Abstract

This essay is about choosing a type of media (video/image/show) that shows a literacy or language conflict. In my essay, I spoke about a scene in a show and how the people in the show had experienced racism with their language.

  English Takes Over

            Throughout centuries, Native Indians have come to learn about the colonizer’s customs, language, religion, etc. There was a time when they were not accustomed to the new people in their land and were able to live freely with their own customs but that all changed when the colonizers, who were the people coming from Europe, came and claimed their land. The Native Indians in Canada were branded and known for being unintelligent, or they were viewed as “wild” people because of their own traditions and language. The Natives were then given the opportunity to be taught about the customs of the new people, but what led to these teachings were not good outcomes for the Natives, which was that the Natives would go through racism because they did not speak in English and to this day Natives are still being affected by racism because they do not conform to societal norms, which is completely unfair because they have all the right to practice their own religion and speak in their own language without any trouble. Language is important and without the importance and credibility given to it, it is a way of erasing a language from its people.

            There have been many shows and movies in which racism towards Natives was shown but I had found a certain show that really went into detail of the discrimination and cultural extinction that the Native Indians had to deal with. In the historical drama show, Anne with an E, based on the fictional book series Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery, Moira Walley-Beckett focuses on how colonization in Canada, in the late 1800s, took a toll on the Native Americans’ religion, mental health, and culture. She portrays this conflict by using a character named, Ka’kwet. Ka’kwet befriends Anne (the main character) through mutual likes and curiosity and because of meeting Anne, Ka’kwet becomes interested in learning more about the people outside of her tribe, the Mi’kmaq. When the opportunity of going to school specifically for those who are Native Indians arose in their town, Ka’kwet had decided to go and asked her parents’ permission. She was under the understanding that she would go to this school to learn in a comfortable and loved environment. But when she does leave and we have shown her “progress” in the new school that is under the Church’s rule, we see how confined and closed off the school really is.

The schools being under the Church’s rule had Sisters and the Father (Priest) and it was them who oversaw purifying the Native children to become more modern. We start to see what is happening to Ka’kwet when Anne tries to speak with Ka’kwet in her in school and one of the Sisters tells her that she is unable to because they are in choir. The next scene is of Ka’kwet, who is dressed in a plain grey dress and is solemnly singing a church song. When Ka’kwet notices Anne through the window, she desperately tries to get her attention and is shown to want to leave the school but one of the Sisters sees her and proceeds to scold her by using the Christian name given to Ka’kwet which is, “Hannah”. Ka’kwet then speaks in her native language and tells the other students that the school is horrible, and they should try to escape. The Sister from before hears Ka’kwet speak in her language and proceeds to say, “Speak English. Your heathen tongue is forbidden” (Walley-Beckett, 25:53-26:50). The entire scene goes to show how the Native Indians in Canada had endure a forceful change within their own land. They were taught English and the customs of the colonizers by force and were prohibited from speaking in their mother tongue. It was a disgrace from the colonizers because they believed that the Natives were going against God with their language. 

Ka’kwet was shown as a defiant young girl when she was first introduced in the beginning and so when we watch her defend her people and her language in the same scene, it becomes a touching and heartbreaking moment for the viewers. The Father of the school told her to “stop being a stupid Indian” because she was speaking in her main language and would refuse to turn back to English. She responds by saying, “I’m not stupid! You’re stupid! (In Mi’kmaq) My name is Ka’kwet.” (26:40-26:46) In retaliation to what Ka’kwet had said the Father hits her hand with a stick. The scene cuts as soon as we hear the terrifying scream that comes out of Ka’kwet mouth. This scene is heartbreaking because we see how the Native children have come to a source of “purifying” their minds by following society’s rules in Canada. They had to withstand these moments in their lives because that is what the white people (colonizers) had wanted to do to them. It comes to show how racism had become a major part in the Native’s lives because they were seen people who are were not intelligent because they did not speak in English and needed learning the correct way of living.

