In the memory of the Vancouver missing women including her sister Sarah, Maggie De Vries wrote the memoir Missing Sarah. She shares her sister’s life story from her own perspective while incorporating information about the life in Downtown Eastside and the Robert Pickton trial. In comparison to De Vries’ personal perspective, Wally Oppal’s (BC former Attorney General) report Forsaken: The Report of the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry provides extended material about the missing women, including future recommendations of safety for women within sex work as well as a positive focus on the women’s life to try to “counter balance the negative storyline” (Forsaken, 9). I will look into how this report extends but also complicates the work done by De Vries.

One way Wally Oppal’s report extends the missing women story from Maggie De Vries’ work is by the inclusion of future recommendations to try to provide solutions for the unsafe environment many sex workers have to survive in (Forsaken, 6). De Vries mentions in her epilogue the necessity of these recommendations, holding “the potential for real change” (Missing Sarah, 266). In this way De Vries’ possibly limited knowledge of the legalities and the wider scope of the sex worker problems in Vancouver is being compensated with Oppal’s extensive work into these cases. This information then gives ideas for change and provide public actions suggestions in order to help Downtown Eastside become a safer place. Today Vancouver has a safe injection site provided to people with addiction to avoid disease and have arranged an on-site place to get help to come clean.

In the memoir Maggie De Vries mentions that she first intended to write her book for all the missing women in Vancouver, she had even done interview’s with some of the missing women’s families (Missing Sarah, 282). In the end she didn’t feel like she would be able to tell all stories and give justice to all the women. The report, on the other hand, highlights all the cases and describes most the missing women. It goes deeper into the practicalities of the cases, which may be problematic as it could hinder an emotional connection to the women (Forsaken, 11). In Missing Sarah we are only brought Sarah’s case and those involved, this may be effective in making the victims feel real but still doesn’t provide context of the broader missing women’s case. We follow Sarah’s story and that becomes an intimate connection to Downtown Eastside where’s the report, which includes documentations of findings, might lose that connection and make the story more complicated.

The report by Oppal does provide an extension for the work De Vries had previously done, a chance to get a further insight to the larger scope of the missing women case. De Vries sees this and therefore refers to his previous work in the memorial (Missing Sarah, 265). De Vries brings up her thoughts on the problems in Downtown Eastside while Oppal is able to give concrete solutions. Although Oppal’s work may not be sufficient in creating a meaningful connection to the women, the combination of texts works well. This is important to understand, to see the women’s perspective and root for the changes to be made in order to create a safer space for them and make them a part of our society.

Work Cited:

De Vries, Maggie. Missing Sarah. Penguin Canada Books Inc. 2008.

Judd, Amy. “Health Canada approves new supervised injection site in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside”. Global News, 26 May, 2017, https://globalnews.ca/news/3481936/health-canada-approves-new-supervised-injection-site-in-vancouvers-downtown-eastside/

Oppal, Wally. Forsaken: The Report of the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry. Volume I Part 3 (9-11). Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing. 2012.

The Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia has dedicated on of their displays to present an Amazonia exhibit. Curator Nuno Porto has introduced local ceremonial and everyday objects crafted by the local tribes in the Amazon forest. All the objects provide the visual aid when short texts describe the relation between the objects and years of colonization. A Surinam stool was crafted by one of the many local tribes in the Amazon; it’s purpose for everyday use. This object has a place in the exhibition because the material was of great importance for some of the tribes. The wood and tribal traditional techniques later became a great asset for the colonizers; tribal knowledge was taken and used for exploitation of those resources. The Amazonian forest has been an important part of the tribe’s history and way of life. They needed the nature to survive. In the exhibition we see the destruction of the forest and how that forces many of tribes into our western civilization. They must integrate to a culture not suitable for their environment and are encouraged to work for the exploitation of what they call home. Colonizers came and removed both the rights of tribes and the “rights of nature”, which is the mandate of the exhibition. Photo’s in the exhibition displays some of the tribe members with modern clothes and objects. Forced cultural integration leads to an increasing dependency on what we today call modernization. This diverts tribal communities interests from the forest and may lead to the tribes losing that valuable connection and their local traditions. Important knowledge won’t be past down and the forest becomes a resource rather than a space for thriving life. The Surinam stool was a part of a lifestyle that used to support their local traditions but now the forest is exploited and tribes are pushed into change. In Vancouver today we strive to help the indigenous people regain touch with their lost culture but in South America the people are still being hunted and pressured into abandoning their identity, an identity that might be extinct in a couple of years. The exhibit really wants to promote the importance of the restoration of a forest that supports life beyond our imagination, not only the tribal communities but also the species inhabiting the Amazonas. Displays of birds and feathers show the natural beauty that is slowly disappearing, as the forest becomes space for cattle ranching and large plantations. The tribes are some of the last people who embrace the connection between nature and human life, without that connection, we will detach ourselves from natural life. If we don’t support natural resources then climate change will continue to worsen. It’s difficult to imagine all the species and cultures that will be lost if deforestation continues at this alarming rate. The Amazonian exhibition asks you to look at the connections between losing cultures and losing the world’s largest sight for biodiversity.

