Thomas King speaks truth through code. What do I mean by that? Well, within King’s Novel, Green Grass Running Water, he utilizes a spectrum of literary and storytelling practices, which juxtapose historic injustices and truth. Despite the heavy reality these parodies unveil, King presents unsettling paradigms through humour and comparison.

One way that King weaves in his own humour and cleverness into GGRW is through the highly representational names he gives his characters. This prompts us, as the reader to question “What is in a name?” Well names are complex, and some beings, inanimate or not, may have multiple names. So what is King’s intent with his parody of names? As I try and answer my own questions I wonder how far King has interwoven internal and external narratives and themes. A specific line in the beginning of the book further prompted me to take my own ponderings outside of paper confines of the book.

On page 41, the narrator/God/Coyote is telling an origin story. This telling takes shape through a conversation between that GOD and Coyote, where despite their different story approaches, tell a tale of the beginning that brings  First Woman and Ahdamn (Adam) together. The origin story is interjected with both traditional plots and characters, such as the creation of land with Grandmother Turtle, alongside the coming  of the Garden. Through this rapid and conflicting hybrid story, the line that caught my mind’s eye was:

“Ahdamn is busy. He is naming everything.”

From this I wondered, is King’s naming in GGRW a response to the entitlement of naming things held by European settlers at contact? Is he intentionally prompting the reader to really consider all of his narrative choices, or are some of them as abstract as Ahdamn naming the Bear a Garage Sale? It dawned on me that maybe King is partaking in an act of decolonization, through reclaiming the power of the name.

So I found a line that would ground me in my research, but I was still unsure of the section I wanted to highlight. I re-read the ten pages after the quote as well as the ten pages before. Although the ten pages after had a copious number of recurring characters, the ten pages before offered names less common. This, I would use as a test to observe “how far” into detail, King took this naming practice.

I chose the ten pages before, which focus on a story of one of Lionel’s three mistakes. The mistake, which Lionel’s aunt Norma highly disapproves of, was him “wanting to get his tonsils removed” (page 30). As Norma considers different carpet colors, for the new carpet that will finally be received, we enter a story of Lionel’s childhood. It is through this story into the past that we learn about Lionel and the tensions around and between traditional and western medicine.

Lionel and Norma are the first two characters who commence the section I chose. Throughout, there is a consistent nagging by Norma, in regards to how Lionel has adopted western ways. What drives the conversation is the divide between values, between traditional and western medicine. Blooming from this scene, a story from Lionel’s childhood awakes.

When Lois James gets her tonsils out, Child Lionel notes the time she takes off school and the special treatment she had. So Lionel, being a smart and conniving young lad complains to his mother about his sore throat until she does something. His mother, Camelot, first takes Lionel to see Martha Old Crow, a traditional healer. To my surprise, after checking Lionel, Martha Old Crow (Martha is a biblical name) sends Lionel and his mother to see the Frog doctor, Dr. Loomis who is a white doctor from Toronto. This is where the parallels between traditional medicine and western medicine start.

Norma compares western medicine and traditional medicine as a representation of one’s values. She does this through glorifying Lionel’s sister Latisha, who chooses to see a Traditional doctor rather than a western one. Lionel counters his aunts’ proposition by emphasizing Latisha’s appreciation for George Morningstar. Morningstar, which refers to General Custer, a historic American war figure known for his duties in the American Civil war, and wars against the American Indians. King’s George Morningstar, is also a white-American, who appropriates Indigenous culture (Flick, 1999).

As we read about the polarities and places of interceptions between Indigenous and western worlds, it becomes apparent that nothing is truly homogenous. Despite one’s perception of how things “should be” such as those held by Norma, It’s clear that in reality it rarely plays out as that way. This is articulated through the scene that follows, and the one of which I started, where GOD and Coyote come together to tell a disjunctive origin story of First Woman and Ahdamn.   

Works Cited 

“Battle of the Little Bighorn.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 2 Dec. 2009, www.history.com/topics/native-american-history/battle-of-the-little-bighorn.

McGonegal, Julie. “Thomas King’s Moment of Truth.” The UC Observer. 2013, www.ucobserver.org/culture/2013/09/moment_truth/.

“Native American Frog Mythology.” Native American Indian Frog Legends, Meaning and Symbolism from the Myths of Many Tribes, www.native-languages.org/legends-frog.htm.

Petkova, Veneta Georgieva. “How Thomas King Uses Coyote in His Novel Green Grass, Running Water.” Universitatis Islandiae Sigillum , May 2011, pp. 1–35.

Blog Question

Identify and discuss two of King’s “acts of narrative decolonization.”Please read the following quote to assist you with your answer.

