My Childhood Days Essay

It was a green world where I was born. I was born and raised in a small town which could almost know as countryside. Now, the small town has already collapsed and turned into a developing-city. It is so sad that I can only recall my childhood days in my mind instead of visiting the small town. It was a small town with warm-hearted villagers. We were all friends and always share our foods and games. Mak Kwan had the most famous cooking while En. Chong could fly the kite highest. Hmm†¦ I could still smell the curry in the air! My brother and I, we used to rush to Mak Kwan’s home and asked for curry when we smell it. Mak Kwan never decline and always offers us a big bowl of curry to share with our family. The satisfaction is so hard to describe. In my childhood days, I loved to fish in the rivers. Especially hand-fishing! I never like to fish with the rods because it is too messy. Although I like to fish, I am not good at it. So, it was always a big surprise for me when I succeeded to catch a fish. It made me smile all the day because I was over the moon! I usually went fishing with my brother. Not like me, he was good at hand-fishing. He could always catch a basket-full of fish. But, we only chose a fish to bring home and let the others go. Brother said that this was to make sure that there are always fishes in the rivers. One day, I watched â€Å"Recess† and I was so impressed by the tree-house. I asked for permission to build a tree-house, and my father promised to make me one! God is so good to me! My dad said that it was his dream when he was small too, so, he tried to make his and my dream came true. Then, we started to proceed. First, we selected a tree which was suitable to build a tree-house. After that, we drew a simple blue-print of the tree-house. We chopped down some trees and cut them into boards (it was not encouraged to cut down trees at that time, but no one stopped us because everyone was excited to see the tree-house). After three months, it was done! Not as luxurious as the one in â€Å"Recess†, but it was pretty good. At that time, I thought that I would become a good architect because I could design and build. Now, I learned that I was naive and stupid. In my childhood days, it was not only my playground, but also my safe haven when I was scolded by my parents. It use d to be my home to home. In the small town I lived, there was a small jungle. My brother and I enjoyed jungle trekking and explored some new things in the jungle. We had an album named ‘Jungle Diary’. We wrote down all the interesting incident during the exploration. We also collected the unique leaves, sticked it in the album and did some notes. We also liked to observe the animals’ lifestyle. We had an old digital camera, we shot the photos of the birds and wrote down the characteristics. It was fun. One time, we followed a deer along and accidentally went in too far into the jungle. We got lost! It was a terrible incident, I absolutely don’t want to recall it. In my childhood days, all the children in the village loved to fly kites. As I said before, En. Chong could fly the kites highest. So, he taught us how to fly the kites high in the sky. It was all about control. If the string is too tight, It breaks, but if it is too loose, it can’t go high. Just like our life. In a windy season, we organized a small kite-flying competition. Although it was small, everyone took it seriously. Because the design and beauty of the kites would be judged, we had to do it on our own. No shop would sell the kites at that time to prevent us from cheating. Of course, En. Chong was the busiest person because everyone asked for his help to make sure the kites could fly. En. Chong is a selfless person, he never declined to teach. He said that he was happy that many people tried to learn the way of making a good kite. It was not easy as what we thought, I failed three times before I got it. It was a big day, the competition. I didn’t win the first p lace, but it was a very memorable incident. I am not going to forget it. There were else more funny and wonderful memories in my childhood days. Unfortunately, kid nowadays can’t experience these funny things anymore. In the city now, people don’t even bother to know their neighbour’s name. The river is polluted, the tree with tree-house is gone, no more jungle for us to explore, and how often can we see the kites in the sky? They said it is the inevitable price for the modernization and industrialization. Yes, thanks to the development, and the pollution. I am glad that I was born in the 90s. Shame for the 00s, all they have is the internet. In the time comes, we will learn that how much hurts we had brought to our Mother Earth.

