At first, I wasn’t exactly sure what was meant by learning Canadian History. In my opinions learning history is what historians tells us what happened in the past, and for some reason we blindly accept this. Through our reading logs, class activities and research paper, I have found out that there is much to take into account when trying to learn history. Through the reading logs, we learnt who the voice behind the document was, what they are trying to say and how they are trying to say it. I believe in order to learn and understand history, that is the first step to be taken. The reading logs made me ask think to myself and ask questions regarding the documents I was reading and analyzing. This was one of the first steps that made me truly understand what history was and how to do it. In order to learn and do history, you have to read beyond what has been written and what has been told.
Chlicotin War: One of our group assignment was to decide if the Chilcotin War was actually a war or series of mass murder. This assignment really opened my eyes to the roles historians play is deciphering events that happened in the past. We had to decide if this was a war or murder by analyzing documents from that period and to come to a conclusion as to what exactly happened. One thing my group and I found out was one one party declared it was a war and the other party declared that it was indeed murder. Our job was then to see who was right based on the documents and evidence gathered. While looking at the documents, I felt that it was not fair or an equal playing field. It is a well known fact that Indigenous peoples pass down stories and events from the past orally and through storytelling, and for a long period of time, oral accounts were found not be reliable so most times they were ignored. The Europeans had documents in writing, news papers, journal and other sorts of written down evidence and accounts of what they “saw” to have happened. One thing we noted was, the accounts could be biased in favor of the Europeans because they were the ones who had the power, they were larger in numbers and history was pretty much written by them. Indigenous people only had stories passed on from generations and in the past, oral stories were seen as invalid.
Research Project: The research project gave me an insight to the steps historians take to interpret historical events. I learnt that you have to analyze different documents and sources to look at the different sides to a story. This is when you can actually see what is happening and you can take both sides and stories into account when trying to know what happened. Just looking at one side of the argument doesn’t give a wide scope of events which leads to history being one sided.
Concept Map: While looking at my concept map, it is interesting to see that I started with Indigenous people before the arrival of the Europeans. I remember in my Indigenous literature class, we went to the Secwepemc Museum and reflected on our experiences and what we learnt in a group circle. I remember sharing that it was nice to hear and see how life was to Indigenous peoples before the arrival of the Europeans because everything I had been taught in school or read in history books are events after the arrival of Europeans. It was like history or historians did not acknowledge the fact that Indigenous people existed before the arrival of Europeans.
What History and How do you Do it:
History is done by people with different belief systems, different ideologies, different experiences and outlooks on life. When analyzing documents, it is important to note who wrote the document and try to see if there are any biases in the writing. History also shows who has the power and it also shows power imbalances. It is our job to see if we can recognize the power imbalances and interpret history as it actually is.