By Adam Donnelly

Kamloops Indigenous students tackle media literacy

May 23, 2017 | 1:00 PM

KAMLOOPS — The role of the media in the modern world is ever evolving. With more and more information being created and consumed every day, it’s important for students to understand where they can turn to for reliable information, and what information is important. Indigenous students at the Four Directions School at TREC just completed a course which focused on teaching media literacy, and in doing so, got the opportunity to focus on a topic they felt needed more attention in the media landscape.

Every day, humans create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data; enough information to fill 10 million Blu-ray discs. So how are we supposed to understand what information is useful, and what information we can disregard?

“What we’re seeing, because of being in the 21st century… and the fast pace of media and how much that consumes our lives, it’s important that media literacy education be available,” UVic PhD student Alexis Brown explained.

Brown and Four Directions Program Coordinator Jordan Smith decided media literacy was an important skill to learn, so they developed a course, called Critical Media Literacies, to help the students at Four Directions understand how to process the information they’re presented with every day.

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“It’s just really important for them to have the ability to be critical,” Smith told CFJC Today, adding it’s also important “for them to understand the role media has in their lives.”

The students took part in several workshops at UBC, to learn the role of media, and how to interpret what they see from the media. They then took on projects to highlight issues they thought deserved more media coverage.

For Daniel Sangret, his experience in the youth justice system motivated him to help shed some light on why young indigenous people end up incarcerated.

“I interviewed four people,” Sangret explained. “One was from youth Corrections, one was from adult Corrections. I interviewed an RCMP officer, and then I interviewed a parole officer.”

For Sangret, it was an opportunity to understand more about how those people on the other side of the system viewed someone in his position.

“That was the best part, honestly. I can get feedback on how people viewed me [from] those chairs, in the justice system,” he said.

Alana Dick wanted to tell the story of her family’s history in residential schools through photographs, so she photographed family members to show “the impact on the three generations from the residential schools,” she said.

“Some pictures just explain everything that I can’t say,” Dick told CFJC Today.

For Kobe Big Sorrel Horse, his project “Graffiti IS Art” was an opportunity to express himself through artwork.

“I did this because it’s something that helps me, personally,” he said.

For Smith, she says the nature of the topics her students selected didn’t come as a surprise.

“A number of them I’ve taught for a long time,” Smith said, “so knowing them the way that I do, I wasn’t surprised… I was incredibly impressed with their bravery [and] their ability to articulate what was important to them, and really just to tackle some things that are very personal.”

For the students involved, they’ve learned some valuable skills and gained the confidence to help them make sense of the endless stream of information that exists.