Land Acknowledgment
Vancouver resides on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) First Nations, which are only a few of many distinct Coast Salish Nations along the Pacific Northwest of British Columbia and Washington. Unseeded is a word which means “to have never given up power or ownership of”. These Nations have been stewards of this land since time immemorial; their jurisdiction is older than the city Vancouver, and all the many second-growth forests of BC, and any law that has been passed in the mere 150-something years of colonization.
ciyəθamə cən.
A Bit About It is dedicated to sharing space with all peoples, those who have been here, and those who are merely guests.
What’s it all About?
Sonder:
“the strong feeling of realizing that every person you see has their own life story in which they are the most important person.” – Cambridge Dictionary
Sonder is the overwhelming knowingness that every stranger and passerby is as internally complex as yourself; that everyone is driven by their own life experiences, ambitions, dreams, fears, and traumas; that – from others’ perspective – you are only a fleeting background character, just as they are to you. Sonder is something like humility, and it’s something like compassion.
A fascination with this concept is what drove writer Alma Pearce to create A Bit About It – a series of short stories based on documented conversations with storytellers in and around the city of Vancouver, Canada. These storytellers have been given a single cup of coffee and the simple prompt:
“Tell me a story – whatever story you’d like”.
In interviewing these storytellers, Alma hopes to remind her readers that every person living in this city has got a story worth telling. Consider the fact that these storytellers are just like you, and that they have each shared only one out of countless stories from the library of their lives.
If you could tell one story, what story would you tell?
Ethics
In Indigenous cultural practices, the title of Storyteller holds a separate significance from the western meaning of the word; Indigenous Storytellers are highly skilled and rigorously trained oral history keepers, who – through stories, songs, and (more recently) written word – dutifully share ancestral knowledge and lessons with their communities. In this blog, the title of storyteller will not be capitalized unless it is in reference to Indigenous Storytellers, so as not to undermine the integrity of this word. All the interviewees will still be referred to as storytellers, as they share their stories with us. Storytellers and storytellers: here meaning very different things.
This website will remain strictly non-profit, since the stories themselves are not the writers’ to profit off of. All storytellers have been given full autonomy in what they choose to share, and have consensually agreed to allow the writer to post their story without reimbursement. These stories are therefore free for the public to read and share.
The short stories will be written from the perspective of the writer to avoid any narrative assumptions or dramatization of the storyteller’s experience. These stories are written exactly as the writer receives them, and therefore may contain inaccurate information: it is up to the storytellers to decide what they share, and the writer will receive all information in earnest despite being unable to verify it.
There is no formal method of recruitment for these storytellers. It’s an instinct thing!