PROJECT DESCRIPTION: This semester-long project centered around the philosophy of justice and issues of injustice that we see in our community or wider society. To begin, we learned about Philosophies of Justice (Utilitarianism, John Rawls Ethics, etc.) to get an understanding of what justice is. Once we had gotten an understanding of this, we applied our knowledge of justice to discuss environmental ethics and look at some issues of environmental injustice in the Four Corners area. This included learning about oil and gas drilling in the Greater Chaco area and what the consequences are of those actions. This got us thinking about what justice vs injustice looks like in our society and the ways that we can combat those issues. The culmination of all this knowledge was a personal project focused on some issue of injustice that we care about. I decided to focus on the issue of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women in the US. I had some previous knowledge on the issue but was intrigued to learn more and bring attention to the issue. I into a group with two of my peers to create an action project around this topic. Our final product was a 11 minute podcast titled "Missing Not Forgotten (MMIWG2S)", detailing what the issue of MMIW is, why it is so important, why it is not talked about enough, and what we should be doing about it.
Our podcast on SoundCloud
QR code to access our podcast
Our podcast script
REFLECTION: How did you successfully meet your goals you established at the beginning of the project, to what extent were you engaged in this project, and what are some key lessons you learned from this project? Throughout this project, I learned a lot about collaboration, adaptation, and researching. Our group went through a lot of ideation trying to combine all of our ideas. We had to really focus our group into something specific that still allowed all of us to have individual contributions. With the group split between classes, we also had to learn how to split up work and communicate effectively so that we could progress the project even without the whole group present all of the time. Working with other people helped me also realize how important it is to constantly be moving towards a goal. Once our first project idea started to become stagnant, we all had to sit down and really think through what we wanted to get out of the project. If we hadn’t done that, we might have continued on a path that wasn’t very productive and never gotten the polished product that we ended up with. Throughout the entire project we had to constantly be refining and going deeper in order to make sure that we were all getting the most out of the project. We put so much time into getting good content and presenting it in a way that was interesting, accessible, and informative. I personally feel that I worked hard to be an active part of my group and create something that was outside of my comfort zone. I did my part and I spent time editing the final podcast to make it sound the best it could. From this project, I now have much more of an awareness of social injustice in my community and I also have learned the lesson that if a project path is not working, it is okay to change it up if it leads you to creating something you are truly proud of. Although my group did not start out thinking about making a podcast, we stuck to our goals of bringing light to the issue of MMIW and creating something that could be shared with our community.
PROJECT DEFENSE: 1. What did you end up doing for your project? Initially, my group and I wanted to reach out to community organizations working on the issue of MMIW so we could partner with them. This felt like it would be the most impactful and interesting to do. However, after reaching out to multiple organizations, we were not getting a lot of response and realized we needed to change our focus. After brainstorming what mediums would show the most of our knowledge while also being accessible to a lot of people, we decided to create a podcast. We compiled all of our research and wrote a script, then did multiple recordings until we were confident with the final product. Then we edited it and uploaded it to SoundCloud. Much of the work my group did was collaborative, but we did have some individual roles. During our research I collected sources and then took notes on what the details of the crisis are, some authors/activists around the country who are taking action, and policies that are currently in action. When we were still focusing our project on community outreach, I sent an email to the director of SASO (a local organization working with sexual assault) to see if they were interested in partnering with my group for our project. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a response and we turned our attention to the podcast. Our first step for our podcast was to find a website to do our podcast on and figure out how to use it. We decided to use Soundtrap to record and one of my group members and I took time to test out all of its features. Next, we wrote our script. Each of us first compiled our own script of sorts and then combined them to make them have a conversational flow. Although we each wrote much of what we ended up saying, there was a lot of collaboration here as well. After that, all we had to do was record. We did multiple takes over a couple days interspersed with refining the script and figuring out the best techniques for using the mics and software. Once we got a recording that we really liked, we edited the track. I did a lot of the initial editing of the raw audio, but this work was split pretty evenly among the group.The final product we created is around 11 minutes long, has 3 different music tracks, and reflects a lot of the knowledge that we gathered over the course of this project. We uploaded the professional product to SoundCloud.
2. How did your project reflect your personal philosophy of justice? This project reflected my personal philosophy surrounding equality, humanitarianism, and fairness. One of the biggest reasons this issue is so unjust is because it is never talked about. Because of the silence surrounding it, Indigenous people who are murdered, kidnapped, and assaulted are not investigated but forgotten. It is very clear that they do not get equal opportunities to speak up against this injustice, or equal rights when it comes to having perpetrators punished for their heinous crimes. Most of the cases labeled as “missing” aren’t even followed up on, so if there was a chance to save them, police departments etc. don’t put effort into doing so. It is not fair that these people have to deal with these issues without any acknowledgement of their suffering. Since we identified that one of the biggest challenges those who are speaking out on this issue face is general ignorance surrounding the issue, us creating a podcast broke through that barrier and made people pay attention to what is actually going on. We really focused on bringing awareness to just how many people go missing compared to how many people are searched for. Our message was that we want people to take a moment and think about how unjust this is - if you were part of the 5,176 people who went missing in just one year, you would want people to care, you would want justice. This issue affects the entire country and it is unacceptable that we are not actively doing things to stop it.
3. Did you do sufficient research and background work to pull off your project, take an informed stance or succeed in your endeavors? I believe that our project was a good first step in the direction of justice. We spent the entire first week of the project researching the complex truths of this issue and turned that into a professional informational podcast. Although we could have learned even more with more time, we did our best to create a well rounded perspective on the issue. In our podcast, we also spoke to the fact that we are white girls who have not had direct experience with the issue, but we will care about this issue. We worked hard to create something that a wider audience could listen to and gain a deeper understanding of this “invisible” crisis.
Justice Monologue #1
After learning about many philosophies of justice, we were tasked with writing a ~2 minute long monologue outlining our thoughts on justice. The prompt for the monologue was: What is justice? What is injustice? In my monologue, I included John Rawl's philosophy of justice and his Veil of Ignorance to support my claims about justice in the justice system. I pulled ideas from the movie True Justice and spoke about my own justice philosophy.
Justice Monologue #2
This second monologue was focused on environmental ethics. We learned about issues of environmental injustice that are in our area and how that ties to indigenous rights and energy. We drew in our ideas of justice while focusing on a central question addressing environmental issues. The prompt for the second monologue was: What is the most just way to balance our energy and economic needs, human and environmental health and protection of sacred lands? I chose to focus mainly on environmental health and protection of sacred lands. I spoke about the idea of land ownership as well as the Black Mesa Coal Mine, which contributed to my overall perspective on environmental justice.