Category: BCFP

Let’s take Action for Reconciliation!

Posted on by christianl

Reconciliation:

“The act of restoring friendly relations between two parties.”

Has our past ways of reconciling been effective?  Are we moving towards a brighter future of where Indigenous people are given an equal playing field as the rest, and for our past wrongdoings to be forgiven?

An issue we currently face is a lack of initiative, and action being taken in this topic.  Lots of people have a sort of aversion towards this subject, and generally turns a blind eye, and/or don’t support the cause.  Sure, there are plenty of people that are part of “Reconciliation”, but are simply using it as a way to increase status, and use this idea to their benefit.  For this project we used a word called Reconciliation, the verb form of Reconciliation, where we take initiative and try to move forward as a class.  We aim to be able educate the people coming to this year’s winter exhibition by showcasing them a diverse set of points focused around different areas of reconciliation.

Driving Question:  

How might we engage in meaningful Reconciliation?

To start, we were given a set of different topics that we wanted to focus on and dive deep into.  I was placed in a team with Cameron and Daniel, two of my friends that I am very confident in working with.  We focused on the subject of land acknowledgements, what do they mean, what they are for, and whether or not they were effective.  I really went extensive into the individual research, as this topic really fascinated me and I wanted to know more.  A major issue my group realized that affected not only land acknowledgements, but reconciliation as a whole was tokenism.  Tokenism is when a company, or organization, does something for the sake of their own personal gain, not actually tackling the issue.  It’s superficial, they just want to look good without putting in the effort of actually researching the topic.  We can see this in land acknowledgements, the constant repetition of the same thing being repeated over and over again.  They are just using a template that has been copied and pasted thousands of times.  Whether it’s through speeches, or the tagline at the bottom of email addresses, we see this happen all the time.

https://christianl.craft.me/Scjjh4646jJIRy

After putting in the research, we wanted a perspective of someone who was Indigenous, and have their thoughts shared to us.  Cameron Bringsli, born in raised in the Yukon, was able to schedule and interview with both an Elder from the Kwanlin Dun Nation (Elder Dawson), and a Professor from the Yukon University (Professor Theresa).  They were able to share with us the information of how they felt towards the topic, and what they found worrying.  Please take a bit to watch our interview with them.

This led us into the idea of creating a booth that allows for the learner to be able to create a land acknowledgement of their own.  Instead of focusing on the same reused information, we wanted them to create a personalized connection to the land, what makes living here so special to them, and why living here is irreplaceable.  When I moved here, I had to restart almost everything that I had done for the last 12 years of my life.  I didn’t know anyone, and was scared meeting people from a foreign nation.  Now, being able to walk to school with friends, or go climbing outside has created life long bonds with the people around me.  Since about last year, I still held a large attachment to my friends back in Brunei, but as I continue to live here, I realize how much I enjoy living in North Vancouver and attending Seycove.  These things are irreplicable to me, aspects that make up who I am, and something that I would write in a land acknowledgement.  This personal connection creates a land acknowledgement that is special to me, whilst also acknowledging that I am on the territory of someone else.

I believe that the best way of reconciling, or spreading awareness in any topic in general, is through education.  Education is the key to most of our modern day issues, whether it’s to spread awareness, or gaining skills to use in the world, it helps with everything.  The awareness allows for us to have compassion and empathy, to realize what we were doing is wrong, and the need to apologize.  Education needs a clear balance, whether we are pushing a topic too little, or too much depends on the people taking in the information.  An example of this is BCFP, though I believe in the necessity of the topic, I am aware of other students that are not as fond on the subject.  I think each person would need an individualized way of learning about reconciliation, as pushing a subject onto someone may create disinterest and a sort of resentment if they were forced.  The winter exhibition was a good balance of the topic, they were able to go there, learn about the topic, and be able to think about it outside of the night.  If they were not interested, or loss interest, in a topic they had the option of walking away, giving the direct freedom to the people who are learning.

Education, my key to reconciliation, requires an open mind with people willing to learn.

I really enjoyed delving into this topic, lots of issues that I was previously were unaware with were brought to light after researching this topic, and I think that we did a fantastic job in presenting during the exhibition.  This was honestly one of my most favourite topics, I really enjoyed working with my two group members, and I believe that we had great chemistry working together.  We all pulled our weight, and I think our final product really showed off all of the hard work we put in.

Thank you so very much for reading, and learning about this topic.

-Christian Lo

Road to Rights #2 – The Opening of Residential Schools

Posted on by christianl

Good day,

This blog post will be focusing on the dark injustices of Indigenous people in the past, and their road to rights throughout our history.  We are part of the reconciliation, and this course helps us achieve the goal of creating an even playing field for all Canadians.

How might the acknowledgement of rights impact Indigenous peoples now and in the future?

We began this project by first understanding what we were creating, and an example of what Ms. McWilliam envisioned for this project.  We would be creating a road to right, a timeline that showed all of the significant events that Indigenous people were affected by, ranging from the initial establishment of residential schools to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People.  Each person in our class was responsible for one of the dates, creating one infographic that covered the topic that would eventually be shown in a display case located in the hallway outside of the PLP room.

Before actually starting, we had to research and understand what we wanted to focus on, and the direction each person would like to take within this project.  We started of by creating a mini infographic on one of the topics chosen above, and I had to decided to focus on a major topic that led to the development of many more issues related to Indigenous people, the establishment of the first residential school in 1831.  This was the second topic of our timeline, and marked the beginning of the mistreatment of Indigenous children.  I believe that I did a great job in encapsulating the key ideas in only one page whilst still keeping it visually appealing.  After finishing this aspect, we focused more on building our knowledge on things like the United Declaration of Rights on the Indigenous People (UNDRIP) and learning about Indigenous woman’s rights.  I built a craft document that encapsulates all of the research that I had done in this project, and all key information needed to know.

https://christianl.craft.me/RoadToRights

Later down the line, I realized that I really liked this topic, and had built a large amount of research regarding the topic.  I decided to stick with this idea, and continue down the same path as before.

This slideshow shows off all of the different revisions made before finally creating a version that I was proud off.  They were mostly minor changes, but definitely added to the overall product.

This beginning of BCFP has already allowed for me to understand the part we play in reconciliation.  We as a collective are part of the long journey that Canada has to walk in order to regain the trust in Indigenous people, and Canadians have a responsibility to learn about the injustices we made in the past.  The best way in recognizing that we as a collective was wrong, is to educate our future generations to prevent another mistake like this to be repeated again in the future.  This course spreads awareness, and allows us to break the cycle of trauma that has been led throughout our generations.

Overall, this project was a great start to the course.  I really enjoyed creating infographics, and Ms. McWilliam was able to summarize the point very well.  It was rather short, but it served as an introductory to this course.  The creation of the panel outside went well, and I think passerbyers will look at it whilst going to their next class.

And of course,

Thanks so much for reading!

-Chris