One assumption I brought into my research was that my nation would only be in Canada. This was quickly proven to not be the case, as the traditional Ktunaxa territory stretches into I believe Washington, Oregon, Montana and Idaho.

Wait a minute!

Who’re the Ktunaxa? Why are you talking about their territory? Where in Canada are they?

And most importantly, why are you talking about them?

Well, this BCFP project was all about researching a nation of our choosing, and writing a chapter for a collective book we’re making (we being the whole class). And, if you have some incredible deductive skills, you might be able to piece together that the nation of my choosing is the Ktunaxa Nation.  

If you remember from my learning intents for this project (which is here) I talked about how I want to use the anthropological toolkit to make snap decisions or guesses.

Well guess what we never talked about after that

That’s not to say this project wasn’t fun or interesting (it was both) I just felt that we didn’t actually learn about the anthropological toolkit. Instead, we spent a bunch of time scouring the internet for sources on indigenous groups no-ones heard of. 

As a bit for this project, we did some reflection on the project itself, and what we learnt. Some highlight bits for me were these two excerpts:

I definitely worked on resilience in this project, considering the other things and struggles going on in my life right now, and working on prioritizing what needs to be done and what can wait.

I’ve been to the Ktunaxa traditional territory (the Kootenays for those wondering) many times, without knowing who was there before me. Learning about their way of life and how they worked with land I’ve been too has been really eye opening and insightful in terms of natural beauty and preservation.

Thanks for reading!