1 Reflect on how these songs contribute to making the community or natural world a better place and identify how the lyrics actions call others to action and can work to make positive change.
Both songs contribute to making us listeners have an awareness of the Indigenous community and how they struggle to make their world and lives a better place. The Wreck Beach/Totem Park song shows us they thought their world “was heaven” and even though it is “the end of the world” they can make something meaningful as it ends. This song calls others to action in a peaceful way by just protesting while sitting on the beach. In the Cariboo Ghosts & Untold Stories song the community is the Indigenous protestors who work together. They take a harsher way in getting attention to their cause of how badly the Indigenous people need to be seen and heard and helped.
How do these songs represent that something is unfair? What is that “something”? Explain.
Both songs talk about how unfair the Indigenous people were treated in the past, and even still now today. The Wreck Beach song tells the listener about how life keeps moving forward and everything keeps changing but still the Indigenous people are treated badly by the white people. Their traditions and lands are still gone and not returned to them and they are still having a hard time today. In Cariboo Ghosts, the Indigenous people are trying to reconnect with their traditional ways but “get tripped up by real life” meaning the white people aren’t letting them be themselves because the white man ways is the right way and there is no room for the Indigenous history in the world today.
What emotions do these songs generate for you? Compare your emotions between each song. Which one is more compelling? And why?
The Wreck Beach song lyrics make the listener feel small and scared because of flashing police lights in the trees makes your heart beat faster and then the police are standing above them telling them to move out. The listener doesn’t feel like they can make a connection and stay in one place, they are lost and “stumbling in circles”. These lyrics are opposite of how the beat and tone of the music is. The music actually doesn’t give me a negative vibe and I really liked this song better. The Cariboo Ghosts song makes me feel like a rebel getting ready for a fight. This sounded like a speech getting people ready to rebel against the white world. I felt a bit sad and hopeless when I read this songs lyrics because the Indigenous people have to keep waiting for another day when things will be better for them.
What is important to each of the singers? What is the message they are trying to convey?
In Wreck Beach the singer talks about how life keeps changing and the Indigenous people need to remember who they are and keep traditions that are important to them alive. They know they have been treated unfairly and badly by the white man and have to fight in a peaceful way. In the Cariboo Ghosts the singer wants the Indigenous people to fight as a large group to keep their history and traditions alive. The song starts like the Indigenous people are feeling defeated and aren’t even trying and it changes into getting together to get a plan to finally be seen.
Using one of your similarities and differences (not the example one given), discuss in a short paragraph (6-10 sentences) how music can convey different perspectives on the same cause?
Music can convey different perspectives on the same cause. In the songs Wreck Beach and Cariboo Ghosts and Untold Stories both songs describe how Indigenous people should rebel and have their traditions seen and heard but they get there in different ways. The Wreck Beach song rebellion is more peaceful and the unfair treatment the Indigenous people face is not told to the listener in a direct way. We kind of have to figure it out ourselves. In Cariboo Ghosts the rebellion feels like it is going to be more violent and the unfair treatment the Indigenous people have gone through is easier to understand. They are called riff raff, feel regret and are always not getting what they need because they are always getting blocked by the white man. Both get treated by the white man’s world but they way they go about fighting it is different. The Wreck Beach song is a peaceful protest but still following the white man’s rules and the Cariboo Ghosts is a knowing about more bad unfair treatment and they are going to fix the problem by fighting.