During my time at the TRU I notices more and more connections between my courses from different subjects. Having classes from History, Anthropology, English, Psychology, and First Nations’ Language, made me realize how interdisciplinary one can possibly go in research. While Anthropology made me aware of past and contemporary issues, history provided a historical background, psychology an explanation for behaviour, English expressed these issues in diverse Literature, and Secwepemctsín enlightened the troubles through language.

  • I would come onto seemingly strange misunderstandings in settler – natives’ relationships. Later I learn in my language class that there is no word for “to be” in Secwepemctsín, and all of a sudden communication issues become apparent.
  • I would read about family alienation in my English class. Later the anthropology class explained the Numbered Treaties and the Indian Act, so that I realise why a women marrying a non-statues men couldn’t come back to live on the reserve for a long time.
  • Or in the history class we would deal with the slave trade and Indigenous participation in the Gold Rush in Canada, with the focus on minorities not being passive but active agents. Later in my English class we detect “voicing” as an act of resistance and in anthropology that many protests from First Nations actually happened but stayed unheard.

Also, the making and depiction of history as a question of interpretation has been interacted with my anthropology research about the role of the media – its biases, hidden meanings, and the different involvement of context. Therefore, I recommend to read the following article:

Harding, R. (2005). The Media, Aboriginal People and Common Sense. The Canadian Journal of Native Studies, 25, 1: 311-335.

With some literature and psychological analytical skills, it is surprisingly simple to detect underlying values, attitudes, and intentions in different mediums. If this works for contemporary aspects, the construction of knowledge has also to be taken into consideration when doing historical analysis.

Taking all the different approaches into consideration helped to gain a more diverse picture and enlightened past – present – future interdependences.
It also spices things up.
Therefore, to continue the interdisciplinary approach will be a key feature of my studies – and hopefully – in my future job.