Coming into this class, I was a bit nervous in terms of the material that we were going to learn and admittedly, I still am. However, reading the material that was assigned to us for this unit gave me a good sense of what we are going to be focussing on in class. Moreover, I felt like the readings laid a good foundation for the course and touched on key ideas that can carry over into multiple units.

Starting with the Smith, Tuck, and Yang reading, I want to say that I really enjoyed it. The format of the paper itself was interesting in that it was fragmented into a bunch of shorter stories and insights. What caught my eye with their reading was the first-person aspect of it, as they really are writing from what they have experienced. Personally, I am not indigenous so I have never felt the hardships and connections that the authors have felt. But from their writing, I really tried to understand where they were coming from. When they wrote “Many of our youth and women have been found beside or in water sources”, I felt a sense of pain that I assume is only a fraction of what the author felt when writing and reflecting on this quote.

In Belasco’s reading, I really liked the example he brought up in regards to where our food comes from. Reading about how our food is globalized really provokes thought and made me think about the processes the food that I eat went through to become what it was.

Finally, Ott and Mack’s article on media studies should not be overlooked. They write about the impact that media has on the world and thinking about it, it does make sense. This is something that I have thought and written about before, so the idea of media’s importance is not new to me. Regardless, I still think it is important to acknowledge the role media plays in our society.