I was extremely confused when I got the email Kai Chan sent us requesting that we bring influencers to our first class. My first thought was, "what class did I sign up for again?" I was scared when I later learned how integrated social media would be for this course. There is something very private about our social media presence; it is a cultivated image of how we wish to be perceived by others. Being asked to produce content for a class about ecology and the environment greatly scared me. Not because I am shy about expressing myself, but because I didn't want to produce content for an app I hate. I used to feel very differently about expressing my political opinions online, but after the black lives matter protests, I felt very disillusioned. Not that social media is not a great way of disseminating information, but watching targeted police violence all over Instagram changed how I felt about social media and the role of activism on Instagram. I think another thing people in our generation struggle with is thinking that caring is cringe, and publicly admitting you care enough to post about it is double cringe. But why do we believe it is cringe to care? Do we see the act of posting as an inauthentic performance? Do we implicitly understand posting won't get us to where we want? Should you even care about what other people think? I often think about this when I am debating deleting my Instagram page. I think this class opened my mind to online activism. I also believe that I have become a more concise writer when creating activist material. Watching everyone create their campaigns was very inspiring, and exploring these ideas in an academic space with other passionate students was enlightening. I enjoyed listening and learning from my classmates and watching them become more confident in their own opinions.

Remembrance day is approaching quickly. Recently I saw cadets at save-on here on campus selling poppies. I was surprised because this was still during October, a day before Halloween. Remembrance day is a massive deal for commonwealth nations as it commemorates all soldiers lost during world war 1; this day also serves as a day to remember all Canadian soldiers lost in wars Canadian veterans participated in. It is common to buy a poppy from a cadet selling poppies; this money goes to charity to support veterans and veterans' families. But I wish to envision a world where veterans are supported regardless of the money raised by poppies. The government should willingly support a population of people who they themselves ordered to war. The poppy is traditionally made from felted pressed plastic, but now they are transitioning to a biodegradable poppy; you will probably not see any yet this season being distributed as they are currently phasing out the plastic poppy. The poppy is typically worn one day or one week out of the year; it is a sign of patriotism and unity that unites us to commemorate people lost in brutal warfare. At the same time, having this sign also be a disposable piece of mass-produced garbage disrespects veterans and the poem Flanders Fields (such a beautiful and sensitive poem does not deserve to be commercialized like this). Obsession of patriotism's performance blinds us from meeting veterans' needs and makes us feel better about the work we are doing. Before we also took the opportunity to switch poppies to biodegradable, this holiday of remembrance would produce large amounts of poppy-related garbage (pins included). Instead of the cadets being forced to sell small plastic flowers to raise funds for veterans, the government can adequately support these programs. We should evaluate how plastic is used in cultural activities like this more; I think we can start to read a lot about our cultural traditions that also involve extreme levels of industrial cooperation.

Living next to the ocean is a huge part of Vancouver Island culture. It is easy to see a body of water as a boundary, but before the island became colonized, many indigenous peoples saw water as a part of their land and not as a border to their existence. This is evident in the spread of the Halkomelem language (one of the many indigenous languages native to here), as it spreads around the island's waterways and even up the Fraser River. The Ladysmith harbour serves as the boundary between the town of Ladysmith and the reserve on the peninsula. The physical boundary of water always placed a huge mental distance between the town and the reserve. Although the reserve is technically still attached to the island, it is very easy to see the other side of the peninsula; it is very easy to pretend that the indigenous people who live on the stz'Uminus reserve (anglicized as Chemainus) are on their own island. This has led to a prevalent culture of racism and "otherism" in Ladysmith, and even though we share a harbour that they have the rightful ownership of, we still see them as the other. This harbour is also used for industrial purposes and is probably most notable for the self-unloading log barges. A self-unloading log barge is a specially designed barge that dumps a load of logs into the water for sawmill storage. These barges are disruptive, as they dump hundreds of tons of lumber into a small harbour ecosystem. This interconnection of the lumber industry to the harbour can be easily visualized by a satellite image of the harbour, where you can see all the floating logs. As someone who grew up in Ladysmith, it was not normal to question this setup. What stands out to me now is how visually disrespectful this practice is to the stz'Uminus people. Before Ladysmith was founded, the harbour was used for fishing salmon and finding bivalves to eat. Now that it has been heavily industrialized, that is impossible. I want to advocate for more stringent regulation efforts into industrial harbour use in cases where the harbour rightfully belongs to an indigenous population. I think, locally, indigenous peoples need to be incorporated more into conversations about waterways. Nationally, I think we need to have a serious conversation about how reserves were created to isolate indigenous populations and not respect their philosophies of movement and governance. I think a shift also needs to change in "island culture". I want to start a change to decolonize island life and incorporate more indigenous philosophy into our unique island culture. If you know anything about the island, a resounding majority of people living there are white. Engaging in indigenous culture is not integrated into this post-colonial "island" identity, and I think ideas about water from indigenous cultures could unilaterally increase the quality of life on the island for indigenous people.

© Roy Langstaff/agefotostoc I grew up on Vancouver Island, which I see as a small microcosm of BC itself. You can find the classic BC industries here doing work, mining, logging, fishing, and some small fruit farms litter the island. If you grew up in a small town, it would be economically dominated by one industry; for us in Ladysmith, it was the sawmill; before it was the sawmill, it was the coal mine. BC, as a province, was built on the ideology of being a trade colony; we were the jewel of trade for our rich resources. Extraction began as soon as colonization began. The land was taken, lines were drawn without consultation, and industry won over indigenous sovereignty. This photo is inside the Legislative rotunda in Victoria; it depicts the core industries that economically developed BC as a province. The painting depicts mining, fishing, fruit picking, and logging. These paintings loom over us and are central to our governance, as they are central physically in the legislature. Even present in the photo is our coat of arms motto. "Splendor Sine Occasu" Which ironically translates to splendour without diminishment. I cannot contain my confusion at this. Are we really that delusional at this level to believe that our industries aren't diminishing our natural splendour here? All industries iconized in these paintings have apparent negative impacts on our "splendour"; we have known this since the beginning of these industries. Even some of these industries conflict with each other. For example, the overfishing of salmon has led to a disastrous ecology crisis that directly impacts forest health. Less salmon returning to spawn directly affects the nutrient balances in our forests—specifically, nitrogen levels. Our dogmatic industries rely on cannibalizing each other slowly. This slowness, I think, adds to the cognitive dissonance between splendour and diminishment. I think the "splendour" described here is also a poor description of the word abundance. Indigenous peoples on the island lived in abundance because they were dutiful land managers. Before colonialism, Indigenous peoples had complex civilizations and societies with rich cultures based on the natural and managed abundance of local ecology. It was this intimate connection with the land that created their culture. It was this sensitive understanding of the ecology that created this abundance for them. Our significant industries ruined this connection and profited off of it, possibly permanently ruining the connection between land and indigenous peoples. I want to imagine a world where this natural abundance can be returned and our industries nationalized to the point of disengaging profit motives. After this, we must push for a post-colonial industry model that returns the autonomy of indigenous peoples and rightful resources. We need to consider industrial reparations seriously in this country and decolonize our view of our industries. Major industries like fishing and forestry have shown that sustainability is not a concern. I would argue that extreme measures to integrate indigenous knowledge into management efforts would increase the value of our industry and save us in a sustainability sense. We will never enjoy absolute splendour without diminishment until we decolonize the industries that reap the abundant splendour and diminish it with no consequences.