The lives of King’s characters are entangled in and informed by both the colonial legacy in the Americas and the narratives that enact and enable colonial domination. King begins to extricate his characters’ lives from the domination of the invader’s discourses by weaving their stories into both Native American oral traditions and into revisions of some of the most damaging narratives of domination and conquest: European American origin stories and national myths, canonical literary texts, and popular culture texts such as John Wayne films. These revisions are acts of narrative decolonization. James Cox. “All This Water Imagery Must Mean Something.” Canadian Literature 161-162 (1999). Web April 04/2013.

Today we live in a world where cultural appropriation is being called out on the online world left, right, front and center. Whether it be ignorant Halloween costumes, inauthentic use of sacred items, to racially stigmatized hairstyles, there’s always someone watching. The appropriation of culture may be more visually present today through social media, but it is not a new phenomenon. In Philip J Deloria’s Book, Playing Indian, we are presented with a very vivid history of both American and Canadian settler populations romanticization and appropriation of Indigenous culture over time.

Thomas King’s Novel Green Grass Running Water, works to do the opposite. Through reading this novel, I noticed two ways that King worked to decolonize and re-appropriate settler culture. One way that King does this is in how he writes his characters. Rather than homogenize and oversimplify Indigenous stories, culture, and practices, King creates dynamic Indigenous characters, who hold their own agency. King’s character Alberta, is a woman involved in a love affair with two men who are cousins. She actively chooses the relationships she involves herself in, and the position she takes. King combats the readers’ perspectives on Indigeneity, gender, love, age and settler norms, through detailed and complex writing of characters.  King gives his characters agency without disregarding the hegemonic system of National and patriarchal power that exists. There is an active interplay between his diverse and contextual characters and narratives of domination and hegemony imposed by colonialism.

In the areas of intersection between Indigenous Characters and colonial narratives, we observe a new form of appropriation. King imposes stories from the Bible alongside creation stories, evoking both a humor and confrontation that might be new to many Canadian readers. Spinning off of reality, King makes a parody of Colonial narratives. As the reader encounters a spectrum of both strongly Indigenous characters with traditional colonial narratives, they are taken into a rarely visited space. Is this a space of appropriation? It seems as though it could be, but I’d like to consider it “appropriate appropriation. His writing is unapologetic and refreshing, making space for new interpretations of old hegemonic tales.

Through weaving colonial stories into a cyclical, multi-dimensional and contextual storytelling pattern administered by King, we observe the power of Indigenous narrative. The actual framework of the story is framed in a way that speaks from an Indigenous perspective, knowledge, and tradition, which enables the reader to reconsider their own narratives. King’s capacity to appropriate Colonial story and character into Indigenous storytelling is instrumental in decolonization. We enter a world where everyone exists, but in more nuanced positionality. He offers space for all, as long as those who wish to indulge in the story are willing to listen and reconsider “reality”.

I’ve included two links below. The first is a very informative definition of what cultural appropriation of Indigenous culture looks like in Canada. This is written by Jennifer Brant who is a Mohawk writer herself and co-editor of Forever Loved: Exposing the Hidden Crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls in Canada.

The second link is to a website about the film: Reel Injun, which explores how white cinema has reflected indigeneity over time. There are multiple clips included on this page that reflects how settler colonialism fabricated a perspective of “Indianness” in attempts to find a deeper connection to self.

https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/cultural-appropriation-of-indigenous-peoples-in-canada

http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/films/reel-injun/

References Cited:

Brant , Jennifer. “Cultural Appropriation of Indigenous Peoples in Canada.” The Canadian Encyclopedia, www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/cultural-appropriation-of-indigenous-peoples-in-canada.

Deloria, Philip J., Inc E. C. NetLibrary, and Aboriginal Ebook Collection. Playing Indian. Yale University Press, New Haven, 1998.

Diamond , Neil. “Reel Injun.” PBS, Public Broadcasting Service, www.pbs.org/independentlens/films/reel-injun/.

King, Thomas. Green Grass Running Water. Toronto: Harper Collins, 1993. Print.

Blog Question:

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 negotiate with the new Canadian government.

The stories we here of the blossoming of the Canadian Nation are often commemorated through tales of war and disjunction between two opposing parties with one similar intention: to settle the land. We’ve learned about the Quebec act of 1774, where British rule accepted and enabled the existence of the Roman Catholic Faith and French Civil Law. We’ve learned about the British North America Act of 1867, and British led confederation. We’ve listened to stories of the opposing forces, such as British vs. France, to Canada vs. British, to Canada vs the US. We are told these narratives of a growing National Identity through post secondary education, but in this space, we have yet to acknowledge the longest feud of all: Canada vs. the various indigenous populations. The story of “our” Nation has always been a eurocentric one, and I’d argue that this narrative was intended.

