An exploration of the cultural, natural and historical significance of islands includes coverage of the geological roots of island formations and how islands played a significant role in the ancient and modern worlds while establishing unique identities for the cultures that evolved around them. By the author of Come Back to Me My Language.
“We need to understand our stories because our lives depend upon it.” —Ted Chamberlin The stories we tell each other reflect and shape our deepest feelings. Stories help us live our lives—and are at the heart of our current conflicts. We love and hate because of them; we make homes for ourselves and drive others out on the basis of ancient tales. As Ted Chamberlin vividly reveals, we are both connected by them and separated by their different truths. Whether Jew or Arab, black or white, Muslim or Christian, Catholic or Protestant, man or woman, our stories hold us in thrall and hold others at bay. Like the work of Joseph Campbell and Bruce Chatwin, this vital, engrossing book offers a new way to understand the hold that stories and songs have on us, and a new sense of the urgency of doing so. Drawing on his own experience in many fields—as scholar and storyteller, witness among native peoples and across cultures—Ted Chamberlin takes us on a journey through the tales of different peoples, from North America to Africa and Jamaica. Beautifully written, with insight and deep understanding, If This Is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories? examines why it is now more important than ever to attend to what others are saying in their stories and myths—and what we are saying about ourselves. Only then will we understand why they have such power over us.
J. Edward Chamberlin draws together anecdotes and insights from a celebrated career in this timely exploration of the power of stories and songs—from both the distant past and today’s news, countering despair and disillusionment with hope and possibility. Stories are our first and last survival strategy; for millions of years, more or less, they told humanity what we know, and what we don’t know; what to wonder about, and what to watch out for. These days many of us feel that we need all the help we can get, for survival sometimes seems like a long shot. The great myths of the world bring us comfort by assuring us that however bad things are, they have all happened before and will one day pass; and however good, they will not last forever. Storytelling, whether of religion, the arts or even science, can be an important form of resistance, offering an alternative to the overpowering pressures of everyday enabling our imaginations. This may offer an escape from reality, which has an appeal to all of us some of the time. But they can be a hazard. The environment is destroyed because of storylines about growth and development. Cultures embrace hallucinations of civilized progress as we slip into a dangerously uncivil social and economic free-for-all. And some claim homes for themselves and drive out others on the basis of self-serving histories about modern constitutions. More than that, we are disconnected from each other by our commitment to the stories and songs that promote these illusions, and make us numb to the value of difference and defiance. But it is also within storytelling that we can find a way to bring sympathy and judgement back into the centre of our conversations about what we can––and what we must––do. Stories and songs, ours and those of others, can help us. They can save us.
THE BANKER AND THE BLACKFOOT tells the colorful and compelling story of a real Western town in the foothills of the Rockies in the late 1800s and highlights the unusual friendships and trust that developed there between Indians and newcomers--before the government broke its Treaty promises to the first peoples.
Turning frequently to First Nations people, Ted Chamberlin looks at their culture and asks what it means to listen. In response, he notes that we take great pleasure in the comforts of narration, of finding our way within a story, a kind of 'dead reckoning' out at sea when the fog rolls in and we experience 'being almost lost'. Much of the essay focuses on people from around the world who have often been described as pre-literate. Chamberlin takes issue with this view and argues that such people 'read' a whole host of signs and stories, and that in understanding how this reading takes place we can understand something of our own habits of reading and listening. Whereas scholars such as McLuhan and Ong have claimed that such cultures are 'imprisoned in the present', Chamberlin points out that this is demonstrable nonsense. All cultures are both oral and written, he argues, and knowledge comes from both listening and reading. Employing his own position as a 'teller of tales' he asks whether we believe the teller or the tale, and draws attention to the importance of not only the storyteller but also the community of listeners.
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