What’s up gang gang on my slime stuff no opp stuff put that on slatt frl frl and welcome back the bestest blog, the Slime Slatt Blog! Today we’ll be going over my final humanities blog post ever, Lies and incongruencies. This project revolved around indigenous peoples and the oppression they’ve had to endure and around truth and reconciliation and all of that kind of stuff. This project was kind of confusing because each keystone had multiple parts to it and the first keystone ended up being the last thing to do but that’s besides the point other than it was confusing but that’s ok because we got it done! So with that out of the way let’s get into the rest of this project!
The first thing we did to introduce us to this topic was an “I Am From” poem. The name is pretty self explanatory but basically you just had to write a poem about where you’re from and how that makes you you. Now I’m really not a big poem kind of guy but I guess my teacher really thought I did a good job on it because she wanted to show it off as a piece to represent my learning at the end of year function, but I declined as I don’t want my learning to be reflected in a poem because I’m not a poem kind of guy and I feel like there’s better work of mine to show than that. Anyway if you’d like to read it for yourself I’ll link it below 👇🏼
Keystone 1:
After this we would start reading a book called “The Marrow Theives” which directly connected to our keystone 1. The book was about this outcast group of First Nations in a dystopian world where the Canadian government is trying to capture them and use their bone marrow for their own purpose. Idk it was kind of a weird book but that’s the rough summary. We spent around a month or so reading this and with this we had to write weekly reflections every Tuesday and Friday reflecting on the book and connecting it to modern day issues, or historical knowledge of your own. At the end of doing these reflections we then had to write a short write up on how the overall book speaks about indigenous issues and how it can be tied to modern day problems. This keystone was probably the easiest out of the 3 as long as you kept up with the reflections and fortunately I did so it was pretty smooth sailing, but it also took the longest to complete just because of how long it took to read the book, that’s why it was the last keystone to be handed in. If your interested in looking at the reflections check out the presentation below 👇🏼
Keystone 2:
Keystone 2 went across 3 different parts to hand in all revolving around the same theme, that being art work connecting to indigenous problems, past or present. Part 1 of the keystone was “History and Art.” For this part we had to find a governmental act then find a piece of artwork made by an indigenous artist and connect the two through a 250 word write up explaining why you think the two connect. For this I used the Indian Act and an art piece called “War Pony.” Part 2 was the same exact format, but this time we had to connect a Contemporary Issue to an art piece, for the issue I chose inter generational trauma. Again for part 3 it was the same format previously but this time we had to connect Civic Conflicts to an art piece, and the conflict I chose to write on was the Mi’kmaq Lobster Dispute. If any of these topics interest you they’ll be in order from 1-3 right below this paragraph. This keystone wasn’t too bad it just took a lot of research and thinking to properly discuss your topic and thoroughly connect the art to the issue.
Keystone 3:
The 3rd and final keystone was our end goal, to make your own piece of art representing your learning through the project in the form of a collage. For my collage I decided to take the Indigenous status card and “reverse it” to make it more native I guess. Basically changing the card to represent first peoples better than just a card with numbers. This was definitely the most fun part of the project as I got to use my creative thinking on to best incorporate my learning throughout the project in an artistic way. I took First Nations paintings and scattered them across a stock picture of a status card to give it the effect of taking back what’s ours. There was also a little write up about truth and reconciliation and what we learned about it in the project that was also apart of keystone 3 but it really wasn’t that important in scale to the collage piece.
Overall this project wasn’t exactly my cup of hot chocolate but I definitely took a lot away from this project and learned a ton about the kind of issued going on in the indigenous lifestyle and how long they’ve been fighting for their rights. I definitely feel like these kind of problems arnt talked about enough and we need to do more as a nation to help that community heal for all of the wrongs we’ve made them go through. For the project rating, respectfully, I give it a 2/10 for fun but a 9/10 for learning and usage of this learning. All in all this project taught me a lot of valuable lessons and information that I’ll be sure to keep in mind in the future. Well that’s all for now, cya.
SLATT 💚
Landon