Reconciliation is one of the biggest things we should be focusing on as a society today. Have you ever wondered why we are reconciling? Why is rasicm a thing? How did it become a thing? Lucky for you, I have spent the past month working hard to answer this question.

What I Created (the keynote)

A few weeks ago we were put into groups of three and asked to create a Keynote presentation answering the driving question What are the consequences of colonization? 

Within those three weeks I have been working very hard with my group in learning all about what the Europeans changed when they came to Canada and claimed the land as their own. We came to the conclusion within our group that we wanted to create our keynote around the following topics, worldview, ethnocentrism, and the life ways of the indigenous peoples.

Watch our final keynote here

Presenting The Keynote

Now that we had finished our learning, it was time to showcase it and share it. The BCFP’s grade 11s were learning about a similar topic, so we presented our keynote to them. To make our Keynote more engaging, we created sheets for them to fill out as they followed along with the presentation. I think these sheets were very helpful because it caused them to actually listen to what we had to say in order to find the answer. 

We presented our keynote to two different groups of the grade 11s, our first time presenting, the group gave us the feedback to slow down. We were quite nervous the first time, which caused us to speed up while talking. The second time presenting, I felt we were much more organized. We really tried to focus on slowing down, however, our feedback at the end was to go even slower. 

 

My Individual Keynote

Once we were done with our final keynote, we had to create an individual keynote, this keynote had to be 2 slides with 3 words on each slide. This assignment really forced me to think about and display MY answer to the driving question and what I learned. Also, only having 3 words on each slide really challenged me to know what I was saying rather than just reading off of the slide.I presented my individual keynote in front of my class. I believe I did a good job, I was very confident with what I was saying I believe that I had a very good understanding of what I was presenting.

My Answer to The Driving Question

Colonization was the beginning of racism in the world. Before colonization, Europeans had only been with people who have the same beliefs, looks, language, culture, etc, their entire life. This isolation caused them to develop ethnocentrism which is the act of only seeing the world through their own culture, which leads to the belief that their culture is better than everyone else’s. When they came to Canada with their ethnocentrism intact, seeing the indigenous peoples and different how they look and act, caused them to immediately dehumanize them and belive that they were better. This is what made them think it was okay to culturally assimilate them, and strip them of their culture, land, resources, clothes, language, etc. Still today, maybe without even realizing, everyone has ethnocentrism, this is why racism and discrimination still exist to this day

What Helped me Get There

                                       Craft

Craft is a note taking app that really helped me organize my thoughts and everything I did during this project. I learned how to use it earlier this month and it made it so easy to look back at all of the work I did during this project when I was creating the final keynote.

Worldview Review

At the beginning of this project we did a review on worldview, this time focusing more on the indigenous worldview. This made me notice the difference in the worldview of the Europeans and the Worldview of the indigenous peoples which helped me understand why the Europeans colonized.

CBC The Story of us: Worlds Collide  

World’s Collide is a short film by CBC about European explorer Champlain and what he did when he arrived in Canada. I really enjoyed watching this video because it gave me the opportunity to actually SEE colonization and not just hear about it. This helped me understand New France, what it was, and how it came to be.

Colonization Vocabulary

Colonization Vocabulary are notes we made in class highlighting important words and defining them. I learned about Subsistence, Reciprocity, Exploitation, Sovereignty, Cultural Assimilation and Ethnocentrism. Ethnocentrism is the word that really put colonization and the consequences of it into my understanding. Ethnocentrism is the act of only seeing the world through the eyes of ones own culture, this taught why the Europeans believed they could take the land, which helped me answer the driving question.

Fail

Nothing anyone has ever done is perfect, including this project, and although I am really proud of what I created, there is always room for improvement. If I were to do this project again, I would make more time to practice more before presenting it. My group and I were mostly focusing on the keynote, to the point that the only time we practiced presenting, was the morning of. I believed if we practiced more, we would be more confident, which would prevent us from talking too fast.

What I Learned

I learned so much about racism and the history of how it came to be part of our society. This project taught me about ethnocentrism, how it is developed, what it is, and how it is still in effect today. I also learned how to use and navigate craft which will be very useful in future projects. This project was also another opportunity to grow my teamwork abilities. 

My Group

I really enjoyed working with my group, we all worked together very well and communicated to create healthy teamwork. Read my group members perspective of this project here:

Julia

Siena