This week’s scholarly reading, Missing and Murdered Women: Reproducing Marginality in News Discourse by Yasmin Jiwani and Mary Lynn Young and the documentary video, Through a Blue Lens produced by the National Film Board of Canada sparked new knowledge in learning about the lives of the locals residing Downtown Eastside, Vancouver. This topic about sex-work, drug addiction were things that I have always heard about from a far in health classes in middle school and through the news media mainly CNN and BBC. But imagining that now I am living in the same city and witnessing many homeless people in Vancouver, I felt actively engaged while reading this article. However, the reading left me with a sad and hopeless thought that the case of the missing women will always be left in the periphery. Myself, having no power in taking this into action, just nod my head and accepted the reality. After reading the article, I realized how the media is a powerful tool in manipulating information and how it can shift the main focus by using the “blaming the victim” (908) approach.

Visual media such as Through a Blue Lens, have done an excellent job in representing the marginalized by giving the chance to the people living in Downtown Eastside Vancouver that many have come from “good strong families” as one police officer explains. After watching the video and hearing from the victims, it was their choice and their decision of becoming who they are today. Typically, people would think they chose the wrong path to life, but on the other hand, if we take our “humanistic” lens, we can view that all human beings make mistakes, we all do. “We” are not like “them” because we have loving families and have all the available and necessary resources, like family love, unconditional support from friends and parents. Many of the victims in the documentary were often abused by their parents and just did not have enough and proper resources around them. Even though I was disguised by watching their lives in the streets wandering with no direction in life, one thing I realized was that they are human beings and “they” like “us” have a “sense of humanity” (903).

Throughout the article, Jiwani and Young argue that the problem lie on the misrepresentation of marginality in the News Media because sometimes without critical thinking we tend to believe what is said on the news and unconsciously through the representation of the media we get drawn to what they are saying. For example, as Zoonen and Young argues that  “crime-news norms” are considered the most “masculinist” example of media practices people. In the case of Robert Pickton, the media is manipulative in such a way that “shifts” its main focus (the Missing Women) to “Pickton, his family, and his property” (905). If the media continues this method, the public would automatically would be more curious of who caused the problem rather that than most important subject, the victim, who was accused and who is being marginalized.

I do strongly believe that there is still hope if female journalists like Lindsay Kines, Kim Bolan and Lori Culbert who portray the image of sex-workers in the News Media not just as “sex-workers” and “drug addicts” but representing from a humanistic perspective who were once just like us, coming “from caring families” (903) that they were “mothers, daughters and sisters” to create sympathy to the public, practicing social responsibility.

Today in class, Dr. McNeill brought up an interesting topic for us to think about “witnessing testimony” and “consumption testimony” and how there is an ethical issue attached to it. This caught my attention and we continued a brief conversation after class, which led me to write this blog post. I have to agree with the “consumption” part in testimony because to the events and art gallery that I have attended, the former students of the Indian Residential School (IRS) re-tell their traumatic and painful stories to the audiences. After our conversation, I began to think if that is the end of the story, I feel there is a “gap” or a “space” that needs to be filled. The organizers this Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) are accepting the past and seeking for the truth to reconcile, but I question if they have alternative motives through “stories” told by the Aboriginals as consumptions or are there other meanings attached to it?

Coming to Canada for the first time last year, I did not have any knowledge on the TRC, in fact, I was overwhelmed by it. Our CAP Sociology 100 course introduced me to this topic and I had the opportunity to attend a TRC hosted event at the Pacific National Exhibition (PNE) located in the East Hastings, Vancouver. In this particular event, after hearing the traumatic and painful stories told by the elderly First Nations who were forced to attend the IRS, I felt terribly bad and angry. But at the same time, touched by their hardships and the suffering of different types of abuse they received and the abolishment of their culture and assimilating to the dominant one. I feel there is a lack of action taken to further take steps to solve this “deep issue”. Maybe I have not put this sentence correctly but I feel there is the process of commodification and consumption involved in the national events hosted by TRC and also in the Belkin Art Gallery as well as the Museum of Anthropology.

The TRC organizers gathering and hosting various events to attract audiences to watch and listen to the former Residential School students shedding tears and bitterness to the audience… If their purpose of creating and hosting these national events in different parts of Canada is to establish understanding and creating awareness to the Canadians and non-Canadians about their colonial past. Is this the end of the story? This point ties back into Rachel’s comment in class that Residential Schools who are controlled by the Christian system have a forward-looking vision into solving this issue, the Aboriginals, on the other hand, want to acknowledge on their past and want to look back at what suffering they had to go through. This raises an ethical concern over who is getting marginalized again.

I have found an interesting article that might contribute to this discussion, it explores on these two questions, “Who does the TRC include in the process of reconciliation? And how might I, as someone who is not Indigenous (specifically, as someone who is “white”), be engaged by the TRC?” (Snyder).