Self Reflection: Addressing Systemic Racism Through Advertisement

Problem/Opportunity

For this research project my area of focus was addressing Systemic Racism in Healthcare against Indigenous peoples. Indigenous peoples face a lot of problems when they try to get care from colonized health institutes due to socio-economic matters and racist stereotypes against Indigenous peoples. My aim is to create an advertisement that addresses these racist comments and represent the peoples that have been affected by Systemic Racism.

Solution/Execution

Going forward and thinking about how to portray this hardship through some form of media, the following question had to be answered:

“What is a media that is relevant in today’s culture and something that people WILL see and listen to?”.

The answer that I came up with: Advertisements.

It’s something that will either catch people’s eyes or make them want to press that skip button like a bargain sale on Black Friday. After getting my idea approved for advertisements, it was time to research my topic/subject matter and ways to approach an advertisement.

The hardest thing to think about was balancing such a sensitive topic like Systemic Racism and inserting it into a everyday media that will be viewed by everyone, regardless of demographic or psycho graphic. PSA’s (Public Service Announcements) are either very boring or very informative, so fine tuning between entertaining and informative was another challenge I had to address.

Concepts and Sketches

*I decided to enclose all my images into a PDF as there are multiple photos in each revision*

Thought Process:

“In order to address Systemic Racism, I needed to research cases where Systemic Racism played a large role in someones experience, I found multiple cases however the case of Brian Sinclair struck out to me the most. After getting feedback from instructors, We decided to base the advertisements on this case of systemic racism.”

The case of Brian Sinclair is an unfortunate one, to put it shortly; an Indigenous Ojibwa man visited a Winnipeg hospital in 2008, only to get neglected for 33 hours by staff and ultimately died due to an overlooked Bladder Infection that could have been treated if it were not for the staff’s racist prejudices against Sinclair.

At first I wanted to go with an absurdist/satirical approach to address such a heavy topic, but as I started to create more ideas I eventually decided on going with a serious and indirect approach to the subject matter.

There were a few things that I had to take into consideration when I was creating the advertisements, here was some of the key points that I had to think about when creating these concepts:

• How long is the run time? 15 seconds? 30 seconds? 45 seconds? 1 minute?
• How do I address the hospital setting?
• If I don’t use a hospital setting, how do I indirectly reference it to health care?
• Interpreting racism in advertisements
• Is Brian interacting in these ads? If he is then how is he interacting?
• How do you show time passing?

More Concepts

There were multiple ways to approach these advertisements and different voices that could have been explored as well, but in the end I decided to go with this storyboard here:

The reason why I wanted to do this storyboard was because I wanted to try my hand on a creative approach to the problem. I liked the idea of satirizing the Sinclair case into a game, so I wanted to explore more and come up with a solution with that in mind.

Self Evaluation

80/100

I believe that I could have done more research on the topic and definitely done better, but as a person that usually struggles with ideation and creative thinking I was happy to have the experience of creating and interpreting different ideas and tones throughout this project. The final execution of this project may not be as strong as I’d like it to be, but I think the ideas that I came up with and the possible routes for this project to go into are valuable things that could be explored more and refined upon.

I’m proud of my the work that I put into this project and I’m happy with the outcome. It may not be the best one that I have in my bag right now, but the things that I learned to make this project are invaluable assets that will aid me in the future.

Challenges and Successes

The biggest challenge that I faced was addressing a heavy topic like racism and the case of Sinclair and representing it into a way that is digestible to the audience. Another problem that I faced was trying not to stick to a single idea, and focusing on multiple different voices and tones that could be used. On the flip-side, I think I was successful in showing multiple different avenues of approach and showing different ways of thinking.

Excerpt/Personal Opinion

This project was a big eye opener for me, as it dealt with a lot of stereotypes and racism along with marginalization and mistreatment. Truth and Reconciliation was always something that we as Canadian citizens have taken for granted; at first I thought it was just addressing problems in the past and moving forward as a society, but after researching more it’s really about the colonial system recognizing it’s own faults and trying to accept them and move on into a better future.

I cannot say for certain if this is actually being carried out or not; from my research at least it doesn’t seem like we’re ready to accept Indigenous ideologies and beliefs as the Colonial system hasn’t really changed much ever since Residential Schools.

It may seem like things are changing for the better, and in some aspects they are, I would want to hope so. But no matter what laws change or whatever permissions we give, it’s up to society and it’s perception of Indigenous Peoples to really decide if we will let them in or not.

Truth and Reconciliation is still a concept that I have a hard time grasping, I feel like I’d have to let it sink in for a while before I can confidently say what it means to me. But the way I see it right now, it will take a long time before we reconcile with our past actions. The truth may be out there for people to read, but it’s up to the people to really decide what they want to do with it.

It may be swept under the rug again, or Canada might face it head on and try to solve the problem. But instead of thinking about the future of Indigenous peoples and their outcome; I’d much rather want to address what we can do now and look back to the past and learn from our mistakes.

A huge thank you to Judy Snaydon for allowing us to learn more about this problem and for nurturing our growth as students as well as the time and effort she spent in helping me and many others understand what Truth and Reconciliation means to us.