Recently, I’ve been reading about the role that indigenous literature can play in the process of
reconciliation in Canada. I’m currently finishing Jo-Ann Episkenew’s Taking Back Our Spirits: Indigenous Literature, Public Policy, and Healing where she explores the work of Aboriginal authors including Basil Johnston, Maria Campbell and Beatrice Culleton Mosionier. But this post will focus on a short story from the collection, Our Story: Aboriginal Voices on Canada’s Past (published in 2005).
Although the book is filled with excellent writing, the narrative that I found most striking was Thomas King’s piece entitled “Coyote and the Enemy Aliens.” Here, King tells a tale of a coyote who becomes involved in rounding up “enemy aliens.” The story is set during the internment of Japanese Canadians during World War II. As the definition of enemy alien changes in the story, King illustrates the fickle nature of dividing people into categories of “us” and “them.”
I have been curious for some time about how the process of redress for historical injustices in Canada has taken shape. In particular, the demand for an apology and reparation for Japanese Canadians interned during the second world war is one that I have followed closely. And I have often wondered how to relate these two experiences (of Japanese Canadians and Aboriginal peoples) to each other without erasing the important differences. Thomas King’s work in his short story is impressive in this regard. He uses the familiar character of the trickster coyote to tie the two historical narratives together. In his foreword to the story, he explains his intentions:
“I know the story of the Japanese internment in Canada. I know it as most Canadians know it.
In pieces.
From a distance.
But whenever I hear the story, I think about Indians, for the treatment the Canadian government afforded Japanese people during the Second World War is strikingly similar to the treatment that the Canadian government has always afforded Native people, and whenever I hear either of these stories, a strange thing happens.
I think of the other.
I’m not suggesting that Native people have suffered the way the Japanese suffered or that the Japanese suffered the way Native people have. I’m simply suggesting that hatred and greed produce much the same sort of results, no matter who we practice on” (158).
King’s story captured my imagination. Not only because it is a well-told tale, but because it opens up a way of creating a particular type of Canadian narrative, one that incorporates many voices while maintaining ties to an indigenous mode of story-telling. It also works to close a gap between seemingly disparate histories, drawing attention to similarities rather than differences. I recommend the book in general, and this story in particular.
Above: an image of the closing event at the Canadian TRC’s first national gathering.
Below: a list of some of the coverage of the Canadian Truth Commission’s first national gathering in Winnipeg. (Thanks to Viola, Leonard and Harmony for some these links!)
Truth and Reconciliation Walkers Headed for Winnipeg (Wawatay News Online)
Strahl Breaks Down at Hearings Into Residential Schools (Global Winnipeg)
Ottawa Makes Own Gesture of Healing at Truth and Reconciliation Event (Edmonton Journal)
Minister Strahl Delivers A Speech on the Truth and Reconciliation National Event (IsumaTV)
Residential Schools Will Be Nixed from Indian Act (The Vancouver Province)
Residential School Stories Move From Shadows (CBC.ca)
Ottawa Intends to Amend Indian Act (Financial Post)
Commission Will Hear Residential School Truths that Will ‘Heal Us All’ (Metro)
Residential Schools: Stories to Tell and Re-tell (The Globe and Mail)
Truth and Reconciliation (video clips covering the first national gathering – The National)
Harbinger of Truth Sees Hope for Future (Edmonton Journal)
Declaration Adoption is ‘a step on the journey of reconciliation’ (Indian Country Today)
Pupils to Study Residential Schools (Winnipeg Free Press)
Some Former Residential School Students Struggle with Church Presence at Reconciliation Event (The Globe and Mail)
Testimonies Online – IsumaTV and Where Are the Children
March 28, 2010
IsumaTV has over twenty testimonies from former residential school students available online. You can listen to their experiences here. Given that testimonies for the Indian Residential School Truth and Reconciliation Commission will largely be taken in private, it will be interesting to see how the experiences from the schools will be shared. IsumaTV and Where Are the Children are two sites making testimonies (not taken specifically for or by the IRS TRC) available online.
Canada’s Colonialism – Article at TheMarkNews.com
January 21, 2010
A short piece on Canada’s colonial history, and Prime Minister Harper’s denial of it, is available at The Mark.
Alana Lajoie O’Malley writes:
“At the G20 Summit last September, our prime minister boasted that we “have no history of colonialism.” That the leader of our country can stand in front of dignitaries from around the world and speak these words is a testament to just how far we have to go in really understanding our national history.”
Read the full piece here.
Photo by axiepics available under a Creative Commons License
Berlin! (Part 1)
November 2, 2009
I recently returned from Berlin where I was participating in the Eleventh Berlin Roundtables on Transnationality. The event, generously supported by the Irmgard Coninx Foundation, was amazing. The Foundation sponsored about 50 young scholars from around the world to participate in discussions centered around three themes: Memorials and Museums, Transitional Justice and Political Discourse. I presented my research on the IRS TRC in Canada and had the pleasure of hearing others present their work related to issues from Ghana, Cambodia, Peru, Japan, Israel, Yemin, and Cypress among others.
