Energy and Place Project
Essential Questions:
1. How does energy production impact place?
2. How do your sense of place, your environmental ethic, and your understanding of our energy needs influence your perception of human's use of Earth's resources and your own lifestyle decisions?
1. How does energy production impact place?
2. How do your sense of place, your environmental ethic, and your understanding of our energy needs influence your perception of human's use of Earth's resources and your own lifestyle decisions?
Through GaiaAbstract
In this essay, I speak about one of my most powerful and impactful mediation experiences. I went on a hike in Ouray after a huge rainstorm, and the essence of the forest drew me into a powerful meditative mindset. Later on in the essay, spiritual references are made to chakra, which are what many people and namely Buddhists believe to be energy centers of the body that allow energy to flow through you evenly. I believe that I have connections with the whole universe through the Gaia hypothesis, and my personal beliefs on the interconnectedness of all things. *** The trees are beckoning me. The bush is thick with semi-dry leaves and branches. The dirt underneath the makeshift hiking boots I wear sticks to me, climbing and finding its way inside the boot and up my leg. The scratchy caress of the dirt is good intentioned despite being unfamiliar. Straying off the path is one of my specialties, and finding comfort in discomfort is another one of my specialties. I feel the dirt dig into the soles of my feet, filling up the empty spaces I didn’t know I had, somehow patching up whatever holes I left in my spirit. The new sensation of wholeness causes the feet from under my legs to shake. My hands fluttered, trying to grab hold of a branch or hillside to help me lower myself down to the ground. Slicing through the air, I smack a few bugs flying by on accident, but eventually my fingertips meet the bark of a tree; scratchy, sticky, sacred. I lower myself onto an almost dry patch of grass where the blades dug into my skin through my jeans somehow, their almost rough and almost soft texture acting like a pillow. The tree straightened the curve of my spine as I aligned my vertebrae along its bark. I have never meditated outside I come to the sudden realization. Another cold burst of air rounded around the trees and grass, shaking them with it’s might and it’s intensity. Safe on the ground, I take hold of my ankles and pulled my legs into a tight cross-legged position, or as much as my jeans would allow. Somewhere the wind continues along it’s path, traveling up hills and over tree tops. I close my eyes, controlling my breathing into a slowed and relaxed pace. In and out, in and out. My chest rises and falls, stomach expanding and deflating, mind preparing. The cycle continues on, the sounds of the forest helping me remain focused on the importance of this meditation, an importance I didn’t quite understand yet, but longed to. My forehead tingled, right above my brow and where my 6th chakra lies, letting me know that my mind is ready to let the universe spill into it. With the last sigh out of my nose, the ground underneath me becomes more than solid earth, and I feel the life that crawls and digs underneath it. Feeling worms squirm and nudge themselves through the freshly dampened soil, my awareness travels from the ground up. The highway of roots hums from underneath me, pulsating with almost heartbeats, and the animals treading the woods became aware of me, too. I feel the pressure of hooves and paws against the mud, sticking and smacking from miles away. They walk the same earth I sit on. Awareness of all things keeps rising higher and higher until I can imagine where every single bird nest resides, and can almost feel the sensation of flying. Through the clouds my awareness travels, breaking through the atmosphere and into the vastness of space, how small we are and how connected we are. I saw how time moves; tenderly. My breathing one part deep and one part a gasp in awe, I had to open up my eyes. I continued the meditation with open eyes, staring out into the woods. The trees and grass, and the mountains overhead bleed with color and life. Feeling so small underneath the mountain tops, so connected with all around me, I let the wind and the sun and the shade do what they wanted, knowing they would not stop for me. They move alongside me. The sensations are becoming powerful that I begin to see ghosts. I feel their presence all around me, perhaps ghosts of who I used to be, perhaps the ghosts of dead poets. Wherever they came from, from inside of me or from the ground, they roam without disturbing one another. Just treading across the ground and dirt like ghosts do. Wanting to touch the same earth they walk on, my fingers found their way to the soil. My fingertips now wet with sacred earth, I begin to truly understand my place on earth. We are intertwined with every thing. The wind that blows down upon my shoulders and inside my shirt came from high in the sky and from the south. I feel the south in the gust of wind. I feel the miles it must have traveled and all of the trees it must have blown through. All of my chakras balanced at once, from the root and through the crown chakra. Chakras are a big aspect of my life. I can feel when certain chakras, or energy centers, are not open and not allowing energy to fully course through me. But the crisp air and sacred ground allowed every door inside of me to open up and allow the universe inside of it. The root chakra grounds itself to the very core of existence, from the earth worms to the cigar galaxies. The sacral chakra opens to the flow of the