0With that in mind \u2013 I took something different, than my classmates away from the book. While the words written on the page of the book are the same, my theories and understandings of it will differ from yours. Why is that? Well the story and the narrative are two different things<\/a>. This book is a narration of Indigenous theories and beliefs. \u00a0That being said, after reading some of my classmate\u2019s blogs I have come to see that while everyone may understand the general story but \u2013 each of us has our own interpretation. We all read the exact same text, but it has come to give different meanings to all of us, there is a different between a story and a narrative.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s essential when it comes to organizing and making sense of narrative and the way people deploy or use them<\/a>. Stories are pieces that can come and go, change, and morph, but the narrative remains. When the narrative shows great resilience, we have \u201cmaster narratives,\u201d meaning narratives that have endured the test of time and become deeply embedded in culture. These are the most important narratives in strategic communication. People make use of them all the time. The narrative provided by the medicine wheel in Indigenous teaching allows for the obtaining of knowledge through interpretations of the story.<\/p>\n

In many Indigenous cultures, the Medicine Wheel metaphor contains all of the traditional teachings and can therefore be used as a guide on any journey, including the educational process. While there is some variation in its teachings and representations, the underlying web of meaning to Medicine Wheels remains the same: the importance of appreciating and respecting the ongoing interconnectedness and interrelatedness of all things. The medicine wheel is the narrative.<\/p>\n

The story, on the other hand, is coupled with our interpretation of what is being said. Stories are important, but not as important as the narrative. Indigenous knowledge is attained by choosing to do what is necessary to obtain multiple perspectives from which to view the world. This in-depth searching for knowledge is what leads to wisdom – becoming aware of the learning through all the senses, requiring the learning to be introduced to the students in multiple modalities – giving multiple ‘stories’.<\/p>\n

Keep in mind that oral storytelling\u00a0is perhaps the earliest method for sharing narratives, we see this practiced throughout aboriginal. During most people’s childhoods, narratives are used to guide them on proper behavior, cultural history, formation of a communal identity, and values, as especially studied in\u00a0anthropology\u00a0today among traditional\u00a0indigenous peoples.\u00a0Narratives may also be nested within other narratives, such as narratives told by an\u00a0unreliable narrator\u00a0(a\u00a0character) typically found in fiction\u00a0genre. An important part of narration is the\u00a0narrative mode, the set of methods used to communicate.The structure of\u00a0Green Grass, Running Water<\/em>\u00a0symbolizes a circle like the medicine wheel<\/a>, Coyote’s voice helps in achieving this.\u00a0Each part starts the way it ends.\u00a0On p. 1 it says, \u201cIn the beginning, there was nothing.\u00a0Just the water.\u201d\u00a0It also starts with the story of Coyote.\u00a0On p. 107, the last page in part one, King is back to Coyote and the last two lines read, \u201cIn the beginning there was nothing.\u00a0Just the water.\u201d \u00a0The whole book starts with I, Coyote, and the topic of water and the whole book ends with I, Coyote, and water.\u00a0It also ends literally with water because the damn breaks.\u00a0The narration is the theory of the medicine wheel \u2013 it should not change, it is the theory. The story emphasizes the power of words to each individual who reads them.<\/p>\n

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Describe how King uses the cyclical paradigm (recurring example) of the Medicine Wheel (and a little help from Coyote) to teach us to understand, or at least to\u00a0try\u00a0to understand the power behind the stories we tell ourselves. ************************************************************************* The Native Americans view the medicine wheel as a pathway to truth, peace, and harmony.\u00a0These are also […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":41028,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/summercanadianstudies2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/summercanadianstudies2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/summercanadianstudies2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/summercanadianstudies2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/41028"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/summercanadianstudies2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/summercanadianstudies2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":114,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/summercanadianstudies2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105\/revisions\/114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/summercanadianstudies2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/summercanadianstudies2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/summercanadianstudies2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}