Week 2 Reflection: EFP 11
Land Acknowledgements
Tarek Diabmarzouk
a) What are your feelings towards land acknowledgements? Is there a specific article we read or video we watched that resonated with you? How could land acknowledgements be made better?
Land acknowledgements are needed to be able to work towards reconciliation and revealing the true history of Canada. Ever since I was in the fifth grade, land acknowledgements have been recited, but I’ve never really understood the true meaning until this week. Now that I’ve been able to study why and when we do come together to say a land acknowledgement, I have some mixed feelings about them. Reading the articles from class, I was able to connect with them and understand why some people feel that land acknowledgements are great, and some think the exact opposite. I believe that it is a great method to work towards decolonization in Canada, however, I also believe that these acknowledgements should not only have words to it, but actions. For example, all schools in British Columbia come together and say land acknowledgement at their assemblies. They are taking action towards it by getting students to take a class where they learn about the first peoples to be able to graduate. Words can move people in different types of ways, however getting a group of people to learn more about what the words really mean, especially young people is in my opinion one of the best ways to work towards reconciliation.
b) What did you learn about local Indigenous communities this week?
This week in class, we were able to learn more about local Indigenous communities. One thing that I found interesting was how many Indigenous communities, especially the downtown east-hastings side are still being stereotyped and discriminated against. Many people look past the actual human being and go straight to the data or rumours they have heard of what’s happening in these communities. A very big example of this that I learned in class is the news and media. When I take a look at the news or media, it tends to take headlines about Indigenous people dealing drugs, being alcoholics and more, however, they never include the different ways many Indigenous people have learned to cope throughout their intergenerational trauma. Many Indigenous people have created amazing things, for example, Indigenous people have created a diverse group of items that differentiate from birth control to genetically modified crops, but you never see that in the media. These are the people who have come before us and have a better understanding of this land than settlers do and yet they are still discriminated against and stereotyped. This would have never happened if the Canadian government hadn’t put so many Indigenous people in residential schools, involved them in the sixties scoop and so many more examples I cannot list. Therefore, the biggest thing that I noticed and learned this week was that settlers are still stereotyping Indigenous people, but to work towards decolonization, we must learn that this is the effect of what the settlers have done, not Indigenous people.