Introduction Since Time Immemorial, Human Beings Have Used Narrative

Chapter 1 – Introduction Since time immemorial, human beings have used narrative to help us make sense of our experience of life. From the fireside to the theatre, from the television and silver screen to the more recent manifestations of the virtual world, we have used storytelling as a means of providing structure, order, and coherence to what can otherwise appear an overwhelming infinity of random, unrelated events. In ordering the perceived chaos of the world around us into a structure we can grasp, narrative provides insight and understanding not only of events themselves, but on a more fundamental level, of the very essence of what it means to live as a human being. As the primary means by which historical writing is organized, narrative has attracted a large body of historians and philosophers who have grappled with its impact on our understanding of the past. Underlying their work is the tension between historical writing as a reflection of what took place in the past, and the essence of narrative as a creative, imaginative act. The very structure of Aristotelian narrative, with its causal link between events, its clearly defined beginning, middle and end, its promise of catharsis, its theme or moral, reflects an act of imagination on the part of its author. While an effective narrative first and foremost strives to draw us into its world of story and keep us there until the ending, the primary goal of historical writing, in theory at least, is to increase our understanding about the past. While these two goals are not inherently incompatible, they do not always work in concert. Such is the fundamental paradox that underlies the discussion of historical narrative: As a form of discourse, can narrative engage us in its imaginative world of story – created, or at least restructured, through an act of imagination – while at the same time accurately reflecting 2 the truth about the past? Since Aristotle first articulated his perception of the difference between fiction and historical writing, philosophers and historians have argued about the efficacy of the narrative form as a means of articulating anything but the most general or universal truths about our experience of being human. The discussion focuses less on whether or not its underlying structure is inherently narrative than on the extent to which that structure has shaped, limited, and even at times distorted our understanding of the past. A compelling case study of historical narrative is found in the story of Newfoundland’s Beothuk people. Featuring a range of narrative sources and styles, a typically colonialist binary opposition of its key players, and a clearly delineated plot structure culminating in their extinction in 1829, the Beothuk story presents an intriguing narrative of humanity pushed to the extreme. Like any history, the story of the Beothuk owes its complexity to a myriad of factors: the legacy of the early Maritime Archaic, Paleo Eskimo, Thule, and Dorset peoples; the imperialistic agendas of Europeans; and the unique ecosystem of Newfoundland, with its distinctive challenges to human settlement and migration (Tuck, 1976; Pastore, 1989; Upton, 1977). Beginning with the Norse accounts, the written word of Europeans has prevailed in the telling of this story, with early colonial correspondence and firsthand accounts forming the context for much ethnohistorical, anthropological, and archaeological research that followed (McGhee, 1984). Drawing on a framework of historical narrative theory, narratology, oral history and Indigenous research scholarship, this interdisciplinary dissertation explores the tremendous diversity and richness of the Beothuk narrative with a view to enhancing our understanding of that history and how it has been told. The theoretical framework of this dissertation has two goals: to explore how narrative has evolved as a primary means of human cognition, and to 3 determine the extent to which that means of cognition influences our perception of what is real, both in the present and the past. Acknowledging differences that occur within narrative across cultures and academic disciplines, this dissertation takes an interdisciplinary approach that focuses on what is common to the intrinsically hermeneutic nature of all narrative: the selection and sequencing of what are perceived by a narrator as significant events, and their subsequent interpretation by an audience, or reader. Through awareness of the narrative underpinnings on which it is based, the attempt is to come to a historical understanding of the Beothuk that is ultimately more inclusive and comprehensive. The textual analysis focuses primarily on the historical and archaeological narrative. It is acknowledged that alongside these sources there also exists a literary tradition concerning the Beothuk that extends from early 19th -century poetry to contemporary dramatic and prose accounts. Dalton (1992) identifies P.P.’s “The Boeothicks” (1836) and Webber’s “The Last of the Aborigines” (1851) as the earliest Newfoundland literary works on the subject of the Beothuks. More contemporary