The Fear Factor

Hello my dear readers,

I write to inform you of the developments from my most recent Humanities project, Fear Factor. This project has the driving question of How has fear been used as a political, defensive, and cultural tool to shape our society?, and  the content was mainly surrounding the Cold War. I really enjoyed that the topics of this class were a continuation on from the knowledge we built in our Manhattan project project recently. Now I am able to have a very cohesive timeline in my head of the significant events from those eras and have a more extensive understanding of the context involved. Fear obviously also played the part in the Manhattan Project and the droppings of the bomb so it it was really interesting to be able to focus on fear going forward. 

Before I get into my reflections and learnings, here’s a brief overview of the project. Over the course of the project we were learning to build a Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) system using the principles of a “Zettlekasten”. And you may be thinking, “What the heck is a Zettlekasten?!”, and the short answer is simple, a collection of notes and information, ranging from fleeting notes to profound permanent ideas linked to other knowledge. I’ll talk more about my Zettlekasten later. We also read 2 books over the course of the project, Hiroshima by John Hersey and Fallout by Todd Strasser. These books, on top of many other forms of media, were just some of the resources we analyzed to gain knowledge for our final product. The specifics of the final product were up to us, but the main idea was to create and answer a personal inquiry question on some aspect of the Cold War and fear. So now that you get a bit of an idea of the project, lets talk more in depth about what I did and what I learned.

Zettlekasten-ing

So let’s talk about my Zettlekasten and PKM. At first the Zettlekasten style of note taking was a lot to get used to, but now I really love how I’ve been able to organize and link my notes. I found I have also been more engaged in the class material because I have been taking more time outside of school to synthesize my notes and use my own words to construct more rounded ideas about certain topics or events. I also found myself linking to more literature while researching. As new connections form, I now have an easy way to jot down an idea in a place where I know I will be able to go back and make something more out of it. Overall super excited to continue to use my Zettlekasten for upcoming projects!

Agriculture in the Cold War

After watching episode 2 of Turning Point: The Bomb and The Cold War, I was incredibly intrigued by the mention of Kulaks and Soviet farming. I previously have read Anna Karenina and it is one of my favourite books so I immediately connected the book as another piece of literature that I can drawn to understand the life of farmers in Soviet countries. Originally I had planned on doing my final product about “othering” and propaganda in America about the Japanese, but after learning more about agriculture during the Cold War, I decided that it was worth my time to redo everything and switch to a topic that I was genuinely interested in! 

My personal inquiry question became; “How did agriculture and food security change and cause fear in the Cold War?”. The people who will want to read this could be anyone interested in agriculture or the Cold War, my teachers, peers, and family. I want to engage my audience by creating emotional connections by humanizing complex issues, having an interesting and engaging plot, and including my research and answer to my question. I ended up wanting to write two fictional short stories about two families. One family in America during the Green Revolution during the Cold War, and one Soviet farmer family. At first I had a creative burst and was able to get one of the stories drafted quite quickly, but as the deadline drew closer, I realized that trying to write a short book in just two weeks is not a lot of time. But after a lot of creative thinking, peer critique, and writers block, I came up with the final story that I have now. I’ll link it below and feel free to give it a read. It’s not too long.

 

Conclusion

Throughout the course of this project I noticed major growth for me in my note-making and knowledge management skills. My Zettlekasten and new ways of organizing knowledge are definitely my biggest take-aways from this project and I am now looking to beef-up my notes for all my other classes so I can have something to look back on easily for information that I have gathered. Thank you for taking the time to read my blog post and check out the book if you haven’t already!

As Always,

Brooke

I Care, I Bother.

Yo what’s up guys welcome to politics. This project was called “Who Cares and Why Bother?!”.  This project focused on our processing skills as we;

  • Investigated human nature and how humans organize themselves
  • Learned about the government system in Canada
  • Looked at issues important to young people and why or why not they vote
  • Developed a presentation to showcase the Canadian govt system and encourage young people to vote

  That’s the overview of this project so let’s jump in.