universe, the push and the pull bringing balance to this energy center. The solar plexus strengthens itself with the backbone of the universe as a support. My structure has the most solid base I could ask for, the roots from the universe tied into my own, my emotions flowing through my body without hesitation, my center of strength supported by the tree. Heart charka is sending out all of the love I have inside of me and receiving all the love the universe has to give. I can understand the language of the trees now, and I realize that I must speak for the trees as they do not have their own voices. Their love spilled into me and our roots aligned. My throat chakra itches, wanting to speak for the trees with only the ghosts as an audience, but they already know what the trees have to say. I have so much to translate that the trees are telling me. The third eye chakra has expanded into it’s deepest levels through this meditation, allowing the trees to speak to me and the ghosts to align in my sights. And finally the crown chakra opens to the universe all I have to give. As much as I give out, I receive. My very spirit aware of the vastness of things, and how silver strings connect us to every thing. All things are interconnected to Gaia and the universe herself. I am Gaia. My chest rises and falls with each breath, inhaling the pristine sacred air around me. Being a Buddhist, I believe that going inside of yourself for answers is often more powerful than seeking out the answers from another source. And today, the universe spilled into me and I know all things. At least, all things that I must know in order to reach enlightenment. I know of suffering, and I know how to end my suffering. I know of the negative effect of loving material objects more than people, and I know of the peace that love can bring to yourself and others. I know of balance. I dip my fingers deeper into the damp soil before retracting and breathing in another sacred breath. The sudden chill in the already frosty air tells me that I must leave and see other sacred places like the city or my home. Standing up, releasing myself from the meditation, the sound of hungry birds chirping makes my own stomach growl. Time was suspended long enough, I figured. Or maybe it lingered the way time should. Either way, I walk myself down the steep terrain, rocks slipping underneath my feet and almost making me topple over. Whatever elegance I feel inside of me still did not reflect in my physical balance, nearly tripping over my feet and roots. I could still see the ghosts of dead poets, and still taste the distance the wind has traveled in my lungs. After the troublesome descent back to the hiking trail, I stumbled out of the woods and onto the worn dirt path. All around are skyscraper aspens and pine trees, dropping their leaves and their needles across the path. I see a poet wave goodbye to me. He reminds me that if I need him he will be waiting underneath the pine tree I sat under. I’m not sure how I know that, but I wave back at him. I have to turn my back to the old man, walking down the path and sometimes wandering off and onto welcoming grass. The grass stuck under my feet; sticky, wet, stick-to-your-shoes consistency. Wherever there are shadows coming from skyscraper trees or the backsides of mountains lay the muck and slush from last night’s rain. A comforting gust of icy wind traveled from the North; I could taste it in my breath. But it’s the sensation of the wind herself that catches me and almost stops me in my tracks; how she runs her fingers through my hair, and leaves me like how a satisfying relationship comes to an end; on equal terms. She said hello and I said goodbye, we are two lines intersecting for this brief moment of sacredness. She must have coursed through another person like she just did to me, because she let me feel the soul of that person she ran her fingers through and soon another person will know my soul, too. I hope they are listening. The wind has a lot to say about a person. The breeze picked up the essence of me, and that’s why sometimes you get goose bumps when wind smacks into your back. It’s not just air that the wind carries along with her, but the essence of people. This time she came to say goodbye. I feel the forest say goodbye to me as I leave the mountain. I face the mountain for the last time and bow my head. Mentally, spiritually, I tell the forest I will not be gone for long. I tell the poet I will be back. And I make a promise to myself to return underneath the pine tree once again. |
Project Reflection For this project, we built up to the final product by learning about environmental ethics, the environmental state of the earth, theories such as the Gaia theory, the humanity of energy production, and how nature impacts nature. We read through many readings as a class in order to learn all we could about environmental ethics. We learned about the different types of ethics, what we thought about each one, and how you could take pieces of each ethic to create your own. In order to progress our understanding of our environmental ethic, we learned everything from conservation to innovation through readings such as excerpts from Edward Abbey, watching the documentary Damnation, and learning about the Gaia hypothesis. Towards the very end of the project, once we felt strongly in one way or another, we were asked to take action in the name of our ethic. I got into a group, and we found a sustainable and creative way to recycle plastic bottles and turn them into self-watering miniature herb gardens. This project was very open ended and allowed us to explore our environmental ethics in depth, taking action instead of sitting idly.
