The Justice Project:
Overview:
Throughout the first semester of Humanities we have grappled with challenging questions surrounding true justice and what that means in different contexts. We began with learning the philosophies of justice. These included different Libertarian and Utilitarian philosophies, as well as John Rawl’s philosophy of justice describing the veil of ignorance. We watched a movie called True Justice which gave us a look into Bryan Stevenson’s work and philosophy, as well as the injustice within our court and prison systems. Following a thorough overview of philosophies of justice, we narrowed our view a bit more and dove into environmental justice and ethics. This complicated topic led us to injustices in our area, including the unjust policies of oil and gas drilling, especially on native land and in the Greater Chaco area. We watched a movie called Beyond Standing Rock that had a variety of perspectives on this topic. With a great base of background knowledge, we wrote and performed two different monologues. The first was speaking to our own philosophy of justice and the second was about how we believe we should foster environmental justice and what that means to us. After dissecting our personal philosophies and putting them into real world context, we were prompted to create our own justice project. These ranged from fundraising and art, to community outreach and collaboration, to podcasts and murals. |
Environmental Justice Monologue:
Justice Monologue:
Here is a QR Code to my podcast called Missing but not Forgotten: Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women:
Project Defense and Reflection:
Defense:
1. What did you end up doing for your project?
At first, my group consisted of 4 people, including myself, and we quickly decided to study the issue of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two Spirits. We had agreed on finding organizations in town and maybe working in collaboration with them to raise awareness or money. Further into the project things changed and we were down to three group members. We came together and decided to create a podcast and promote it in our school newspaper instead. This allowed us to learn much more about the topic and fulfill our goal of spreading awareness.
Throughout the whole process, the three of us stayed in a healthy state of collaboration. We all did our own research and then came together and told one another about what we had learned and combined our knowledge. Initially, I read two extensive overviews of the issue which allowed for a good base of knowledge. Then, as I dug into it a bit more I found a great resource by Andrea Smith called, ‘Not an Indian Tradition: The Sexual Colonization of Native Peoples.’ This paper gave me more insight into the bias that our country is built on and how it has led to the silence surrounding the hardships of indigenous women. With this perspective, I had a lot to add in our conversations when we discussed the historical context of the issue. My group members focused their research more on policies and current records, so we had a well rounded base of information to discuss in our podcast.
Following our research stage we started on our podcast script. We decided to each write a short script of our own, including what we wanted to talk about. Then, we combined all of our scripts to make one big one with all the information. This worked quite well and ensured that we all had an equal part of work. After we recorded there was some editing to do. I would say I completed half of the editing while another group member completed the other half. Once it was finalized, we uploaded it to Soundcloud and sent it to the school newspaper.
2. How did your project reflect your personal philosophy of justice?
My project encompassed my idea of justice not only in the intention behind it, but also in the topic itself. My philosophy of justice centers around equality, generosity, human rights, and collaboration in working for the betterment of society. Spreading awareness about a topic like MMIW is mostly positive, but it's hard to find the line, as a white person, between being informed and silencing other voices. Since we were intentional in acknowledging our perspectives as young, white females in the podcast I felt as though we executed the principle of collaboration in finding justice. We never claimed to be experts or have first hand experiences, because obviously we haven’t, but instead we did what we felt was our part in speaking up.
I believe that justice does not correlate with law, justice requires an open heart full of compassion, and the willingness to listen, which the law rarely executes. I most strongly resonate with John Rawls theory of the veil of ignorance and Zinns idea of civil disobedience. My project embodies a willingness to listen and be wrong, as well as an effort to amplify an ignored issue without silencing the important voices. I am sure that with more time, my group and I would have loved to have interviewed an indigenous female to hear a first hand perspective. But without that perspective we did our best to speak to what we know. Which was mostly about the implicit biases that overcome us as well as our Western systems.
3. Did you do sufficient research and background work to pull off your project, take an informed stance or succeed in your endeavors? Explain!
Although we didn’t succeed in the initial way we thought we would, we most definitely succeeded in growing our knowledge and ourselves. There were a couple of times when we would sit down and check in about what our goals of this project were. We decided that while seeing a concrete change in our community would have been great or ideal we also really valued learning more about something that was ignored. So, we took that path due to resources and time. Our background research was fairly extensive for the amount of content we were discussing in our podcast. And, we were able to draw from past class discussions about environmental justice, because some of it connected. Overall, our project was a success because we produced beautiful work and not only got individual things from it, but also have provided something for others to learn from.