Lord of the flies

Investigation #1 was an analysis of Lord of the Flies by William Golding. Lord of the Flies is an allegory and its deeper meaning ties back to our quest to learn about politics. I chose to listen to an audiobook playlist on YouTube which allowed me to take some pretty detailed notes while listening. After chapter 8 I stopped taking those notes because I realized that audiobooks take a lot longer to listen to than it would be if I just read the book. I think it was super important for me to read and analyze the historical context and learn a bit about William Golding because that allowed me to already engage in deeper thinking beyond the text. In the discussion we had post-reading, I displayed complete knowledge of the book and as we all know, I love to talk, so I had a perfect opportunity to stretch my communication skills 💪.

Learning about politics

At the start of this project, I was a person who didn’t know much about Canadian politics or government and to be honest, I didn’t care. But thanks to my photographic memory I now have an immense understanding of everything we talked about and learned in class, especially the structure of government that was drawn out on the white board. Learning about how politics worked made me much more interested in it, and I think that’s is one of the reasons why youth don’t feel like they want to be involved in government processes. So who cares about politics? Usually older people, but in this project I learned that a lot of young people do care about politics and they should! Getting involved with the government and voting is a great way to contribute to positive change, which young people these days always seem to be fighting for. So when it comes to convincing young people to vote, focusing on issues they care about and telling them what each party can do to help seems to be an effective strategy!

Group project

For my group’s presentation, I created the keynote and edited and storyboarded some of our TikTok’s. My main contribution was actually keeping everyone organized and mapping out what we should be doing individually and as group work. I think without my organization we definitely would have struggled to complete the presentation on time. I think myself and the group could’ve used more of our time to practice presenting and of course it was a bit of a hitch in the plan to have 2 group members missing for our final presentation.

I think the most impactful part of our presentation was the TikTok’s we made on issues in Canada that we care about. Showing the youth that the issues they care about are being acted on by some parties (and not acted on by others), is a motivation to vote to create the change they wish to see. 

Conclusion – Who actually cares? And Why Bother?

Who cares about politics and voting? I care, my classmates care, the adults in my life care, and many more people around the country and world. And why ultimately bother? To create the change you wish to see in the world. This project showed me that I can process ideas and further my understanding with deeper analysis and synthesis of information. I am proud of the work that I did and I know I am taking with me a lot of knowledge and regard for our political system and what my role can be.

This was a message from Brooke. do doo do do *← the theme from messages from the govt of canada*

THE Great Debate

Happy 2024 everyone!!! 

I come to you today with a project we finished just before winter break, and if you know PLP you know that means it was also our Winter Exhibition project! This project was called The Great Debaters, and if you can guess by the title, it was a project centered around debate. We not only learned about public speaking, and how to debate, but we also learned about researching, finding credible sources, and structuring persuasive text that combines the right mix of pathos and logos. 

The Project

At the beginning of this project, we got the chance to watch Denzel Washington’s The Great Debaters. If you have not seen this movie, it is based on the true story of Melvin B. Tolson, who was a professor at Wiley Collage in Marshall, Texas. The movie follows Mr. Tolson’s debate team as they work their way to challenge Harvard for a national championship. It was a very inspiring movie and helped get us into the mindset of debate.

The first piece of writing that we did was a short paragraph on the best “blank” ever. It could be a book or a season or musical artist. It was up for us to choose a best “____” so I chose to do mine on something I care very deeply about, Christmas stuffing. 

Over the next few classes, we learned about different ways to improve our writing and practiced using these techniques with our “best blank ever” writing. I found parallel structure really interesting and highlighting different sections for different tones.

Around this time, it became time to choose a debate partner, and topic. My partner Ines and I decided to choose the topic “zoos should be banned“ with Ines arguing the affirmative and myself arguing the negative. I am already passionate about this because I love reading books on conservation and had recently read about this issue in particular.

Now that we had our topic chosen, Ines and I wouldn’t be collaborating again for the rest of the project. promptly, I came up with some Need-To-Knows and got down to researching.

A big part of writing is revision, so of course the next few weeks were chock full with writing our opening argument, rebuttal, and closing statement, rewriting and practicing aloud, and so much peer critique. 

Now, as I mentioned at the beginning, this project was our PLP 11 project for the PLP Winter Exhibition. This means we would be performing these debates live in front of an audience, and they will get to choose the winner. The pressure is on! I debated fiercely, but in the end I came up victorious. Thank you Ines for being a fierce rival.

