Part Time Indian Presentation
Summary:
For this project, we were put into groups of 4 and each group was assigned a topic surrounding First Nations Peoples. Each group then did some research on the topic and were asked to create a powerpoint to present to the rest of the class. However, our presentations needed to be clear and concise as we were restricted by a time limit as well as a maximum amount of slides we were allowed to have. The group that I was assigned to consisted of me, Tyson, Colby, and Gyu min with topic of the Indian act. The topic was split into four sub-topics and we assigned one to each person. Tyson researched what the Indian act was, Colby had the topic of the impacts of it, Gyu min found and shared current events on the topic, while I looked into the future of the Indian act.
10. I identify and discuss bias in research resources
For my sub-topic, the future of the Indian act, there were two main views on the situation, the government’s perspective, or the First Nations perspective. The government wants to get rid of the Indian act and make the First Nations Canadian citizens, while the First Nations want to keep the benefits of the Indian act while getting rid of the rest. In many of the sources that I researched, the author of each article chose to speak from only one of the perspectives. This made it so that each article was very biased against the other side. So I talked about this with one of my group members and we ended up having to present both stances during our presentation in order to seem more neutral than bias.
11. I go beyond google and use databases to find scholarly research sources
Before we started our research, Mr. Morris actually suggested that we use the Canada in Context database that is accessible through the Gleneagle library homepage. The database listed a ton of helpful sources that we ended up using for our research on the Indian act. I often used the date function to find newer articles on the Indian act in order to make sure that the information was not outdated. An example of an article I used on the database is this link that I used to do a little research on what the Indian act was before actually diving into my assigned sub-topic.
12. I look at controversial issues or topics from opposed perspectives to gain a more complete understanding.
As mentioned before, when I was researching the future of the Indian act, I was forced to research both the government’s perspective, as well as the First Nations perspective due to the bias views that most of the articles had. I needed to relay my research without any bias for any side, so I needed to research both sides in order to gain a complete understanding to be able to take a more neutral stance on the matter. In fact, I ended up working together with a group member to put a “debate” into our presentation where we took opposite stances and argued for our side to show both stances in the situation.