This semester I took a newly required course called B.C. First Peoples.  While we did a lot of work in this course this year, which you can look at some of work here, this post reflects on our most recent project answering the question “What can I do, even if only in a small way, to be a part of Reconciliation?”

First here are some of my products from other projects and weekly notes that I wanted to highlight:

 

I knew from the start of the year that I would have an exhibition for BCFP and one for PLP and while I hoped they would be on the same night, they actually turned out to be back to back. Originally we were told that PLP 11 would be showing our humanities Holocaust project (which you can read about here) but a bit over a week before the exhibition the plans changed. Firstly we were going to only create something small for humanities and focus on BCFP for both exhibitions, then I heard we would be able to choose, finally it settled on a combined approach where students could combine the humanities and the BCFP. 

This is the part of the project I’m especially proud of because when some people heard this they started to stress and I know I can get like that, sort of stuck, but that day I found a white board and started writing down everything I wanted to do and how to connect them. 

Working with my partner, Fraser,  we created an amazing project. I originally wanted to do something with making people aware of the mistreatment of Indigenous peoples in the Canadian health care system. I got interested in this because of a weekly note I did which you can find here and after reading many articles I knew it was a very pressing and important topic. Then when planing for this exhibition my mom actually told me about what she saw the last time she was in the emergency room. She saw an Indigenous Staff member come and connect to Indigenous patients waiting in the ER. She heard him talk to them and assure them that he would be checking in wth them during their time in the hospital that day. In my research, I learned that in multiple hospitals in BC there are Indigenous Patient Navigators who are Indigenous people who help other Indigenous Peoples through everything in the hospital, basically being their spokes person. So I decided to do a project talking about the mistreatment, the statistics, and the systems set in place and where. So when the two projects had to combine my humanities partner Fraser and I decided to use my BCFP project idea and our humanities one and connect it through the idea of people needling to be up-standers today. 

We created multiple interactive parts including a physical timeline, an online quiz with statistics, effective visuals one where some of my friends and I made orange origami roses to make into a heart, and a physical card the visitors could bring home with a link to our calls to action describing how you can be an upstander even in a small way (look below if you want to scan the QR code yourself to see what you can do). Everything was presented well from the beautiful painting of BC (I did the islands and Fraser did the mainland) to the edges of the paper on the table, and the layout was eye catching.  I was super passionate about both topics and really enjoyed telling everyone one about it. I would end up in discussions with people who would tell me what they knew about the topic as well and personal stories they had heard.  

 

In the end I am really proud of the project Fraser and I created and I think it answered the question “What can I do, even if only in a small way, to be a part of Reconciliation?” And if you want to see a few things you can do please check out this link. The link shows some of our research as well as places you can sign your name, volunteer, or donate to in order to help stop the mistreatment of Indigenous Peoples in the Canadian healthcare system. I’m very glad I took this course because not only did I learn this information but in multiple exhibitions I was able to help raise awareness to others who I hope might tell it to even more people causing even a small step forward in reconciliation.