Identities, Kinship and Representation: Test Review

Everything for the Unit 1 test on one page: the key facts from all 6 lessons, the mistakes that cost the most marks, and a practice test that points you back to the lessons you need.

Key facts

Starting an Inquiry: Self-Location, Questions and Ways of Knowing

Positionality is the position you speak from; self-location is stating that position openly, including the limits of what you know.
An open inquiry question cannot be answered with yes, no or one fact, and usually asks how or why.
Two-Eyed Seeing (Etuaptmumk), shared by Mi'kmaw Elder Albert Marshall, means seeing with the strengths of Indigenous knowledges through one eye and Western knowledges through the other, and using both together.
Relational knowledge treats knowledge as made of relationships; a researcher is accountable to the people and places the knowledge comes from.
Narrow a topic by nation, region, time period, author or form, and keep the people at the centre of it in view.
Indigenous knowledge in an inquiry must come from named, cited First Nations, Métis or Inuit sources, and oral knowledge only with permission.

Three Distinct Peoples and the Words That Name Them

Section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982, names three Aboriginal peoples: the Indian (First Nations), Inuit and Métis peoples.
Indigenous is the umbrella term; the most specific name — nation and community — is the most accurate and the most respectful.
Inuit is plural and means 'the people'; one person is an Inuk. Never write 'Inuits' or 'Eskimo'.
Métis refers to a distinct nation with its own history, language (Michif) and governments, not to anyone with mixed ancestry.
There are more than 600 First Nations in Canada, speaking languages from several unrelated language families.
Status means registration under the Indian Act — a federal legal category that does not decide who is First Nations.

Kinship, Land and Identity

In many First Nations, Métis and Inuit texts, identity is relational: a person is located by family, community, nation, and land and water.
Kinship systems differ by nation — for example, Haudenosaunee clan membership passes through the mother's line.
Land and water often act as relatives, teachers or sites of loss rather than as setting; test by swapping in a generic place.
A memoir narrates a stretch of the writer's life; a personal essay reflects on one idea through experience and usually has a turn.
A memoir speaks for its writer's experience — build claims about wider patterns on several sources, not one.

Deconstructing Stereotypes and Representation

Explore describes the representation; deconstruct asks who made it, when, for whom and why; reconstruct studies or creates texts that represent people accurately, led by the people represented.
The 'vanishing' image claimed the peoples were disappearing, making assimilation policy look like natural fate.
A romanticized or 'noble' image is still a stereotype: it flattens people into one trait and places them outside the present.
Every representation reflects its historical period, the creator's cultural background, and the social and political conditions of the time.
Staged 'authenticity', such as early photographs that removed signs of modern life, is a representation choice, not a record.
Mascots and costumes turn living peoples into props; several major teams, including Edmonton's CFL team in 2020, have dropped such names.

Appropriation, Appreciation and Cultural Protocols

Cultural appropriation is taking from a culture without permission, credit or benefit to its people, usually across a power imbalance.
From 1884 the Indian Act banned the potlatch, and the ban was not removed until 1951; outsiders now sell what communities were punished for practising.
Eagle-feather headdresses belong to specific Plains nations, where they are earned; worn as costume they disrespect those nations and erase all others.
Canadian copyright protects individual works for the creator's life plus 70 years; Indigenous cultural property is often collective and has no expiry.
Article 31 of UNDRIP affirms Indigenous peoples' right to control their cultural heritage, traditional knowledge and cultural expressions.
Before using anything, ask: whose is it, is it sacred or earned, was it offered or taken, who benefits, and is the context respected?

Identity Today

There is no single way to be First Nations, Métis or Inuk: urban and on-reserve, fluent and learning, are all real forms of identity.
The Sixties Scoop, from the 1950s into the 1980s, removed large numbers of Indigenous children into mostly non-Indigenous homes; many texts are about finding the way back.
Two-Spirit is an Indigenous umbrella term adopted in 1990; it is not a general synonym for LGBTQ+ and many nations also have their own terms.
Language nests, mentor-apprentice programs and immersion rebuild languages; Canada passed the Indigenous Languages Act in 2019.
Belonging rests on kinship, community and nations' citizenship processes — not appearance, fluency, location or an ancestry test.
Reconstructing texts come from the people represented and show present-day complexity instead of a single image.