The Foundation also arranged for three guest lecturers:
Karl Schlögel (Professor of Eastern European History, European University Viadrina Frankfurt/Oder): “Divided Horizons, Divided Memories: The Year 1989 and Europe”
Albie Sachs (Judge on the Constitutional Court of South Africa): “From Prison to Constitutional Court: The Changing Face of Justice in South Africa”
Daniel Libeskind (Architect, New York): “Counterpoint: The Architecture of Memory”
The lectures were great. Albie Sachs’ talk was particularly inspiring. Sachs was a freedom fighter in South Africa and during his exile in Mozambique, he survived a car bomb attack. He lost his right arm and partial vision in his eyes, but, as he said in his talk, retained his sense of humour and his will to fight. After the fall of apartheid, he returned to South Africa where President Mandela appointed him a judge on the newly formed constitutional court. After his talk, I had the opportunity to speak with him briefly – a truly generous and special man.
The Foundation has recently announced its next Call for Papers. The theme is Cultural Pluralism Revisited: Religious and Linguistic Freedoms. I encourage everyone to apply!
Next on my list: Washington, DC. I head there on Friday for the annual American Studies Association (ASA) Conference. My last conference of the year!
Coverage of the New AFN Chief
August 11, 2009
The Assembly of First Nations (AFN) elected a new Chief at the end of July. Mr. Shawn Atleo, a hereditary chief of Ahousaht First Nation, is the new, and youngest (42), AFN Chief. He identified the importance of treaty rights, continued dialogue about the legacy of the residential schools, and Aboriginal youth and education issues as primary concerns. Check out the local and national coverage:
The Globe and Mail – Alteo Elected New AFN Chief
CBC – Aboriginal Issues (includes video)
Brantford Expositor – New AFN Chief Reason For Optimism
Montreal Gazette – New AFN Chief Must Reform Organization
Update: The New Commission
June 10, 2009
As mentioned in a previous post, rumors have been circulating about the new Indian Residential School Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Just after the one-year anniversary of its establishment, and on the eve of the anniversary of the official apology by Prime Minister Harper, the TRC confirmed that the new commission will be comprised of Justice Murray Sinclair of Manitoba, Marie Wilson, a former journalist and CBC North regional director from Yellowknife, and Wilton Littlechild, Alberta regional chief of the Assembly of First Nations. The mandate has been extended by one-year in order to make up for the time lost due to the resignations of the former commission. To read more visit: cbc.ca or the TRC website.
Given the setbacks of the first year, it may be helpful to re-visit some of the complicated issues that face the commission. Ovide Mercredi’s lecture on TVO’s Big Ideas last year could provide a good start, as could the article entitled “A Just Society? Canada’s Adventure in Truth and Reconciliation” published in Dissent by Feisal G. Mohamed. Both Mercredi and Mohamed raise questions and concerns about what kind of justice is pursued through these national commissions. In the Canadian case, these issues include how testimonies will be collected, how the commission envisions the concepts of “truth” and “reconciliation,” and the ways in which the commission may obscure other issues facing Aboriginal communities. It will be interesting to watch the coming weeks and months as the commission regroups and begins this process with renewed focus.
Semester Wrap-Up: Part 2
May 18, 2009
More reading highlights from the semester:
1) Michael Taussig’s The Nervous System
Michael Taussig explores the ways in which the combination of state-sanctioned violence and a climate of silence engender a perpetual “state of emergency,” where the chaotic is the norm. His metaphor of the nervous system works well on several levels. In terms of memory work, it evokes the non-linear way in which an individual or community remembers. It also suggests an embodiment that, as we have seen in previous readings, is an important component when theorizing trauma. In addition, he explores the concept of “writing the nervous system” and explains that it “calls for an understanding of the representation as contiguous with that being represented and not as suspended above and distant from the represented” (10). He inserts himself into this text, realizing that his own representations cannot be distanced from the represented; he blends the subject and object of study. At times, he addresses the reader explicitly, asking, “But what about people like yourself caught up in such matters? What sort of talk have you got?” and then, “What about myself, for that matter?” (29). This rhetorical technique helps to illuminate the “nervousness” in both Taussig’s content and style.
In chapter 3, he raises some interesting questions about the academic process of contextualization, positing that it has become a sort of talisman, mystified in a way that suggests its knowledge translates into a guaranteed understanding of social relations and history. Instead, Taussig proposes that social relations and history themselves are “fragile intellectual constructs posing as robust realities” (45). And that our “contextualizing gaze” (45) creates a view that is too narrow, not allowing for creative blending within and between disparate spaces and times.
2) John Jackson’s Real Black: Adventures in Racial Sincerity
By using a diverse range of examples in the New York area, including the gentrification of Harlem, Black Jewish identity in Brooklyn and the politics of naming in hip hop, Jackson challenges ideas of racial authenticity and explores the potentials of sincerity. Jackson’s book is a foray into “autoethnographic” work. He focuses on complications and intersections, practicing a “dark reading,” where he attempts to “feel, grope, invent, even pretend the real” (67). He is offering another way of meaning-making, an interpretive strategy that recognizes the role of the interpreter in relation to the messages that are received. Anthropology, in other words, can have a dual nature, representing a complicated interaction between observed and observer.