Conclusion

Overall, I really like public speaking so this project is pretty fun for me. I think I definitely improved my redrafting skills because I find sometimes I don’t do enough drafts and end up with something that I’m not completely happy with. But in this project I really pulled through, and in the end had a speech that I was very proud of. Thank you to Madsen and all the PLP teachers and students for a wonderful exhibition and see y’all next time!!

As always, Brooke

The Fallout

“I am grateful to the Executive Committee for this chance to talk to you. I should like to talk tonight — if some of you have long memories perhaps you will regard it as justified — as a fellow scientist, and at least as a fellow worrier about the fix we are in. I do not have anything very radical to say, or anything that will strike most of you with a great flash of enlightenment.”

The quote above is the beginning to J. Robert Oppenheimer’s speech to the Association of Los Alamos Scientists on November 2, 1945. I chose to start the post with this speech because; 1. We did an analysis of this speech as part of this project, and 2. I think the last sentence of the quote is a really funny way to start my little blog post. 

This project was based around one of the most important projects in history, The Manhattan Project. Now I wont go into depth about what the Manhattan project is for those who don’t know, because the final product for this is an interactive book about the manhattan project!!

Field study!!

Even though it is called the “Manhattan “project, it did not take place in Manhattan. The project was based in Los Alamos, New Mexico, a town that was constructed specifically for the Manhattan Project. Through PLP we got the wonderful chance to do a field study and go to New Mexico to do hands-on learning about the project.

It was amazing to be able to visit historical sites around New Mexico and get to have tours of various museums from some very interesting tour guides. Usually our guides had some personal connection to the museums like working for the Air Force in the past or having spouses and relatives working in nuclear science labs. This made our tours more captivating because our knowledgeable guides always had some facts that you cant find on the plaques.

Capturing in The Field 

Before leaving for New Mexico, we set out plans and to-do’s with our group of where the field team, Declan and I, should film, get interviews, and collect information.

With our little microphone in hand, we filmed up a storm.

Après Field Study – Piecing the book together

When we returned home from New Mexico, our group got back together to check in on what each side had completed. Our home team had already started writing up the chapters and getting a layout of the book. I was the art director for our book and had design ideas right from the get-go of what aesthetic to have, and some page layouts. I worked with Arianne, our lead graphic designer, to crank out some sample pages that we could duplicate and use for each chapter. Our chapters were laid out, chronologically over the time of the Manhattan Project, and we decided to have the first few chapters in a lighter colour palette and then switch to darker tones after the chapter about the Trinity Test to reflect the sombre feelings of what happened after the bombs were dropped. We worked as a team to divide up all the chapters to do revisions and citations and input some amazing videos done by our audio/video people. We spent a lot of time coming up with a thesis around the historical significance of the Manhattan project. We have worked with historical significance before and past projects, so it was not a concept we were unfamiliar with. It was incredibly difficult to have to come up with our thesis towards the end of the book because then we had to go back and change/edit what we had already written to ensure it met the thesis. It would’ve been much easier to do it at the beginning before starting to write any of the chapters or collecting media in the field, but it was a good way to challenge ourselves in the end when we were already crunching to finish the book.

Finally, after a lot of hard work and time spent outside of class, we completed the book. I suggest you take the time to read it through fully and watch all the videos to get the full sense of the story we are trying to tell. I hope you enjoy.

*technical difficulties we cannot currently upload the book due to file size issues. Will get this fixed ASAP!!*

Conclusion 

This project was a lot of fun to work on, and also very serious. I am so thankful for the opportunity to be able to go to New Mexico and touch history in ways that I wouldn’t have been able to without the PLP program. We have worked with historical significance in the past, but this project put it in a new light that was really interesting to work with and I enjoyed working on it. Thank you for reading.

As Always, Brooke.

Dear Grade 8’s

Wow the first blog post of grade 11, we’ve come a long way since my first big post back in grade 8. I remember crying over writing that… anyway. So what kicked off our grade 11 year? A project about something that is “mightier than the sword”, a writing project answering the driving question “How can we use the power of written text to inspire the new PLP 8 learners?”. This project helped us get through the messy writing process and learn how to evaluate our work to real-world standards. We also had to analyze our rhetorical situation and cater our writing to our audience, and with our main audience being the grade 8’s, this was a bit different than writing for our teachers like we are used to. 