The sense of place essay was the most challenging piece of writing from the year. Not because writing in the grand style, but because this writing made me grow into a new person. Throughout the whole project leading up to the essay writing, I had it in my head that I knew where my sense of place was and how I was going to present it. Writing comes natural to me, and I knew I would be able to discover my place in the world after I drafted for a little while. But as soon as I sat down with the blank document in front of me, I realized I didn’t know where I belonged. I realized that I rooted myself so much in the work that I do, that I forgot to root myself to the world around me. I found my sense of place in a meditative experience in the mountains of Ouray, where I felt myself connect with the world as a whole. I wrote my essay about this experience and about how I am connected to Gaia and about how Gaia is connected to me in order to remind myself that I am of nature. I needed to root myself to Gaia once again, and this experience allowed me to view the world and the work that I do in a different light. I am always so busy trying to create beautiful pieces of writing, or finishing a chemistry lab, to stop and enjoy what I am doing. I aim for perfection, and I never realized how harmful that was for me until I realized that I am here for a reason, and that reason is not to learn competitively. It was to grow as a human being and help those around me. This project and the writing helped me realize that once again. It was a beautiful project that helped me find my roots again when I didn’t even know they were lost. I am most proud of my ability to write in the grand style. Creative writing in a story format has always challenged me, and this essay helped me improve my creative writing abilities. The use of the grand style in my writing came from another part of me that I didn’t realize that I had. I didn’t realize my potential as a writer until I was sitting behind a computer screen, able to write about a beautiful dense forest from my memories and explain it as if I were actually there. “A comforting gust of icy wind traveled from the North; I could taste it in my breath.” Is one of my favorite lines from my essay. It is a simple, passing line but I feel as though it captured one of the most profound impacts that meditation and realization had on me. I could feel the importance of all things and the origin, and I’ve found that that understanding has helped me in my personal relationships with those around me. I can understand their origin, just like how I could taste the origin of the wind. It also encapsulates some of the grand style writing I was able to produce in a few short lines. Another example of my usage of the grand style is, “The highway of roots hums from underneath me, pulsating with almost-heartbeats…” where I was able to grab onto an image and sensation and metaphor all in one segment of a line. I am incredibly proud of the way I articulated my meditative experience, and how I was able to grow from reflecting on this experience as well as grow as a writer and poet. My environmental ethic has and will definitely change how I am living my current lifestyle. My ethic aligns most closely with that of innovation, acknowledging we have to progress but we have to be creative and sustainable in the process. Through this project, my ethic has arisen and my lifestyle changes have been slow but steady. Because I am a student, I don’t have very much say in the food that I eat, the way that I live, and the way I transport myself from place to place. However, my family is starting a garden where we will be able to grow our own vegetables such as zucchini, pumpkins, spinach, and others. That is one way that this project has influenced my desire to live a little differently, providing for myself what I can provide with hopes to purchase my other goods from local farms when I have more say in where my food comes from, such as when I graduate from high school. This project has greatly influenced what I want to do with my life, and how I want to live my life. In the future, once I graduate from college, I am contemplating creating a non-profit organization with the goal of educating people about social, racial, socio-economic, gender, and environmental inequalities through the use of literature, poetry, and art. That is quite the goal to have at such a young age, but this project has inspired me to think in that direction for my life. I would love to be able to make a change in the world while making a change in my own lifestyle. This project has expanded my way of thinking, and I am greatly appreciative that I was able to experience this project and learn from it the way that I did. It was a great project to close junior year with as it expanded our way of thinking as we are starting to head out into the adult world, making us eager for change and giving us the background knowledge to make that change. |
Click Here To View My Chemistry Project!
