I Riel-ly left this post to the last minute.

Hey everyone and welcome to my blog the last few weeks my class and I learned all about Louis Riel, and multiple other events that have many different ethical dimensions to them. To understand for ourselves who was right or wrong in these instances, we learned how to analyze a situation while considering it’s ethical dimensions. The final product was a series of photos that answered the driving question: how can we present actions and decisions through images to help us make decisions of what is fair or unjust.

We began this project by taking a look at current events and practicing our ability to analyze the text and decide what we thought of the situation. This was a great way to begin this project in my opinion because it got me thinking of what was unfair in the situation. Something I had to do a lot later on in the project. 

Around this time we started learning about Louis Riel the Hero/Villain. To help us understand how to portray our opinions in our own work (the images we would later create) we looked at how the author Chester brown portrayed Louis Riel’s story. We learned about the many ways people saw Riel. Reading this book also gave me something to connect and relate other events to in the future. It also got me thinking about how I wanted to portray my event, and what I wanted to show the people that would see my post.

Next we were assigned our topics. These topics we would then research. Then demonstrate through key images.  My partner (kaden) and I got the pemmican proclamation. A proclamation that forbade export of pemmican, a trade very important to the NWC and Métis people at the time. We researched and asked questions about our topic. 

Once they were all answered we began getting a good idea of what we wanted to demonstrate in our images. 

Here was our first drafts.

These images were a good start but we thought that we could show more about the event to a viewer, and overall demonstrate the ethical dimensions of the pemmican proclamation better. I also felt that we could connect what we had read about this event and portray it a little better. Showing evidence of our understanding for this confusing topic.

To complete exactly that I focused more on showing symbols in the images that would explain the perspectives of each side of our event. For example I added more Métis symbols and pemmican to the Métis and NWC side to show their culture and what they found important. While I tried to show the want for expansion and sense of power for the HBC image.

Here are the images we pitched to our class.

These images turned out better not only did they look better but they also represented the pemmican proclamation more effectively. I think they definitely showed the many ethical dimensions and perspectives of the pemmican proclamation. Though I am pretty proud of how these turned out, If I could do it all over again I might try a more metaphorical and artistic approach. Making sure I didn’t only explain and connect my images to what I read but also given them a slightly more creative twist, and maybe incorporated what I thought of the situation more.

Once our images were ready to be posted we had one more thing we needed.

A caption! We had too write a quick summary explaining what happened during the pemmican proclamation. This was a great chance to show improvement in our connect competency. Because we took a story we had read from multiple sources and told it in our own variation. Just like we had earlier with our images, taking the knowledge we had acquired an putting it towards our three images.

After some revision this is the caption I put together,

Together the caption and images made our finished project. I was pretty proud of how it all turned out. The earlier stages of our project were super useful and really helped me create and put together the final product. For instance reading the book about Louis Riel give me a great example of how an artist demonstrated that event. As well as taking a look at many peoples perspectives in a recent event showed me how complicated historical and current events can truly be. All those lessons helped me to get where I am now, Improved in connecting my views to others. And understanding ethical dimensions, determining who I believe is right in a situation but also recognizing others views. Overall this has been a great project, see you soon, Kaia