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The influence of America on Canadian culture and identity
Essays on Canadian identity
Essays on Canadian identity
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Your Citizenship please? At a point in time, people encounter this question when you are about to cross the border into a different country, whether it is by car, train or plane. It questions one’s identity as to who they are. Most people answer with the current country they live in but does one ever answer with the country that they were from? “Borders” by Thomas King, is an intriguing story about a mother that has pride in her culture and values where she comes from. Along with her two kids, she resides in a native community. The mother has to declare her citizenship at the border, where she persistently presents herself as “Blackfoot.” The story, “Borders”, illustrates how difficult it is for Aboriginals to maintain their cultural identities in contemporary times. The mother and the daughter have several cultural differences as the mother, who displays extremely strong values and feelings towards her culture while her daughter, Laetitia wants to explore outside of her reserve. There is an imaginary line that King refers to is an additional obstacle that impedes on their culture. They have to respect the border but still maintain their culture. The obstacle that the imaginary line creates a political alliance which adds to their cultural values. Lastly, the title “Borders” itself, is very symbolic and play a significant role in the theme. The title intrigues the reader and identifies an idea that is central to the theme of the story.
The mother and daughter appear to be very different in the story. The mother is very proud of her native heritage and is not pleased when her daughter brings up her plan to move. “Laetitia had not left home with my mother’s blessing…” (King, 133) The mother creates chaos because she has too much...
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...ng that she is Canadian or American. She is stern but successfully is able to pass through the border as just stating her native identity. King explains how difficult it may be for some natives to express and value their culture with the complications of the imaginary borders that is presented. The mother takes her son and travels across the border and back, telling tales, demonstrating in what you believe in, with hope that one day her daughter, Laetitia will return back to the Blackfoot reserve.
WORKS CITED
Andrew, Jennifer. Border Trickery and Dog Bones: A Conversation with Thomas King.
Studies in Canadian Literature. 1999. CBC
Davidson, Arnold E., and Priscilla L. Walton. Border crossings Thomas King's cultural inversions. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003. Print
King, Thomas. One Good Story, That One. Toronto: HarperCollins, 1993. Print
We see scenes where Mae is happily conversing with her mother in both English and Wampanoag in the car as they pass through a town of Wampanoag named streets. This visual imagery urges the viewer to wonder how these familiar representations of Indian words and sayings work to hide how the indigenous people live in modern times. With the lack of presence of local Native peoples in the forms of mass media, people have started to believe the myth of the disappearance of the Native peoples in places such as New England. The film also briefly gestures, through interviews, that people have started to dismiss Indians as being long gone from the world, and that non-Natives see them as “invisible people” in order to justify the Euroamerican absorption of indigenous regions. The film encourages us to understand that, even with the impact of history, Native peoples still live here, and that they are still connected to their native land, that their homeland is one of the most important relationships. Jessie explains, “I lost my land rights” Translated into Wampanoag is “I fall down onto the ground,” because “For Wampanoag people to lose one’s land, is to fall off your
Have you ever felt like you didn’t belong somewhere? Do you know what it feels like to be told you don’t belong in the place of your birth? People experience this quite frequently, because they may not be the stereotypical American citizen, and are told and convinced they don’t belong in the only place they see as home. In Gloria Anzaldúa’s “How to Tame a Wild Tongue”, Anzaldúa gives the reader an inside look at the struggles of an American citizen who experiences this in their life, due to their heritage. She uses rhetorical appeals to help get her messages across on the subliminal level and show her perspective’s importance. These rhetorical appeals deal with the emotion, logic and credibility of the statements made by the author. Anzaldúa
Weber, David J. Foreigners in Their Native Land: The Historical Roots of Mexican Americans. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1973.
... perceptions their ancestors held centuries earlier. Stories are not set in stone, and this means that all stories - even the most powerful - can be altered. The Blackfoot mother refuses to accept the prevailing stories pushed onto her by society and, as a result, her access through the border is restricted. But in persisting for a third, viable alternative, the mother is able to shape the dominating assumptions of society. She tells her own counter-narratives, introducing an "alternative to the narratives of the nations [she] refuses to acknowledge" (Andrews and Walton 609). She presents a story that is capable of altering the metanarrative that governs that governs Canada and America; the mother succeeds in changing the fundamental beliefs held by both societies, and she is able to free the Canadians and Americans from the restrictive, dichotomous way of thinking.
