Nationalism (Humanities Reflection)

_________________________________________________________________

Introduction:

Hello and welcome back to another blog. Humanities time once again. This was a big project therefore it contains tons of information. Before we get onto our Milestones, let me introduce our driving question for this project, “How can an understanding of nationalism of the past, help us make sense of today?” As said in the driving question, this project was all about nationalism, and we each got a topic to write about during our time in class. My topic was Louis Riel, never heard of him? Well, Louis Riel was a Canadian politician, a founder of the province of Manitoba, and a political leader of the Métis people. He led two resistance movements against the Government of Canada and its first prime minister, John A. Macdonald. Personally, I think he is considered a Hero. But some people would care to disagree with me. Whatever your opinion is, let me know in the comments and ill do my best to answer most of them. Realistically, this project did not have Milestones clearly laid out in-front of us, so I’ll do my best to guess what could possibly be a Milestone. So without further ado, lets move onto our Milestones, 

_________________________________________________________________

Milestone 1, Welcome to the very start of the project. For MS1 we needed to do our Confederation Simulation reflection. Now at the start of the project we had to do a simulation that explained the different parts of a revolution, as well as nationalism, we where assigned to groups of 3 or more. We where assigned to represent the follow provinces, Canada east, Canada west, New Brunswick, PEI, ect. I was assigned to be apart of New Brunswick. I feel I could have spent a little more time on this Milestone as I handed it in late, and I overall feel I could have done a better job in general. Personally I think for next time I should stay on task more, as I got a bit distracted with side-chatter. Overall though I would personally grade this Milestone as accomplished. Feel free to look at the reflection,

Time for Milestone 2. Now, for Milestone 2 our next Milestone was our topic research. As I said before we needed to pick a person to write about, who had something to do with nationalism. I picked Louis Riel as my topic mostly because I know who he is and what he did before we even started this project. I really believe this helped me with my learning, as I already understood the important parts of his history. I feel I could have done a little bit more research, as I didn’t quite meet the criteria for this Milestone. Overall I could have done better, and I should have gotten to work on that Milestone as soon as I came home from school. (This kinda ties into what where doing in Maker right now but more on that later) Anyway, feel free to check out my research about Louis Riel as I do think it might be one of the more important Milestones out there.

Welcome to Milestone 3, the halfway point for the project. For Milestone 3 we needed to make our 3 images. Now if I haven’t told you already, our main goal for this project was to make an instagram post representing our chosen topic. As you know mine was Louis Riel. For every topic we needed to make 1 written-on image, a quote image, and for the last image we could basically do whatever we wanted to. Here is my quote image that I made,

Now onto Milestone 4, MS4 connects a lot with Milestone 3, we needed to choose our final image. Now we were in groups of 3 or more for this part of learning. So we each collaborated with each-other to pick our final 3 images. We decided mine would be best for the quote, Coal’s written-on image would be good, and Nolans creative image would be good. That pretty much sums up Milestone 4. 

Milestone 5 time, our last Milestone. For Milestone 5 we were asked to make our final post caption. Now our caption was the thing to put our images and research into context. The reader would be using the caption to figure out who Louis Riel was and how he connected to nationalism. Overall this section of learning went great. Me and my fellow peers worked collaboratively and effectively together to make what we would say, an accomplished caption.   

Finally, the blog post, Milestone 6, not really a Milestone but I decided to include it anyway. As you can probably tell by now, this is my blog. Feel free to grade my work on Milestone 6 in the comments. I would be glad to have your feedback on what I should improve on!

_________________________________________________________________

Opinion Piece:

(My personal opinion on Louis Riel)

 

Louis Riel, many would say he is an idol, and some would call him a monster. My judgment is strictly based on what I have observed in my lifetime. Louis Riel, in my viewpoint, is a hero and will always be the true founder of Winnipeg. Let’s go back in time. Louis Riel was born on October 22, 1844. The Metis people were struggling to keep their land rights around this time, and as Louis Riel grew up, he began to get into politics. In my opinion, when Louis Riel started his government with the British, it was a love, hate relationship. For example, the Métis National Committee declared a provisional government on December 8, with Riel ultimately becoming its president on December 27. The British wanted to join Canada as a confederation, but Louis Riel voted against it. This struck up a disagreement and eventually led to what some would call a revolution. When Louis Riel did this, he was a hero and was standing up for his people; some would say that doing this led to his death, but it didn’t. As the revolution moved on, Canadian troops were deployed to force Ruperts Land (or Manitoba) to join Canada, which led to war. The Metis people were heavily outnumbered, and they lost the fight, even though they knew the land. When to war was going on, Louis Riel captured Fort Garry in 1870, British citizens were ferrous and wanted to take it back but flunked. This led to the capture of Thomas Scott; Thomas would yell racial stigmas every night, which led to Louis Riel executing him, some would say this is unlawful, but I think this was justified. For instance, He was known for violent actions against the Metis People, including the decapitation of Metis people’s heads, and would cry out racial slurs at them. He would be exceedingly racist to Metis. And he would neglect Metis people. He would pertain to them as “Not people” and “******’*”. Thus I would call this execution justified as the Committee found him guilty of treason. Now some people would say Louis Riel is the one who mandated the execution to be done, and yes, he did. But this is where most people are mistaken. Louis Riel sanctioned a legal vote with the valid government he established; the Metis people voted on the call. Hence Louis Riel is not the one who executed him; it was finished on a vote and was done lawfully. Yet still, the Canadian government impeached him for manslaughter and put him to death on November 16, 1885. In conclusion to this case, I uncover Louis to be a hero. Not the “monster” some people assume he is. Established on the Historical information presented, I would like to conclude this topic by confessing people should recall Louis Riel for being a hero and should pertain to him as the one who ultimately said “No” to supremacists and non-equal rights. Therefore I conclude Louis Riel as the one who saved the Metis people’s rights. 

_________________________________________________________________

Conclusion:

I would like to conclude this project by saying, this is probably one of the only projects that I really understood from the start. What I mean by this, is that if we go back to the introduction, I explained what our project was about and how we needed to pick a topic to write about. Well looking back at what I said, the reason I pick Louis Riel as my topic is because I have done a lot of reading and studying in the past. I feel all the information I built up from reading the Louis Riel comic strip really transferred into this project. Thats why I felt I understood this project and area of studying so well, making this one of the most beloved projects in grade 9. Finally, I would like to end this blog with my answer to the driving question, How can an understanding of nationalism of the past, help us make sense of today? This question was very interesting and brought up a good point, how does nationalism in the past help us make sense of today, there are many people we would consider nationalists who are idols. This makes me think back to Louis Riel (the person I chose for my topic) he showed the Canadian government that just because you’re white, doesn’t give you any more privilege or authority over other race’s. He showed that even though you may have power and authority over people in your government, does not mean you can “Force” a place out of your jurisdiction to join Canada. Therefore I conclude this by saying the people in the past who where nationalists, can help us better understand how Canada became Canada, and who was really responsible for making different provinces and areas of Canada like Louis Riel. I hope you have a awesome rest of your day, and Ill see you in a Scimatics blog later.