As expressed in the question I am addressing, “Canada at the time was not willing to accommodate more than two founding nations.” Founded in 1870, the Metis Nation, predicated upon the coming together of French traders and Cree people, challenged the “Homogenous” culture, which the nation of Canada stubbornly and unsuccessfully attempted to embody. The Canlit guide gives multiple examples of how National identity of Canada evolved throughout time, and how identity relied on differing from those they considered “the other”. The Metis people were an example of the binding of two distinct groups, which directly challenges a “single” National identity. During the Red River Rebellion, Riel and the Metis defenders resisted confederation but were defeated by Canadian National powers. Accepting the Metis as a third founding Nation, meant that Canada would be surrendering the “last spikes”  in their imaginings of a homogenous self.

Why could British loyalists accept French Law and culture and not that of the various Indigenous populations? It seems very likely it could all go back to the embedded perception of racial hierarchy.  In the vain of racial hierarchy, terms such as savage and civilized traveled upon boats, overseas, reinterpreted and imposed by settlers into their new worldly interactions. The conceptualization of Indigenous peoples as inferior to European is observed through early literature, such as the works we have studied by Susanna Moodie. The Indigenous peoples were not considered “Civilized” through eurocentric perspective, and therefore, were not deemed to be worthy of European National standing.

Through Coleman’s term, White Civility, we acknowledge the forces of loyalty to the crown, which further divided and oppressed indigenous populations. Loyalty was something that had to be enacted through creating a British bred Canadian identity. This was done through constructing literary works, creating what Coleman terms a “fictive ethnicity”. This was furthered through the Massey Report, prompting the production of national culture, through eurocentric art, literature, and poetry, which romanticized the white-Canadian experience. The construction of Canadian identity was attuned to civil whiteness and Christian/Anglophone perspectives. This attachment to Britain produced greater division between settler people and Indigenous populations. Assimilation was perceived as a process to “civilize” the Indigenous populations but instead drove cultural genocide.

Fortunately for us, Canada never fully succeeded with creating their culturally homogenous imaginings. Today, we are sharing stories of diverse experiences, unveiling the hoax of Canada as multicultural, and acknowledging the impacts of colonial literature in the stories we tell today. Below I have linked a video of a traditional Metis Dance, performed by Desmond Colombe called a Jig, proving that Metis culture continues today. The second link is a CBC film called “Being Black in Canada”, which touches on the unspoken history of Black Canadians in the forming of the Canadian Nation state.

Works cited: 

CanLit Guides. “Reading and Writing in Canada, A Classroom Guide to Nationalism.” Canadian Literature. Web. April 4^th 2013.

CBC. “How to Literally Tear up the Dance Floor using the Red River Jig”. S YouTube, YouTube, 22 Nov. 2017, www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gKRVTub3ng&t=2s.

CBC. “Being Black in Canada”. YouTube, YouTube, 8 Feb. 2015, www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORW_e8P8RcY.

Question: 

“In his article, “Godzilla vs. Post-Colonial,” King discusses Robinson’s collection of stories. King explains that while the stories are written in English, “the patterns, metaphors, structures, as well as the themes and characters, come primarily from oral literature.” More than this, Robinson, he says “develops what we might want to call an oral syntax that defeats reader’s efforts to read the stories silently to themselves, a syntax that encourages readers to read aloud” and in so doing, “recreating at once the storyteller and the performance” (186). Read “Coyote Makes a Deal with King of England”, in Living by Stories. Read it silently, read it out loud, read it to a friend, and have a friend read it to you. See if you can discover how this oral syntax works to shape meaning for the story by shaping your reading and listening of the story. Write a blog about this reading/listening experience that provides references to both King’s article and Robinson’s s story.”

Response: 

Who do you imagine speaking when you read a story? Well, that definitely isn’t a question that can be answered simply. It depends on who you ask, the story they’re reading, the writer’s intention, and a conglomeration of external socio-cultural factors. From my experience as a reader, voices can be active, passive, clear and ambiguous. They come from someone, who came from somewhere, which has a history, which often informs the story.

Whose voice whispered in your as an adolescent, you read tales of National pride in your social studies textbook? What did they sound like? Where they confident? Curious? A little unsure? For me, I could imagine the voices as distant, presumptuous and unrelatable. My nationality was hung up in all the spaces in the Canadian narrative where I didn’t belong. The canon of Canadian literature has proven throughout history that it favors stories by settler Europeans. These are the voices that generations of readers have deemed Canadian. The homogeneity of the canon affects how we see ourselves, in relation to how we see the nation.

This week we looked at how the stories in Susanna Moodie’s in Roughing it in the Bush, who helped not design what has embodied “Canadian Literature,” but most importantly, it exemplified the European thought ways Moodie and many others had brought with them. Moodie’s stories of her first encounters with Indigenous folks and turtle island emphasize the “danger of assumptions”, expressed further by Thomas King.