Where marks get lost

Claiming to have 'no bias' or to be 'neutral', instead of naming your position and its limits. (Starting an Inquiry: Self-Location, Questions and Ways of Knowing)
Keeping a topic ('Inuit culture') as if it were a question, so the research has no direction. (Starting an Inquiry: Self-Location, Questions and Ways of Knowing)
Asking questions that treat all First Nations, Métis and Inuit peoples as one voice, such as 'What do Indigenous people think about…'. (Starting an Inquiry: Self-Location, Questions and Ways of Knowing)
Using Two-Eyed Seeing as a label while citing no named Indigenous sources, or inventing an 'Indigenous perspective' to balance the essay. (Starting an Inquiry: Self-Location, Questions and Ways of Knowing)
Treating the inquiry plan as fixed and ignoring sources that show the original question rested on a wrong assumption. (Starting an Inquiry: Self-Location, Questions and Ways of Knowing)
Writing 'First Nations such as the Inuit' — Inuit are a separate people, not a First Nation. (Three Distinct Peoples and the Words That Name Them)
Using Métis to mean 'part Indigenous'. The Métis Nation is a distinct people with its own history and governments. (Three Distinct Peoples and the Words That Name Them)
Writing 'Inuits', or 'an Inuit' for one person, instead of Inuit and Inuk. (Three Distinct Peoples and the Words That Name Them)
Writing 'Indigenous culture' or 'the Indigenous language' as if there were only one. (Three Distinct Peoples and the Words That Name Them)
Adopting 'Indian' or 'Eskimo' in your own voice because an old source used it, instead of quoting it as the source's word. (Three Distinct Peoples and the Words That Name Them)
Treating land and water as background scenery and leaving them out of an analysis of identity. (Kinship, Land and Identity)
Generalizing from one memoir: 'This book shows that Indigenous people believe...'. (Kinship, Land and Identity)
Skipping the lists of relatives and places as filler, when they are often the strongest evidence about identity. (Kinship, Land and Identity)
Calling the narrator of a memoir a fictional character, or assuming the narrator of a novel is the author. (Kinship, Land and Identity)
Filling in a ceremonial reference from generic websites, or repeating its details as decoration, instead of analyzing what the writer chose to share. (Kinship, Land and Identity)
Assuming a positive stereotype — spiritual, wise, at one with nature — is harmless because it sounds kind. (Deconstructing Stereotypes and Representation)
Judging an old text as simply 'good' or 'bad' without asking which period, culture and politics produced it. (Deconstructing Stereotypes and Representation)
Stopping at deconstruction: listing what is wrong with a representation but never turning to the texts that answer it. (Deconstructing Stereotypes and Representation)
Treating an old photograph or documentary as an objective record rather than a series of choices. (Deconstructing Stereotypes and Representation)
Reconstructing by inventing a first-person Indigenous voice, instead of amplifying work by the people represented. (Deconstructing Stereotypes and Representation)
Arguing that a costume 'honours' Indigenous people when it names no nation and benefits no one it comes from. (Appropriation, Appreciation and Cultural Protocols)
Assuming that anything public, visible or old is free to use, as copyright suggests, without asking who holds the rights in the community. (Appropriation, Appreciation and Cultural Protocols)
Treating all borrowing between cultures as appropriation, instead of asking about permission, credit, benefit and power. (Appropriation, Appreciation and Cultural Protocols)
Writing 'Indigenous-inspired' or 'tribal' in your own description instead of naming the nation, community and maker. (Appropriation, Appreciation and Cultural Protocols)
Retelling a traditional story heard at an event in a project without asking permission or crediting the teller. (Appropriation, Appreciation and Cultural Protocols)
Treating people who live in cities as less 'authentic' than those on reserves or on the land. (Identity Today)
Using Two-Spirit as a general synonym for LGBTQ+, or applying it to someone who has not used it themselves. (Identity Today)
Assuming someone raised away from their community, or still learning their language, has a lesser identity. (Identity Today)
Describing the Sixties Scoop as distant history, when adoptees are adults today and its effects continue. (Identity Today)
Forcing a tidy resolution onto a character whose identity the text deliberately leaves complicated. (Identity Today)

Practice test

24 questions from across the unit. Each one shows the lesson it comes from.