Take Action Project
This project took place in the midst of the energy and place project. The point of this project was to take action in our community; the projects took different shapes such as a rap about environmentalism to finding sustainable ways to plant herbs and flowers in plastic bottles. The projects took many shapes and forms and stemmed off from our own environmental ethic.
Project Documentation
Two self-watering plastic bottles with morning glories planted inside. This was one of the first steps of the project; creating the plastic pots and planting the seeds. The self watering system works by weaving a few strings to act as mock roots into the bottom of the water bottle. The strings pull up the water and from the bottom of the bottle and waters the plants.
We created a ton of water bottle housed plants, and this is a picture of some of the budding plants growing in these bottles. You can see how damp the soil is due to the self-watering system put into place.
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In order to make the bottles look better and to make the project more fun for the audience, we painted the water bottles following a nature theme. This is a picture of me painting a bottle to look like waves.
Some of the painted bottles placed in a window sill in a classroom. This provides sunlight to the plants (as you can see the tall morning glories bent towards the sunlight) and beautifies the classroom. We hope to place more of these around the school, placing them in other classrooms as well as outside of the school itself. If you look closely you can see the falsified string roots coming down the water bottles.
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Native American Studies Project
Essay
Native cultures in the United States have been drowned out by the Western lifestyle, and are often thought to be dead or dying ways of thinking. Their perspectives and opinions are altered and given different shape through Hollywood movies that often play off common tropes and stereotypes. Even modes of bringing minorities or racial inequality into light such as Tumblr’s “Black Out”, where colored users posted pictures of themselves in order to empower others, fail to either feature Native peoples or present them as they are and who they were. Not only are Native stories crucial to understanding America’s history, but also crucial in understanding the plight of the people we displaced.
Native American poetry is one of the most important modes of expressing their cultural story. Poetry is a form of writing where one can express emotions without having to use the boundaries of grammar or other rules of writing. This free form of expression allows anyone to present their stories in any way they please. Native poetry expresses stories of their culture and their urban life in a modern and easily accessible way. “Blues-ing on the brown vibe a bilagáana snaps a photo the Navajo woman stands holding her hand requesting some of her soul back instead she replaces her soul with a worn picture of George Washington on a dollar bill” reads a stanza from Ester Belin’s book, “From the Belly of My Beauty” (Belin 4). In this specific stanza, the poet is expressing how Navajo culture intertwines and occurs still in our modern and daily life. The woman holding her hand out, requesting her soul back, represents an aspect of their belief system along with how American culture does not understand that belief. Belin expresses how American culture does not respect the people that were here before them, and chooses to express that through her poetry.