In King’s Godzilla Vs. Post Colonial we further consider how prior assumptions can be damaging to stories that will come to shape our identities. The voices we have heard in the popular Canadian literature we are expected to read partakes in the erasure of the Indigenous voice and experience. King explains that although Post Colonial scholarship works to deconstruct Colonial confinement and oppression, it continues to abide by and rely on Colonialism. The Post-colonialist mentality takes away from Indigenous storytelling practices that developed before and beyond first contact. The act of storytelling is not homogenous, and rather, can be used as a tool to diversify the voice, perspective, and intent of the writer.

Harry Robinson narrates stories that have been told to him, using his own oral traditions that have been transcribed into writing. Although these stories have been traditionally told through the voice itself, the words by Robinson are not incarcerated on the page by European written practice. Instead, Robinson rejects the laws of English grammar, and as King, explains “creates his own oral syntax”. The language used by Robinson undeniably produces a prominent voice. It’s not loud, not necessarily clear, but it is heard. Robinson manages to carry the oral tradition forward, transcending the written practice, unapologetically entering the minds of the reader.

It’s liberating reading Robinson’s stories. Not only because they engage the reader through his unique voice, but rather because his voice and stories intersect multiple perspectives of self and nation throughout history. In his telling of “Coyote makes a deal with the King of England” we witness in a multitude of ways how Europeans were perceived, easily tricked, pretentious, and oftentimes stubborn. Through his narrations, Robinson takes his space. He merges histories, adopts different accounts, while still maintaining an “oral syntax” which is true to his indigeneity.

How are stories being addressed today? How can stories be utilized to expose National injustice against indigenous people, communities and their lands? Watch the first video below if you want to see how stories intersect and resurrect. If your interested in Indigenous Storytelling, and the need for its’ growth in Canadian Literature, read the article “Canada needs to give Indigenous stories the platform they deserve” by Jesse Wente bellow.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/film/canada-needs-to-give-indigenous-stories-the-platform-they-deserve/article34046186/

Works Cited

King, Thomas. “Godzilla vs. Post-Colonial.” Unhomely States: Theorizing English-Canadian Postcolonialism. Peterbough, ON: Broadview, 2004. 183- 190. Web. 04 april 2013.

Robinson, Harry. Living by Stories: a Journey of Landscape and Memory. Ed. Wendy Wickwire. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2005. Print.

Settler Decolonization. Stories of Decolonization: Land Dispossession and Settlement. YouTube, YouTube, 23 Nov. 2016www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTruP6r2cAA.

Blog Question:

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. Inintroduction 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.

*

The process of storytelling is not birthed from a single formula. The act of the story is diverse in how it is gathered, perceived, how it is told and how it is received. This week, we unveil the persistent assumptions from stories of contact, which includes how the Indian, Native, Aboriginal, Indigenous, First Nations, and individual groups are perceived today. The stories we hear from the ethnographic canon attempt to show us what life was really like. Unfortunately, the process of gathering information worked to distort the stories in favor of European narrative preferences. I’m sure you’ve had a family member or friend tell you or someone close to you “You hear what you want to hear.” This saying seems to parallel how a European listener’s own desires play into their interpretation and dissemination of that story. With new interpretations, stories become distant from their roots, but despite these implications, roots have the capacity to travel far.

Through this week’s readings, we have not only emphasized how divergent one story can look from multiple “heads and minds,” (Robinson) but we also learned how each story can be informed by individual or group experiences. When we observe contact through a Eurocentric lens, we take away agency from the people who were here before these stories started. What stories informed the perspective of the populations of people on turtle island before contact? How did “indigenous” myths of the “other” inform how they interacted with these new individuals. Both of John Lutz’s articles emphasize the encounters between the indigenous populations and the Europeans coming by ship as “spiritual encounters,” both embedded by divergent myths and religious pervasion.

Indigenous groups prior to contact were armed with their own understandings of distant “others,” which would later influence their interactions when they did arrive. European recordings of indigenous understandings neglected to acknowledge the emphasis the “other’s” as spiritual and transcendent. This limited our understanding of indigenous intelligence and agency prior to “contact.” From the very beginning, there has been a distinct leaning towards Eurocentric storytelling practices, which throughout time has created a major disconnect between the roots and how stories are perceived today.

The suppression of culture and story was utilized by European colonizers, to further strengthen the building of the Canadian Nation. This was done through the Indian Act. Through the banning of the potlatch, indigenous peoples cultural protocols and subsistence practices were harshly criminalized, forcing individuals and communities to abandon their way of life or attempt to continue it illegally. This time of cultural prohibition spanned 75 years, disabling individuals form transcending their storytelling practices, deeply embedded in their relationships to themselves, each other and the land. Not only did this implicate the variation and depth of the stories that exist today, but stemmed intergenerational trauma within indigenous communities.

