11/13/2012. [H]ow do we provide an arena for contesting stories (Aboriginal History: Workshop Report 5)?

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1 The Challenge of James Douglas and Carrier Chief Kwah [H]ow do we provide an arena for contesting stories (Aboriginal History: Workshop Report 5)? DISCOURSE: a use of language unified by common focus, vocabulary, concepts and typical contexts of usage. EG. medical discourse ; literary discourse COUNTER-DISCOURSE: a use of language that appropriates the vocabulary and typical contexts of a discourse for the purposes of speaking against that discourse. 1

2 In man the tongue is (a) the principal organ of taste. (b) the principal organ of articulate speech. (c) the principal organ of oppression and exploitation. (d) all of the above. 1. intervene between parties to produce agreement or reconciliation; 2. to be the medium for bringing about a result or conveying (as in a gift) [or an idea]; 3. to form a connecting link between; 4. connected not directly but through some other person or thing; 5. involving an intermediate agency. Wherever you go, there you are. Culture as a intermediate agency or as the medium that conveys knowledge. The idea that what we know and how we know it are filtered through or shaped by our cultural horizons, assumptions, investments, understandings, worldview. 2

3 Neither the courts, nor the academy, nor the assembly, nor the longhouse, have any monopoly on seeming to speak from great heights... Or speaking from a side road to someone convinced they are on the highway. But the interesting question turned out not to be whether we were talking nonsense, individually or collectively, but who has the power to impose that nonsense, and how that imposition takes place. And underlying all this who sets the standards of sense and nonsense. The question of historical discourse centred on that question of power. (Aboriginal History: Workshop Report 3, my emph.) The clearest thing that came out of [the workshop] is that the setting up and living out of dichotomies is an especially pernicious legacy of colonization. Primitive or civilized oral or written nothingness or nationality, aboriginal or nonaboriginal these are the categories which are used to analyze aboriginal people, and the choices put to them. Take one or the other. Be modern, assimilated..[.] or primitive, traditional. (Aboriginal History: Workshop Report 8) My insistence that an understanding of Carrier perspectives required looking beyond documents to contemporary oral sources [about the Douglas-Kwah encounter] was met with some suspicion from academic colleagues, Parks staff, and others. (Klippenstein 124) Why was Klippenstein s method met with suspicion? 3

4 What assumptions about knowledge in general and the oral and the written accounts in particular underlie this suspicion? Consider: DICHOTOMIES WRITTEN ACCOUNTS Reliable Fixed Verifiable Advanced ORAL ACCOUNTS Unreliable Malleable Unverifiable Primitive It is customary for events recorded in written form to be labelled histories, and those from oral traditions, myths or legends. Legend, like folklore and myth, connotes a poetic or quaint mix of truth and fantasy and is generally associated with primitive people who have a less firm grasp on reality than literate peoples. (Klippenstein 147) THE THESIS PROVIDES A MAP OF THE PAPER WHAT (evidence and method) + SO WHAT (findings or point) 4

5 What is the author s MATERIAL? What types of evidence will she use? What is the author s METHOD? How will she go about proving her point? What is the author s GOAL or FINDING? What point is she making? Various renditions of this story survive both in document form and in oral tradition. A comparison of these version illustrates how historical events and experiences are written from particular perspectives, and suggests that events are interpreted and realities constructed in order to suit specific purposes. The comparison casts doubt on the superiority of written texts and shows how over time in the written and oral traditions alike history is shaped and reshaped in the telling. (Klippenstein 125). Each story belongs to a tradition, and each tradition has its own criteria of authenticity and authority. The stories of science are informed by dramatic and narrative structures that are much like those of other stories. And they are determined by particular theories, by particular ways of looking at things. Myth and legend are also shaped by methodologies that are no less strict, no less grounded in the gathering and verification of data, and of course no less creative than the stories of science. (Aboriginal History: Workshop Report 1) 5

6 What types of accounts does Klippenstein include in her study? 1. second hand or reported stories (from both Europeans and Carrier, incl. in written accounts) ; 2. official HBC records; 3. first-hand or eyewitness accounts of Europeans; 4. Oral accounts of Carrier descendents of witnesses. What does the language used in John McLean s account (126) tell us about the perspective of the writer? bloody ordeal treacherously murdered poor men What dichotomies shape this account? What benefits or advantages does Henry Connolly s eye-witness account (132-33) have over McLean s (second-hand) account? What limits the eye-witness account? What values or ideas shape this account? Who is the hero of this account? 6

7 Genre: a set of expectations, qualities, forms, contents that group texts together EG. science fiction ; poetry ; propaganda. How does genre influence these accounts? Heroic: Douglas s & HBC s bringing of justice to a savage land; Bildungsroman: the development of the great man ; Romance: the pathos of brave women and children. Are written accounts necessarily or essential more reliable than oral accounts? Memorial reconstruction; hearsay second-hand news; Personal investments, loyalties; Limited perspective; Cultural assumptions ( justice, empire, business, Eurocentrism). What is the effect of privileging written accounts over oral accounts? Loss of Cultural context: the apprehension of the murderer in the Carrier village (140) Carrier perspective: brutality of the execution of the Carrier murderer (139). 7

8 How does an account gain authority? Availability: printed accounts can be accessed and become standard (Tod and McLean); Institutional Sanction: HBC accounts are official (Simpson); Cultural inwardness: interviews and understanding of Carrier culture clarifies motivations (Morice); Tradition/Community: Carrier custodians of oral history provide missing perspective. Klippenstein asserts that both oral and written accounts are culturally mediated and that the privileging of written accounts as more reliable is detrimental to the understanding of history. Do you think that she has made her case? 8