User:Sydney.mcinnis/sandbox

Article Evaluation

The Wikipedia article on the Haida people is generally well sourced and supported, but lacks in its efforts to frame the culture accurately. Generally, I feel that that the Indigenous perspective is underrepresented, though the article still presents unbiased information, however, it fails to share the true effects of assimilation.

The first specific issue I noticed was that the author(s), when noting the Haida's traditional language, doesn't mention the different dialects of Haida, and doesn't offer any detail about the importance or state of the language today. There is little emphasis placed on the Haida worldview - their spirituality and traditional, sacred practices - which is the centrepiece to the lives of many Haida people, but rather speaks largely on what they are "known for". As well, when the conversation of assimilation comes around in the article, the description of residential schools is vague and does not draw nearly enough attention. "The government began forcibly sending some Haida children to residential schools as early as 1920. Haida children were sent as far away as Alberta to live among English-speaking families where they were to be assimilated into the dominant culture," it states. Considering how impactful the event has been and instrumental in the people's actions that came afterwards, I think there deserves to be more description than just stating that "some" children were displaced.

The only over sourcing issue I noticed was when the author(s) was discussing how Haida people are "thought to be warlike and practice slavery", however there is no attribution for this statement and is therefore not suitable for this article. I went through and checked all ciations and all were active and correlated with what they were supposed to.

Something I wondered about was the use of the term "tribe", when the author(s) was describing the Haida's defence mechanisms. This term isn't typically used in a Canadian context, and could likely be changed for something more contextually relevant, like "band" or "clan".

I also found the article to be up to date. In the introduction, the film "Edge of the Knife", which is due to be released in the coming years, is mentioned positively.--Sydney.mcinnis (talk) 19:51, 9 September 2017 (UTC)