Imperialism ON trial
For our Imperialism on trial project we took the book “Things Fall Apart” and did a mock trial based on the events in the book. The topic that was taken to trial was about if the British government was responsible for Okonkwo's death or if it was his own fault. We went through the process similar to if you were going to real court case but much shorter. We had Attorneys, a Judge, The Jury, witnesses and all the other roles in the court case and it was all run by students. At the end of the trial we had the audience vote for which side they thought won.
For the trial my role was an Attorney writing an amicus curiae brief. An amicus curiae brief is when Frequently, a person or group who is not a party to a lawsuit, but has a strong interest in the matter, will petition the court for permission to submit a brief in the action with the intent of influencing the court's decision. A quote from my own Brief says “The pressures of the British Empire no doubt brought upon him countless times of strife. These countless times of strife without a doubt caused his mental state to weaken, he saw his great village become weakened and controlled by the newly arrived British Empire.” Within my brief I wrote about both sides and wrote it in the interest of Okonkwo, I chose to write about the opposite side than our class was on. It was interesting to write about the opposite side because it made it a lot more challenging.
Through this project I learned how to write in a new way, this style of writing will definitely come in handy in my life once i'm out of school. Writing this Amicus Curiae brief was pretty difficult at first but around halfway through my writing it got easier since I got more used to writing something like this. The hardest parts of this was trying not to put too much opinion into it and use just facts that backup my opinion. I feel in this part of my Brief I did well “ would also like to bring attention to the fact that if the village of Umuofia had not allowed the Missionaries to come into their territory the British Empire would have ultimately destroyed Umuofia like they had with countless other neighboring villages.” I did my best to use facts from the book to back up all of my claims which i felt was a big part where I grew.
I feel like this project will inevitably change my views on the colonialism of africa, It was really an eye opener to hear a story told from the side of the people native to africa not the missionaries side. This story has also shown me some things like in the story where they aren't given a proper trial that parts of our history aren't always lawful and definitely aren't right a lot of the time. This book also showed me what being “civilized” really means and what it does to a society. The missionaries in the book where civilizing the Ibo people to my understanding and I really get now what that means.
For the trial my role was an Attorney writing an amicus curiae brief. An amicus curiae brief is when Frequently, a person or group who is not a party to a lawsuit, but has a strong interest in the matter, will petition the court for permission to submit a brief in the action with the intent of influencing the court's decision. A quote from my own Brief says “The pressures of the British Empire no doubt brought upon him countless times of strife. These countless times of strife without a doubt caused his mental state to weaken, he saw his great village become weakened and controlled by the newly arrived British Empire.” Within my brief I wrote about both sides and wrote it in the interest of Okonkwo, I chose to write about the opposite side than our class was on. It was interesting to write about the opposite side because it made it a lot more challenging.
Through this project I learned how to write in a new way, this style of writing will definitely come in handy in my life once i'm out of school. Writing this Amicus Curiae brief was pretty difficult at first but around halfway through my writing it got easier since I got more used to writing something like this. The hardest parts of this was trying not to put too much opinion into it and use just facts that backup my opinion. I feel in this part of my Brief I did well “ would also like to bring attention to the fact that if the village of Umuofia had not allowed the Missionaries to come into their territory the British Empire would have ultimately destroyed Umuofia like they had with countless other neighboring villages.” I did my best to use facts from the book to back up all of my claims which i felt was a big part where I grew.
I feel like this project will inevitably change my views on the colonialism of africa, It was really an eye opener to hear a story told from the side of the people native to africa not the missionaries side. This story has also shown me some things like in the story where they aren't given a proper trial that parts of our history aren't always lawful and definitely aren't right a lot of the time. This book also showed me what being “civilized” really means and what it does to a society. The missionaries in the book where civilizing the Ibo people to my understanding and I really get now what that means.