ipl-logo

How Does Tomson Highway Present The Relationship Between Aboriginal Life And Culture

2234 Words9 Pages

When looking at Aboriginal life and culture, through the lens of fiction, there is often a heavy emphasis of the supernatural, many times portrayed through the images and stories of mythical creatures. These spiritual beings, such as the Weetigo, a cannibalistic creature of Cree mythology, can be seen as a representative of a society in which trauma plays an influential role in origin stories and in life; thus such stories often have a strong 'traumatic' base to them. Tomson Highway's Kiss of the Fur Queen and Eden Robinson's Monkey Beach, both utilize mythology and the spiritual world to describe the battle of dealing with various traumas. Through these novels the role of mythology and storytelling within Aboriginal trauma, and how to …show more content…

Highway shows how the brothers mature past the sexual abuse inflicted upon them by Father Lafleur at the school, and how Jeremiah and Gabriel cope by developing their passions in music and dance. Tomson Highway applies traditional Cree mythology to portray the impact of residential schools upon Aboriginal life and culture, and the resulting dramatization of Aboriginal. Kristina Fagan says in “Weesageechak Meets the Weetigo” that Highway uses the tool of storytelling in Kiss of the Fur Queen “to explore connections between the traumatic past and troubles in the present and to self-reflexively examine the potential and limits of such indirect... communication” (Fagan, 1). The idea of indirect communication, is instead of saying something or expressing themselves directly, a person acts something out, or gets their point across in a round-about way. It's a subtle way of communicating harsh issues. Kiss of the Fur Queen, for example, has many instances of “indirect communication”, one of them being Chachagathoo's island, where the Catholic priests had hunted down Chachagathoo, an Aboriginal Shaman/medicine

Show More
Related
559 Words | 3 Pages

Two Indigenous elements that are strongly present in the texts Dead White Writer On The Floor by Drew Hayden Taylor and Five Little Indians by Michelle Good are trauma and stereotypes. The first Indigenous concept that is present is trauma. The five main characters from Five Little Indians suffered trauma from the residential schools, as well as Fred from DWWOTF. In Five Little Indians, Kenny suffered from all kinds of abuse during his time in the residential school starting at the age of six. Even after Kenny escaped, he was still plagued by his experiences there.

Read More
1802 Words | 8 Pages

Tracey Lindberg’s novel Birdie is narratively constructed in a contorting and poetic manner yet illustrates the seriousness of violence experience by Indigenous females. The novel is about a young Cree woman Bernice Meetoos (Birdie) recalling her devasting past and visionary journey to places she has lived and the search for home and family. Lindberg captures Bernice’s internal therapeutic journey to recover from childhood traumas of incest, sexual abuse, and social dysfunctions. She also presents Bernice’s self-determination to achieve a standard of good health and well-being. The narrative presents Bernice for the most part lying in bed and reflecting on her dark life in the form of dreams.

Read More
1540 Words | 7 Pages

Intimacy in these novels takes on different forms and meanings, including forced intimacy, familial intimacy and intimacy with the supernatural. Forced intimacy in the form of sexual violence and assault effects many characters in Monkey Beach. Lisa is raped by her friend Cheese, Erica is followed by a van of white men yelling sexual threats against her and Karaoke is abused by Josh. As a reader, we can also assume that Josh himself has been the victim of abuse, furthermore showing the readers that there is a legacy of abuse within the community due to multiple factors including residential schools. Robinson’s novel shows the negative impacts of sexual violence in Indigenous communities within Canada.

Read More
1804 Words | 8 Pages

Maria Campbell’s Stories of the Road Allowance People provides the audience with engaging stories told by elders of the Metis. Campbell draws the reader into the life and culture of those whose stories it shares. Her use of elder storytelling creates an entertaining piece of literature while also providing an accurate depiction of Indigenous history through stories. She represents the storytellers in her book with dignity and power by using the stories of true elders of the Metis and transcribing the oral stories as accurately as possible on the pages. This is largely manifested by her use of unconventional dialect and structure throughout the stories.

Read More
925 Words | 4 Pages

Counteracting Indigenous stereotypes in The Secret Path by Gord Dowie, and Illustrated by Jeff Lemire The Secret Path is a multimedia project that focuses on an Ojibwe boy named Chanie “Charlie” Wenjack, and his escape from residential school. The project premiered on October 23rd 2016, and it comprises of an album, a graphic novel, and an animated film. It was created by Gord Downie and illustrated by Jeff Lemire, both whom are artists that are “white and from southern Ontario,” and they both have no Indigenous heritage (Grundy). In the text, “‘Sharing Our Stories with All Canadians’:

