personal reflection on land, colonialism/settler colonialism (Toronto)
This assignment requires you to identify a place (land base) in Canada that you feel
affinity toward, and/or which has impacted their life. The land could be where you
were born, where you live now, or a place that you visited and that impacted you
somehow.
These are some guiding questions that are meant to help shape what you will write
about:
a) Whose land this is/was, i.e. what can you find out about how Indigenous
peoples were moved or displaced from the land; and what is Indigenous
peoples’ relationship with that land today. (Think about peoples; treaties;
traditional territories; resources; cultures).
b) How do you think about your relationship to this land today? How has it has
impacted your life? How has your relationship to the land changed or shifted
as a result of learning more about Indigenous histories of the land? If you
are non-Indigenous to this land, how did you come to be there, and how
would you “acknowledge” your relationship to the land? Think about land
acknowledgements and how you might do one; write an example.
c) How has colonialism has affected your life and the lives of your families, in
Canada or elsewhere in the world? What are the ideologies, policies and
practices that impacted you and your family, and how do you understand
these in relation to the themes in this course? How has assimilation (cultural
practices or policies) impacted your life, or the lives of your family
members? Do you feel pressured to assimilate to a culture that is not yours,
and/or do you feel that Canadian society includes your
culture/language/community in a meaningful way?