Through Wickwire’s introduction to Robinson’s stories, we observe that stories take many contemporary shapes and forms, evolving with experience and time. The stories Robinson tells are diverse and instrumental, as they embody a timelessness. Following the silenced narratives as the European “other” as godly, Robinson emphasizes how both Indigenous perceptions of the Europeans, and the European perception of the Indigenous were both shaped by prior myth. The reality of the two equally divergent groups is not surfaced, and rather we are presented with narratives of the “inferior” indigenous peoples.

In reflection to this week’s readings, I found that my own understandings of “first contact” were largely shaped by the confines of Eurocentric history telling practices. Despite the distance that exists between a stories roots, and how a story is told today, it is still possible to observe what elements are resilient. Indigenous storytelling practices have transcended from times of suppression, evolving and adapting while still continuing to maintain important truths. As Robinson explains, stories have the capacity to “create”. They change with context, but they are not completely severed from their roots.

***

The links I’ve included below work to both contrasts and compliment the process of reinterpreting past stories and myths. Through a compilation of stories told by Jacinta Koolmatrie in her TedX appearance, we hear how Australian aboriginals stories were morphed by settler colonial interpretations. The second link I have attached engages in dialogue regarding the educational canon, and the work educators are taking on to  decolonize their curriculum.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/beyond-beads-and-bannock-teachers-indigenous-curriculum-1.4811699

Works Cited

Koolmatrie, Jacinta. YouTube, TedX, 26 Jan. 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUIgkbExn6I.

Hennig, Clare. “’Am I Colonizing This Curriculum?’ Teachers Share Challenges of Getting New Indigenous Curriculum Right | CBC News.” CBCnews, CBC/Radio Canada, 6 Sept. 2018, www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/beyond-beads-and-bannock-teachers-indigenous-curriculum-1.4811699.

As I relished in the honest depictions of “home” written by my fellow classmates, I can genuinely say I felt a sense of connection. I was surprised to observe how much more I had in common with these diverse individuals than I did in contrast. Overall, the biggest take away I received was that many of us believe home is ultimately some form of belonging, whether it is to ourselves, our family, or the natural environment. Many of us felt a lack of belonging, which has led us to seek community and our own reconceptualization of home. Each blog post was moving, in a way that allowed me to see our common humanity. The major differences were mostly represented by where someone was born, but in the bigger picture that meant very little. I did not expect the similarities to double the differences, but they did! We are a colorful group of people, but rather than clash, we compliment!

Thanks for reading!

Lexi

Similarities

-nature offers a space to come “home”

-visitor in someone else’s homeland (Haida Gwaii)

-accepting the colonial history, and your position upon the land

-belonging within and beyond one’s self

-the community as a sense of home

-fascinated and inspired by Hippie Communes

-home is about feeling safe

-British-Canadian ancestry

-family prided by Canada as their “home”

-not completely comfortable with settler ancestry

-family as “home”

-home as belonging and serenity

-home as not a physical space

-home as family

-shared feelings as an outsider, lack of sense of belonging

-intersecting identity, to be settler and “foreigner”

-BC nature becomes home

-belonging is within the self

-abusive family/home life

-childhood food issues

-Home as an unsafe place

-also had to tell social worker nothing was wrong so I didn’t get taken away

-home is the body, the earth, the universe

-Born in Canada

Differences

-feeling grounded in own body

-I don’t live on campus

-Home is not a place to unwind for me

-traveling solidified Canada as a home for others

-home for some is a dispersed family

-I’m not a Canadian that has lived overseas

-Never lived outside of my community

-Lived in the same neighborhood my whole life

-I didn’t grow up with both parents in my household

-no traditional definition of home

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

People still ask me where I’m from, as I serve them beer in 16oz cups, labeled “Deep Cove,” the neighborhood that my great grandparents on my mother’s side had “pioneered”. I grin and answer with a playful smirk, “I’ve been here since the 1940’s!” I acknowledge that my family history is problematic, being “pioneers” upon land that was already being actively used by the Tsleil-waututh people of the inlet. What I find equally troublesome is the shocked responses and facial expressions I receive because of my mixed-race “colonial” history.

My existence in the community I call my “home” sits at a contradicting intersection. Although I have ties to this land through my settler ancestry, I am perceived as a foreigner, rather than an anomaly, due to the pigmentation of my skin. Because I’m neither indigenous nor white, it is assumed that I must be from somewhere exotic. Although I have spent my entire life on these soils, making impressions in the forest with my feet, despite my active shaping of community, I am still “othered”.