Starting an Inquiry: Self-Location, Questions and Ways of Knowing
1
Which of these is the strongest inquiry question?
Starting an Inquiry: Self-Location, Questions and Ways of Knowing
2
What one-word term names the social position you speak and write from?
Starting an Inquiry: Self-Location, Questions and Ways of Knowing
3
Match each idea to its description.
Self-location
Two-Eyed Seeing
Relational accountability
Open question
Starting an Inquiry: Self-Location, Questions and Ways of Knowing
4
Match each weak question to its main problem.
When was Nunavut created?
What do Indigenous people believe about the land?
Why are Indigenous people so spiritual?
Is Indian Horse a good book?
Three Distinct Peoples and the Words That Name Them
5
Which three peoples does section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982, recognize?
Three Distinct Peoples and the Words That Name Them
6
Name the language that developed in Métis communities by combining Cree and French.
Three Distinct Peoples and the Words That Name Them
7
Put these legal milestones in order from earliest to latest.
1. 1R. v. Powley sets out a test for Métis rights
2. 2Nunavut becomes a territory
3. 3Daniels v. Canada rules on Métis and non-status Indians
4. 4The Indian Act is passed
5. 5Section 35 recognizes Aboriginal and treaty rights
6. 6Bill C-31 amends the Indian Act's status rules
Three Distinct Peoples and the Words That Name Them
8
A biography says a writer is 'Kanien'kehá:ka from Akwesasne'. Which description is the most accurate in an essay?
Kinship, Land and Identity
9
In a sample passage written for this lesson, a narrator says: 'Ask me where I'm from and I'll tell you about my aunties before I tell you about the town.' What does this most suggest?
Kinship, Land and Identity
10
In Haudenosaunee nations, clan membership is passed down through which parent's line?
Kinship, Land and Identity
11
Which thesis statement avoids generalizing from a single memoir?
Kinship, Land and Identity
12
What is the name for the form of non-fiction that explores one idea through the writer's own experience?
Deconstructing Stereotypes and Representation
13
At which stage do you ask who made a text, when, for which audience and for what purpose?
Deconstructing Stereotypes and Representation
14
Why was the 'vanishing' image politically useful in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries?
Deconstructing Stereotypes and Representation
15
Name the 2009 documentary by Cree filmmaker Neil Diamond about how Hollywood has portrayed Indigenous peoples.
Deconstructing Stereotypes and Representation
16
An early twentieth-century photograph shows a family in older clothing with no modern objects in view. What is the most careful reading?
Appropriation, Appreciation and Cultural Protocols
17
Which situation is the clearest example of appreciation rather than appropriation?
Appropriation, Appreciation and Cultural Protocols
18
Which article of UNDRIP affirms Indigenous peoples' right to control their cultural heritage and traditional knowledge? Give the number.
Appropriation, Appreciation and Cultural Protocols
19
Why does Canadian copyright protect much Indigenous cultural knowledge poorly?
Appropriation, Appreciation and Cultural Protocols
20
A classmate wants to use a sacred figure from an Anishinaabe oral tradition as a character in a horror story. What is the best advice?
Identity Today
21
Which statement best describes the Sixties Scoop?
Identity Today
22
Match each revitalization strategy to its description.
Language nest
Mentor-apprentice program
Adult immersion
Indigenous Languages Act
Identity Today
23
Put these events in order from earliest to latest.
1. 1The Indigenous Languages Act is passed
2. 2Nunavut becomes a territory
3. 3Bill C-31 amends the Indian Act's status rules
4. 4The Indian Act is passed
5. 5The Sixties Scoop begins
Identity Today
24
A character in a novel lives in Toronto, rarely visits her home community, and is learning her language online. How should an analysis treat her identity?

Endless drill

Fresh numbers every time, for the calculation questions in this unit.

Endless drillnew numbers every time

Generating a problem…