Claire Baker: Give Back Your Land
The creative work that I chose to do was to write a song about my personal journey reflecting upon Indigenous-Settler Relations. This song is sectioned into four parts moving along through the history of Canada and the journey of reconciliation. I wanted to share a story about the horrors and realities that were involved in this key historical concept through my perspective. This reflection will start with the analysis of the song and the connections to the course concepts I learned throughout the semester. It will then move to discuss the importance of geography when analysing Indigenous-Settler Relations. Finally, I will explain how my work advances the Call to Action towards Reconciliation and the message that I hope is translated through my music.
Reconcilation involves all of us
Overall, writing this song has allowed me to encapsulate my own feelings about the entirety of this course. Personally, I find that sometimes it can be difficult to put the words together to discover how I feel about something, but putting those words into music allows me to understand these feelings creatively and freely. Through the multitude of concepts learned throughout the course, I have been able to write a song that portrays a story about a key part in Canadian history. I believe it can be related to by both Indigenous peoples and settlers to share a connection through music. To close, I want to share a quote by Justice Murray Sinclair that encapsulates the sentiment of connectivity that I wish to portray through my art. It reads, “Reconciliation is not an Aboriginal problem, it is a Canadian problem. It involves all of us.” (Sinclair, 2015).