Great course!

Great content

interesting

great course

Informative

Thank you.

Very good.

Thank you!

thank you

Well done

good info

Engaging.

its good

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Course was very informative and full of information.

It became a course of how the victim's were exploited and continue to be and how they suffer today, without offering solutions to the problems.

Given today October 2021, with all the news of the atrocities of the Residential Schools, this course would take a graver view of the indigenous peoples position, without offering solutions.

Solutions are what allow errors and mistakes to be dealt with and for societies to move forward. Continuation of the past solves nothing. What can be done to allow the healing to to commence?

I took this course hoping to gain an understanding of what is wrong, at the very beginning of it that information was provided, and throughout the course examples of how indigenous people are treated and segregated was given. What is the solution from the indigenous point of view?

I am very thankful that the indigenous community is gravely concerned about the land and the environment, their stories hold get truths and meanings, this course showed that and reenforced my thoughts.

However what I gather from this is that the indigenous community want to have special compensations and exemptions. In a society it does not work it becomes chaos. Tradition and culture are very important to all, but granting individual groups special exemptions benefits no one. What I got from this course is that indigenous people want exemptions and compensation for past errors. But in what form?

A society must agree to work together as a unit or like paddling a canoe, if both people are not paddling in the same direction nothing is accomplished. Most definitely traditions and culture need to be maintained (the error of residential schools) but we must work together, we must all contribute equally in some manner, much like a marriage we all need to perform the role and tasks of what we are good at.

Thank you for the course I enjoyed the information and knowledge.

The course is a good overview but needs some polishing to be great.

Several questions in the quizes were confusing and did not match with the readings. Some quiz questions asked something like "What was THE issue..." but when you looked at the readings there might be two or three issues raised and the answer options included versions of more than one. When you get a quiz question wrong, suggesting that you go back and look things up is not very helpful. A better quiz would have a specific reference (either for the correct answer or for the wrong options) that could then direct the student to the information. This cross linking would also ensure that quiz questions and choices matched with material in the course.

There was no clear way to go back and redo a quiz but it says we can do re-takes.

Some data is wrong, e.g., Calgary Olympics were not in 1986 they were in 1988. I didn't keep track of everything but between grammatical errors and factual errors, I suggest that someone go through the course and make corrections.

I live in Treaty 6 and 7 areas and the course was heavily weighted to Eastern Canada and not particularly strong in Western Canadian experiences.

The sections referencing the case law were probably the strongest pieces of the course in both material and clarity.

I enrolled in this course to better understand the history and contemporary issues of Canada's indigenous peoples so that I can be better informed and more supportive.  When the course stuck with discussing facts (versus pointed opinions),  I felt that I was gaining a greater appreciation of our sad history; I enjoyed the content and I was supportive of what was being discussed. 

What was truly distracting and irritating was the ongoing victim versus oppressor theme.  I can sympathize with that theme -- and I get it -- but  to repeat it over and over without offering any ideas on how to move forward is a great disservice to what this course could have been and I was hoping for.  I would ask how you expect a person that voluntarily devotes the time and to learn to feel welcome when I am referred to as a settler, a colonialist, a racist, a misogynist, a paternalist, a heteropatriarch, a capitalist, a subsummator, and a genocidal instrument over and over throughout the classes? 

Sadder still is that over the twelve sections very little was conveyed in terms of how WE can move forward in the future to make our country a better place to live for ALL of us.  Maybe that's irrelevant to a primer course?

I thought this course covered most of the key takeaways from Canadian Indigenous History, however, it was very disappointing that significant figures (e.g., Chief Tecumseh) were very minimally mentioned throughout the modules; this is really important history and deserves to be included in the course. In turn, adding these components to the course would've definitely made it more interesting to learn. Finally, I think this course tried way too hard to attempt to establish a real-world social connection in an online environment. For instance, the instructors are constantly making the same hand gestures every few seconds and it is very noticeable, hard to watch, and is obvious that they were informed to do so. I also think that some points are highlighted in the videos that are just part of ordinary conversation and do not actually hold any particular significance on its own and as such, they shouldn't be emphasized over everything else. I noticed this a few times throughout the course. In sum, however, I think the course was well-structured and would be a great learning opportunity for those that have never learned about Indigenous History in their past.

The initial part of the course including contact and colonization was interesting and a good review regarding the creation of the Canadian state and its effects of indigenous people.

The section narrated by Ruben in week one was poorly done and should be omitted from the curriculum. Given that there are many indigenous language in Canada I did not find the inclusion of this section useful.

The section on indigenous women including murdered and missing woman could have been a module on its own.

More content on intergenerational trauma would be helpful to understand the lived experience of those folks living with intergenerational trauma

The final module on indigenous art felt more like an art history course and could have been left out.

The Paintings done by Leah Dorian however , where just lovely and added context and meaning to the didactic videos. This section was well done as were the testimonials and conversations with elders in their native languages.

The quizzes with the exception of week 10 were fair and a good measure of what one was required to take away after watching the videos in each section.

7/10

The course has a lot of good factual information, especially for a newcomer to Canada like me. However, it also raises more questions than it answers, as it oversimplifies multiple topics and attributes a number of societal problems which (IMHO) are "universal human experiences in modern world" to colonialism / paternalism – I myself am from a small country with exceedingly white population with no history of colonialism nor slavery nor strong paternalism, yet we do have a lot of the same societal / identity / cultural problems as the first nations peoples do – so issue attribution throughout the course feels disturbing, narrow-minded and wrong. Overall, the course somehow managed to paint indigenous peoples and culture as weak and needy, despite the best intents of course creators. I feel I'd be better off without watching the course, and following on social media the few indigenous creators I stumbled upon by chance, to learn about the problems they deal with, their culture, and how to be respectful.

While I learned alot and am so much more aware of the history of Indigenous people in Canada, I found the format of the course quite flat. The professors, while I'm sure knowledgeable, had very flat presentation styles that made it difficult to remain engaged. Staring forward and barely moving any part of their bodies was actually distracting though that sounds incongruous. The text was therefore very helpful, though as acknowledged by you, had many grammar, spelling, sentence inconsistencies which was annoying to the reader. Improve the video clips by putting in more 'test questions'-to put one question in the odd videos seemed a bit futile i.e. use that as a method of engagement or don't use it at all. Some of these comments are perhaps nit-picky but I believe the quality of the presentation is key to the enjoyment of the learner. That all aside, I enjoyed the content, certainly adjusted some of my views and am glad I did the course.