Hello!
Hello everyone! Welcome to my page.. Blog… thingy….
This is my awkward way of asking for your patience. Communication through the world wide web (“www”) has never been my strong suit. An aim of this course, and one of my reasons for taking it, is to strengthen communication and navigation of the www. I invite and encourage you to start conversations with me and I look forward to our chats!
I am intrigued by English 372 because it is a unique Canadian literature course with a goal of creating a dialogue that is more complex than straightforward literary criticism. I am very excited for this course both as a Canadian citizen wanting to reflect on our history and as someone who feels that novels tell us more than one story.
I live in the Cowichan Valley on Vancouver Island, home to British Columbia’s largest First Nations Community the Hul’q’umi’num people. I am privileged to have the opportunity to come into contact with the culture here and have greatly enjoyed my experiences. I am also very aware that my presence and how I chose to move in and interact with my community has a large impact. I would like to further my understanding of my impact and learn to be an effective ally in my community starting by challenging my views through this course. I am learning that my understanding concepts such as decolonization and cultural appropriation are flawed. Through this course I hope that I will be more able to recognize injustices such as cultural appropriation in novels and more broadly, in Canada. I also hope to gain a better understanding of future goals of reconciliation and decolonization from the First Nations perspective.
I am currently in school working towards being a high school history and english teacher. I am excited by the prospect but also intimidated because I know that position comes with a responsibility to accurately convey Canada’s past. I am hopeful that this course will teach me to identify stories that need to be told as well as improve my ability to teach history from multiple perspectives. With all of your help, I am positive that it will!
Works Cited
“Core Traditional Territory, Traditional Territory” Cowichan Tribes, https://www.cowichantribes.com/about-cowichan-tribes/land-base/traditional-territory/
“History of the Cowichan Peoples.” Cowichan Tribes, https://www.cowichantribes.com/about-cowichan-tribes/history/
“Understanding Oppression: Terminology.” Dragonfly Canada, https://dragonflycanada.ca/resources/understanding-oppression/