Welcome back to another blog post. We have just completed a project based around the history and truth and reconciliation. For this project the driving question was “How can art and text reflect both the history and our current place in time?”. To answer this we created three reflections based on a civil conflict, a cultural issue, and one on just the history. However that came later on in the project so Ill talk about it more in depth later on. 

We started off this project by creating an “I am from” poem representing our lives. In my poem I decided to talk about places I’ve travelled, sports I do, and hanging out with friends. I think my poem turned out better than I expected. I think this task helped me recognize the connection I have to where I live and what’s around me. 

After we worked on this for a bit we moved onto the actual project itself. Throughout the majority of this project we read the book “The Marrow Thieves” while also refreshing our brains on the Indian act and Truth and Reconciliation. While reading The Marrow Thieves we completed a journal reflecting on the past chapters we read. We completed a contribution and reflection twice a week. For most of my contributions and reflections I either drew or traced a drawing that had something to do with the book that I found stood out to me. I think this way of reflecting on the book was good as it actually made us sit and think about what we has just read. Then after completing this novel we did one final reflection answering the question “How does the Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline reflect Canada presently and historically?”. I am happy with how all my reflections turned out because I feel it’s a key part of my learning throughout this project. Check out some of my favourite reflections that I made on the Marrow Thieves and my final reflections answering the question down below.

While learning about the Indian Act, we learned more about residential schools, cultural appropriation, stereotyping, and truth and reconciliation. I feel all these topics were really important to learn about to gain a full understanding of Canadas history. While learning about these we completed three art and reflections starting off with the history. For these art and reflections we needed to reflect on a topic and then a piece of art from an indigenous perspective connecting it to the topic. For my history one I wrote it on Bill C-31, this was a bill created to remove gender discrimination that the Indian Act created, giving women and children a chance to gain or regain status. For the second history and art, it has to be on a cultural issue so I completed mine on Intergenerational Trauma. Intergenerational Trauma is something indigenous communities are still struggling with today because of what the Canadian Government put them through. Then lastly for my third reflection and art I completed it on water rights and protests as it needed to be on a civil conflict. I am super happy with my work and how my reflections turned out. For each topic I made sure to find a nice art piece that reflected to topic and wrote about the art connecting it more to the topic. You can read my full reflection’s down below. 

As a part of keystone three we wrote another reflection on what we learned overall on truth and Reconciliation I feel that although I only wrote about three paragraphs it reflects my learning well. Read more down below ⬇️

Then as this project came to an end we completed the final product which was a collage. This could be a physical thing or digital so I completed mine digitally. When we first were given the task with this collage I had no clue what I wanted to do, however I did know I didn’t want it to just be a bunch of pictures overlapping. So after a little bit of brainstorming I came up with the idea of having it be the theme of a newspaper. I decided to include the art from each one of my reflections. Then using a newspaper font I wrote a short blurb on each topic. I am super happy with how my collage turned out and although I think it would have been super cool to actually have a physical collage, this gave me more options when it came to actually putting it together. My collage is posted at the top of this post so if you have not had a chance to look at it scroll up to see.

Overall I feel this project really helped me learn and understand more about Canadas history. In my final novel reflection I talk about how being Canadian seems like this great thing but after learning about everything the Canadian Government put the Indigenous family’s and communities through, its disappointing to think that a human can do that to another human being. I am super happy with how all my work turned out and ill be back with more posts shortly as the year comes to an end.