Hello and welcome! This blog post is summing up a recent project called Lies and Incongruencies. Throughout this project we read a book, wrote reflections and create a collage. These project were a part of the process of Keystones that helped to answer the driving question for this project. The question for this project was associated with Keystone 1 “How does the Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline reflect Canada presently and historically?”.

I was really excited for the first assignment of this project because it was the task of creating a poem. I’ve had some experience with creating poems in a previous project, last year, called Working With Words. I really enjoyed this part of the project because while it had somewhat loose guidelines, it was a fun way to be creative and write about my childhood. While this seemed like a minor side activity that we did, it would end up being important in the back end of this project because we would reflect on it. We would look at how we had grown in our writing and in our knowledge after this project. 

The next big part of this project I moved onto was the Marrow Thieves. This was a book that we read and had to analyze as we were creating it. After read a certain amount of chapters we would dedicate 10mins in class to create a contribution that should our engagement to the content we were creating. After we finished the book we builded enough information to answer the driving question “How does the Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline reflect Canada presently and historically?”. We did this through a long class reflection.

In addition to the first Keystone I did the second will many different parts. This included 3 reflections of a certain topic and a connection between a piece of art. The topics I researched and found an art to connect to was Cultural Appropriation, Six Nations Conflict, and Bill C-31. This was a really important part of this project because these reflection built my critical thinking skills and contributed to the creation of my final product. 

The other keystone I completed in addition to these too was the collage plan and a Truth and Reconciliation. The outline for what the Truth and Reconciliation was: “This is a personal reflection of how you feel as a person living in Canada. Compare where you were before we started during your I AM From poem to now that you have learnt this information. This reflection should be about 100 words about your learnings and what you can do for Truth and Reconciliation.”

After reading the book I noticed a shift in my view of Truth and Reconciliation. The brainstorm of what I included was possible with the use of critical and reflective thinking, positive personal and cultural identity, and social awareness and responsibility. 

After this reflection I created a collage plan, which was the foundation of what my final product would be. The task for the collage was to incorporate Truth and Reconciliation and one’s reflection into the collage. I thought of creating stories of my reflection through showing images that display each topic then connect to one image at the end. Then in the blank spaces I would link to my reflections.

After my collage plan was complete I worked on actually creating my collage. In the process of creating it I decided to make a few changes from my plan. Instead of leaving open space I decided to overlap all of the images. Due to the fact that there was no negative space I decided to display the topics of my reflections in text then link to them if someone tapped the title. I also wanted to showcase a story so I decided to add footprint on each section connection the images to the centre image that showcased the after effect of the negative things the Indigenous people faced. 

Overall this project allowed me to build different curricular competencies. I think I was really able to improve my use of ‘Social Awareness and Responsibility’, which is something I’m very proud of. The answer to the driving question “How does the Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline reflect Canada presently and historically?” can be found in my reflection. 

Thank you for reading this post! What type of collage would you make?

Alicia 😀