Work cited:

Social media is a relatively new form of communication and social interaction.

Different social media platforms have emerged diffusing the limitations of long distance friendship. One such app was launched with increasing success among adolescents and young adults. Snapchat, according to a blog post done by Gary Vaynerchuk the app currently has over 100 million active users. He suggest that Snapchat has manage to replicate the psychological behavior of disappearing memories, hence allowing for fast and temporary information about friends all over the world. Snapchat has become an excellent way for representation of young people’s lives, with the launch of the feature “my story” all your friends have the ability to follow your daily life through short images or videos posted for 24 hours. This means constant exposure to real time activity. This social communication possibly contributes to the prolonging and persistence of friendship.

Snapchat could be seen as a platform for posting life narrative. It allows users to capture and post instantaneously. The number of images and videos are unlimited and available to all your followers. Although the value of this information can be debated, due to features of editing and manipulation of the video, reality can be altered. The validity of the information then also contributes to the strengths of the relationships you hold on this platform. According to Lisa Thomas and Pam Briggs the use of multiple social media decreases our ability to sense where friends are observing our information. They suggest that many platforms such as Facebook, store data posted by users, which means different “selves”, can be viewed on a person’s feed. However, due to Snapchat’s feature of removing old content there is a constant update of information. Allowing your followers to stay up to date with the self-representation you want to portray. This representation is completely in the user’s hands, which would mean a censor of information the user doesn’t desire to share. This is inevitably present in non-social media friendships as well. This suggest that Snapchat’s way of presenting information may hold higher validity in terms of change through time, allowing for friends of distance to observe a life narrative guaranteed to be up to date in terms of representation.

Information about us as Snapchat users is available to our followers. Since Snapchat also allows for personal messages and photos it could suggest for a more personalized presentation for those considered close friends. Although critics suggest a lack of face-to-face relationship, Alexis Elder discusses the validity of online friendship through Aristotelian definition of friendship. She suggests that a friendship involves communication and sharing of thought and doesn’t require physical presence. Hence the conversations and posting that is available on Snapchat fulfills the need for what Aristotle defines as friendship. In this case the self-representation contributes to an update of our friends current situation and social activity and the personalized communication becomes an extra way to keep value and persistence in a friendship. These components conceivable contribute to a preservation of friendship.

Works cited:

Elder, Alexis. “Excellent Online Friendships: an Aristotelian Defense of Social Media.” Ethics and Information Technology, vol. 16, no. 4, 2014, pp. 287–297., doi:10.1007/s10676-014-9354-5.

Thomas, Lisa, and Pam Briggs. “Assessing the Value of Brief Automated Biographies.” Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, vol. 20, no. 1, 2015, pp. 37–49., doi:10.1007/s00779-015-0896-2.

Vaynerchuk, Gary. “The Snap Generation: A Guide to Snapchat’s History.” GaryVaynerchuk.com, 29 Jan. 2016, www.garyvaynerchuk.com/the-snap-generation-a-guide-to-snapchats-history/.

Disability is a type of impairment, physical or psychological, impacting a person’s everyday life and sometimes becoming an extension of individual’s identity. Disabled people are a marginalized minority with great individual variety, presenting different perspectives on what a life as a disabled person indicates. With the aid of memoirs, journals, case studies etc, we can explore the different implications of coping with a diagnosis of different disabilities. Paramount to our understanding of the two disabilities are the representations created by personal accounts, their accounts also reflect how non disabled people view and engage with disability.

Embracing once disability could be difficult, however,  Ryan Knightly- an English professor diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa- does so by writing about his experience of going blind. Retinitis pigmentosa is a gradual disease that cause tunnel vision that get worse over time. He suggest that going blind is a process and journey, hence he refers to it as “blinding” (259).  For him it wasn’t one instance of turning blind and then directly adjusting to that life. Instead, he describes his denial by going to the club so that his partial blindness could be mistaken for drunkenness, even by himself, “blindness lent an authenticity to my recklessness” (51). Therefore avoiding the social stigma of bumping into people, without any other excuse.  It’s clear that Knighton didn’t want to disclose his illness to his surroundings, possible to avoid the label that comes with being disabled.

