Lies And Incongruences 🪶

Hello and welcome back to yet again one more BlogPost. As you can see, this post is about the Lies and Incongruences faced by First Peoples all around Canada. As a class, we dove into Canada’s darker and hidden past to learn more of what it means to become apart of the Truth and Reconciliation movement.

To learn about this topic, we looked and examined several pieces of art that represented certain aspects, events, celebrations, etc. and then reflected or connected upon them, but before we got to that stage we started by practicing our literature.

We were tasked to write personal  I AM poems that would describe things that we each loved as a person. The ones our teacher Mrs. P showed us as examples spoke about her passions and favourite memories so I decided to create a mix between the two. I wrote about my passions at the moment and then brought some experiences or specific memories to further write in detail. I don’t think this post was any specific style of poem so don’t try looking for any patterns of haikus or tankas.

Following that, we began the main focus of the project, The Marrow Thieves. The Marrow Thieves is a bestselling novel that brings light to injustices faced by First Nations peoples that happened before and are ongoing. The book was a mix of fiction and non-fiction as it was based in a dystopian future with an un-realistic plot along with key points of Canada’s dark past.

We spent the rest of the project reading chapters in class and at home while making weekly contributions and reflections on the previous chapters. A lot of the real aspects of this book were already taught to us before which seemed repetitive but I then noticed how this book brings a different POV of what the injustices towards people of Indigenous blood. Although mainly fiction, the writer wrote in detail about what the lives of the hunted first peoples were like and how in-humane the recruiters (white colonists in Canadian history)

The rest of this project was basically about writing reflections and connections to specific art pieces and events. In total we wrote 3 written reflections and they were split up into three separate parts of a Keystone.

The first written assignment we received was about finding a law that affects Indigenous people either past or present and then find a piece of art which we could make a connection with. I decided to write about the Indian act because although many of the laws tied to it had been removed shortly after the Second World War, it still remains today. Although I new the general idea of what it was, I learned a lot more about the details and how deep the effects went.

The second written assignment I completed was about finding a contemporary issue that affects indigenous peoples and reflect upon it again. This was about finding a more specific issue that affects indigenous peoples and I found a pretty wild one. I found out that 80% of the vendors on Hastings street are selling fake indigenous art. By “fake” I mean a person without any indigenous descent is creating art without permission and is making a profit from it. There’s a tv series called “The Pretendians” which is about a group that tracks down cultural appropriation, specifically the fake art being sold. The act of using someone else’s culture for your profit is wrong and falls under a deep level of cultural appropriation.

Our final part of this keystone was our third written assignment. This one tasked us to find a civil conflict that affects indigenous peoples and a piece of art that represents the issue. This time round I chose to write about the War For The Woods between Canadian logging companies and local Indigenous peoples and citizens. The War For The Woods is the ongoing protests around the country for the preservation of Canada’s old growth. Protests began in the later 1900s and have grown over time to thousands of people putting themselves in the way of those looking for the money inside the trees.

 

When Keystone 3 came around the corner, we were tasked to, yet again, write a comparison between what we knew before our I AM poems and after we learnt everything in this project. This was a short write but it was a little hard for me to write about the evolution of my learning since a lot of what we covered was sort of a recap. As I wrote my reflection, I did begin to realize that I did however learn a lot about the details behind everything I considered a recap. I thought of this assignment as a conclusion of this project but it really wasn’t

The way we ended the project was by creating a collage that once again represents a conflict/event that affected/affects indigenous peoples. Since I had everything I needed to know and had pictured what I wanted my collage to look like. However, as usual it took my several different attempts to complete my collage. I tried about 3 different pictures and they all just didn’t work until I came up with the one. I created a collage with a contrast between what life looked like before the forests of Canada were scalped for modern construction and developments.

If you’d like to read my work for any of the assignments above, please use the links below :👇

The Indian Act

The Pretendians

The War For The Woods

Truth And Reconciliation Reflection

Although this project was rather repetitive both topic and assignment-wise, I did finish with a new keystone in my academic career. I won’t talk about it here but if you would like to find out, take a trip to my Tpol post and see for yourself.

Thanks again for reading,

Adios 👋