Dreams and Nightmares in First Nations Fiction
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Dreams and Nightmares in First Nations Fiction Inauguraldissertation zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades eines Doktors der Philosophie (Dr. phil.) an der Philosophischen Fakultät der Universität Greifswald Vorgelegt von Lena Ruwoldt Februar 2017 Name des Dekans: Prof. Dr. Thomas Stamm-Kuhlmann Name des Erstgutachters: Prof. em. Dr. Hartmut Lutz Name der Zweitgutachterin: Prof. Dr. Kerstin Knopf Datum der Disputation: 1.12.2017 Für Ellen und Heinz 1 Introduction .................................................................................................................... 1 2 Epistemological Concerns ............................................................................................ 11 2.1 “Write your own damn stories:” Non-Native Literary Academia ......................... 12 2.1.1 Personal Positioning ........................................................................................ 19 2.2 “Decolonizing the (European) Mind”: Aboriginal and Western Worldviews Colliding? ....................................................................................................................... 23 2.2.1 Academic Restrictions: The Need for a Paradigm Shift ................................. 31 2.2.2 Post-colonialism: Rejections and Benefits ...................................................... 35 2.3 Western and Aboriginal Dream Discourses .......................................................... 39 2.3.1 Sigmund Freud: Ein Traum als Beweismittel ................................................. 40 2.3.2 Black Elk’s Dreams and Visions .................................................................... 46 2.3.3 A Categorization of Dreams ........................................................................... 60 2.4 The Sample ............................................................................................................ 63 3 Robert Arthur Alexie: Trauma(tic) Anxiety Dreams ................................................... 66 3.1 PTSR, FASD, and Residential School Narratives ................................................. 66 3.2 Dream Reversals .................................................................................................... 76 3.2.1 Orality in the Novel ........................................................................................ 77 3.2.2 The Novel as a Residential School, PTSR and FAS Narrative ....................... 85 3.3 Truth and Reconciliation: Mission (Im)possible? ............................................... 106 4 Richard Van Camp: Ecological Nightmares .............................................................. 115 4.1 The Windigo ........................................................................................................ 115 4.2 Two Stories, One Nightmare ............................................................................... 127 4.3 “Dreams and Traditional (Ecological) Knowledge: Ambivalent Messages? ...... 152 4.3.1 The Tar Sands ............................................................................................... 161 5 Richard Wagamese and Cherie Dimaline: Existential Dreaming .............................. 168 5.1 A Legal Framework of Native Identity in Canada .............................................. 168 5.2 Homelessness and the City .................................................................................. 178 5.3 “We are people of the dream:” Dreaming an(d) Identity .................................... 205 5.3.1 The Old Ones and the(ir) Old Ways ............................................................. 226 5.4 Idle No More and the ‘Highway of Tears’ .......................................................... 237 6 Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 243 1 Introduction Native Studies in Canada were created in order to help lift the denial that this nation was built on stolen land; the inclusion of the nonthreatening, yet eye-opening medium of the verbal arts – both oral and written – will strengthen this educational mandate and grant Aboriginal peoples greater visibility. Renate Eigenbrod, “A Necessary Inclusion” (13) The relationship between Native and non-Native populations on Turtle Island1 is still shaped and deeply influenced by (post/neo)colonial power dynamics, hierarchies, and internalized concepts of each other manifested in ‘us versus them’ dichotomies. Jo-Ann Episkenew names this “invisible boundary between settler and Indigenous society” with the words of John Stackhouse, a “quiet apartheid”2 (Episkenew Taking Back Our Spirits 190). For non-Native people, contemporary Native literature provides and accessible medium to learn about the realities of current social injustices in North America concerning its Native populations and thus proving that colonialism is ongoing and not a situation of a long forgotten past. This process presupposes the unlearning of the settler’s/colonized way of thinking which is dominated by the “colonial myth of a story of imagined White superiority” (Episkenew Taking Back Our Spirits 3). The study of First Nations literature fosters the key process of liberation and reconciliation that has come to be known as decolonization. A conceptualized ‘Dream of Healing’ finds its literary and literal representation in the form of dreams and nightmares in First Nations fiction. Indigenous people and their non-Indigenous allies and activists hope for a (decolonized) future where “Canada’s apartheid” is overcome not only in daily-life but also in schools and universities of Turtle Island and abroad. The subject matter of dreaming can be regarded as a bridge and opportunity to enhance and improve a dialogue between Native and non-Native people, since it is a topic 1 The notion of Turtle Island refers to North America, alluding to what the Indigenous populations name the continent, because several Indigenous creation stories, especially of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois), describe that the continent was created on a Turtle’s back. Sky Woman, who fell down from the sky, landed on Turtle’s Back which has become the land, peeking out of the ocean. I will use the term Turtle Island as representing the Indigenous perspective of North America that ignores the Western creation of borders. 2 For more information, please see John Stackhouse’s The Globe and Mail series “Canada’s Apartheid.” 1 accessible to all people. Its literary representations and functions show the differences and conflicts between Natives and non-Natives but are also embedded in an individual, subjective framework commemorative of Freudian interpretations. As the dreams and nightmares in First Nations fiction predominantly deal with the trauma of colonialism and its effects on Indigenous people, they (and their academic discussion) seem to deepen the existing gap between worldviews, concepts and notions of the colonizer and the colonized. But dreaming also appears to lead the way to reconciliation, not only with the protagonists’ selves but also with the collective past of colonization and ethnocide. Contemporary Indigenous writing and its readership can enhance the already mentioned process of decolonization - a concept that is also a process of liberation and healing. The need to acknowledge differences without declaring one wrong and the other right, without the urge to impose only one view on all, is essential to decolonization. This process is especially important concerning epistemology, belief systems and different ways of knowing and researching. One of the major attempts of this dissertation is to not enhance opposition while declaring right or wrong, to not discard or reject one view over another, but instead to acknowledge that different views exist. I am striving to follow the examples of the literature selected for this study. All of these fictional writings do exactly that: while still portraying differences of worldviews (Western and Indigenous) as the status quo they also show that a clear separation is not possible anymore, and that many Aboriginal authors have come to write ‘beyond’ such confinements and limitations. However, this thesis will lay more emphasis on the Indigenous perspective, since it still is the marginalized viewpoint that needs to be brought forward in order to find common ground. Common ground, however, can only be found when both sides - colonizer and colonized - agree on the need for healing and act upon it (Episkenew Taking Back Our Spirits 11). Decolonization and liberation both aim at the healing of wounds induced by more than 500 years of colonization, and so does dreaming in literature. I believe literature to be one of the most powerful ideological tools of decolonization; one that is accessible and open to all people invested in change, liberation and education. Kovach writes: “introducing Indigenous knowledges into any form of academic discourse [research or otherwise] must ethically include the influence of the colonial relationships, thereby introducing a decolonizing perspective to a critical paradigm” (30). When it comes to decolonizing tools, we have to acknowledge a difference in “Third World” liberation/decolonization 2 referring to liberation sought for in revolutions such as Algeria and Congo, compared to “Fourth World”3 decolonization referring to internal colonies like reservations, Residential Schools, and homelands. The tools here are strictly trimmed to the ideological tools of the latter category of decolonization that usually does not involve guns and (the