examples include Cook’s play On the Rim of the Curve (1995), Morgan’s novel Cloud of Bone (2007) and Crummey’s River Thieves (2001). Inarguably, these literary interpretations have shaped the narrative through their ongoing influence on the popular perception of the Beothuk in Newfoundland, a perception which, as Budgel (1992) notes, continues to be based on feelings of guilt for their perceived extermination. To varying degrees, this literature about the Beothuk draws on both the historical and archaeological writing, and like those forms, it can provide the reader with valuable insight into the perspective of its authors. The fundamental difference, however, lies in the fact that as a consciously fictional undertaking, this literature effectively treats the Beothuk as symbols rather than historic entities, and as such it ultimately serves to exclude the historic Beothuk as referent 4 (Dalton, 1992). Rather than shedding any light on their past reality as a people, this literature functions more to articulate the sympathies of its authors in their ongoing struggle with issues such as the use of the Beothuk as literary subjects and the significance, primarily to non-Native Newfoundlanders, of their tragic fate (Sugars, 2005).1 For material that is admittedly fictional in nature, such a focus is to be expected, and both readers and writers will approach the text well aware of its primarily figurative intent. This awareness is also characteristic of Native oral traditions, which tend to emphasize the centrality of the narrator’s role and his or her subjectivity in the interpretation of events. Within the historical and archaeological narratives of the Beothuk, however, the situation is quite different. For in historical writing, as in archaeological writing, both readers and writers proceed on the assumption that their primary goal is an attempt, at the very least, to accurately reconstruct and interpret the past as it really was. And unlike readers and writers of fiction, many approach the enterprise with little conscious awareness of the narrative structure employed, or, more importantly, the extent to which that structure can shape and limit their interpretation. Narratives, both fictional and historical, rely on storytellers, or narrators, to come into being. Whether they speak in the same voice as the author or adopt a persona that is distinctly their own, narrators strive to create a world of story that is sufficiently compelling to hold our attention to the very end. As most narrators know, one of the more common means of doing so is through the creation of compelling characters – individuals who resemble or differ from our perception of ourselves in ways that we can readily recognize. As audiences, we are drawn to a main character or protagonist we can relate to, someone who shares our values or reflects some fundamental aspect of who we think we are. Often appearing in opposition to this primary 1 An overt expression of this sentiment is found in Candow’s “Obligaory Beothuck Poem, which begins with the observation, “All the tortured white artists in the world/couldn’t put you back together again” (1986, 11). 5 character is the antagonist, a character who is largely defined through what we perceive as difference, by characteristics that we do not share, or at least wish we did not. From the very earliest forms of narrative, storytellers have organized their stories around the struggle between readily perceived binary opposites – good and evil, light and dark, the hero and the villain. While it is true that the best narratives describe compelling, complex characters who can simultaneously intrigue and repel us, such as Milton’s Satan in Paradise Lost, many narrative characters find themselves firmly fixed at opposite ends of our moral spectrum. Such characters serve as stereotypes, readily identifiable extremes of our morality and behaviour rather than realistic representations of the human condition. Narratively, they draw us into the story by serving as subjects with whom we can identify, and onto whom we can project our aspirations and desires, as well as our deepest anxieties and fears. As others, they represent extreme manifestations of the human condition that we have never quite experienced ourselves, for the simple reason, of course, that they are not real. Any study of early Native/European interaction in North America tends to illustrate the extent to which all human beings habitually define ourselves in opposition to a perceived other, and the price we pay for doing so. Reid (1995) describes the early British in Atlantic Canada as being engaged in a creative act of imagination, constructing fictitious boundaries between themselves and the Native population as a means of protecting their own cultural identity. What Goldie (1989) identifies as the colonialist’s propensity to project fear and desire onto the Indigenous other persists today on a global scale, as it has for centuries, in “the familiar binarism of Europe and its Others, of colonizer and colonized, of the West and the Rest, of the vocal and the silent” (Slemon, 1990, 34).

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