Hiding a disability is often done to avoid judgment or assumptions, which is often the case for people with mental disorders. This is apparent in  a case study of people diagnosed with bipolar disorder which is when an individual experience intense changes in mood from euphoria to serious depression.  The researcher, Jacqueline Corcoran quotes a woman’s response to diagnosis, saying that she thought she was “nuts, maniac […] someone that has to be locked up” (163). After being given a label she directly assumed her disability was going to force her into isolation. In other cases Corcoran describe people in denial, they think that the diagnosis is incorrect and/or chose to avoid facing it for many years. Also denying help by throwing out leaflets about the disorder (162).

From the two sources of disability accounts we can assume that the fear of being different is a recurring theme. Both Knighton and the the participants from the case study see need for isolation or avoiding public. So although there is a big difference from an extreme change in mood and not being able to see, they share the feeling of being not normal. With both mental illness and physical disorder comes challenges of acceptance and moving forward. Bipolar disorder will always impact your mental state and a goal is to avoid the symptoms for a richer life. For a person with physical disability, like blindness, there is a larger element of embracement. With accounts like the once mentioned above, people can get a richer understanding, and will therefore change how they engage with people with different types of disability.

Works cited:

Knighton, Ryan. Cockeyed: A Memoir. N.p.: Penguin Group, 2006. Print.

Corcoran, Jacqueline. Living with a Mental Disorder: Insight from qualitative research. Routledge 2017. http://www.tandfebooks.com/doi/view/10.4324/9781315816647

Good Evening Everyone!

I was recently introduced the article “Youth trauma and memorialisation: The selfie as witnessing” by Katherine Douglas. It’s a read that may change ones view of the simple concept of the “selfie”. It raises questions about whether taking a selfie at a memorial sight is an appropriate behavior and whether the act can be justified. As a member of todays youth I find this topic relevant and therefore I will try to unpack some of the ideas presented in Douglas article. There is controversy of the act of taking a selfie, because it’s often associated with “vanity, narcissism and fakery” (Douglas, 2017).

The purpose of a selfie often becomes apparent when it’s uploaded to some kind of social media. It’s publicity inspires opinions on it’s use and meaning. Douglas, interestingly brings up the “dark selfies” in relation to “dark tourism”. I wanted to expand on the similarities of these two concepts. Memorials is know as a place for the public to come for mourning and witnessing. Often these becomes sights of interest for tourists, especially famous sights such as the 9/11 memorial. Even without a direct relationship with the event, they come to partake in the mourning and to keep the history alive. (Lennon, Foley 2006) Similarly the youth may use the selfie as a kind of documentation of once mourning, it becomes a way of second hand witnessing. Arguments against taking a selfie at a memorial is often the lack of respect and distraction away from the meaning of the sight. Douglas cites Daily Mail’s article on “self-portraits in inappropriate locations” and how they are “grossly insensitive”, However, this may also occur with tourism without the use of cameras. People may come there for the social aspects and to be able to “tell the story” without thought and intention to honor the deceased. Having a coffee with a friend talking about last Saturday at a memorial might take away from the important act of remembrance. This indicates that respect can be shown in different ways, so a selfie can convey respect and other times be disrespectful.

An interesting example of this was shown at  the holocaust memorial in Berlin, it’s very simplistic and easily accessible to the public. Built to honor all the people that died in the holocaust. The purpose of this memorial can often be misinterpreted and people use the space for entertainment. This was shown in an article by BBC News “Yolocaust, How should you behave at a holocaust memorial?”, when Shahak Shapira, a jewish german-Israeli writer, proceeded to edit photos of people taking inappropriate pictures in the memorial. Thereby, I want to emphasize that taking a selfie can be an act of respect, in one context, it becomes a way of raising awareness, just like mourning in silence should be an accepted act of respect. On the other hand there will also be inappropriate behavior that can take place at a memorial with or without a camera.

/Anni Persson

Works cited:

Douglas, Kate, “Youth, trauma and memorialisation: The selfie as witnessing” Memory Studies, 2017: 1-16

Gunter, Joel. “’Yolocaust’: How should you behave at a Holocaust memorial?” BBC News, BBC, 20 Jan. 2017, www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-38675835. Accessed 21 Sept. 2017.

Lennon, J. John., and Malcolm Foley. Dark tourism: Andover, Hampshire, Cengage Learning EMEA, 2010.

Reporter, Daily Mail. “Curse of the Grossly Insensitive Selfies: Teens Picturing Themselves at the Most Inappropriate Places – Including Ground Zero, a Holocaust Memorial and Even in Front of DEAD Relatives.” Daily Mail Online, Associated Newspapers, 29 Aug. 2013, www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2405379/Selfies-Serious-Places-blog-shows-self-portraits-inappropriate-locations.html.