Find your Fit: researching colonialism
This was such an interesting exercise. I actually found that the various Boolean combinations often limited me too much in my searches, so it was difficult to find what I was looking for! I spent a fair amount of time going between the different OER repositories and referatories to find what I needed.
I initially wanted to search for “Indigenous worldviews” and the first hit on OpenCulture.com was Emma Stevens’ rendition of The Beatles’ “Blackbird”, sung in Mi’kmaq (https://www.openculture.com/2023/07/hear-the-beatles-blackbird-sung-in-the-indigenous-mikmaq-language.html). This sparked an interest to change my search parameters to look for various combinations of colonialism (colonial, colonization), music, Indigenous, and worldviews. ‘Blackbird’ sung in Mi’kmaq made me think about how Indigenous people across Turtle Island are pushing back against colonialism, and I thought it was a very beautiful way to demonstrate the power and longevity of Mi’kmaq language and culture. So the exercise became about curating sources that would support learners’ understanding of colonialism and the ways people push back against it.
This took me to OASIS, where I found a TED Talk from Farish Ahmad-Noor, talking about “Why is Colonialism (still) romanticized?” in Southeast Asia – a very different colonial landscape, but with a lot of the same issues that are seen in Turtle Island. His discussion (link: https://www.ted.com/talks/farish_ahmad_noor_why_is_colonialism_still_romanticized) about the long-term impacts of colonialism was a really great way just to highlight how insidious colonialism and colonial ideas actually are, even in today’s society. There’s still a lot of work to do.
The third source I found on Merlot.org by tweaking the search parameters to just music AND colonialism. I hit on an Open Access Textbook: Acoustemologies in Contact: Sounding Subjects and Modes of Listening in Early Modernity, by Emily Wilbourne and Suzanne G. Cusick (https://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=773404686). The collection of essays is a call to action to decolonize music history, and they examine how cultural configurations of sound affected communication, comprehension, and the categorization of people. It is a historical look at some of the same themes.
Taken together, the whole package of sources becomes a conversation about colonialism, music, and the ongoing impact of colonialism on today’s world.
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https://www.openculture.com/2023/07/hear-the-beatles-blackbird-sung-in-the-indigenous-mikmaq-language.html
Hear the Beatles’ ‘Blackbird’ Sung in the Indigenous Mi’kmaq Language
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