Speaking to the effect American culture has had on her culture and other Native peoples can be seen throughout Belin’s book. She discusses the current plight of the Native Americans in poems such as Ruby in Me #1, 949 Auga Fria, and For Miss Celine When She Smokes where she speaks to the alcoholism, substance abuse, and poverty that strikes the people on reservations. “And all the time while she smokes I am thinking I hope she is thinking good thoughts because the spirits are listening” (Belin 54). She speaks to how Celine has forgotten the spirits, which I believe is how American culture has affected her. There is no talk of their spiritual beliefs in the school system and often times in their own homes due to claims of reverse racism and the experience of boarding schools on their older family members. This lack of spiritual presence in place of Western values takes away their cultural stance. Sherman Alexie, another Native poet wrote a short story called A Drug Called Tradition and in it he says, “But I did have this brand new drug and had planned on inviting Junior along. Maybe a couple Indian princesses, too. But only if they were full, blood. Well, maybe if they were at least half-Spokane” (Alexie). The boys in this story are trying to have a “real Indian experience” and feel as though they need to experience that through drugs.
The once intentional and now quiet erasure of the Native cultures is only perpetuated by the Western way of living that the Native people are still struggling with to this day. The English forced the natives into the monetary system while they had a vast advantage over them, and many tribes have not caught up to this day, still struggling to put food on the table. Alexie and Belin both express their experiences with poverty, whether talking about colored mashed potatoes or being paid $5.15 an hour (Alexie, Belin 44). The experience of a modern day Native American is the direct aftermath of the English invasion of North America, and understanding the strife they went through and are currently going through is important to know to expand one’s understanding of history and how it intertwines with humanity at it’s core. Through understanding these delicate issues and listening to the stories expressed through Native poetry and other forms of story telling, we can discover a new way of telling history.
Works Cited
Alexie, Sherman. The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. New York: Atlantic Monthly, 1993. Print.
Belin, Esther G. From the Belly of My Beauty: Poems. Tucson: U of Arizona, 1999. Print.
Native American poetry is one of the most important modes of expressing their cultural story. Poetry is a form of writing where one can express emotions without having to use the boundaries of grammar or other rules of writing. This free form of expression allows anyone to present their stories in any way they please. Native poetry expresses stories of their culture and their urban life in a modern and easily accessible way. “Blues-ing on the brown vibe a bilagáana snaps a photo the Navajo woman stands holding her hand requesting some of her soul back instead she replaces her soul with a worn picture of George Washington on a dollar bill” reads a stanza from Ester Belin’s book, “From the Belly of My Beauty” (Belin 4). In this specific stanza, the poet is expressing how Navajo culture intertwines and occurs still in our modern and daily life. The woman holding her hand out, requesting her soul back, represents an aspect of their belief system along with how American culture does not understand that belief. Belin expresses how American culture does not respect the people that were here before them, and chooses to express that through her poetry.
Speaking to the effect American culture has had on her culture and other Native peoples can be seen throughout Belin’s book. She discusses the current plight of the Native Americans in poems such as Ruby in Me #1, 949 Auga Fria, and For Miss Celine When She Smokes where she speaks to the alcoholism, substance abuse, and poverty that strikes the people on reservations. “And all the time while she smokes I am thinking I hope she is thinking good thoughts because the spirits are listening” (Belin 54). She speaks to how Celine has forgotten the spirits, which I believe is how American culture has affected her. There is no talk of their spiritual beliefs in the school system and often times in their own homes due to claims of reverse racism and the experience of boarding schools on their older family members. This lack of spiritual presence in place of Western values takes away their cultural stance. Sherman Alexie, another Native poet wrote a short story called A Drug Called Tradition and in it he says, “But I did have this brand new drug and had planned on inviting Junior along. Maybe a couple Indian princesses, too. But only if they were full, blood. Well, maybe if they were at least half-Spokane” (Alexie). The boys in this story are trying to have a “real Indian experience” and feel as though they need to experience that through drugs.
The once intentional and now quiet erasure of the Native cultures is only perpetuated by the Western way of living that the Native people are still struggling with to this day. The English forced the natives into the monetary system while they had a vast advantage over them, and many tribes have not caught up to this day, still struggling to put food on the table. Alexie and Belin both express their experiences with poverty, whether talking about colored mashed potatoes or being paid $5.15 an hour (Alexie, Belin 44). The experience of a modern day Native American is the direct aftermath of the English invasion of North America, and understanding the strife they went through and are currently going through is important to know to expand one’s understanding of history and how it intertwines with humanity at it’s core. Through understanding these delicate issues and listening to the stories expressed through Native poetry and other forms of story telling, we can discover a new way of telling history.