I really only started to notice this as I got older, and I realized that I was one of the few “mixed-race” people in my years of public school. I started to feel as though people were intrigued by my existence because they thought they didn’t know it. The truth was, I was raised by my white, settler colonial family. I had experienced most of the samerealities as did they, the only difference was how “they” saw “me”.

This internalized social isolation I started to feel had led me to seek a sense of belonging. I started to reach outside of my community, seeking a network shared similar values to me, where I could feel a part of something. The first community I sought out was one that was brought together by a common love for the “land where I live”. Through reaching out to local activist communities, I started to make connections with people from the Tsleil-Waututh Nation, the people of the Inlet.

Through being introduced to the Tsleil-waututh Nation, I observed a community that has existed long before my “pioneer” family had arrived. This sense of belonging that was shared upon the land and between individuals spurred my curiosity. I appreciated the Nation’s resilience, interconnectedness, and shared values, and it inspired me to further seek a community for myself.

Although I never found a physical space or solidified community that shared the many intersections in life that I face, I did come to a realization. What I found was a deeper capacity inside me, to create space for myself and people like me. Community and spaces of belonging and acceptance are changing as we listen to the diverse stories of our neighbors and our friends. We are all divergent, but we also intersect in a number of ways. As musician and activist Tonye told me recently “we need to focus less on what makes us different, and instead, appreciate what we share in common”.

As of recent, I have been seeking out individual relationships in my small Deep Cove community. I have been making new friends based on shared interests is a way to create my own network of individuals, unbounded by race, gender, and socio-economic position. So far I’ve utilized the online realm to create a Femme-based cycling group based in Deep Cove, and I am working with a local cafe to start workshops on community sustainability. It is now our time, as individuals who face many “intersections” to re-appropriate space for each other, while acknowledging the contradictory history of the land, and the narratives that have pre-shaped how people perceive us.

Thank you for reading this week’s blog entry! I’m sure we intersect in one shape or form!

Keep taking space and “Flooding the feed”.

Lexi

Below I have attached a link to a short video I made in documentary film school called “The Land Where I Live”. I made this film at a time ofconfusion, regarding what my connection to the land was, as I am not indigenous, but I feel a deep attachment to it, and its wellbeing.

The second link I have included is an article about two community members and business owners in deep cove that are creating a community through sustainability.

Deep Cove to go plastic-straw free

Works cited

The Land Where I Live , 30 Oct. 2018, vimeo.com/157327712.

For my version of “How evil came into this world”, I decided to try meshing both themes from the Genesis story and the story of “The Woman Who Fell From the Sky”, while attempting to embed my own understanding of evil that exists today. Through my re-telling of this story, The bear represents the mother, and the feminine cycles, while the baker and his family represent the people stuck under the authority of capitalism. Lily is born into the world on a blood moon, and this connection with the cycles, although inherent, can be lost when one does not listen to them. When Lily decides to leave her mother, and the seasonal cycles that are essential to her well-being, she enters a new world where these cycles are undermined by profit incentives. In this world, Lily loses her deep connection to the cycles and faces stressors that influence her health. The young woman loses her moon-cycle, which is common in today’s society, often caused by stress and/or eating disorders. Hore it found a way to transcend the message of what it lacked. When Lily listened to her body and the earth’s natural cycles, she knew what she had to do. She found her way home, entered hibernation, and found great internal healing.

My Story

It has been many winters since Bear was born. Many moons since the Lunar eclipse that had brought her to this earth. It was the evening of the Blood Moon when the earth came between the light of Father sun, and as Mother moon darkened, she laid bear onto a young earth. During that chill January, Bear who was only a young cub, walked the new earth curious and unsure.

Coming out of winter, bear learned through trial and error. She learned that in the seasons cold, the land was barren, the days were shorter and darker. Most importantly, she learned that her body had felt tired. From her first winter on earth, she came to learn that within the earth’s seasonal cycle, she would need to make time for hibernation.

In Bears first year on earth, the seasons flowed into each other, and her own cycles started to align with them. In spring, Bear felt a surge of excitement and energy. She saw colors appear she never imagined. She knew she would have to stay awake for this season. In the summer, she moved between the mountains and valleys catching fish and foraging for berries. A nomad, her wanderings allowed her to meet other creatures along the way and learn from their inherent knowledge.

When fall came, Bear noticed a change. The colors were fading and the days were becoming shorter and darker. She was a quick learner, so she harvested as much food as she could, preparing for the cold and dark season approaching. After finding a comfortable den, Bear breathed heavy and deep and fell fast asleep.

This cycle is how it went, for many many years. That is until the next blood moon approached. It was nearing the end of January, Bear lied asleep in her den. It was quiet in warm, but on that cold lunar eve, bear noticed something pulse inside her. Bear had felt different, she felt as though she had expanded. Bear was pregnant.

