What impacts identity??

Hello again everyone and welcome back to another blog post!

In the past unit we have been talking a lot about identity and what can shape your identity. This post is going to be reviewing this past unit and reflecting on some thoughts about identity. If you missed my last post introducing this identity unit, click here to check it out!

Anyways, let’s get right into this post.

Our driving question for this unit was: How does land impact people’s identity?

For the first couple weeks of school, we basically learned as much about identity as we could. I took a few things out of this:

Identity: Basically how the world views you.

Worldview: How you view the world.

These concepts are very similar, but at the same time they are quite different. During these first few weeks, we also gave our own interpretation of Deep Cove’s identity. I talked about how the mountains and water create an identity for Deep Cove.

To get a better idea of the driving question (How land impacts people’s identity) we took an amazing field trip to Alberta with that question in mind. We stopped at tons of unique and awesome places which could have answered the question. What we tried to figure out at each stop was how the geography of where we were impacted the way the locals live.

For example, people living in Calgary are used to a cold, long winter so they plan their lives around the snow and cold weather. Even the weather impacts people’s personalities.

A good example to answer the question was Drumheller. Drumheller is a small town a couple hours outside of Calgary. Because it’s small and a few hours from a major city, it wouldn’t be visited too often. However, the land completely changed the identity of Drumheller. In the rough plains just outside of the town, lots of fossils and dinosaur bones have been found, leaving the obvious conclusion that dinosaurs used to roam Alberta. This brought lots of attention to the town and it was quickly called the “dinosaur capital of the world”. This created lots of job opportunities for the town of Drumheller. They embraced the idea of dinosaurs in their town and now there are museums and dinosaurs statues throughout the town.

As I said, the land completely affected Drumheller in a major way.

I think going on this trip really opened up my eyes to the idea of identity. Before this unit, I didn’t really give too much thought about my identity, or how where I lived could impact my identity. Doing this unit has really changed the way I think about the land around me. I think that I can now appreciate the land a lot more than I did before. Vancouver has really shaped the way I live, for the better.

During the course of the trip, we had to create a video which answered the driving question and displayed different stops of the trip. We also had to figure out how the land impacted people’s identity at each separate location. We also had to interview at least one person at a location. I picked 4 different locations to feature in my video which including Lake Louise, a buffalo ranch, Drumheller and Rogers pass.

Here’s my video!

This post is going to wrap up this unit. I hope you enjoyed reading about my identity!

Signing off for now,

Nik