Hello and welcome to the final humanities project of grade 10. For this project, we went into the messy and chaotic world of art, to try and see if we could use artwork to reflect current and past indigenous issues in Canada.
Driving Question
How can art and text reflect both the history and our current place in time.
To start off the project and learning, we began to read the Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline.
The Marrow Thieves was a futuristic dystopian type novel reflecting on the residential school and cultural genocide of Canada’s past. The main plot point pivoted around a destroyed earth, in which most of the population has lost the ability to dream. The only ones who maintained the ability are the indigenous population, who keep the dreams in the fibers of their marrow. This specialty comes at a cost, as they are being hunted down like commodities for the rest of the population to dream.
Throughout the book, we would do brief check-ins as well as reflections with any of our thoughts on the book. Personally, I thought the concept of the book was really cool, but the overall story wasn’t the most intriguing. The love story between the main character Frenchie and Rose seemed slightly out of place and distracting from the other more central plot points. Despite this, the connections and commentary the book made on the indigenous struggles, while still being a dystopian non-fiction novel made it an interesting read.
In the end, we would do one final in-class quick write on how the book reflects Canada presently and historically.
In-class writing is often the bane of my existence. Writing under time pressure is something my brain can’t handle very well, and normally ends in disaster. This time I did somewhat come up with a comprehensive argument. Although some of the thoughts still seem unfinished or at least slightly underdeveloped. For these types of assignments in the future, It may be useful to do more preparation. I did do some brainstorming to generate some thoughts before coming into class, but it was more of a brain fart of ideas than an organized plan.
After the book, it was time to start the art portion of the project. For this, we went into the wild forest of the internet in search of art that could connect to Canada’s history. For this first search, we were trying to find art that connected to some of the historical government acts like the Indian Act, White Paper, Bill C-31, or treaties with the indigenous peoples. I chose to research more about the 1969 White Paper since I didn’t know much about it compared to the other options. This topic ended up being really interesting and opened my eyes to the different perspectives in our nation.
The overall keystone ended up working on many of the skills we have been practicing over the course of the year. Summarizing all the important points from my research into one short paragraph is always a challenge. What’s also a challenge is interpreting artwork, because sometimes I just can’t piece together what the artist is trying to say.
For example some of the Kent Monkman paintings, while very striking can also be quite busy and complex. Looking at these for the first time I could tell there was some point that was trying to be made, but what exactly I couldn’t tell. Maybe that’s the beauty of art. It can be anything you want it to, but that also made it quite the puzzle to piece together connections to history. This ended up not being a problem with the first keystone, as I chose a pretty simple piece of artwork with a clear and easy to see message (my kind of artwork!).
For the next round of artwork hunting, we found pieces that connected to civil conflict (War of the Woods, Fairy Creek, Land Back, etc…) as well as a piece about a contemporary issue in indigenous culture (cultural appropriation, resurgence, intergenerational trauma, etc…)
For the final project, we brought all our artwork together into our very own art piece in the form of a collage. I wanted to focus my piece on the insane percentage of BC that is unceded land. Unceded meaning that the Indigenous title to the land has neither been surrendered nor acquired by Canada or the Crown. In British Columbia, a staggering 95 percent of all land is unceded First Nations territory. I really wanted to put on display how much of BC was taken without any treaties or understanding with the people who have been on the land for centuries.
To do this I made a map of BC that then fades to show all the land that wasn’t given to the crown through agreements. This land is instead replaced with indigenous issues, showing indigenous resurgence, protests for the environment, and commentary on the governmental acts that continue to plague Canada.
I still have a couple of final thoughts and ideas that never quite made it to the light. I think it would have been a more impactful reveal if you physically revealed what’s underneath. I thought about making a physical version but ended up not having quite enough time to make it a reality. The other issue that I have with it is the fact that it makes the treaties made seem like a good thing without its own controversies. These historical treaties are full of their own problems, which I don’t think are fairly represented in this collage. I tried to somewhat fix this by adding some quotes referencing different governmental acts and indigenous leaders, but I feel it could have been executed a bit better. Although it seems like I’m just roasting my own work at this point, I am still quite happy with its overall message and vision.
Anyways that’s all I have for this project. Every year we do a bit on the indigenous issues in Canada, and it’s always interesting because it’s an ongoing issue. Unlike other topics that only happened in the past, this is still going on today. We can all play our part in the reconciliation of these destructive events, through education and more importantly action, to forge a better path for our future.
See you next time,
Nolan