Hello and welcome back to another one of my blog posts. The project I am going to reflect on today set up the course it is a part of (BC First Peoples) and had us explore why it is important. This project was mostly a review of what we have already learned about the history of Indigenous peoples in Canada, but it brought new meaning as we were able to talk about these topics in a more mature way.

At the beginning of this project we learned about the concepts of two-eyed seeing and the First Peoples’ principles of learning. Both of these concepts can be applied to how we will learn throughout this course for the rest of the year. I was glad we learned about them this early. At first I found them hard to wrap my head around, as it is hard to look at things from both a new perspective and your existing one, but by the end of the first week I felt that I had a complete and deep understanding of both topics and will be able to apply both to my future learning.

The part of this project that I am most proud of is the writing I did at the end of it and the semantic map I created. Something I struggle with sometimes is communicating my whole understanding through to the work I create, but this time I was successful in my communication. I think that both of these pieces of work are examples of nuanced, cogent, and original work. This is because of how this project was timed compared to the Manhattan Project. All of the benchmarks were due about a week after the ones for the MP, meaning I could apply what I learned about what did and didn’t work for me on those and apply that to how I approached this project.

My Final Writing

Semantic Map

See you in the next post!

Neko

(Photo from Museum of Anthropology taken by me)

My Previous Knowledge

Our next project in BCFP is going to span the whole year so I’m really excited to start this project. The first chunk of it will focus on anthropological perspectives which opens a lot of ways to think and engage with our learning. At one point I wanted to be an anthropologist so this is right up my alley. I hope that I can expand on my previous knowledge on bias, worldview, and culture. An example of an idea I hope to expand on from a previous project is the analyzing I did in our Louis Riel project in grade 9 where we looked into how he was portrayed in statues and what that said about the sculptor.

What I Know so Far

I’m excited to apply this understanding to this project with a bigger picture perspective. Now that I’m in grade 11, I have the chance to truly create a deep understanding. I fully intend to take that opportunity. Today in the launch, I learned to really make sure that I don’t make assumptions. For context, we were looking at photos of uncommon objects and trying to look at them from an anthropological perspective. I made some pretty good hypothesis about the out of context photo my group got, but when we looked at all of the photos as a class I made some inaccurate guesses when I didn’t have a lot of time to look over them.

My Goals Looking Forward

My goal as an anthropological thinker is to become better at understanding and fully comprehending the other perspectives and practices even when they differ from what I gravitate towards. I intended to work on keeping an open mind even if my gut reaction is strong towards one perspective. In the last project my intention was to try to find my own place in working towards truth and reconciliation and that is still true. I hope that the anthropological mindset can help me find new ways to do this.

See you on the other side!

Neko