My Movie
Curricular Competency Reflection
A. In the past, Canada did not recognize Indigenous people, their land and their culture. Canada and the US tried to assimilate them by using residential schools to take their culture away from them, as talked about in the Code Talker. In the Round House, the main focus was on how land was taken away from the Indigenous people and how laws were biased towards the “white man”. Presently, we are more aware of the trauma that residential schools created for those that attended. We are also more aware of the rights of Native people in claiming their land. Canada is doing better today in trying to respecting Indigenous people by acknowledging the harm that was done, trying to negotiate land claims and have students learning more about Indigenous culture in schools. I think in the future Canada will have even more of an emphasize on Indigenous education and learning about their culture. Hopefully, Indigenous and Canadian will work together.
B. In the Round house I learned how justice is very hard to get in Indigenous communities. For example, the tribe was only allowed to prosecute someone if it was another Indigenous person that had committed a crime on tribal land; this jurisdictional issue results in problems of getting justice, like what happened to Linden Lark. Moreover, I learned many laws that are in effect, are still biased in favor of the “white man”. From the Code Talker I learned how important language is to Indigenous people and how it is very sacred to them. I also learned that the Navajos made a significant contribution to WW II.
C. I think it is very important to read novels from a variety of cultures including Indigenous authors. This gives students different views of the world as opposed to their own. It also helps helps you understand Indigenous culture and history from their point of view, and may help in understanding current issues. In addition, Indigenous authors can be a great role model for younger Indigenous people.
D. I would recommend the Code Talker to anyone who is interested in history, especially World War II. I would only recommend The Round House to someone who really likes books about justice and how it affects Indigenous communities. Overall I do not recommend The Round House because there are many elaborate side stories from other characters that are distracting and make the novel confusing as the narrative for each story is threaded throughout.
Core Competency Reflection
An example of where I took a significant risk in my thinking or the expected process was when I chose to come up with my own idea for the personal connection piece rather than using an suggested idea. I built a wooden scale which clearly demonstrated how different things in the books balanced with each other or out weighed each other.
This is how I select images and words to create impact for different audiences: Because I knew we were presenting to ELL students, I tried to embed images into my presentation that they could easily understand, as they may have not understood all the words on the slides. I also showed this in my personal connection piece, where I used images of my scale in the PowerPoint to give a visual to the students I was presenting to about how ideas in the books balance each other.