Conversations With Coyote: Philosophizing Through Stories

• Main Author: Spriggs, Kobie Lee
• Other Authors: Mudde, Anna, Drury, Shadia, Pete, Shauneen, Daschuk, James
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research, University of Regina 2014
• Subjects: Canada; Indian; Regina; Plato; First Nations
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10294/5779; http://ourspace.uregina.ca/bitstream/handle/10294/5779/Spriggs_Kobie_191800100_MA_SOPT_Fall2014.pdf

A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in Social and Political Thought, University of Regina. iv, 98 p. From the time of Plato, stories have been important epistemological tools that aid and promote understanding in Western culture. Today this tool is often relegated to the realm of the primitive with no contemporary value or power. In this thesis, I argue that the stories we tell inherently and irrevocably matter. Understanding one another can be aided by attending to the stories we have told and continue to tell. In Canada, stories have shaped (for good or for ill) our identities, institutions and ways of being in the world. Due to the ability of stories to shape social and political spaces, I argue that we ought to take seriously the question Thomas King so insightfully asks: What happens if we start off with the wrong story? What kind of world could we create if we told a different kind of story or, at least, made space for a plurality of stories? While a plurality of stories does not imply a plurality of truths, it does suggest a means to more authentically navigate difficult social and political spaces. Within the Canadian context we have seen the dangers of telling a single story, as evidenced by the Indian Residential Schools and the assimilative policies of the Canadian Government’s Indian Act and White Paper. By considering the ontological importance of stories, I argue that the space stories can create is an important one in combating and changing oppressive social environments particularly in the Canadian context and for First Nations peoples. My contention in this thesis is that it is within these dual realities of stories, in in-between conceptual spaces, that social and political transformation can occur. Stories are salient epistemological tools that disrupt dominant social and political spaces through their ability to reveal things in a new way, foster understanding and a new orientation ...