Louis Riel is one of Canada’s most important historical figures, but how has peoples views on him changed overt time from a villain to a hero? As a final project for this year in humanities we worked on Louis Riel. The driving question is how Louis Riel’s portrayal has changed over time. Over this project we worked on a multi paragraph response, topic sentences, a heritage minute paragraph, and discussed how various artifacts portrayed Riel. 

This project made me think about how people can like or hate the same person based off the perspective they have on that person and how that perspective can change based off of how you act. The story of Louis Riel shows how people’s perception can change, in this case societal standards changed and to most Riel is now seen as a Métis leader that stood up for his people where as back in the 1800’s he was seen as a rebel and murderer. At the start of this  project we talked about how some artifacts portrayed Riel. I hadn’t heard about Riel before so seeing the weird ways he was perceived was intriguing. It was like he was a man with multiple personalities. 

 

We then learned to write a proper topic sentence which gives the reader a good expectation for the writing to come and a skill I will use for the rest of my life. Writing a topic sentence is one of those skills that a should have known to do but didn’t and now that I can my writing flows better and if I feel like I’m getting off topic I can refer back to my topic sentence to get me back on track. Next, we watched a heritage minute film and wrote a paragraph about it. This short film made me think about how a video and how propaganda can shift people’s perspective. (not saying the heritage minute is propaganda I just thought about that) I definitely thought about how your surroundings can impact you life and your world view. 

Finally, working on the multi paragraph went pretty well for me. I felt that paying lots of attention in class and taking plenty of notes really paid off, and I came out with something that although the first draft wasn’t perfect it was one of my best pieces of writing. Throughout this year I’ve been consistently getting better at writing and all of my small improvements throughout the year have added up to being a much better writer. I’ve also gotten more patient with my writing and am able to focus and work for a longer time witch I demonstrated in this project. Looking back at my work from the start of grade 8 I can easily tell that I’m a much more experienced writer. 

I’ve always thought history was a little bit odd. I didn’t understand why I should be learning about something that already happened, but I actually found this project and learning about Louis Riel pretty interesting. The most interesting part of this project for me was how people’s perspective of Louis riel changed and even though it’s the same person people now versus in the past have very different reactions of Riel. I also thought about how someone that might be disliked now in a few hundred years might be seen as a hero like Riel. Anyway, over this project I learned how to write and how people perspectives can shift that made me think and question  many things about perspective.