Works Cited
Alexie, Sherman. The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. New York: Atlantic Monthly, 1993. Print.
Belin, Esther G. From the Belly of My Beauty: Poems. Tucson: U of Arizona, 1999. Print.
Project Reflection
This assignment took place after a very long, in-depth analysis of Native American history and primary source analysis. That process felt like it both prepared me for the end product of this assignment writing wise, but also covered subjects and events we were not going to be writing about and therefore felt tedious. However, all of the analysis and college level writing we ere doing throughout the process was extremely valuable and prepared me for the literary analysis I produced at the end of the project. I read two books, finding the value of Native American literature in learning former and contemporary history form their perspective seeing as we only learn history from the western perspective. In that way, I value the project as it taught me more about American history than I had learned before. The value of the project came more from the individual research that I had conducted where I was able to understand and investigate the importance of historical representation of native peoples.
This is where history and creative expression intersect; every piece of writing, every piece of art, has a historical context. They were created during a certain point of time when they didn’t have any of the bias that we may have now, or may have more of a bias than we currently have. Being able to read and view creative pieces during certain points of history allow you to contextualize the bias, and understand the world as it was during that time frame. I personally believe that history and creativity are one in the same. Creative pieces are also one of the best ways to understand the emotional context of the time frame. History books allow you to understand the events that were occurring, but put you at risk of separating yourself from tragedies of the time. Reading or viewing creative pieces allows you to connect with the people at the time, and understand their plight from a human’s perspective and connect with historical events rather than acknowledge historical events. I really enjoyed being able to understand the people’s emotions in the late 1800’s, as it helped me understand the context and importance of historical events. This project allowed me to understand the emotional plight of the people and contextualize history. It was a very valuable experience, and allowed me to connect to the project and historical events a lot more than I would have if not for reading creative pieces of writing.
This is where history and creative expression intersect; every piece of writing, every piece of art, has a historical context. They were created during a certain point of time when they didn’t have any of the bias that we may have now, or may have more of a bias than we currently have. Being able to read and view creative pieces during certain points of history allow you to contextualize the bias, and understand the world as it was during that time frame. I personally believe that history and creativity are one in the same. Creative pieces are also one of the best ways to understand the emotional context of the time frame. History books allow you to understand the events that were occurring, but put you at risk of separating yourself from tragedies of the time. Reading or viewing creative pieces allows you to connect with the people at the time, and understand their plight from a human’s perspective and connect with historical events rather than acknowledge historical events. I really enjoyed being able to understand the people’s emotions in the late 1800’s, as it helped me understand the context and importance of historical events. This project allowed me to understand the emotional plight of the people and contextualize history. It was a very valuable experience, and allowed me to connect to the project and historical events a lot more than I would have if not for reading creative pieces of writing.
Wounded Knee Inquiry Mini Project
For this project, we studied how historians study history and we attempted to create a non-biased account about a historical event. This is a part of a larger project of Native American studies, where we read text book passages and "read the silences" in them and find the bias. In order to understand it, we read multiple primary sources about the Wounded Knee Massacre and wrote a textbook passage about the event. We then watched a film rendition of the event and wrote an essay about the film, attempting to pull in evidence from the film and the primary sources.
Textbook Passage
The Massacre of Wounded Knee took
place in December of 1890 in South Dakota. Prior to the massacre, the United
States had been reassigning land to the native people in order to help them
assimilate into Western culture; as a result, they had promised oxen, housing,
food, and other necessities to help them get by ad adapt to the lack of land
and lack of animals to hunt for food. However, the United States had not done
what they had promised, leaving the Native people hungry, sick, and irritated.