The video and image above correlate to Anne with an E’s scene with Ka’kwet because the people speaking in the video are descendants of the Mi’kmaq people. The video shows how there are some who completely lost the language that the Mi’kmaq people spoke and what they were taught about. One of the reasons was because their parents married someone who was not from the tribe and they become the dominant parent. As the image above says, losing the language is like losing your identity, yourself, who you are and who you represent. We see Ka’kwet losing herself in the beginning scene when she was singing a church song in English. She was not happy and seemed to be in a state of depression. Ka’kwet wanted to go back to her tribe and when she did, she was in a state of hysterics because of the trauma she had to endure. A specific line that she yells out to her little brother while they were making small baskets was, “(In Mi’kmaq) Say it in English. (In English) This is for your own good. Stop behaving like a stupid Indian.” (00:44-00:46) She has lost herself because of the trauma and the video talks about how this newer generation that comes from mixed parents also lose themselves. They do not know how to speak the language because it never became an important part of their childhood unlike Ka’kwet, who only knew the language. 

In the source that I will be using, we can see some progress in certain parts of the world regarding indigenous people. In myth number two named, Some Languages are Just Not Good Enough, of the Laurie Bauer and Peter Trudgill book, Ray Harlow touches upon the topic of how there is a consensus between some people that certain languages hold no value or importance. The ingenious people of New Zealand, who are known as the Maori have also endured a change in their country and had their language be deemed as unimportant in New Zealand for quite a long time. “within the past five decades or so, Maori has seen its uses increasingly restricted till in many places it is now only used at formal institutionalized events.” (Harlow, 10).  It goes into what I saw in the episode of Anne with an E because although the Native Indians in Canada were not able to regain their language back but instead, we saw how they were forced to lose it. This group of indigenous people are not the same, but they may have the same past. The Maori may have gone through the same purifying method many centuries ago, but the difference now is that the Maori have been able to gain back some of their power and appreciation back for themselves, unlike the Natives Mi’kmaq. Well, until the higher ups of New Zealand had taken into consideration the importance of the language that the Maori people use.

Having said all this and seeing how these group of people have gone through and are still going through discrimination but also reading about how with other groups have been able to gain some power back is bittersweet. Ka’kwet is a prime example of how terrible it was for the Native children when they were forced to have their culture and language erased from their lives, it is a different part of the genocide the Natives were a part of. It goes to show how important language is and how it must be valued because it can be forgotten. There should be more talks about the history of the Indigenous people because they are a huge part of the history of certain countries. We must talk about how they were forced to lose their language and religion and to this day there is still the loss of their language and customs. We must continue to preserve their culture because no one should go through what the Natives had to go through.

Work Cited

“A Hope of Meeting You in Another World.” Anne With an E, season 3, episode 4. Netflix, January 3^rd, 2019.

“A Dense and Frightful Darkness.” Anne with an E, season 3, episode 9. Netflix, January 3^rd, 2019.

Bauer, Laurie, and Peter Trudgill. Language Myths. Penguin Books, 2007.

OpenLearn from The Open University. https://youtu.be/iGIw25_ML3U

Cover Letter

Dear Professor Nagales and Professor Miller,

            With the Critical Analysis Essay, I have come to learn that looking into and understanding a visual/graphic really means. I learned how to interpret and understand meaning of the source that I am using. It became a valuable strategy for me because I am now able to analyze and connect sources to each other in a collaborative way.

            Drafting has become a crucial part of constructing my essays and it did not fail this time either. I find drafting and revising important factors to creating a cohesive essay because drafting allows me to make mistakes and let all my thoughts out onto the paper. Once I go to editing and revising and I take out or add things that I did not realize I needed to do. It also helps in constructing a thesis and making sure that the sources that I am using will relate to the topic at hand. When creating my draft for this essay, I forgot to add in a visual and I realize that if I did not do my draft and did not get feedback on it, I would not have a visual. It is so important to consider of the privilege that drafting gives a person.

            I have also been able to “Analyze cultural, linguistic, and global cultural diversity, and describe an event or process from more than one point of view” (Course Outcomes) throughout this essay. Especially, two cultures that could be the same but are not. I was able to see a connection between them and explain how they interconnect to each other. I found that using most of the strategies have been beneficial to creating my essays.

Best,

Yara Abdelrahman