Reflection:
1. In what ways were you successful in meeting the goals you established in your project proposal? What contributed to your successes?
When looking back at my project proposal, we did not actually succeed in what we were hoping to accomplish. But, I learned that paths with projects are rarely linear, and what matters is feeling proud of your final product. And this, I did succeed in. I feel as though we succeeded because of our reflection on our goals throughout the process. We continued to reflect on what we were trying to achieve in order to keep ourselves on track and this helped us immensely.
2. In what way were you successful in meeting the goals you established in your proposal? What contributed to your failures? What did you do to try to overcome the obstacles? What should you have done differently?
When I reflect, I don’t see any failures because of our product of beautiful work. But, technically we did fail according to our proposal. I actually think we got a lot more out of it because our path changed and we had to practice being flexible. Our “failures” happened because of things that were out of our control. Perhaps with a bit more initiative in the very beginning we could have reached out to more organizations and been successful in finding one. But, with the set back of a group member leaving we were apprehensive in continuing to reach out to people. Overall, we had good, flexible collaboration within our group which aided us in succeeding and feeling proud even with significant obstacles.
3. To what extent did you SHOW UP for this project? How engaged ,committed, and involved were you in the work? How much did you strive to create beautiful work worth doing? To what extent were you accountable to yourself and others if relevant?
I showed up in this project as a supportive and engaged group member. I was always interested in our topic of MMIW, so from the start I was excited to research and learn more about it. I also acted as a supportive group member when challenges came up for one of our members. Because of the emphasis on intentional work within my group I would say that we did strive for beautiful work and indeed succeeded. We wanted to be thoughtful with our words because of how vulnerable this topic is. I most definitely held myself accountable for contribution of work as well as attentiveness in our inclusion of content. My group members and I were not afraid to challenge one another if we felt something was inappropriate or wrong because of how much we cared about our final product. This was good practice in holding each other accountable in a context of a sensitive topic.
4. What TWO key lessons did you learn from this project that you can apply to senior project? Think about how senior project involves choosing a project you’re passionate about that is viable in the time provided, completing multiple steps over the course of a semester, potentially collaborating with other organizations or people, fundraising, spreading the word, and so much more! The Justice Project was like practice for the big game, rehearsal for the broadway show, an appetizer to the 5-course meal!
The main lessons I took away from the Justice Project are that it is important to stay intentional in your work in order to create beautiful products, and transparency is key when learning. I plan to do interspersed reflections throughout my senior project and ask myself what I am getting out of my work at that moment and what I am missing. This way there will be a purpose behind my questions and my knowledge and I will hopefully feel engaged the whole time. I also will probably be studying things that are ‘touchy’ and transparency will be necessary as well as room for mistakes, which I continue to learn the value of.
1. What did you end up doing for your project?
At first, my group consisted of 4 people, including myself, and we quickly decided to study the issue of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two Spirits. We had agreed on finding organizations in town and maybe working in collaboration with them to raise awareness or money. Further into the project things changed and we were down to three group members. We came together and decided to create a podcast and promote it in our school newspaper instead. This allowed us to learn much more about the topic and fulfill our goal of spreading awareness.
Throughout the whole process, the three of us stayed in a healthy state of collaboration. We all did our own research and then came together and told one another about what we had learned and combined our knowledge. Initially, I read two extensive overviews of the issue which allowed for a good base of knowledge. Then, as I dug into it a bit more I found a great resource by Andrea Smith called, ‘Not an Indian Tradition: The Sexual Colonization of Native Peoples.’ This paper gave me more insight into the bias that our country is built on and how it has led to the silence surrounding the hardships of indigenous women. With this perspective, I had a lot to add in our conversations when we discussed the historical context of the issue. My group members focused their research more on policies and current records, so we had a well rounded base of information to discuss in our podcast.
Following our research stage we started on our podcast script. We decided to each write a short script of our own, including what we wanted to talk about. Then, we combined all of our scripts to make one big one with all the information. This worked quite well and ensured that we all had an equal part of work. After we recorded there was some editing to do. I would say I completed half of the editing while another group member completed the other half. Once it was finalized, we uploaded it to Soundcloud and sent it to the school newspaper.