The failing crops and the lack of hunt made it near impossible to live off of
the land, so they were heavily dependent on the United States to give them the
supplies. In their desperation for help, they looked to a prophet for religious
guidance who told them about a Ghost Dance, which would bring the dead Indians
back to life to kill those who had done them harm; the white people. The
soldiers outside of the Pine Ridge Reservation heard of Ghost Dances and left
to arrest the leaders responsible for the Ghost Dance.
The Army had killed Sitting Bull, an important figure to the natives in the area, while attempting to arrest him for the Ghost Dance craze. After word traveled about Siting Bull’s death and that soldiers were coming, the Indians became frightened that they were coming to kill them. Chief Big Foot led people towards the direction of the Bad Lands, unknowing of the soldiers that had veered off in the direction of the Bad Lands to attempt to meet them there. The 7th Cavalry led Chief Big Foot’s band back to the Pine Ridge Reservation to Wounded Knee Creek, where the soldiers demanded all guns and knives from the Indians to prevent them from defending themselves or leaving the Army’s watch. The men were separated from their families and taken to a spot separate from the tipis and the women and children. After the weapons were demanded, a native boy fired a gun at a soldier and killed him. This caused the military to fire back and thus started the indiscriminate killing. As the soldiers killed the men and as the men tried to defend themselves, the women and children at the camp started to flee the scene and ran away. The 7th Cavalry followed those women and children, firing their guns and even cutting limbs off. Young boys fired their guns at the soldiers who were chasing them to defend themselves. As the women and children fled, the 7th Cavalry killed a vast majority and left many wounded. 300 Sioux people were murdered on that day, including Chief Big Foot and hundreds of other men, women, and children. Very few people survived, as the following night, a blizzard blew over the creek and froze the dead and killed many of the wounded. Once the blizzard had blown over, reporters, photographers, soldiers, and native people returned to the scene and many pictures were taken, as the bodies and scene was preserved due to the blizzard. |
Reflection My engagement with this assignment was not as connected as I would like it to be; I was uninterested in the format we were writing in and I felt as though the documents we had to write along the way for our sources was very tedious. It made the process irritating but helped me read the passages closer and with a historical point of view. I felt like the frustration was worth it and I feel accomplished being able to finish the textbook paragraphs after all of that reading.
I see my bias in the passage towards the Indians; I used a little bit of harsh language such as massacre and even murder. But I felt as though other words wouldn’t justify the actions of the Cavalry. My heart broke for the Indians but I didn’t want to sound over biased in any direction. I can also see my bias towards the beginning when I talk about the reservation agreements. I tried my best to conceal it but I really had a hard time stomaching all of these readings. To be honest, I felt extremely sick to my stomach while reading these and having to write about it. It makes me so sad and so bogged down just knowing about these things. Recounting it and trying to be unbiased was sort of hard on an emotional level. Studying history using primary sources is so hard but very rewarding. I was slightly familiar with the process as I was looking into sources for my honors project, but I was studying something very contemporary and something that I have to deal with on a daily basis. It’s different studying something from a long time ago. It was challenging and I had to sort of leave my own bias behind in some situations. I had mad respect for the study of history when it’s not something you can really speak for for yourself. I appreciate the study of history much more now, and understand how the context is super important in primary sources. |
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee Essay
Representation of other ethnicities, sexualities, gender, and culture in the media is extremely important in sharing human stories that are often watered down by white, straight characters. Movies like Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, while not completely historically accurate, helps to represent a tragedy that an entire culture had faced in the late 1800s and sheds light on other difficulties the Native American people face to this day. Movies that are shared to a large audience expose people to other perspectives and challenge the stereotypes set out for the culture, race, or other that is shown in the movie. Media holds a strong influence in how we view other people. Representation in the media about Native American culture and tragedy help others, especially the privileged race of white America, to understand them, break stereotypes, and give a human face to the stories.
