Comment

Pre-history, described as the “period before Europeans made contact,” is important because we should not only just learn from the records/ books that it written down. Hence why some Aboriginal People find it insulting. In a sense, I do believe that although the Europeans were the one who wrote every history down, they don’t see the same things as the Aboriginal People do. They just write what they see and not what they have heard or experienced. 

In order to preserve this knowledge I think that a way to do so, is by listening more to the Aboriginal People, more specifically, the Elders, where they are respected and listened. Some of the stories that one can listen to, of how they lived before the Europeans arrived, and what did they experience, not the what the europeans experienced. Often when we were young before we had contact with books, what we did was listening to the stories that our grandparents told us, how they behaved when they were young. And up until this day, I can still remember clearly what they said. Finally, talking to Elders is the best way to preserve knowledge.

As mentioned in Carline’s post, I agree that when we lost the knowledge of the Beothuk, we lost a sense of knowing a land. By losing this knowledge we lose the practices that they made in that land or culture, what kind of herbs they used and what for, since not all the Aboriginals share the same type of “recipe.” And this knowledge is important in a contemporary context because unlike the other Aboriginals, we don’t know what did they contributed which formed Canada today because they extant before we got to know more about them.