Moving from the unpleasant life in the old country to America is a glorious moment for an immigrant family that is highlighted and told by many personal accounts over the course of history. Many people write about the long boat ride, seeing The Statue of Liberty and the “golden” lined streets of New York City and how it brought them hope and comfort that they too could be successful in American and make it their home. Few authors tend to highlight the social and political developments that they encountered in the new world and how it affected people’s identity and the community that they lived in. Authors from the literature that we read in class highlight these developments in the world around them, more particularly the struggles of assimilating
Martinez, Oscar. Border People: Life and Society in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands. (Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 1994), 232.
...d and left with little cultural influence of their ancestors (Hirschman 613). When the children inadvertently but naturally adapting to the world around them, such as Lahiri in Rhode Island, the two-part identity begins to raise an issue when she increasingly fits in more both the Indian and American culture. She explains she “felt an intense pressure to be two things, loyal to the old world and fluent in the new”, in which she evidently doing well at both tasks (Lahiri 612). The expectations for her to maintain her Indian customs while also succeeding in learning in the American culture put her in a position in which she is “sandwiched between the country of [her] parents and the country of [her] birth”, stuck in limbo, unable to pick one identity over the other.
...o her husband’s family. While her concern for her parents shows that Lindo did not wish to openly rebel against her tradition, Lindo made a secret promise to herself to remain true to her own desires. This promise shows the value she places on autonomy and personal happiness two qualities that Lindo associates with American culture.
Ruben Martinez was fascinated with the tragedy of three brothers who were killed when the truck carrying them and 23 other undocumented migrants across the Mexico – United States border turned over in a high-speed chase with the U.S. Border Patrol. “Crossing Over: A Mexican Family on the Migrant Trail” is a story about crossing and life in the United States.
Li, Peter S. Destination Canada: Immigration debates and issues. Don Mills, Ont.: Oxford UP, 2003.
Lee, Erika, and Judy Yung. Angel Island Immigrant Gateway to America. New York : Oxford University Press, 2012. Print.
Migration has been a major part of human living and also animals, people migrate for various reasons such as seeking better lives, family, job opportunity, availability of social amenities etc. immigration policies were put in place to monitor and decide who immigrate to a country and these policies have been present since 1906, and these polices have had different reasons for their enactment and these reasons change as time and era changes (Baglay, 2014). The early policies were racially based restriction, economic growth, multiculturalism, restriction on refugee and economic immigration (Baglay, 2014). The Communitarian approach used by Michael Walzer to explain immigration policy is similar to Canadian immigration policy. This paper seeks to discuss and analyze the articles by Joseph Carens and Michael Walzer, explaining the different perspectives of explaining immigration policies. The paper would summarize and contrast the author’s main arguments. It would take a stand on which argument is more persuasive in explaining immigration policy and give reason for this position. It would also use other articles to support or refute each argument made by Joseph Carens and Michael Walzer. Lastly this paper would explain and come to a conclusion of if any of these arguments apply to Canadian immigration policy and give examples of these similarities. Carens and Walzer had very different view on immigration and open border, Carens used the Liberal perspective of explaining open border.
Thomas King’s Borders portrays the limitations placed on native people in both Canada and the United States. Although multiculturalism is a celebrated trait of both countries, there are limits to the extent which one is able to display personal identity. In the story, the mother is prevented from identifying herself as a Blackfoot woman and instead must decide which broad category she fits into: American or Canadian. The story highlights the difficulty of being forced to conform to the social and cultural norms that one must in order to call oneself a citizen. The Canadian and United States, borders symbolize the restrictions that the government places on minority groups, such as the Blackfoot nation. King’s narrative reveals that governments
Mendoza, Louis, and S. Shankar ED. Crossing into America. New York: The New Press, 2003.
Bestseller journalist, Sonia Nazario, in her literacy non-fiction, Enrique’s Journey, describes a young man’s journey trying to reconcile with his mother in the United States, but has to go through many obstacles to reach her. Nazario’s purpose is to inform readers about how immigration affects children and their mothers in Central America. She adopts an optimistic/determined tone in order to reveal to her readers the difficulty and bravery the children have to face to get to the United States. Nazario begins her credibility with ethos to retrace an abandon teenager’s journey through Central America, pathos to follow the mother son relationship, and logos by giving facts and statistics for illegal immigrants in the U.S.