Let’s celebrate Columbus Day by not thinking about him at all! Let’s think about the people who actually discovered Canada (AKA not him).

We have just learned about the consequences of colonization and we even made a whole keynote presentation on it! But let me start from the beginning…

Driving Question 🏎️

What were the consequences of Colonization?

To figure out our driving question our end product would be a keynote presentation that we present to the grade 11’s who are learning similar things. We would be split into groups and then choose a group of indigenous peoples and an aspect of what colonization changed (such as trade, government, etc).

Getting Started 

With this project we started by coming back to the building block of all our projects… WORLDVIEW!!! We already know so much about this aspect but it wouldn’t hurt to know some more aspects that would relate to what we are learning right?

One of the first things we did was get to know craft, craft was going to be our best friend for this project because we were going to be taking A LOT of notes about:

New France

Indigenous Peoples

Territories

Colonization 

Colonial Wars

And more!

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Craft

Craft is a really good note taking app where you can write down your notes in an organized way. You can add colours, pictures, you can also add blocks and dividers to divide the different aspects and you can share your notes with other people! I know that this sounds like I’m doing an add for craft right now but honestly it is an awesome app. 

Indigenous Peoples

The term Indigenous peoples refers to:

– First Nations

– Métis

– Inuit

These were all the original inhabitants of what is now Canada.

These people had lived since time immemorial (so long there is no specific date) and before colonization they already had a government, ways of life, community, cultural system, language and much more.

Residential Schools

Residential schools are one of the more serious things that colonization did to the indigenous peoples and that was strip them of their identity. The Europeans thought that the Indigenous were different and that the Indigenous were below themselves, by thinking this they wanted to “change” them to be “normal”. The Europeans took away their language, Clothing, Culture anything of value to them or what makes them Indigenous.

Europeans deciding to do this was horrible and I dont know what was going through their mind… oh wait actually I do it was probably “Wow people who are different from us! Lets try to make them like us and take away everything of value to them and give them life trauma” like no, just no. But here is what the original goal of residential schools was supposed to be: 

The main reason I am talking so much about this is because it connects back to our final keynote presentation which I will explain soon.

Starting The Keynote:

Our final keynote had to include all these aspects and to start we would be getting our groups. My group was:

Tyler

Julia

You can click their name to see their own blogs as well!

I feel that me and my group worked well together and I hope to do more projects with each of them. We were able to evenly do work and no one did too much or too little and when we were presenting to the grade 11’s I feel it went smoothly.

Our Focus

Our focus is something we need to choose that colonization changed for the Indigenous peoples over time. For example me and my group chose lifeways (ways of life and how you live) We talked about how before colonization they relied on hunting, gathering, fishing but after colonization a lot of new resources were introduced and it was harder for them to adjust back to their original lifeways. Residential schools affected Indigenous lifeways a lot by erasing their identity and the Europeans wanting the Indigenous to forget who they were. 

Algonquin Peoples

We also needed to talk about a specific group of Indigenous peoples that were affected, we chose the Algonquin Peoples. I have learned a little about them earlier in an assignment but it was interesting getting to know more about them.

The Algonquin People originally resided in the northern parts of Quebec and Ontario. With colonization and residential schools Algonquin people were moved out of their home and put somewhere completely new. 

The Algonquin lived in Wigwams 

They lived in large territories such as the woodlands and sub-arctic regions

The Algonquin language is called Omàmiwininìmowin

Wigwam

Algonquin Territory

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Keynote Presentation

Here is my groups final Keynote Presentation on the Consequences of Colonization, hope you enjoy!

RPReplay_Final1715621171

Presenting To The 11’s

For the presentation to the 11’s my group made a follow along sheet to make sure they pay attention and to see that they are taking away information from our presentation. Here it is:

We presented two times, and I feel that it went pretty good! We were confident and I feel that we used our cucards and didn’t stutter. We sounded like we knew what we were talking about (and we did) and I think that the grade 11’s could see that! They wrote us back some feedback sheets as well here they are:

Overall we had consistently the same feedback, TALK SLOWER!!! I can definitely use this feedback in the future for any other time that we may do a presentation or are talking in front of the class. I do agree with this feedback as well because sometimes when you feel like you know all the information you just talk so quickly about it forgetting that the people you are talking to may not know the same stuff.

Individual Keynote

YAY! We finished the project we are finally done! Haha… NOPE!!! The grade 11’s and Ms. McWilliam decided to see if each one of us were able to describe the consequences of colonization which is our driving question.

We were given 3 days to do this and then we would be presenting on Monday to our entire class. This presentation had some limits: