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Constellation of Learning - Coggle Diagram

- - - - Stone Mother by Tanaya Winder is an incredibly impactful poem and connects to this course and other material in this course significantly. On lines 48 and 49 the poem says: “When you lose something, you hope it will be found. When something is stolen, you want it returned. We’ve had our land stolen and we’re losing it again unless we all take action for climate change.” The first theme in those lines is colonization as it says we’ve had it stolen but before it also states when something is stolen you want it returned. That did not happen to the Indigenous people as their land got taken and it was never given back. The second theme is climate change as if the world doesn't act on this huge continental problem then not only will they have lost their land from the government in the past but also would lose it now because of climate change. “Our Mother Earth holds our histories in her dirt. But today, she burns not in the traditional ways once taught, controlled and deliberate. Today she burns desperate, for all to resist fossil fuels, the drilling, and the black snake named.” This quote shows both themes of identity loss and climate change. The first lines saying “she burns not in the traditional ways once taught” talks about how a lot of Indigenous people have lost their identity because they have become so accustomed to the land they lived on which meant so much to them or was a part of their identity, but after people stole their land they lost that identity and themselves. The second line saying “Today she burns desperate, for all to resist fossil fuels, the drilling, and the black snake named” talks about the current state of climate change in the book as it is out of control with constant earthquakes and relentless storms.
- - - - The Marrow Thieves is very significant to our course as it tells a story about the struggles that the Indigenous people have gone through for example their land was stolen, they were taken advantage of and they were put inside residential schools. Although this book is fiction it strongly relates to the events and problems that had occurred in real life or is still an ongoing issue. On page 41 Frenchie said “I came from a long line of hunters, trappers, and voyagers. But now, with most of the rivers cut into pieces and lakes left as grey sludge puckers on the landscape, my own history seemed like a myth along the lines of dragons. This quote is implying both the land not only being changed but also taken from them which in return leads to being stripped from their identity. For a lot of the Indigenous people hunting, fishing and traveling through their natural landscape has become a part of their central being, a part of their identity, so when “the rivers cut into pieces and lakes left as grey sludge puckers on the landscape” so to was frenchies identity, cut into pieces and changed into something he did not recognize which is why he says at the end of the quote “my own history seemed like a myth along the lines of dragons. Another topic that had been an ongoing issue in the book which is slowly becoming a worse problem in today's world was the rapidly increasing dangers of climate change as this book takes place around 20 to 30 years in the future. When Frenchie said “Even after the world was making us more aware of change. After the cities have crumbled off the coastlines, after the hurricanes and earthquakes made us fear for a solid ground to stand on” he was talking about how the world just gave up caring about climate change entirely and eventually it got so bad that in a way the world was starting to fall apart. In all, this book is incredibly important and is very significant to this course as it talks about topics like climate change, intergenerational trauma and colonization which have happened in the past or are still prominent in today's world.
- - - - When first looking at this photo I was very confused, until we learned about what the photo's true meaning was. A boy by the name of Thomas Moore Keesick was enrolled into the Regina Indian Industrial School on August 26th, 1891 at only 8 years old, along with 2 of his siblings, his brother Samuel and his sister Julia. This image is probably one of the most iconic photos of showing how dark Canada’s legacy was with the residential school system. This image is quite scary and incredibly sad as it also shows that the residential school system wasn't just a horrible place for these kids to live but also shows that the systems put in place there worked. Thomas looks completely different in the 2nd picture compared to the first. “These places were not meant for education. They were created to assimilate and destroy Indigenous peoples and our culture.” -Falen Johnson. This quote talks about not just how bad the residential schools were but were also “created to assimilate and destroy Indigenous peoples and our culture” wich can very well be seen as in the second picture Thomas looks like a whole other person because of the things they were teaching him at the school. “The camera…was a manifests camera. Even today we are dealing from the fallout from these images. This is something we are trying to resist. We are contemporary. We are evolving” - Paul Seesequasis. Even now people are still feeling the sheer pain and sadness just from this image.
- - - - When I was starting Hunting by Stars I thought it was going to be very similar if not almost the same kind of plot. But I was wrong, I noticed some new themes that were not as big in the previous book The Marrow Thieves. There was one quote that Frenchie said which made me think of resistance: “I’d been out in the woods and on the run for so many years that my feet didn’t recognize a floor… I was inside. I’d spent the last eight of my seventeen years outside, running, trying to stay on the other side of walls” (Dimaline, 14, 15). After reading this quote I started to understand and realize more what Frenchie was feeling and also what he was talking about, because it really sucks when you will be working towards something for so incredibly long and putting in all this work for it to succeed just for it to all crash and burn in the end from just one small minor mistake. For example, “I’d just stopped to take a piss when your Recruiter conked me out, and then, well, then I was here” -Frenchie (Dimaline, 149). After working so hard to survive for so long just something very small like using the bathroom lead to him being caught and losing his freedom. After being captured he eventually found out about his brother Mitch who was working with the residential school and he spoke with him and found out he still cares for him very much “It was a prison. I had to get out. And now Mitch had given me a small sliver of light to chase” (Dimaline, 98). That also represented resistance because he was plotting to escape the residential school wich he was trapped in via help by his brother.