For my ECS 100 class in the winter semester of 2020, we were told to do an aesthetic project based around what we knew about residential schools, and Indigenous peoples, along with what we had learned within the course material of the semester. For my project, I chose to represent my knowledge in my favourite form of aesthetic piece, a video edit. This video represents all my knowledge, using scenes from the movies and video games that I watched/played growing up.

My Explanation:

I started the edit with a few clips from a YouTube video from Historica Canada, called “Residential Schools in Canada: A Timeline” to show some main knowledge and what I had first mainly learned in my school life. Then, I used scenes from the video game, Assassin’s Creed III, because that game was a big part of my understanding when I was growing up. It gave me a look into a Native-American’s life when America was first being colonized. Although it is not quite the same as Canada, it is still fairly similar in the way that Native-American’s were treated as lesser. I then used scenes from the movie Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron because that movie was shown to me at a very young age and became my favourite movie. I was not sure why the white people in the movie were so mean to the Indigenous peoples but then as I got older and was introduced to Assassin’s Creed III and learned more in school, I understood it more. I then used clips from the movies Indian Horse and We Were Children because those movies majorly impacted my view on residential schools as I grew up. I had learned how terrible things were at the schools but these movies actually gave me a visual of it, deeply affecting how I saw things. I finished the edit with another couple of clips from the Historica Canada video, including a quote from Justice Murray Sinclair that I thought was important for everybody to hear because it has such a strong message to it. I also used a circle transition to represent the medicine wheel and the Indigenous peoples many uses for the circle (circle of life, everything being connected, etc.)

~minor flash warning~

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JorpGCPVkL92UzTobplSFi10duBIKJm-/view?usp=sharing