Curricular Response
I used the image of a stop sign on the East Coast to represent a message to the Europeans not to enter and stop before they colonize Turtle Island. As well, the quote “Chris Columbus gets credit for discovery,” talks about the colonizers overlooking the people who owned the land and claiming it for themselves. The meaning of my assignment was to present how indigenous people’s lives were negatively altered by European settlers.
Core Competency Self-Assessment
It was easy for me to select words and images to create meaning on my map because I knew I wanted to focus on the impact of colonization. The image of a flag reminded me of the countries planting flags on the moon, as if they could just claim property over something that easily. Europeans settled the same way, not thinking of the impacts nor people on the land, and took it and the resources for themselves to manipulate. I thought about that and the reservations and decided the binary opposites “natural, artificial” and “freedom, controlled,” were broad but clear enough to suggest that colonization was like a prison. Titling it was simple because the settlers were making another Europe, and treating it like the continent always belonged to them.
