CEMETERY ACTIVITY PAGE
You can see differences in
modern cemeteries too.
Large gravestones or
decorations in a cemetery often mean that
the person in the grave had
a lot of money when he or she was alive.
Small gravestones in cemeteries
that you and I see often mean
that the person in the grave
wasn't really rich or famous.
Can you think of any really
huge cemetery monuments in cemeteries that
you have seen? Some have big
angels and decorations that make them
really stand out. This shows
that the person who died must have
had a lot of money. Other graves
are big and decorated because the
person was well known or famous.
Just think of Jimi Hendrix or
Bruce Lee or Karl Marx's graves.
As we run out of land on this
planet, some people are making the decision
before they die that they do
not want to take up much space. For this
reason, some people choose
to be cremated or choose a small grave.
A lot of these decisions have
to do with the 'cultural perception of the land'.
This means how people who live
in an area think about the land that they live in.
Some people take their land
for granted. Others work hard to keep their world and the earth they live
on a nice place.
Why don't you take an afternoon
to visit a cemetery?
Walk through it, and notice
the differences in graves. Sometimes you see
huge monuments, other times
you don't see any.
Mozart (a great musician) doesn't
even have a grave, but
he was pretty rich and
well known (though not at the time of his death).
Sometimes you see graves of
people who you have never even
heard of that are huge with
urns and angels and carvings.
Can you think of reasons for
these differences?
Along the Fraser River and
East Coast of Vancouver Island
in British Columbia, some people
were buried in very big graves,
like the mounds that we see
at DhRl 16.
Other people, were buried in
graves made out of rocks piled together.
But sometimes, people were
buried very simply.
So, differences existed then
too.
Can you think of reasons for
these differences?
As you have learned modern
cemeteries share some similarities
with old ones on the Northwest
Coast. Many of the differences that
we see have to do with a persons
rank or status in society, how well
respected or well known they
are or how much wealth (money) they have.
Sometimes the differences also
have to do with people's
cultural perception of the
land - how they understand it.
That's pretty neat!
Take me back to DhRl 16!
