As a pre-service teacher, while watching both of Alanis Obomsawin's documentaries, "Richard Cardinal: Cry from the Diary of a Métis Child" and "Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance," I imagined how I would integrate these visual texts into my own future classrooms. First, I considered the pedagogical implementations necessary to teach such grave and profound content. Second, I contemplated the documentaries as visual texts with structure and form, both elements of the films (the content and the structure) bearing equal relevance. I then questioned, how I would use these texts, and other like them, to not only teach my students about the subject matter but also, to teach students about structure, form, and rhetorical choices. Thus, while viewing
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Obomsawin's physical presence on screen as an interviewer ("Cry from the Diary of a Métis child") and as a journalist ("270 Years of Resistance") draws her audience into the frontline; thus, creating a sense of confidentiality and intimacy between her viewer and the people featured in her film. Although she is, in fact creating expository documentaries, I think this is an important rhetorical strategy, one of which I would explore with my students as part of teaching Obomsawin's premise for structure in her films. What is more, Gauthier acknowledges, "her onscreen participation in her films not only enhances her credibility, but it also affirms her close emotional investment in the situation" (4). In terms of subject matter, Obomsawin reveals untold truths, many of which I believe will challenge my students pre-existing notions of Aboriginal peoples in Canada. Pedagogically, I will need to prepare my students for these topics by outlining acceptable language and providing students with background knowledge as a means to comprehend the context and understand the lens through which Obomsawin delivers her information. What I find most compelling about using her films in the classroom is the simple fact that she creates a forthright conversation and provides hard evidence to support her claims with video footage, personal interviews, and still photos. Although these forms of evidence are seemingly simplistic, the simplicity itself makes her documentaries successful and likewise a manageable source for teaching students about argumentative structures and forms. As Gauthier observers of Obomsawin's work, "[i]n general, her films utilize a linear, chronological structure, revealing incidents as they unfold" (5); the straightforwardness of her linear argument maintained throughout the film leads the audience towards a crescendo of shock when faced with the truth that she
Obomsawin's physical presence on screen as an interviewer ("Cry from the Diary of a Métis child") and as a journalist ("270 Years of Resistance") draws her audience into the frontline; thus, creating a sense of confidentiality and intimacy between her viewer and the people featured in her film. Although she is, in fact creating expository documentaries, I think this is an important rhetorical strategy, one of which I would explore with my students as part of teaching Obomsawin's premise for structure in her films. What is more, Gauthier acknowledges, "her onscreen participation in her films not only enhances her credibility, but it also affirms her close emotional investment in the situation" (4). In terms of subject matter, Obomsawin reveals untold truths, many of which I believe will challenge my students pre-existing notions of Aboriginal peoples in Canada. Pedagogically, I will need to prepare my students for these topics by outlining acceptable language and providing students with background knowledge as a means to comprehend the context and understand the lens through which Obomsawin delivers her information. What I find most compelling about using her films in the classroom is the simple fact that she creates a forthright conversation and provides hard evidence to support her claims with video footage, personal interviews, and still photos. Although these forms of evidence are seemingly simplistic, the simplicity itself makes her documentaries successful and likewise a manageable source for teaching students about argumentative structures and forms. As Gauthier observers of Obomsawin's work, "[i]n general, her films utilize a linear, chronological structure, revealing incidents as they unfold" (5); the straightforwardness of her linear argument maintained throughout the film leads the audience towards a crescendo of shock when faced with the truth that she