Aboriginal Canadians have, over the years, become victim to a tremendous amount of discrimination by the Canadian government. The Indian Act of 1867, which signifies one of the earliest forms of discrimination, took away a significant amount of power from the hands of Aboriginals. Aboriginals living within Canada have also suffered as a result of poor living conditions and extreme poverty. Although poverty is a national issue, it is especially prevent among the Aboriginal community. The White Paper of 1969, which attempted to assimilate Aboriginals into Canadian culture, is considered to be one of the most severe forms of discrimination directed towards this group.
Rosie being unable to imagine the floating world that is represented in the gift given to Tome reaffirms the barriers between her mother and herself, also the Japanese culture and herself. When Mr. Hayashi takes the picture and burns it, and Tome and Rosie talk it is shown that the seventeen in the title does not only stand for the syllables in a haiku but also the seventeen silent years since the stillborn child Tome gave birth to, a syllable for each silent
Such instances include our need for our "own mouthpiece", "we hold our own responsibility", and "a free country we need not be ashamed of". The heart of any persuasive argument is a sense of empathy and understanding of the situation presented. To underscore the hardship Cary and the fugitives had to endure, she utilizes particular word choices and contrast between Canada and the U.S. in order to set the tone of her article. Within the first paragraph, Cary implements the word "demagogue" to establish that the authoritative figures she has dealt with used underhanded tactics of manipulation, including preaching half-truths. In the sense of the word’s denotation and connotation, Cary is able to stake the claim of danger, peril, repression, and subjugation when in the mercy of the demagogue.
“Civilize Them with a Stick” Mary Crow Dog is a Native American writer who captured her struggles as a student at a boarding school run by Bureau of Indian Affairs. A traditional education at mission school St. Francis became a challenge for the children of an Indian culture. The attitudes towards Native Americans were not held to that of the middle-class white students. Punishments were severe following the Church orders by extreme methods. Two sisters experienced this struggle at separate stages, which has been experienced by their mothers,’ mother.
Passing Likeness Sally Stein’s essay titled Passing Likeness: Dorothea Lange’s ‘Migrant Mother’ and the Paradox of Iconicity was published within Only Skin Deep: Changing Visions of the American Self, edited by Fusco and Wallis. Stein discusses the long unknown details behind an American icon: the Depression-Era photograph by Dorothea Lange entitled, ‘Migrant Mother.’ The photograph in question shows a disheveled and desperate-looking woman, caring for her children in what appears to be a hopeless situation. Shown sheltered by a makeshift tent and accompanied by merely the title of ‘Migrant Mother,’ one is lead to believe this nameless Caucasian woman is a permanent resident of this pea-picker’s camp without a husband to help providing food. Stein notes, “This modern version of the longstanding pictorial genre of mother and child, Kozol argues, chiefly served to reassure the public in the Great Depression that the most fundamental social unit – the nuclear family – was beleaguered, but still strong” (346). This image was particularly appealing to American viewers because most could relate to the struggle of this seemingly white American family.
As Wendy Rose writes, her words transform into the scar tissue of her trauma, both indicating and masking her emotional wounds. In “Neon Scars”, Rose projects her authorial voice in a direct and cutting fashion to express her turmoil from the disconnectedness from her roots that she experiences. Born a mixed blood Native American, she addresses the lack of identity she feels due to the disparity between her European background and her Native American appearance. Additionally, she lives with the face of a Hopi native, but empty handed in claiming a spot in her tribe. Rose aims at portraying feelings of familial alienation through the scattered format of her autobiography where she outlines both the origins of her family and current psychological
Denise Chong and Helga Kurtz-Harder Mills have given their perspectives regarding the positions of immigrants and women refugees in Canadian society in their books “The Concubine’s Children” and “Breaking the Barriers: Refugee Women in Canada” respectively. Denise has explained the story of a Chinese man who came to Canada for a better life of his family and Helga has given a description of refugee women who came to Canada. “The Concubine’s children” tells the story of Chong’s grandmother who was sold to Chan Sam at the age of 17 as a concubine. Chong talks about Chinese immigrants in Canada and the struggle they faced as they were treated like slaves. “The Chinese worked very hard, eleven hours a day, six days a week.
Joy Kogawa’s Obasan was a journey though history as we saw how the Japanese immigrants suffered during World War 2. Naomi was the protagonist and the narrator of the novel, Kogawa chose the narrator to be the protagonist as well because it lets the reader know what the character was really feeling and experiencing. Naomi’s uncle died at the beginning of the novel and her family moves back to Japan. Naomi is sent to Alberta to work on a beet field in the internment camp. The characters in Obasan were being forced by their aunt Obasan to keep their culture while society was telling them to change and fit in.
Good morning/afternoon ladies and gentlemen of the Board, I’m here to serve the purpose of informing you about Message Stick’s Program ‘Henry and Bee’ written by Bee King. The program is about a young Aboriginal woman who was removed from her mother at birth. As a teenager, brought up in a white family, she began to feel isolated and out of place as she grew a sense of not belonging therefore she set out to locate and reconnect with her birth parents. It was no easy search and eventually she tracked down her mother and father. Just to give you a brief outline of the production, Message stick is an aboriginal program; it is a constructed pro-aboriginal program.
Dorothea Lange: Powerful Photography December 7 1941, Japan attacks Pearl Harbor; February 19, 1942 President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized Executive Order 9066 allowing the military to designate military areas "from which any or all persons may be excluded." Even though it did not mention a race it resulted in 110,000 Japanese- Americans being sent to internment camps (Gordon). The U.S. government paid many photographers to photograph the Japanese neighborhoods as people were preparing to leave, the processing centers and the camps themselves (Gordon). Dorothea Lange was one of these photographers. Lange faced the hard choice of either photographing what the government would have had her photograph, or photograph the truth of the horror she saw.