When sounds of spring penetrated the walls of Bears den, the mother-to-be, knew it was time. She exited the dark warmth of winter, into the fresh sprouting of spring. It was then she gave birth to her daughter, Lily.

Lily did not look the same as her mother Bear. She has smooth skin and only a single furry bushel upon the top of her head. She crawled like her, but as summer approached it was clear that Lily wanted to stand. Was she part squirrel? thought her mother.

Many years passed in an exciting harmony. Young Lily would spend summers running through the forests picking berries with her mother, and in winter, shed cuddle up within her mother’s fur coat, and fall into a deep sleep. But as Lily got older, she began to veer away from her mother’s cycle. Bear was very disappointed at first, but she knew that Lily must learn the cycles of the earth on her own.

On Lily’s first winter alone, she walked the valleys, now icy and bare, looking for her friends. Nobody was to be found, not squirrel, not robin, not even toad. She roamed further beyond where she had ever been before, upon a great cliff, she looked down and spotted a land most peculiar looking. Under the dark grey backdrop of the sky, there were colors and sounds and movement she had not seen before on her endeavors. Lily was curious. What was that place? She’d have to find out.

After seven long days and nights traversing the margins of the forest, Lily approached this land. She was cold and she was hungry, wearing her salmon skin dress she had made in the summer. Looking ghost-like, there was not a face in sight at this time of night. As she walked upon the land made of hard flat slabs of ground, Lily realized the emptiness inside her. She’d missed her mother.

It wasn’t until the next day that people noticed the lost young woman walking aimlessly around the neighborhood. A well-known baker approached the girl before starting his shift, offering her some of yesterday’s bread. Lily was startled. She had never seen a human, especially one whose skin reflected the light of the moon. The girl was shocked, but she was so hungry she took his offering.

She stayed with the baker and his family, learning their language, their practices and eventually, how to become a baker herself. She longed to go back to her mother, but she’d owed the baker and his family money and services for the time she had stayed with them. They were a nice family and cared deeply for Lily, but they had debt they needed to pay, and Lily was indebted to them.

So years passed, and Lily became more distant from the rhythm of her past. She had even forgotten how she had arrived in this land in the first place, which meant she’d also forgot how to get home. Lily fell into a dark head space. All she could think about was how she could repay the baker and his family and get back to her mother. Her heart was so heavy, and her body lacked energy. She knew she needed hibernation. Evil entered the world when her inherent cycles were broken.

The young girl was so detached from her natural element, she had lost her moon cycle. Conceived under the full blood moon, Lily was disconnected from herself and her future. She fell sick, as her body new she was not in sync with the lifestyle that had once fueled her. Despite the heavy weight of debt that the baker had held over her, Lily new deep within her that she had to leave. So on October the 31st, Lily put on the Baker’s wives fur coat and disappeared out of the concrete world.

Under the warmth of the fur coat, that felt similar to her mothers, Lily trusted something inside her. Above her, a full moon bloomed, lighting the path ahead. It took many days and many nights for Lily to find the land that once nourished all her needs, but once she arrived, she had felt it. Outside of the den that Lily has spotted her mother asleep and much skinnier than she had remembered. As Lily approached her sleeping mother, Bears eyes started to open. Without hesitation, the mother bear sighed happily and gave her daughter the biggest bear hug.

Both Bear and Lily entered the years’ hibernation with the food that Bear had saved for her daughters’ anticipated arrival. Lily was quickly replenished from her much needed rest and entered spring with a new, deeper connection to the cycles of the earth, the seasons, and herself.

The end.

Bellow I have included two links. The first is for an interview with Thomas King about his novel: The Inconvenient Indian. I highly recommend reading this book, as it offers a counter narrative to the history and identity of the North American Indian.

The second link leads you to the website of the Idle no more movement. This movement started in 2012 by three Indigenous women and one ally, to take a stand for Indigenous sovereignty and land protection initiatives. I found this relates to both the topic I wrote about in my short story, as well as the theme of “listening to voices we don’t often hear”.

Thanks for listening,

Lexi

//https://www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/being-idle-no-more-women-behind-movement

Works cited

Channel, Canada Art. YouTube, YouTube, 30 Jan. 2014, www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZMXQTsksic.

Caven, Febna. “Being Idle No More: The Women Behind the Movement.” Cultural Survival, www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/being-idle-no-more-women-behind-movement.

