The image me and Emily chose to interpret is called: “Assimilation vs Inclusivity.” Children are sat down to take what appears to be a school picture indicating that this could be from the time of residential schools. The view is from above and is reminiscent of a school picture, so it’s most likely supposed to be from the time of residential schools. Most of the childrenare dressed in greyclothing which gives a bleak, and depressing look. Not only this but by all the children being dressed the same, they were being stripped of their individuality and freedom, and they were all meant to look, act, and dress the same.Additionally, their faces are grey because they are losing the light and happiness on their face. On the other hand, there is a select group of children who are dressed in colourful traditional clothing. The gaze of the children dressed in grey clothing is very sad, whereas the children who are dressed in their traditional clothing are delighted and smiling because they get to practice their culture and express themselves.In summary, the theme of this artwork is to show how Indigenous communities had to assimilate into Canadian culture and essentially forget who they were. The artist is trying to encourage and celebrate diversity and inclusivity at a time when it was discouraged. One of the great things about Canada is that it is a melting pot of people from many different cultures and at the time the Canadian government was trying to erase their cultures and force them to all look and act white. This image makes me sad because it shows how Indigenous people are slowly losing their culture due to assimilation and colonization.
For my math art assignment, I spelt out the letters of my name in bubble letters and made a butterfly. I made a butterfly because I love butterflies and it was a call back to my math reflection on the butterfly effect. For the equations I used, I used a combination of linear relations and inequalities. I used domain and range for the letters and there was a lot of trial and error for me. I kept plugging in different numbers for the b value until I got it right. One of the challenges I had doing this assignment was trying to make the lines slanted. For that, I asked for help, and I figured it out quickly. From then on the assignment felt like a breeze and I found it easier. My strategy was to go line by line to make the process as efficient as possible. This assignment helped me better understand how to graph linear equations by visualizing them into art.
For the Indigenous Explorations project, my group researched the health of Indigenous people in Canada. We split the project into three parts and did three parts each, I researched the history of Indigenous health and their traditional healing practices. I talked about how colonization impacted the health of Indigenous people. Bella researched the current health of Indigenous people. She touched on the gap in the health system when it comes to Indigenous people and some factors that may contribute to that. Lastly, Kiki researched the health of the children in residential schools. She delved into how they were treated, the conditions of these schools, and how the abuse the victims faced traumatized them.
Researching the health of Indigenous people made me aware of how the health system and government in Canada do not properly address the concerns of Indigenous people. It was sad to see how things like colonization, poor living conditions, and racism impacted Aboriginal people’s health. Recording the podcast was something I was really looking forward to because I, myself listen to a lot of podcasts. It was harder than I expected because up until then, I didn’t realize that I had such a bad stuttering problem. Even though it took a couple of tries to finally get it right, I’m glad we practiced over and over. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed recording this podcast, and it is honestly something I would want to do again.
At first, researching our topic was not as easy as I thought it would be. I had to look at various different sources to confirm that the information I was sharing was correct. However, using the school’s resources in conjunction with online sources was very helpful because it allowed me to compare my information to other sources to ensure it’s right. Since ‘health’ is a pretty broad topic we had to split it into three parts for each person in the group. I researched the history of Indigenous health, Bella researched information on the state of current Indigenous people’s health, and Kiki researched the health of Indigenous children in residential schools. As a group, the research part went pretty smoothly and we all found interesting facts and information that we combined for our topic.
Although the research part of the assignment went well, we ran into some issues recording it and posting it. We used Kiki’s computer and the audio sounded kind of muffled. However, this could be partly due to the fact that we leaned in to speak on the microphone, as opposed to passing it around, which we didn’t originally do because we didn’t want the microphone to pick up the audio of us passing it around. In hindsight, if I could do it again, I would re-record it. When it came to posting the audio we ran into an issue, where we couldn’t post the file because it was an ‘aup’ file and not an ‘mp3’ file, however, we quickly figured it out and came up with a solution on our own.
Government of Canada; Indigenous Services Canada. (2022, January 17). Suicide prevention in indigenous communities. Suicide prevention in Indigenous communities. Retrieved March 11, 2022, from https://www.sac-isc.gc.ca/eng/1576089685593/1576089741803
“Iqaluit’s latest water crisis result of tainted promises.” Toronto Star [Toronto, Ontario], 18 Oct. 2021, p. A13. Gale In Context: Canada, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A679301760/CIC?u=43riss&sid=bookmark-CIC&xid=e2cb6d0d. Accessed 11 Mar. 2022.
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Jamal, S., Jones, C., Walker, J., Mazereeuw, M., Sheppard, A. J., Henry, D., & Marrett, L. D. (2021, June 16). Health Reports Cancer in First Nations people in Ontario, Canada: Incidence and mortality, 1991 to 2010. Cancer in First Nations people in Ontario, Canada: Incidence and mortality, 1991 to 2010. Retrieved March 11, 2022, from https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/82-003-x/2021006/article/00002-eng.htm