Academic Writing

Before we jumped in and did our piece for the grade 8’s, we did some writing workshops and learned about the pre-writing process. We then tested this out in preparing a little academic writing piece answering the question “Why is PLP a good choice for students?”. Any good sarcastic PLP student would first think “Nooooo it’s hell not a good choice!!!” But I cracked down to research the benefits of PLP nonetheless.

I then did a rhetorical analysis pretty quickly because honestly it hasn’t been the most helpful tool for me to use so I didn’t put too much time into it.

Then was the generation of a topic sentence. I came up with 2 ideas that I wanted my topic to include; the fact that we live in a project based world, and how PBL and PLP help learners use 21st century tools and expectations to stay authentic with their work. I came up with a few but eventually settled on;

“Seycove’s Performance Learning Program adopts an authentic, real-world approach to empower learners and enable them to reach their full potential in our dynamic, project-based world.”

2 drafts later and I ended up with my final piece of academic writing. I’ll link it here for you to see – PLP Paragraph

Text for Grade 8

This is where we come back to our main driving question of “How can we use the power of written text to inspire the new PLP 8 learners?” I met briefly with some grade 8’s one morning before school with some of my peers to see what the grade 8’s are like. Really trying to take in their worldview and how they are feeling about high school. I took these notes to advise me in what to write, as there weren’t really any restrictions. I chose to go for a chill and honest tone to my message and just write a short paragraph, because I didn’t have the time or attention span in grade 8 to read essays full of cheesy advice. 

I really liked my first draft which surprised me because I was thinking I wouldn’t write something that I liked right away. A few little tweaks left me with something I was really proud of and excited to share. So to all the grade 8’s out there, this is my advice to you.

How to Get Through High School… Realistically.

So, you’re now in high school. New friends, new routine, new school, everything’s unfamiliar and exciting. Until it’s not. Too many new names to remember, classes are hard, you get rained on at the bus stop in the morning. Eventually the excitement wears off and you’re left being like, “Well I guess this is my life now.” But here’s the truth: high school can be a rollercoaster, and it’s okay to feel overwhelmed sometimes. The key to getting through high school realistically is finding balance. Yes, study hard and aim for good grades, but don’t forget to make time for yourself. Join clubs or sports you’re genuinely interested in, and surround yourself with friends who are thoughtful and supportive. High school is one hell of a journey, and you’ll have ups and downs, but remember, it’s all part of the process and it’s going to be ok. Stay true to yourself, stay organized, and don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it. Your high school years will shape you in ways you can’t even imagine right now, so embrace the experience and grow from it. You’ve got this. 

Conclusion 

In this project, I feel my writing grew more in the process than in the final pieces themselves. I can think more consciously about my word choice now thanks to the writing workshop and I understand how analyzing a rhetorical situation helps me inform my decisions as a writer. 

So to the grade 8’s that were forced to read this post, thank you for listening and I hope PLP treats you well. And to everyone else, thank you for reading as usual and stay tuned because I will be going on a field study for the next project that will be mighty interesting. I will write to y’all again soon,

As Always, Brooke

STONKS

Am I financially literate? Are you? Well this project was all about finance.

Finance

We did this activity about budgeting and how budgets cam be helpful. Our objective was to develop a monthly budget, differentiating between fixed and variable expenses. This exercise proved to be an effective method for acquiring budgeting and money management skills.

Moving on, we embarked on the activity centred around planning for our future careers. We engaged in thorough research on summer jobs (if we were interested in getting them) and set goals for the amount of money we wanted to save by the end of summer. Additionally, we explored the average costs associated with attending university and living costs. This experience provided us with a good understanding of our financial prospects for the upcoming future.

Stock Market Simulation

The highlight of this project was definitely the “Stock Market Challenge.” It was a competition within our class to see who could make the most money in a simulated stock market. We had two options: go for big, well earning stocks or focus on ethical investments. I decided to go ethical and really look into each of the companies I invested in. I am proud of my choices because I know that these companies have an overall positive impact on the world. You can see my reflections for all 5 weeks of this challenge here

This is what my stocks looked like at the end of the challenge ⬇️

 

Conclusion

So overall after this project I feel better equipped to handle my finances in the future. I am more confident that I will be knowledgeable in how to manage my money and not go broke.

As Always, Brooke

The ALT Manifesto

Sup guys and welcome to The Alt Manifesto.

 

Have you ever wanted to be King for a Day? Or maybe you just want to settle down for a hearty dinner full of Korn and Chop Suey! Or maybe you didn’t get any of those references and are wondering why I just said that. Well, no matter who you are I invite you to join me on this journey to understanding music-based alt subcultures like emo, goth, punk, metal, and so much more! 

So a somewhat random into to a school related blog post huh? In the last section of maker this year we were working on the famed PLP podcast project. The podcast could be on any school appropriate topic that we want, as long as it was trying to answer the driving question of;

How might I use design and content to influence others for good?

First of all how cool was it to practically be able to make our podcast about whatever we wanted? I chose to make mine regarding alternative music subcultures and their history and culture. Through this topic I believe I can influence others for good by educating people about these subcultures and how they affect people and our culture, instead of just calling anyone who wears all black “emo”.

The Prep

We started by envisioning a plan for our podcast via a collage, and coming up with podcast names and taglines. We then started to work on creating a script for a trailer for our podcasts, and looked at some other podcasts trailers on Spotify to see what type of stuff we needed to have in it. You can listen to my podcasts trailer here;

Along with our trailer we created a release schedule to help us plan out and organize how and when we would release our episodes. I originally thought I would release a single 20 min episode every week, boy was I off in thinking how achievable that would be.

Podcasting

We took a listen to several other podcasts on Spotify to analyze hoe they used story, tone, setting, and editing to enhance their show to make it enjoyable for listeners. Quickly building up the skills needed to plan, script, record, edit, and release podcast episodes.

Just the research for my first episode accidentally took hours because I was so interested in the topic (metal music) that I had a hard time deciding what I should include in the script. Eventually I did end up getting 2 episodes out and I think I may actually try to release more next school year just because I actually enjoyed making them. You can find my podcast here;

Conclusion

This project was super fun and I really enjoyed getting to show off my passion as a learner. The design process can be a bit tedious at times but I think I now have quite the hang of it. I love thinking about what my podcasts audience thinks about the show and if I am actually influencing others for good. Hopefully if you have a bit of extra time you could listen to one of my episodes and let me know in the comments what your thoughts are. Thank you so much for reading (or listening)!!!

As Always, Brooke

tPOL 2023 – Advancing

Before we start, here is the POL declaration- “Thank you for coming to my presentation of learning. I am the expert on my own learning. I am also responsible and accountable for my own learning. You can expect me to give an honest evaluation of my progress. We will discuss my strengths and opportunities for growth. Thank you in advance for listening and for offering feedback that I can use to improve as a learner.”

Hello and welcome to my tPOL (transitional presentation of learning). In this post I will try to answer the question “Why do I feel I am ready to advance to the next grade?”. In short, I am ready to go on to grade 11 because I have become proficient at the skills that I learned and developed in grade 10. And hopefully the rest of this presentation proves that. I have chosen one project from each class to represent me as a learner this year.

First, a quick look at my learning plan.  I did an excellent job this year at trying to reach my proficiency goals for each class, which were rainbows 🌈 across the board.

Some things that I feel I have done well at that are in my learning plan this year would be;

  1. I have been using things regularly for both school and non school related tasks and it has helped me greatly.
  2. I have been communicating with teachers more frequently when I need help or some flexibility. This was something I have never been good at but I feel like I finally made some headway on it this year.
  3. Creating authentic work that I feel represents who I am and my worldview.

Something that I want to improve more on in my grade 11 year will be handing my work in on time. To do this, I will structure my homework time more clearly and get help from my mum to keep my accountability on track.

Evidence From my Classes

Humanities

Save Juno Beach!

One thing you may or may not know about me is that I have loved learning about WWII ever since elementary school. Half of the books I own are WWII related and war movies are by far my favourite genre. So imagine how excited I was to find out that we were doing a humanities project on my favourite topic in history.

Let’s pop over to my blog post that I did regarding that project – > Juno Beach

I chose to talk about this project today because it shows my passion as a learner. I have always been able to learn %200 faster when im learning about something that I am genuinely interested in, a skill that PLP suits so well because we are generally allowed to focus on specific topics that pique our interest.

