I Have Dug Deep

Welcome back to my second ever BC First Peoples blog post. 

This project was called Digging Deeper, and it was about archeology. When I first heard about this project I wasn’t too excited because archeology doesn’t really seem very interesting, but it turns out there’s actually a lot more to it than I first thought. With that said, the driving question for this project is “How might we use an anthropological perspective to better understand the history of British Columbia?”. Now with that out of the way, let’s get into the info.

First of all, we had to define what Anthropology is. I thought I knew what it was…. But I didn’t…. I really didn’t. Fun fact, there are 4 different types of anthropology, I thought it was just Indiana Jones. These four subsections are Cultural Anthropology, Biological Anthropology, Linguistic Anthropology and Archaeology. Now I’ll go into detail on each one.

Cultural Anthropology:

This is the study of human cultures, beliefs, practices, customs, rituals and social structures. These people are often employed based on observation, participation, and ethnographic field work. They aim to gain a cultural understanding and create positive social change. They publish their work through “ethnographies”.

Biological Anthropology:

This is the study of the evolutionary aspects of humans. They examine fossils, genetics and anatomy to gain their information. They use human biology and how different populations adapt to different environments to learn how humans and other animal groups have evolved and adapted over time.

Linguistic Anthropology:

This is the study of human language and communication. They study how language is shaped by different social interactions and cultural practices. This research helps them learn how languages change and evolve over time. They focus on the diversity of languages across societies.

Archaeology:

This is the Analysis of material remains such as artifacts, structures and environmental data. They have excavations to dig and document layers of soil to uncover artifacts. They use history, geology, chemistry, and biology to interpret evidence and further their research.

So those are all the different kinds of Anthropology but we’re not done with terms quite yet. There are still some important words that are crucial to Anthropology. These words being ethnocentrism, cultural imperialism and cultural relativism, there are also some less important terms that I will describe briefly. Culture shock is experiencing disorientation, frustration or confusion in different settings that they aren’t used to. Xenocentrism is the belief that another culture is superior to one’s own culture.

Ethnocentrism:

Ethnocentrism is a term that means to view a culture from the perspective of an outsider. This term is used when somebody evaluates a culture by comparing it to their own ideals and culture. This perspective can make one think of other cultures as “weird” just because it’s different.

Cultural Imperialism:

Cultural Imperialism is a term that means people who believe that other cultures need to be helped because it is inferior. This perspective can mean that people travel out to different cultures that they view as “worse off” and interfere with traditional practices because they need to be “fixed”

Cultural Relativism:

Cultural relativism is a term that means the opposite of Ethnocentrism. It means viewing a culture through the eyes of its own standards, rather than one’s own. This is the method that anthropologists must use in order to give a fair understanding and insight into their culture.

Now I promise that was all the important terms relating to anthropology, so now we can get into what we ended off doing. We were going to be making a website with all of our collective projects, what was this project? Well we learned that we were going to be making a digital museum exhibit about different artifacts that were in the Museum Of Anthropology. Immediately when I heard about this I knew I wanted to do some kind of weapon, so I rushed immediately to the website that we used to find our artifacts and sorted by weapons. Immediately something caught my eye, and that was a…. gun? I was quite surprised because I didn’t think Indigenous peoples had guns so I was immediately interested, so I locked that one in and started my research.

We were given a template with a few things to dive in to, those being the nation it belonged to, the date it was found or created, and a brief description of the artifact, then we had 4 extra cards embedded that were context and connections which was all of our research compiled, anthropological connections which explained how these artifacts connected to different types of anthropology, nation deep dive which went into the history and story of the nation the artifact belonged too, and finally an interactive element of our choice that would engage viewers.

Now I could explain what I researched and how I got my info, but I think it would be best just to give you the link. So go ahead and check out the website that we’ve made right here (embed the link). My artifact is the Jiiguu (Gun) and while you’re there, try checking out some of my other classmates’ work, you might learn a thing or two.

And now we come back to the driving question for this project. “How might we use an anthropological perspective to better understand the history of British Columbia?”. I think we can use these perspectives to gather more insight into what has built up BC’s history, and how different Nations have evolved over time. These perspectives can also help us view history through the eyes of those who experienced it, and help us see things from somebody else’s world view.

Thank you so much for reading my blog post on this project. I enjoyed it more than I thought I would and there was a lot more to it than I knew. I hope you liked this blog post style, I tried to add a lot more images so it wouldn’t be a wall of text so hopefully this is a good change. See yaaaaa!