Welcome back to another Blog Post! Today we are going to be going over what happened in our most recent BCFP project and how I changed from it. This project had us question our own beliefs and assumptions surrounding BC First Peoples, and this turned out to be a very good thing!

For this project their were two major Things we had to do, one was pick a BC First Nation community to research, and two was write a chapter on this nation. This was broken down over a few weeks.

Finding My Nation 
To find which nation I wanted to research I went on a few different websites that gave out information on all the communities and nations inside of BC. I looked around for a bit then finally settled on a nation I had never heard of before, Blueberry River First Nations. They are located in North Eastern BC, and have been around for 100s of years going under different names since the 1700’s. They are a small but developed nation that have a special connection to nature. 

Creating My Chapter
My task of writing a chapter on this nation explaining who they were what they do and how they are relevant turned out to be quite the task. I took this job very seriously because I imagined how it would feel if someone from outside of BC wrote a chapter on North Vancouver and mis-represented us. I would feel angry and unjustified. So that’s why I went through and found a list of relatable sources that I could base my chapter after. I even reached out to someone in the BRFN (Blueberry River First Nations) Government to see if they had any insights I couldn’t find online, unfortunately I never heard back. The actual chapter that I wrote focussed on these topics: Population Patterns, Social Structure, Territorial Range,Language/ Oral Traditions, Economic systems, Traditional Hunting and gathering strategies, Subsistence Strategies, Cultural Practices, Education Systems, Governance, and Family Networks. All of this research took me quite a while, but I am proud of how the Chapter turned out.

Blueberry River FN

What I Gained
This project taught me how important tradition and growing can be when properly combined. I think that I originally had this idea in my mind that indigenous people have not changed all that much and rely more on tradition than modern strategies. After going through this project with a open mindset (VMV goals mentioned) I can see that Indigenous people, at least in my nation, have found a way to perfectly combine their traditional strategies with new ones, making their community a effective machine.

Summary
Overall this project opened my mind up to be able to see how change in the indigenous communities has helped benefit BC for better rather than worse. BC is growing and changing and a lot of credit is due to Indigenous people!