Read More
788 Words | 4 Pages

Where Jacobson works with animalistic symbolism, Morrisseau expresses the Ojibway worldview within his work through the use of narratives. Morrisseau’s grandfather Potan was known as a Midewinini and Jissakan, a shaking tent seer, and was well versed in the traditional stories and teachings of his people. One aspect of the Ojibway world view is the importance of narrative, which was told by the elders of the community. These narratives “were instrumental in teaching about history and morality. The Ojibwa narratives were used to pass on knowledge,” (Wobodistch, 15)

Read More
157 Words | 1 Pages

“The Way to Rainy Mountain” is organized very well, it includes three narrative voices. Throughout this novel the first narrative voice is about the Kiowa legends. Then Momaday has a paragraph of contexts that relates to the legend. The author gives the reader a bit of his life by relating a family experience he had. Because some of the Kiowa legends and history go with Momadays own family history, then this three voice narration allows the author to have great detail about the Kiowa’s way of life in every way.

Read More
563 Words | 3 Pages

Over a long period of time, the Aboriginal peoples of Australia have developed an elaborate body of myths, legends, and stories that gave expression to an Aboriginal cosmology, or understanding of the world. This body of myths, known collectively as the Dreamtime, served to “anchor the landscape and its human and animal inhabitants to distant events and mythical ancestors. In this cosmology, long before humans appears, ancestral beings emerged from the earth and traversed the land” as explained in the introduction of the Mutjinga myth. Moreover, Aboriginals also tied everything in the physical world with a spiritual form, which is the central motif of the Mutjinga myth, as Mutjinga is the woman responsible for taking care of these spirits - and her ability to communicate with them gives her

Read More
255 Words | 2 Pages

Walking with Our Sisters is a memorial exhibit commemorating the missing and murdered Aboriginal and Métis Women of Canada and the United States. The Carleton University Art Gallery provokes awareness and shame due to the appalling history of Canada concerning the Indigenous women and children. The exhibition presents approximately eighteen hundred vamps prepared by the families’ victims and countless advocates. The gallery elicits recognition and powerful heartbreaking emotions through the marvelous designs, respectful approach, hunting music, and agonizing arrangements. Walking with Our Sisters is certainly a remarkable event.

Read More
1461 Words | 6 Pages

Political culture is defined as the set of values and beliefs that are shared in a population. These attitudes and practices shape political behavior in a society. Political culture is passed on from generation to generation and changes slowly. Political culture is helpful in understanding the actions of people and how they understand themselves. When studying comparative politics, culture should be taken into account because it can explain the actions of individuals in different societies.

Read More
706 Words | 3 Pages

Print. This article mainly focuses on the elders in Canadian Aboriginal communities, namely on what role they play in preserving culture and oral tradition. It also discusses how digital storytelling (explained by the author as being any “short narrative told in the first person and enhanced by visual text and symbolic imagery”) affects the practise of oral storytelling. This article will support the argument that

Read More
75 Words | 1 Pages

The effects were that lots of traditional aboriginal culture and language went extinct. This resulted in lots of loss of information for aboriginal children. Also the loss of having their children taken away was devastating to many parents, who never recovered from their grief. Some commited suicide or turned to alcohol. Due to being taken away at a young age, the children never learned family skills.

Read More
184 Words | 1 Pages

Aboriginal peoples in Canada, or Aboriginal Canadians, are the indigenous peoples within the boundaries of present-day Canada. They comprise the First Nations,[2] Inuit[3] and Métis.[4] The descriptors "Indian" and "Eskimo" have somewhat fallen into disuse in Canada and are sometimes considered pejorative.[5][6][7] Old Crow Flats and Bluefish Caves are some of the earliest known sites of human habitation in Canada. The Paleo-Indian Clovis, Plano and Pre-Dorset cultures pre-date current indigenous peoples of the Americas. Projectile point tools, spears, pottery, bangles, chisels and scrapers mark archaeological sites, thus distinguishing cultural periods, traditions and lithic reduction styles.

Read More
931 Words | 4 Pages

Native American stories have made their way into American literature and entertainment ever since cultural contact, especially the stories with animals as characters. In Native Americans stories you will notice that they use the animals as the motifs. A motif is an idea that is present throughout the whole story. They are noticed easily in the stories; they play a significant role in defining the moral of the story. Native Americans use animals to tell their stories, the animals have contest of who can do what the best or who can accomplish something that the other animal cannot.

Read More
1757 Words | 8 Pages

3 Shakespeare’s Contributions In the early 16th century, The English language was not highly rated. It was rather seen as a language spoken day-to-day by the lower-caste society due to it sounding barbaric and lacking the sophistication that foreign languages required. Therefore, it was not promoted at schools. Children were taught Latin and Greek in schools, because they were the default languages for scholarly and ecclesiastical communication.

Read More

More about How Does Tomson Highway Present The Relationship Between Aboriginal Life And Culture

Related Topics

Open Document