Maker

My Podcast – The Alt Manifesto

First of all how cool was it to practically be able to make our podcast about whatever we wanted? Remember when I just said how I am so much more engaged when I’m learning about something I’m genuinely interested in? Well this was literally a perfect time for that passion to shine for me.

Personal Growth Planning

I’ve decided not to choose one specific “project” from PGP because I feel like they all kind of blend together into one larger picture. At the beginning of the year I was still just a fairly organized 15 yo who didn’t feel like there was any need to worry about my upcoming adult life or post-secondary plans. First we organized our physical and mental spaces, then worked on building up good long term habits with Atomic Habits by James Clear, then thought about our future careers and how to market ourselves like adults, then started asking questions like what degree am I going to get after high school? What schools might I go to? How will I financially support myself? How can I be financially literate?

Now I stand here as a 16 yo who can drive a car, has a job, and is saving for the future. I have vague plans for post-secondary that I am looking forward to exploring with my mum next year. In PGP this year I did exactly what the class entails right in it’s title, and that is why I am ready for grade 11.

Thank you so much for coming!

Marketing Myself

Helloooo world of blog. I haven’t really done any blog posts yet this year specifically about my careers class so guess what we are talking about today? Yep my Personal Growth planning aka PGP aka Careers class and what we’ve been working on.

So how does one market themselves? In this case, I am talking about marketing yourself in terms of job opportunities through things like resumes and business cards. The choices that you make when choosing how to present yourself to potential employers can greatly influence your chances of getting that job. So this section of our PGP class set out to prepare us for the job hunting and professional self-presentation of our futures.

Driving Question;

How do I make career life choices?

Answer – planning. Let me explain;

We started by looking at our dream careers and our realistic careers, what those jobs would initial and what the prerequisites were. And then finding the prerequisites for those prerequisites and so on. What schools do you want to go to? How far from home are you willing to travel for university/college? What degree do you need? Where do you want to end up living? What’s your financial situation going to look like? Etc. Answering all these questions is essential to planning out any career life choice you make. Tracing out where you want to go and how to get there is how you make career life choices, or at least how you make good career life choices.

And to help us start making these career life choices, we started answering the question “How can I effectively market myself to employers?” To convey our answers to this question, we each made new resumes, business cards, and a cover letter draft that we could send out to potential employers.

The Resumes

Above you will see my updated resumes that I made during this course. I really like the one that has my picture on it because it separates my qualities/soft skills from my skills. An employer can make their decision just by a quick glance over a resume so it is important that they are neat and organized in layout. I think I did a wonderful job creating an appealing resume that accurately reflects me marketing myself.

The Business Cards

As you can see above, I have 2 different business cards. One I chose to do a simple black and white with minimal information and personality, the other is coloured and has some line graphics on it. I like the beige aesthetic one because it feels more personal and includes my title as student/sales associate.

The Mock Interview

Finally, we did mock job interviews. My partner Dana and I spent a lot of time carefully picking out interview questions that we thought displayed a good mix of our skills and personality, being sincere with our answers as well. We came into school dressed professionally and ready to shoot. We then dressed up and filmed the interview with both people answering and asking the questions. Practicing like it was a real interview helped me feel better prepared for any interviews I will have to do in the future because I already know what questions may be thrown at me and how I should respond to show off my best self. I think this interview shows off my skills in communication and my passion for my interests, but I’ll let you judge for yourself. Here is the video Dana and I made (I’m the brunette);

Conclusion

Overall this section of PGP has made me feel more confident in my abilities to get another job in the future when I leave the one I am currently at. I am excited to use my new resumes and maybe even hand out a business card or two. It was sometimes difficult to find colours or fonts that matched my personality, and trust me you can spend a very long time flipping through fonts that just dont feel quite right. But being able to critically think about one’s future is a skill I have always loved to use and exercising that in this project was very helpful for me. Thanks for reading!

As Always, Brooke

So Many Lies And Incongruences

Content warning; there will be mentions of residential schools, missing and murdered indigenous women and girls, and other traumatic events for First Nations peoples.

This is not the first time we learned about Canada’s wrongdoings towards indigenous peoples in class, and it wont be the last.