The Legacy of the Canadian Residential School System

We all have an identity in this world. When we were born as human beings, we were all given an identity based on our gender, ethnicity, and the society we were born in. This identity is further strengthened by our experience throughout the journey to adulthood, creating a bond and belongingness to one’s own culture. When a language is eventually learned during childhood, it becomes one of the major factors in determining our identity. Cultural customs are also integrated into our minds as we grow up.As we approach adulthood, our basic cultural identity is shaped; we maintain our cultural identity as we enter the local society, as it is the label that sticks with us for the rest of our lives. Along the way, we have the freedom to choose which of the religions to believe in, but our choices will most likely be affected by our identities as well. The First Nations people in Canada are suffering from a loss of language, religion, and identity due to the horrible past they had suff ered in the past century.In the 1880s, the residential school system was established by the government of Canada (Miller 2011). From then on, First Nations children were forced to attend these Catholic schools instituted based on European standards and regulations. Injustice went on for almost another century, in which many First Nation cultures were diminished and obliterated. Steven Harper may have apologized to the First Nations for the rest of the Canadians, but the damage is already done (Dorrell 2009). The Residential School System extinguished the hopes of Canadian First Nations in maintaining their own cultures.In this article we will use St. Mary’s, a residential school located in Mission, BC, as a case study to investigate the severity of the impact the RSS had on First Nations cultures. Language is the mean of communication of a society and a significant factor in cultural and social development. It is also the distinct identifier of a specific culture. By analyzin g the complex systems of the languages of different cultures, sociolinguists can relate the languages’ properties to aspects of the culture.Language is also tightly intertwined with the culture of a civilization: the Chinese and Japanese consider calligraphy—the act of writing in an unique but artistic way with ink brushes—a major art along with music, painting, and the chess game of Go; the Medieval Romans were inefficient and limited in their mathematics due to their numeral system until the Arabic system was introduced. In short, languages can be considered as the backbone of a culture. It is also the backbone that the First Nations began to lose as soon as the Residential School System was initiated.In residential schools, any languages other than English were forbidden; the violators of this rule were severely punished. In Terry Glavin’s Amongst God’s Own, one of his interviewee Meredith Hourie (2002: 61) commented that the nuns at St. Maryâ⠂¬â„¢s referred to the native tongues as â€Å"devil’s language†; in their eyes, speaking another language in a Catholic residential school is blasphemous. Benjamin Paul Millar (Glavin 2002: 66) felt that he was beginning to improve in his native language until he was discouraged by slaps in the face and on the backside for breaking the rules; now he could only recall a few words of his native tongue.Genevieve Douglas (Glavin 2002: 62) admitted that she cannot understand her own native language due to the policies at St. Mary’s; students were not allowed to answer to questions unless they can fully interpret what was asked and know how to respond in English, hence the students had to focus their limit in language acquisition on English. Children who were new to the residential schools (such as St. Mary’s) were not familiar with these rules. They felt alienated and were desperate to fit in.As a result, these new First Nations students had to resocializeâ⠂¬â€or â€Å"Westernize†Ã¢â‚¬â€themselves in order to survive. While these cases might seem trivial at first glance, consider this: there were 80 residential schools scattered across Canada at its peak, with over 11000 students being taught (Kirmayer, Simpson, and Cargo 2003). The magnitude is immense, and numerous dialects of the native tongues were lost. It is also worth noting that the majority of students who enrolled in St. Mary’s had Western first names and last names instead of native ones.Under these circumstances, a child would feel even more out of place when comparing one’s own name to the elders’ more native names. They might believe that they were not welcomed in their society and opt to blend into the Western society instead. For instance, a Scotland-born Chinese child would likely to grow up to be more attached to the Scottish culture if his last name was chosen by his parents to be McGregor instead of Lee. Traditions are also identifiers for the cultures they belong to. Each culture has their unique customs, beliefs, and mythologies.For example, the Gods with the most power in terms of mythologies are mostly male due to the fact that almost all cultures are male-dominant. In ancient Greek mythology, Zeus was regarded as the ruler of Mount Olympus and said to be the â€Å"Father of Gods and Men† by Hesiod, reflecting the differences in the status of genders in ancient Greece. In Chinese mythology the Gods were told and categorized as emperors, royal families, and government officials, ultimately referring to the hereditary monarchy political system that the dynasties of China followed for millennia.While First Nations traditions may not be as well known as the bigger cultures in other parts of the world, they have their unique and intriguing perspective in the world they live in. Their view on how all things ranging from animals to inanimate objects have spirit and soul is echoed by Plato’s world-soul idea. However, their inspirations cannot be further explored in the future since these First Nations beliefs are facing extinction. These traditional practices such as Shamanisms were discouraged, as they were viewed as witchcraft in the eyes of Catholicism.Due to the nature of residential schools, children could hardly see their family during their time as a student. Wayne Florence (Glavin 2002: 68) was severely injured by one of the nuns at St. Mary’s, and even then he could not gain the privilege to meet with his family, or even talk to them through the phone for that matter. This separation leads to the inability to learn of and be familiar to their customs. Not only were the children prohibited from learning of their own cultural religion and heritage, they were led and forced to believe that there is only one â€Å"correct† religion—Roman Catholicism.According to Catholic rules, all other religions are false and are blasphemous. First Nations students lear ned that they were not born with freedom, but with sins to be cleansed of; this idea induced fear in them and contempt in their traditions. Aside from a loss of culture, it was estimated by scholars that as many as half of the children died during their involvement in the residential schools, either from abuse or committing suicide (Robertson 2003). We are living in the generation of globalization. In Canada, it is not uncommon for one to have multiple cultural backgrounds.We can notice numerous people of Chinese descent who do not know a single word of Mandarin nor Cantonese; Scandinavians who do not feel the urge to assimilate into another culture’s customs, and even Indian-Canadian comedians who became successful amongst the public by showing observational humor with regards to racial dissimilarities. These people of the general public—whose voices can be heard through the media—are of a majority; whether they are currently living in their affiliated society they were born in or have their homes on the other side of the globe, they feel that they are a member of their culture.No matter which part of the world it is, dates with cultural significance like Christmas, the Lunar New Year, and the Ramadan are celebrated and practiced annually. The same cannot apply to the First Nations in Canada after the residential school system tragedies. Imagine that no one can understand your first language and cultural customs—while communication with others will still be possible through other means like secondary and body language, you can hardly feel the familiarity and ease in comparison to talking freely in your own first language. If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?If you know a language but no one else can comprehend it, does it still exist? If no one in the world other than you knew the family gathering tradition on Thanksgiving, would this day still mean anything at all? While these question s may seem hypothetical to us, the First Nations in Canada are facing these issues today. Writings and symbolic arts in dying tribes may never see their original meaning comprehendible ever again. Canada may consider First Nation reserves and universities as national treasures, but the fact is that cultural maintenance in these smaller tribes is not encouraged and our treasure is continuously decreasing in depth.All cultures in the world are established by the contributions of their people over time; they are the condensation of knowledge, customs, heritage, and language. Each culture is unique in its own way, and should be preserved with the most effort. However, not only did settlers and colonizers took over the First Nations’ lands by force, they also nearly wiped out their culture with a weapon in the form of the Residential School System. These residential schools, such as St.Mary’s, denied the students of their chance to inherit their respective culture, and even took away some of their lives as a byproduct in resocialization. As a result, First Nations languages and traditions were lost; some First Nation survivor might even be the last remaining member of his or her tribe. These are losses that we simply cannot put ourselves into their perspective. I sincerely hope that the government of Canada will not only compensate, but also try their best to maintain the enduring First Nations cultures someday; an apology is simply not enough.