In:Storytelling, Identity Formation, and Resistance in Indigenous Cultures in Canada and the United States
Edited by Kamelia Talebian Sedehi
[Studies in Narrative 28] 2025
► pp. 229–247
Chapter 12The common plot
Transient characters in Indigenous storytelling
Published online: 2 September 2025
https://doi.org/10.1075/sin.28.12wei
https://doi.org/10.1075/sin.28.12wei
Abstract
This manuscript investigates key differences between Indigenous and non-Indigenous perspectives to
highlight the ways Western beliefs are pernicious. Working out of the Dish with One Spoon concept, a
long-held belief of Indigenous peoples in the St. Lawrance valley and Great Lakes region in Canada, it considers
storytelling as an act of diplomacy and sharing. The first section compares an Indigenous history, “A Squamish Legend
of Napoleon” to the official Western historical narrative on Bonaparte. Extending this historical analysis to a
literature review of Katherine Vermette’s The Break and Armand Ruffo’s Treaty#, it
examines how the transient character’s journey generates new perspectives that reveal our interconnectedness and
shared histories. A case is made that there is an urgent need for renewal narratives, acts of storytelling based on a
common plot capable of sustaining wider human communities.
Article outline
- Decolonizing the past: Narratives of interconnectedness
- Our shared histories in “A Squamish Legend of Napoleon”
- Transient characters and diplomacy in Treaty# and The Break
Notes References
References (33)
Barnard, A. (2004). Hunting-and-Gathering
Society: an Eighteenth-century Scottish Invention. Barnard (Ed). Hunter-gatherers
in history, archaeology, and
anthropology. Berg.
Borrows, J. (1997). “Wampum
at Niagara: The Royal Proclamation, Canadian Legal History, and
Self-Government.” Aboriginal and Treaty Rights in
Canada. Ed. Michael Asch. Vancouver: UBC Press. pp. 155–72. Web access through the library.
Brooks, L. (2008). Alnôbawôgan,
Wlôgan, Awikhigan: Entering Native
Space. The Common Pot: The Recovery of Native Space in the
Northeast. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota.
Denoon, D., Mein Smith, P., & Wyndham, M. (2000). A
history of Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific. Blackwell Pub.
Dickason, O. P. (2002). Canada’s
First Nations: A History of Founding Peoples from Earliest Times (3rd
ed.). Oxford University Press.
Frost, J. D. (2018). Myth
and reality: a review of Bonaparte and the British prints and propaganda in the age of
Napoleon. National
Identities, 20(3), 231–233.
Glover, F. (2020). A
Dish with One Spoon. In The Canadian
Encyclopedia. Retrieved from [URL]
Harvey, A. D. (1998). Portable
Napoleons. In HistoryToday (Vol. 48, Number 6, pp. 58-). History Today Ltd.
Johnson, E. P. (1911). “The
Squamish Legend of Napoleon.” Legends of Vancouver. [URL]
Keegan, T. J. (1996). Colonial
South Africa & the origins of the racial order. Leicester University Press.
Lewis, S. L., & Maslin, M. (2018). The
Human Planet: How We Created the Anthropocene. Yale University Press.
Lonoff, S. (1989). Charlotte
Brontë’s Belgian Essays: The Discourse of Empowerment. Victorian
Studies, 32(3), 387–409.
Lytwyn, V. (1997). “Dish
with One Spoon: The Shared Hunting Grounds Agreement in the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence
Region.” Pentland, D. H. (Ed.). Papers
of the Twenty-eighth Algonquian Conference. University of Manitoba, 210–227. Retrieved
from [URL]
Davidson, I., Matthews, J. M., & Porr, M. (2020). IMHO:
34Inventing modern human origins. In Interrogating
Human Origins (1st
ed., pp. 35–55). Routledge.
Porr, M., & Matthews, J. M. (Eds.). (2020). Interrogating
human origins: decolonisation and the deep human
past. Routledge.
Porr, M., & Vivian-Williams, E. (2021). “The
tragedy of Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu.” Australian
Archaeology, 87(3), 300–304.
Reder, D. (2006). “Understanding
Cree Protocol in the Shifting Passages of ‘Old Keyam.’” Studies in Canadian
Literature. 31.
(1), 50.
Stevenson (Wheeler), W. L. (2000). “Decolonizing
Tribal Histories.” Diss. U of California, Berkeley.