After watching Audrey Siegl’s community engaged learning talk about her connection to water, and the Indigenous lands that we live on, I found myself intrigued by many things she talked about. I found it empowering but also sad when Audrey emphasized how the work she does is not something that is political but it is for the purpose of survival. I find it extremely saddening and unfair that an individual or a group of people have to put so much effort into where they came from and their heritage just so that their legacy and stories and history can live on. It makes me question what would it be like if I had to do as much work and fight extremely hard like Audrey does just to say that I’m Canadian? I imagine that many people would be in an extreme uproar if that was something they had to do everyday simply just to have their ancestry and identity live on, but because it involves Indigenous peoples it’s simply okay so push it aside and say it doesn’t matter as much? Another impactful thing Audrey talked about during her presentation was that the term Musqueam is a political accommodation for her ancestors and all Indigenous peoples. The government is simply just putting a name to the stolen lands that they took, just to make the Indigenous peoples feel valued, but does this mean they are really fully paying tribute to their lands? What’s interesting to me that they would never consider changing the name of cities like Vancouver or Toronto to the original names it had, because that would feel to them as if their identity would be taken away, but what makes it okay to take away the identity of the Indigenous peoples and remove the names of territories they had? Another important part of the land we live on is the water that is integrated within it. I found Audrey’s perspective on water to be fascinating as it’s not only seen as something on the earth and around all of us, but it is used for directions and used within human life. Audrey explained how her ancestors never used the terms north, south, east, west, but instead used upstream, downstream, and beside the river. That shows to me that water is not just something for basic survival, or some small aspect of life, but indeed it is the central pillar of life. Audrey really highlights the importance of water in our lives, and that is it not just something to push aside and not focus on the vitality of it.

After watching Barbara Lee’s community engaged learning talk about Asian representation, I found myself with ranges of emotions regarding certain topics she brought up. I find it heartbreaking and couldn’t imagine the internal hardship she faced when she mentioned that she didn’t see a lot of people like herself while growing up. In different ways than what Barbara Lee faced, I found myself in similar positions, where I was the only one out of my friends or people around me, at school, or in the sports I played, that had divorced parents, or had family trouble and never had my parents volunteer at school events, or throw big birthday parties. I always felt different and although this is on an extremely small scale compared to what Barbara faced, I can’t imagine what it would feel like to feel so isolated within her community just because she looked different compared to everyone else. I find it sad that she felt that her family had to do “all of the Canadian things” like learning how to skate and eating certain foods. To me, it really shows the environment that we as Canadians give to people coming to our country for the first time, and making this place their permanent home. I think that by Barbara’s family feeling like they had to do all of the Canadian things to fit in, it means that immigrants and minorities are being further suppressed, and removed from their culture. This in turn contributes to more underrepresentation which Barbara talked about, and the blatant act of whitewashing occurring, as we are forcing minorities to do more “white” things and act in more of a “westernized, white way”. I think that we as a society need to stop doing that, as cultural diversity is extremely important in my opinion, and it would be devastating for our westernized way of living to eradicate many other cultures across the world. We should be embracing the different cultures that exist, and not suppressing them. 

After listening to my first community engaged learning talk with a panelist of speakers and previous CAP alumni, I was really intrigued by the points talked about, and the benefits brought up about learning in a community environment. I feel as if there is a big difference between learning about the community and learning through the community. To go more in depth, everyday in the classroom from grade school all the way to university, we sit, listen, and retain information about certain communities, and how they are affected, and their position in society, but through the lens of a teacher or professor. That limits our perspective on how much we can learn about a community and how much we can really impact it. By our CAP professors bringing in people from our community to talk with us, and by allowing us to do projects that enable us to act with our community, it allows us to learn through the community. Just as one of the professors from law and society on the panel mentioned, we are learning with the communities at the same level as them, all integrated together, and not going into the conversation with a superiority feeling, and looking down upon the community from which we are trying to learn. In another sense, we are also contributing back to the community by listening to these talks, because now we can approach marginalized communities with a basic understanding of their position in society, and better be able to approach them with solutions and more equitable conversations. This mutual sharing of information and understanding works in a circle; a circle that our CAP professors have fortunately brought us into with our community engaged learning talks.

During our discussions of academic integrity, I found many things surprising and differing from my original thought about academic integrity. My previous views of academic integrity were always tasks that were required to do for fear of plagiarism, or to earn easy marks for an assignment. I never had thought of academic integrity as a conversation, or a continuation of knowledge, more or less something everyone dreaded doing for the sake of time and energy on an assignment. What I found the most interesting was that academic integrity was more used as a means of continuing academic dialogue, and building off the information from one piece of academic writing to another. I almost think of it as sending a text or an email, and in that email you include valuable information that a person wants to be able to find again. We all know in this day and age with technology when we try to find a past text or email we just go onto our phones or computers and search that text or email and we find all the information we want; a citation is exactly that but just in a more professional and academic form. Academic citation is a search bar for where we can find valuable information to continue on our academic discussion. To go along with the common theme of modern academic citation, I found an article online that describes academic citation as listening and talking to sources which is an interesting way to think about it. I specifically focused on the listening to sources part of the statement, and the connection I made was that in order to listen to a source, and benefit from it, we need to make that acknowledgement. It is similar to making eye contact with someone when they are talking, that is how you show someone that you are listening. I find that by making so many connections between modern day life and academic citation, I have changed my perspective on academic integrity, and found a way to relate it to my everyday life. I find it to be super important in practicing, and doing in all academic work we create. It is definitely something that I overlooked during my high school career, but will certainly not overlook during my university career. 

Here is the link to the article I read:  ​https://milnepublishing.geneseo.edu/writing-in-college-from-competence-to-excellence/chapter/listening-to-sources-talking-to-sources/ 

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