Keystone 1

Keystone 1 for this project was reading the book The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline and filling out reflections and contributions each week relating to the chapters we read. This reminded me a lot of the “Lit circles” we used to do in elementary school, and I really enjoyed it. First of all, The Marrow Thieves is an amazing book that I had heard of prior to reading it in class, so I was super excited to be analyzing it. I would like to share with you my journal of reflections and contributions, so SPOILER WARNING if you havent read it yet.

Reading Journal pdf

As you may have seen, for some of my contributions I chose to make art pieces, and in one case an animation (that you would not have seen because that file is a PDF and cannot play the video but trust me it was cool). I usually don’t like making art because I find that my perfectionism gets in the way and I end up just giving up on  the art. But I really wanted to do something different that wasn’t just a piece of writing and I am super proud of how they turned out.

At the end of the journal there is a reflection answering the question “How does The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline reflect Canada presently and historically?” And I would like to charge a clip of that reflection with you now.

The characters in the book experienced loss of family, both chosen family and biological, just like indigenous people did during the time of residential schools and especially the sixties scoop. They were unable to know if their loved ones was alive or where they were taken, a heartbreaking type of pain to feel that was felt by a whole race of people. This type of pain is felt heavily even to this day because of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls in Canada. The ramifications of the colonizers treatment of indigenous peoples in both the book and real life have long lasting consequences that will not be forgotten.

Keystone 2

DQ – How can art and text reflect both the history and our current place in time?

The driving question for this project can be answered by the work I did in keystone 2. Here is a brief look at what keystone 2 is about and the competencies that went along with it ⬇️

Keystone 2 was completed in 3 parts; history, contemporary issues, and civil disputes, and how each of those topics could be found in art. For each topic we had to find an art piece (could be any kind of art including music) and tie it to a specific topic or event that related to the main topic (I.e. Canada’s peace and friendship treaties for history or MMIWG).

For part 1 I chose to focus on historical peace and friendship treaties. I chose a piece of art that I found on a website with a research paper dedicated to Canada’s peace and friendship treaties. Lnuey.ca was an excellent source that I found for this topic and extremely helpful for writing.

Here is the art I chose that directly symbolizes the peace and friendship treaties. I encourage you to go to this link to see my write up on what the peace and friendship treaties ment and how this painting is represented. Keystone 2 pt 1. Treaties & Art 

Part 2 was about contemporary issues that indigenous people face culturally and how that can be seen in art.

For this I chose to focus on cultural appropriation. I was researching artists who were indigenous activists when I came across Kent Monkman, a Cree artist from Manitoba. With some help, I searched through his gallery on his website to find a painting that I felt could tie into the cultural appropriation topic. This lead to us finding a painting called “Welcome to the Studio”. This painting is actually too large to be imbedded here without me cropping it up so you will have to see it in my writing reflection -> Contemporary issues and art.

The final part of keystone 2 was a similar task to the first 2 parts, but this time it was related to a civil conflict. I chose to focus on missing and murdered indigenous women and girls because I think it is a powerful topic that is still very prevalent today. My reflection shows the connection to the red handprint and red dress movements that we see today as activism for this issue. The link to my full reflection can be found here -> MMIWG and art

The Collage

The final product of this project was a collage (physical or digital) showing what we had learned over the course of the project. Along with this came a short written reflection on our learnings and what we can do for truth and reconciliation.

I feel guilty now as a Canadian looking back on what my country did to the First Nations peoples. I had a pretty good understanding of most of this information before we started this project but I always felt that it didn’t affect me much. I learned much more about how the history of Canada’s wrongdoings against the First Nations people still affects them to this day through intergenerational trauma, lateral violence and cultural appropriation. I can contribute to Canada’s truth and reconciliation by continuing to learn and take seriously the lessons we are taught on this topic. Especially next year in my BC First Peoples class.

 

Conclusion

So this project contained a lot of heavy topics and was very impactful. During this project I heard someone say “If you feel comfortable about truth and reconciliation, you’re not doing it right.” And that really hit home for me because it is on the shoulders of us white colonizers to right the wrongs of our ancestors in any way we can. I did excellent work throughout this project and really showed off my authenticity and raw willingness to learn and participate, some skills that have grown immensely for me over the past year. Thank you for reading this post.

As Always, Brooke