2. How did your project reflect your personal philosophy of justice?
My project encompassed my idea of justice not only in the intention behind it, but also in the topic itself. My philosophy of justice centers around equality, generosity, human rights, and collaboration in working for the betterment of society. Spreading awareness about a topic like MMIW is mostly positive, but it's hard to find the line, as a white person, between being informed and silencing other voices. Since we were intentional in acknowledging our perspectives as young, white females in the podcast I felt as though we executed the principle of collaboration in finding justice. We never claimed to be experts or have first hand experiences, because obviously we haven’t, but instead we did what we felt was our part in speaking up.
I believe that justice does not correlate with law, justice requires an open heart full of compassion, and the willingness to listen, which the law rarely executes. I most strongly resonate with John Rawls theory of the veil of ignorance and Zinns idea of civil disobedience. My project embodies a willingness to listen and be wrong, as well as an effort to amplify an ignored issue without silencing the important voices. I am sure that with more time, my group and I would have loved to have interviewed an indigenous female to hear a first hand perspective. But without that perspective we did our best to speak to what we know. Which was mostly about the implicit biases that overcome us as well as our Western systems.
3. Did you do sufficient research and background work to pull off your project, take an informed stance or succeed in your endeavors? Explain!
Although we didn’t succeed in the initial way we thought we would, we most definitely succeeded in growing our knowledge and ourselves. There were a couple of times when we would sit down and check in about what our goals of this project were. We decided that while seeing a concrete change in our community would have been great or ideal we also really valued learning more about something that was ignored. So, we took that path due to resources and time. Our background research was fairly extensive for the amount of content we were discussing in our podcast. And, we were able to draw from past class discussions about environmental justice, because some of it connected. Overall, our project was a success because we produced beautiful work and not only got individual things from it, but also have provided something for others to learn from.
Reflection:
1. In what ways were you successful in meeting the goals you established in your project proposal? What contributed to your successes?
When looking back at my project proposal, we did not actually succeed in what we were hoping to accomplish. But, I learned that paths with projects are rarely linear, and what matters is feeling proud of your final product. And this, I did succeed in. I feel as though we succeeded because of our reflection on our goals throughout the process. We continued to reflect on what we were trying to achieve in order to keep ourselves on track and this helped us immensely.
2. In what way were you successful in meeting the goals you established in your proposal? What contributed to your failures? What did you do to try to overcome the obstacles? What should you have done differently?
When I reflect, I don’t see any failures because of our product of beautiful work. But, technically we did fail according to our proposal. I actually think we got a lot more out of it because our path changed and we had to practice being flexible. Our “failures” happened because of things that were out of our control. Perhaps with a bit more initiative in the very beginning we could have reached out to more organizations and been successful in finding one. But, with the set back of a group member leaving we were apprehensive in continuing to reach out to people. Overall, we had good, flexible collaboration within our group which aided us in succeeding and feeling proud even with significant obstacles.
3. To what extent did you SHOW UP for this project? How engaged ,committed, and involved were you in the work? How much did you strive to create beautiful work worth doing? To what extent were you accountable to yourself and others if relevant?
I showed up in this project as a supportive and engaged group member. I was always interested in our topic of MMIW, so from the start I was excited to research and learn more about it. I also acted as a supportive group member when challenges came up for one of our members. Because of the emphasis on intentional work within my group I would say that we did strive for beautiful work and indeed succeeded. We wanted to be thoughtful with our words because of how vulnerable this topic is. I most definitely held myself accountable for contribution of work as well as attentiveness in our inclusion of content. My group members and I were not afraid to challenge one another if we felt something was inappropriate or wrong because of how much we cared about our final product. This was good practice in holding each other accountable in a context of a sensitive topic.
4. What TWO key lessons did you learn from this project that you can apply to senior project? Think about how senior project involves choosing a project you’re passionate about that is viable in the time provided, completing multiple steps over the course of a semester, potentially collaborating with other organizations or people, fundraising, spreading the word, and so much more! The Justice Project was like practice for the big game, rehearsal for the broadway show, an appetizer to the 5-course meal!
The main lessons I took away from the Justice Project are that it is important to stay intentional in your work in order to create beautiful products, and transparency is key when learning. I plan to do interspersed reflections throughout my senior project and ask myself what I am getting out of my work at that moment and what I am missing. This way there will be a purpose behind my questions and my knowledge and I will hopefully feel engaged the whole time. I also will probably be studying things that are ‘touchy’ and transparency will be necessary as well as room for mistakes, which I continue to learn the value of.