(Above is a photo of my grandmother’s family home)

As a young listener, the stories I was told seemed to be intentionally planted into my mind to tell me a narrative of national and familial pride. I was bred to believe that our Nation was a dystopian reality, and my family home was “ours”. I believed this narrative, but I always felt like something was missing. My questions began in public school, where “Social Studies” class was imposed Canadian identity and history upon our young and impressionable minds. I enjoyed it because I felt partly a part of it. What I mean by “partly a part of it” is that my white-settler colonial ancestry was represented. The other part of me, my Canadian Carribean identity, felt forgotten or unimportant. This contradicting sense of both belonging and exclusion has prompted my disillusion with the highly promoted “Canadian identity”.

The canon of Canadian literature imposes upon us a story of settler colonialism, which commonly describes the land as barren and resources abundant. Stories like these allow for the “forgetting” or “unlearning” of a harmful colonial reality. Chamberlin describes how the settlers arriving in Canada in the Nations’ early years were displaced people seeking a place of hope and refuge, but the land itself was not vacant therefor further displacement took place. The stories that have enabled an “imagine” past, neglect to inform us of a counter “reality”. What isn’t told in the hegemonic narrative is the histories and realities of the indigenous populations and the cultural genocide which took place.

This duality between the imagined and the real has prompted Chamberlin’s dialogue on questions of what is true, and what is false, especially in the context of stories of “Home”. Stories of settler colonialism intentionally suppress the voices of indigenous and displaced populations. This was done through the stripping of their inherent agency over their land, their languages, their ceremonies, and their history. The loss of these incredibly important and functional and cultural factors are still being unveiled, as the individuals and the descendants who faced forced cultural deterioration work to retell their stories. With growing access to contrasting histories, the dialogue of what is true or imagined grows, and questions regarding Canadian Nationhood arise.

In this course, we look at the contradiction of a very prominent line in the Canadian National Anthem: “Oh Canada, Our Home, and Native land.” This line tells us a story, but as we learn more about the difference between “Home” and “land”, this national statement begs us to ask further questions. What is our home? What is the native land? Is one real? Is one imagined? Can they exist simultaneously? In my own experience upon this land which I call home, I call forth these questions.

Through stories of home, both imposed by the nation and through stories passed down through our family history upon this land, I’ve experienced a very conflated understanding of self. I live along the Burrard Inlet, in a community which I’ve known to call Deep Cove. My Great grandparents were Pioneers on this land, and to show for it we have a brick and a bench with our name on it, with our stories embedded in the pages of the archives in the heritage center. As a teenager into young adulthood, I prided myself on the fact that my family had lived upon that land since the 1940s.

Growing up, I wasn’t told of who was there before us. I didn’t know about the sacrifices that were made and who had to make them so I could boast my entitlement to the land. Entering my first semester at Capilano University, I learned about residential schools and Truth and Reconciliation. I listened to Ta’ah Amy George, a Tsleil-Waututh elder, speak about her experiences in residential schools and its residual effects. I remember feeling deep guilt and anger, but I also felt injustice. This injustice was not only regarding the abuse, violence, and genocide that contributed to the forming of Canada but also the injustice of the knowledge and stories that were kept from me.

Why was I conditioned to believe the unfair and racist stereotypes imposed upon indigenous populations, when the stories we were told of our pasts were incomplete, tilting in favor of settler population. How could I trust a nation that had tried to drown out the cultures and livelihoods of multiple populations because of racial hierarchy? I felt tricked, as my national and familial pride deflated. My sense of “home” and “identity” was imagined, and now it was my job to re-learn the land, through the stories of the people that came before “us”. So I’m here to listen to the voices that deserve to be heard, through literature and ceremonial elements of the “story”.

Bellow, I have attached a link to a podcast by UBC’s own unceded airwaves, an indigenous lead radio show associated with CITR. This episode talks about the decolonization of the institution and what that might mean or look like.

I’ve also included a link to stories of the Tsleil-Waututh people told by Cheif Dan George, Annie (Ta’h) George and other Tsleil-Waututh storytellers. These stories speak of the Burrard Inlet, its characteristics and its formation. I recommend you read the Legend of Scnoki, which offers us a story of the two-headed snake and the shaping of the Inlet.

NATIVE LEGENDS OF THE INDIAN ARM AREA – Compiled and edited by Ralph Drew, Belcarra, B.C. 

Link: 
http://www.belcarra.ca/reports/Native_Legends_Of_The_Indian_Arm_Area.pdf

Thanks for Listening!

Yours best,
Lexi

References Cited

Unceded Airwaves. “Decolonizing UBC Campus”. Unceded Airwaves, CITR, 05 December, 2018. CITR. https://playlist.citr.ca/podcasting/audio/2018/Unceded-Airwaves-38687-154419-December-05-14-00-50.mp3

George, L et al. (2019). Native Legends of the Indian Arm Area. [online] Belcarra.ca. Available at: http://www.belcarra.ca/reports/Native_Legends_Of_The_Indian_Arm_Area.pdf [Accessed 16 Jan. 2019].

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