As much as his book is about the difficulties involved in theorizing race, Jackson’s project is also a “rumination on the ethnographic project, itself a response to challenges arising from the alleged crises in representation and analysis of the late 1980s, crises that still haunt the discipline to this day” (9-10). In response to this haunting, Jackson proposes the novel methodological technique of “channeling.” To deal with his own feelings of nervousness in asking subjects difficult or personal questions, Jackson channels the presence of more famous and accomplished ethnographers. He asks himself, WWZNHD? What would Zora Neal Hurston do? (24-25) Eventually, he finds that he needs to conjure up a whole new identity altogether, which leads to the rise of Anthroman.
The fears he believes accompanies ethnographic writing, what he refers to an “ethnographobia” are brought fully to the surface of his text (24). Anthroman is one of his coping strategies, an alter ego whose “Anthrosenses” won’t fail under pressure. In referring to himself in the third person, he disrupts the flow in his text, and highlights the constructed nature of his work. It is a methodological tool that illustrates his theoretical arguments. Jackson’s work recognizes the difficulty in reading his subjects, and explains that this is what sincerity demands: an acceptance of our “mutual impermeability” (87).
I found Jackson’ work particularly interesting in his recognition of the ways in with ethnography is implicgated in the production of knowledge. For Jackson, ethnographic knowledge is produced through an acknowledgement of this “mutual impermeability” while simultaneously engaging with it.
At times, his own presence in his work is a little overwhelming. Still, the book is definitely worth-reading, providing an interesting example of creative and engaging ethnography.
Semester Wrap-up: Part I
May 12, 2009
The semester is finally winding down and although I have a few loose ends to tie-up, summer is on the horizon. So I thought I’d take a little time and post some reflections on my coursework and research from this past semester.
A few books that I loved:
1) Human Rights, Inc. by Joseph Slaughter.
Slaughter begins his Preamble to the book with a quote from John Humphrey, principle drafter of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: “Everyone knows, or should know, why human rights are important.” (2) Slaughter goes on to discuss how the gap between what everyone knows and what everyone should know is relevant to discourses of both literature and law. He focuses on the connections between human rights and the novel, particularly the coming-of-age genre, Bildungsroman.
He writes:
“The novel genre and liberal human rights discourse are more than coincidentally, or casually, interconnected. Seen through the figure and formula of human personality development central to both the Bildungsroman and human rights, their shared assumptions and imbrications emerge to show clearly their historical, formal, and ideological interdependencies. They are mutually enabling fictions: each projects an image of the human personality that ratifies the other’s idealistic visions of the proper relations between the individual and society and the normative career of free and full human personality development” (4).
It’s a fascinating read that ties together seemingly distinct discourses in interesting and unexpected ways. Chapter three, “Normalizing Narrative Forms of Human Rights: The (Dys)Function of the Public Sphere,” focuses on the ways in which reciting one’s story in a public setting, as ins the practice in some truth commissions, reveals the emphasis placed on storytelling in relation to the formation of the citizen-subject.
2) The House of Difference: Cultural Politics and National Identity in Canada by Eva Mackey.
In The House of Difference: Cultural Politics and National Identity in Canada, Eva Mackey explores the ways in which multicultural and pluralist discourses, while espousing the rhetoric of tolerance, may in fact create a climate of intolerance and resentment. By examining the strategies of power at play in Canadian multicultural policies, Mackey challenges the national myth of an inclusive and tolerant Canadian society. Her explorations reveal how an account of national identity that focuses on pluralism may be a form of managing difference as opposed to allowing for difference to flourish.
Mackey utilizes several methods in order to explore the terrain of Canadian identity as it relates to policies of multiculturalism. She offers a re-reading of historical documents, analyzes iconic imagery (including painting, sculpture and photography) and their circulation, and conducts interviews with people around and about several events celebrating the 125th anniversary of Canadian confederation. This eclectic approach strengthens Mackey’s points, highlighting the diverse ways in which multicultural discourses takes shape on both national and local levels.
In the context of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Canada, it will be interesting to see how this myth of a tolerant nation will be affected.
3) Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel, Never Let Me Go, follows the haunting tale of three friends who are “donors.” The story moves back and forth between the present and the past, recounting Kathy H’s sometimes-tumultuous memories of two dear friends, Tommy and Ruth. Although the novel is set in the 1990s in England, it straddles the boundaries between a world that seems incredibly familiar, and one that is eternally distant. A sense of familiarity is created by the recounting of Kathy’s childhood and youth, including arguments with friends and first loves that will resonate with most readers. At the same time, a sense of distance is created by the realization that Kathy and her friends are part of a system where they are reared expressly for the harvesting of their organs. The novel provides an interesting context in which to discuss issues of personhood, the ethics of biotechnology and human rights.
Digital Archives – Residential Schools
November 3, 2008
CBC.ca has an excellent online resource about the Indian Residential School system. By watching these news clips, dating from the 1950s onwards, you can get a good sense of the ways in which public opinion about these schools slowly changes. Check it out here: A lost heritage.
