In/relation/Module 1/Learning Together/Diving Deeper/Option 2

How Did We Get Here?

Adapted from Time and Place Activity at UBC from http://timeandplace.ubc.ca/user-guide/theme-i/activity-a-where-are-you-from/

Preparation

1. Clear the room to make a large empty space.
2. Identify the directions: North, South, West, and East. You may put signs on the wall.

Activity

1. Acknowledge the discomfort and unsettled feelings that may arise from this activity regardless of one’s relationship to this place. If applicable, speak about your own discomfort when you told your story. Speaking about the effect connected to this activity openly is one way for participants to see it as “OK” to bring it up and models a way to do this.
2. Explain the rationale of this activity despite its risks. This activity is intended to provide participants with an entry point to articulate their relationship to the local geographical spaces that we occupy today. The more we think and reflect on this, the more we become aware of our identities and are able to represent and articulate this to others.
3. The center of the room represents Vancouver, Canada and the four directions: North, South, West, and East.
4. Using your map from prework 4 , have learners move through the space, beginning with where they grew up.
5. The facilitator moves to where they grew up, and shares a story about their family, moving to where their parents lived, grandparents, etc- modeling the movement of family through time.
6. Learners move to another place on their map, and pair with another learner, and answer these questions:
   1. Where are you on the map?
   2. What is this place to your history?
   3. What is your relationship to it personally?
   4. How do you know about this place on the map? What don’t you know? How has history shaped your knowledge of your ancestry?
7. End with the land acknowledgement as students stand in the room.
   1. Reflect on the words traditional, ancestral, and unceded.
   2. What does the land acknowledgement mean in relation to the delta animation and the presence of UBC on this land?
      • Why is it important to acknowledge Musqueam?
      • How can you relate to the land acknowledgement as an ongoing process?
      • How does the land that we learn on impact us?