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.

 

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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.

 

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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.