After doing the reading logs I gained a deeper connection and understanding to the mistreatment of Indigenous peoples. The many stories, groups, wars, and lack of Canadian accountability made me want to research something that involved this group of people. I am not the type to research a topic that is dry and boring– I like to look into things that I question, connect to, and want to broaden my understanding on. For my other classes I was researching topics like eating disorders and teen girls, medias role on youth body dissatisfaction, and cellphones influence on youth brain development; therefore I needed a topic that I could not relate to and had little to do with psychiatrics.
After the readings on the Gold Rush I was intrigued and looked a little bit more into that, which opened many doors to me because it is a huge topic. After a lot of thought I wanted to look into the role of Indigenous women during the Gold Rush because after week 4’s Nagging Wife article I was appalled at their clear inequality of being non elites. This brought attention to a lot of information I had never considered and reeled me in very quickly. I became enthralled in this topic and eager to learn more. I started with hopes of finding letters by Indigenous women to explain rape during this era, but then realized that rape was not really a thing, so that opened the door to prostitution and the question of whether Indigenous women were doing this willingly or not. And that is where it all began… After many visits to the librarian and countless hours learning about prostitution in colonizing Canada, I gained an in depth understanding that has changed my perceptions of the Indigenous culture and made me more sympathetic towards this group of people’s past.
