The documentary “Through a Blue Lens” follows select drug addicts and police in the Eastside downtown of Vancouver. Even though the goal of this documentary was designed as a public service announcement to (for a lack of a better term) scare grade school students into not using drugs, the documentary also reinforces the stereotypes that are associated with drug addicts. It accomplishes this by showing the most grueling images and scenes of the day in the life of a drug addict life. At first this may seem like a smart and innovative way in which to keep kids off the streets and away from drugs but it also gives people who are addicted to drugs a very negative view due to the stereotypes attached to them. Such stereotypes portrayed in this documentary are that they are wasting their lives away, one of the police officers went to the extent of saying that the addicts were “pathetic.”

This would not be the first time the media has reinforced stereotypes of certain groups especially marginalized groups, it also happened during the time of the Pickton case since many of the victims were drug addicted prostitutes. Because of what the papers were saying the public were making wrong interpretations of these marginalized people due to the fact that they were prostitutes and drug addicts. People were saying that this was their fault and that they had put themselves into the situation they were in. This caused the public including the police to pay no sympathy or attention to the problem at hand, which led to the number of deaths to dramatically increase before anything was done. Examples like these make it abundantly clear that when the media catches onto a story on marginalized groups which has negative connotations, the stereotypes about them are made even more obvious and clear then they already are.

Once in everyone’s life they will most likely receive an apology, which then they reply with something along the lines of “that’s not enough.” This is something I noticed when visiting the Museum of Anthropology and going through the exhibition on the indigenous residential schools. When you go through the exhibit there are long posters hanging from the ceilings which have the apologies from the various institutions that took part in the treatment of the students at the time of the residential schools, apologies included ones from various churches as well as the well know apology given by Prime Minister Steven Harper. Personally these apologies, when I first read them were touching and made me think differently for maybe a split second and that’s when I read the Speaking to memory comment books.

In these books visitors like me had commented in them about what they thought about the exhibition and something I noticed was that a lot of the comments had to do with the apologies. Some of them were positive however there were numerous negative comments concerning these apologies. People went as far as writing that the apologies were nothing but words and had no greater meaning then any other word. What was surprising was that these sorts of comments were written by people who had dealt with intergenerational effects. What this made me realize is that even though the TRC was suppose to allow people to overcome the atrocities of the indigenous residential schools and bring people together, there were some who just weren’t connecting with what was trying to be achieved. Which makes me raise the question of whether or not the TRC is accomplishing what it had hoped to? I ask this because if there are still individuals who feel like they are not being helped, does it highlight that the institutions that apologized may have been only doing so to gain sympathy from the public?

In the 1870’s the federal Canadian government took part in developing and administrating residential schools. The objectives of these schools were to remove and isolate aboriginal children from the influence of their homes, families, traditions and cultures, and to assimilate them into the dominant culture. However as demonstrated in the TRC it was made clear to me that the treatment of these children was completely unfair to the point in which it became almost surreal and completely unbelievable. It was believed the mission of the residential schools was “to kill the Indian in the child.” In Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s statement of apology from 2008 in which he apologized for the mistreatment of former students of Indian residential schools he says that it “is a sad chapter in our history.”

However even after the 1870’s it would seem as though the federal Canadian government never really seemed to have changed as I have noticed whilst conducting my own research of the Chung collection from the UBC archives under the rare books and special collections. When the Chinese started to emigrate over from China their lives were never peachy, they were actually rather grim. They weren’t treated fairly, they had to deal with completely unreasonable situations, such include the head tax they were obliged to pay. Also like the residential schools the aboriginal children were forced to attend, in school the Chinese were also forced to be put through a western way of learning as I noted from my research from the archives. From my research I noted that not only were the children being taught but it was almost as though the goal of the schools was to kill the Chinese in the child. However this being said in the children’s workbooks their was a lot of evidence showing that the students were trying to maintain their identity by writing certain words in Chinese. However this was minimal which highlights the strong desire for the schools to change and westernize the students. Like the aboriginals this event should also be classified as a sad chapter in Canadian history.

According to the Oxford dictionary the term ancestry is defined as “one’s family or ethnic descent.” In Fred Wah’s biotext Diamond Grill ancestry is one of the main themes explored throughout the book and he gives ancestry another name that is not as simple as the definition provided by many dictionaries. However the Wah family is not introduced at the beginning of the book or in a certain chapter of the book like one would be assume. The way in which the Fred Wah discovers his ancestry throughout the novel is similar to the way in which my family has been trying to discover mine, which has been over a long period of time. Because Fred Wah doesn’t introduce his family the way the reader would expect and introduces and introduces them at random times throughout the book makes the discovery of his family history more real and less perfected, like the way in which the way my family’s ancestry has been and still being discovered over the last decade.

Fred Wah uses his biotext as a way of telling his family history. Like the discovery of Fred Wah’s family history mine has been ongoing, cumulative and messy. This has led to their being an incomplete archive like depicted in Diamond Grill where there my family have encountered gaps and silences due to people missing. This highlights that due to the fact that with silences it makes collecting lives as stories somewhat more difficult and in Fred Wah’s case due to the fact that he was trying to understand his relationship with his father better.  Not only does it highlight this but also it highlights that no matter what medium one uses to trace back to their ancestors whether it is doing it on your own or like in my family’s case using someone who specializes in that field or using websites such as ancestry.com there will always be loopholes or better yet known as silences. This also conveys that with the progression and improvement of such areas we can see that sometimes things never change.

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Ever since classes started, both my Sociology and ASTU courses have been (for a lack of a better term) drilling information about the truth and reconciliation conference better known as the TRC into our brains like you wouldn’t believe. Now I may be coming off in a very negative sense but I mean it in the most positive way possible, by this I mean I’m thankful for the fact that I was consumed by all this information. Why? Well I never really learnt much about this topic in high school since topics like these weren’t eminent at international schools over seas.

Who knew that after a few classes I would already feel like I was connected to what the colonizers had done to the natives and in particular the children especially since I have a large European heritage. I even had to have someone tell me that what had happened back then did not define me as a person. But even with that I wasn’t convinced and when I was told we were to choose two TRC events to attend I couldn’t help but feel the need to attend more than that. Unfortunately due to my living conditions getting into the city would be a little time consuming, but that didn’t stop me from following the live feeds as well as going to the Belkin gallery on campus.

What I couldn’t understand is why other people I knew from other faculties didn’t even understand why we were being given a day off in the middle of the week, or they knew why we were being given a day off but weren’t as emotional as I was or why they didn’t feel the need to attend any of the events when we were given a day off for this particular reason. But then I realized that if my professors hadn’t fed me all this information I probably wouldn’t have gone either, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t be curious about the reason of the TRC or simply for why we were being given a day off. I say this because I’m upset and furious after what I’ve learnt.

I remembered from the Koener library, Cathy Busby’s piece “We Are Sorry”, the full text of Steven Harper’s apology from June 11, 2008 to the First Nation people for the treatment they faced. This made me almost want to change my political views and more importantly it touched me. That’s until I realized like everything else the Harper government has cut back on lately, the current government had also cut spending towards First Nation People. In the short video art piece at the Belkin Gallery by Chris Bose named “Savage Heathens” Steven Harper’s apology is recorded. There was a repetition of specific lines, including the fact that it was the goal of residential schools to “kill the Indian within the child.” Once I discovered that the government was cutting their funding towards the First Nation people I realized how hypocritical the government to my country is and the lies that I have been consumed by. It makes me question if the students from the other faculties are as consumed as I was by the lies.