How Indigenous Storytelling Shapes Residential School Testimony
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Restorying Relationships and Performing Resurgence: How Indigenous Storytelling Shapes Residential School Testimony by Melanie Braith A Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies of The University of Manitoba in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of English, Theatre, Film, and Media University of Manitoba Winnipeg Copyright © 2020 by Melanie Braith i Abstract This dissertation argues that an understanding of Indigenous storytelling can change how audiences engage with residential school survivors’ testimonies. From 2009 to 2015, Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) recorded residential school survivors’ stories. The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation published these recordings online to meet survivors’ desire for their stories to be a learning opportunity. Any audience’s learning process is, however, contingent on their understanding of testimony. The most prominent Western understandings of testimony come from the contexts of courtroom testimony and trauma theory. Their theoretical underpinnings, however, emerge from epistemologies that are often incommensurable with Indigenous epistemologies, which can lead to a misreading of residential school testimonies. Looking at residential school testimonies through the lens of Indigenous oral storytelling, an inherently relational practice that creates and takes care of relationships, is an ethical alternative that allows audiences to recognize how these testimonies are a future-oriented process and restore relationships and responsibilities. My main argument is that Indigenous literatures can teach us how to apply the principles of Indigenous storytelling to residential school testimony. Indigenous epistemologies understand theory as a way of explaining processes by enacting those processes. Based on this, I argue that residential school novels reflect on the process of telling residential school stories by way of telling them. Thereby, the novels create theories of residential school testimony that explain how this form of testimony employs Indigenous storytelling principles in order to restore relationships that support Indigenous resurgence. I analyze residential school novels by Tomson Highway (Cree), Robert Arthur Alexie (Teetl’it Gwich’in), Richard Wagamese (Anishinaabe), and James Bartleman (Anishinaabe) in order to demonstrate how they re-imagine testimony by drawing from ii Indigenous storytelling principles that emphasize relationality, collectivity, and reciprocal responsibility. By applying the novels’ theories to the recordings of TRC testimonies, this dissertation renders visible how survivors used their testimony to create relationships, address contemporary political issues, and work towards Indigenous resurgence. Thereby, this dissertation contributes to a new understanding of testimony that enables audiences to engage with survivors’ stories in a decolonial manner. iii Acknowledgements There are many people without whom this dissertation would not have been possible, first of all the residential school survivors who spoke up and shared their stories in so many different ways. This dissertation reflects what I learned from them, and I hope that it inspires future engagement with these stories in those who read it. For four years, I was conducting my research as a visitor to Treaty 1 territory, and I will always be indebted to all the wonderful people who made me feel like Winnipeg was my second home. The Indigenous Literary Studies community on Turtle Island is furthermore the most generous collective of people I ever had the honour to meet. So many of these scholars have inspired and supported me over the last years. I am infinitely grateful to my advisor Dr. Warren Cariou whose support really was endless. Without his brilliance, kindness, and editorial skills, this dissertation would not be what it is today. I could not have wished for a better advisor. I was also lucky to work with a wonderful PhD committee: Dr. Alison Calder’s office door was always open, and she walked with me when life was difficult. Dr. Niigaan Sinclair taught me about Indigenous research methodologies and introduced me to the Native American Literature Symposium. Dr. Sophie McCall’s thoughtful comments provided so much food for thought and contributed to my arguments in Chapter 4. I want to thank the University of Manitoba, the Faculty of Graduate Studies, and the Department of English, Theatre, Film, and Media for the fellowships and awards that I received for the work on this project. I furthermore want to thank the faculty and staff at the English department who have been wonderful to work with over the past four years—in particular Anita King whose kind support meant a lot to me. My heartfelt gratitude goes out to the Centre for Creative Writing and Oral Culture at the University of Manitoba for the incredible support throughout. I am very grateful for the fellowship I received and for the support that enabled my research at Library and Archives Canada in Ottawa. I am also grateful for having had the opportunity to work with the wonderful staff at the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation. I am endlessly grateful for the support of my dear friend Dr. Patrizia Zanella from whom I learned so much about allyship and ethical engagement. Her thoughts and encouragement have been invaluable for this dissertation. Being apart from my family for the duration of this program was by far the most difficult part. I cannot thank my parents Gabi and Ralf and my sister Franzi enough for always being there for me while actually being thousands of kilometres away. You are all amazing! Baz and Sly became family in the last year of my PhD, and I will always treasure their kindness and stoicism. Finally, I am and always will be grateful to my partner Daniel who became my husband during this long journey. Your support means everything, and I love you. iv To Daniel. No more oceans and a cat. v Table of Contents Introduction: Listening to Residential School Survivors ............................................................... 1 Chapter 1: Stories of Theory ......................................................................................................... 29 Chapter 2: Disclosing the Experience: Residential School Novels Before the TRC ................... 68 2.1 Testimony as Creative and Collaborative Process: Highway’s Kiss of the Fur Queen ...... 70 2.2 Testimony as Communal Experience: Alexie’s Porcupines and China Dolls ................. 102 Chapter 3: Witnessing the Experience: Residential School Novels in the Age of the TRC ...... 132 3.1 Testimony as Intersection of Story, Place, and Body in Wagamese’s Indian Horse ....... 133 3.2 Intergenerational Testimony in Bartleman’s As Long as the Rivers Flow ....................... 156 3.3 Residential School Novels as Acts of Witnessing ............................................................ 175 Chapter 4: Listening Differently: An Analysis of Survivors’ TRC Testimonies ....................... 184 Conclusion: Getting Ready to Listen .......................................................................................... 231 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................... 246 1 Introduction: Listening to Residential School Survivors One night, a 13-year-old Cree boy was awakened by his mother and asked to sit at the kitchen table and listen to her stories of residential school. She told him how she was taken away from her own mother, and how she was forced to learn English. Cree author Darrel McLeod chose to open his memoir Mamaskatch with the description of this particular moment, recreating the image of an intimate storytelling situation that is nested in the relationship between 13-year-old Darrel, the listener, and his mother, the teller. When relating how his mother shared stories of residential school during a nightly kitchen table storytelling session, McLeod pays special attention to his mother’s narrative strategies, and rather than simply sharing what she told him that night, he first foregrounds how she tells her stories: The pattern of my mother’s stories is different from the ones I hear at school. The timelines are never linear. Instead, they are like spirals. She starts with one element of a story, moves to another and skips to yet a different part. She revisits each theme several times over, providing a bit more information with each pass. At first I find it hard to follow, but I’ve learned that if I just sit back and listen without interrupting, she will cover everything and make each story complete. (4) McLeod’s mother was not formally trained in the Cree tradition to be a storyteller, and yet, McLeod’s description of her stories’ structures reminds me of the ways in which Cree storytellers weave and braid stories. McLeod’s memory of this particular moment speaks to the way in which his younger self needed to learn how to listen to this way of storytelling in order to understand the meaning behind the intricate structures of his mother’s stories. I chose to begin with this passage 2 from McLeod’s memoir because in numerous ways, the passage encapsulates the subject of this dissertation: it is about listening to residential school stories; it is about the process of learning how to listen to residential school stories; it is about how survivors’ stories refuse to conform to certain expectations of structure and content; and it is about how