An important part about Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is the corroboration between actual primary source documents and the movie. The main character of this film is Ohiyesa or Charles Eastman, who is a member of the Sioux tribe. He completed his education at Dartmouth, an Ivy League school that was created for the education of Native people to assimilate them into White American culture. In the film, he investigated something called the Ghost Dance, in which the native people tried to call upon the spirits of the dead to kill the white people. This corroborates with the historical document about The Ghost Dance War, where he said, “…We learned that Big Foot’s band of ghost dancers from the Cheyenne River reservation north of us was approaching the agency, and that Major Whiteside was in command of troops with the orders to intercept them.” As in the film the ghost dancers caused a lot of trouble among the white American troops and caused them to fear for their lives, even though Eastman assured them it was simply a dance would calm down. This seemingly small aspect of the film makes a big difference between the native people being mythicized and the native people being represented as they were and how it was.
This film took the obvious bias towards the Sioux and the other native tribes of the area, perhaps leaving the “white perspective” out of the film, if you will. But the white perspective of history is shown through more sources than through film, but also through historical accounts commonly given during high school, through modern media interpretations of the people, and stereotypes given through television shows and often times from person to person. In the film, General Miles aggression towards the Sioux, along with the aggression of the President was exaggerated to a larger extent than what was shown in historical documentation. In the film, General Miles was shouting aggressively at the natives at a meeting and spoke about how the U.S. Government was not going to treat them any kinder, while in the historical documents, he spoke about the failure of the government to the natives rather than the success of the government, such as in the film. “Failure of the government to establish an equitable southern boundary of the Standing Rock agency reservation. …To expend a just proportion of the money received from the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul railroad company, for right of way privileges … to issue to such Indians the full number of cows and oxen provided in article 10, treaty of 1876.” These claims and other such claims corroborate to the actual treaties and the native first hand accounts, proving that these were, in fact, failures of the government and did show that General Miles was very critical of the government’s treatment of the natives but in the film, he was shown to be very critical of the native people instead. It may have been for the benefit of Hollywood and to give a perspective of how the native people might have viewed the government officials.
The human story of the Massacre of Wounded Knee was further given life by the film’s reenactment of the event. The protagonist of the film, Charles Eastman, had heard horses come to the small town he was living in and providing medical assistance to. Through the people he was treating the wounds of, he heard of the death of Sitting Bull and then the events of the massacre. While dramatic and emotional, the scene was historically inaccurate. That was perhaps the largest piece of inaccuracies in the film, as Sitting Bull died almost over a week before the massacre happened. However, for reasons such as time constraints and risking having the story become boring or too drawn out, the film combined the events together. Despite the inaccuracy, the film gave a very human look to the massacre, showing the native women and children fleeing from the hostility of the 7th Cavalry in unjustified fire of guns and cannons. It showed graphic images of the people dying and children getting shot down and injured. Because of the storytelling and how they director made Eastman the protagonist, the viewers had been rooting for the Sioux for the majority over the movie over the hostile and aggressive whites, further impacting the impression the death of native people in that scene and in others. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee built up our positive view of the natives from the very beginning of the movie with the starting scene being the Battle of Little Big Horn where the people were shown more like the “savages” the media attempts to make them look like, and ending the movie with the now very fleshed out and human characters that were native people. This build helped the viewers break their stereotypes of Indians. This is why representation of different cultures in the media is extremely important, even if they are not completely historically accurate. They give human sides of people that have been stereotyped into something other than human, and may inspire the viewers to investigate into events even further or on a smaller scale, helped to break negative views of minorities.
In conclusion, giving the emotional and human side of minorities is extremely important in taking strides to eradicating or reducing racism, sexism, and other classist issues. Discussing the tragedies and the successes of those people is very important in giving perspectives outside of those that are most commonly listened to, and gives an irreplaceable perspective on events that you might not be able to get outside of the perspectives of the people it directly influenced. More films like Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee should be produced in order to show mass amounts of people another side to the story of the native tribes outside of the white-washed perspective that we commonly receive. I have hopes that more films showing people of color, different sexualities, and genders will be produced instead of more historical dramas about the founding fathers or other white figures of America.
An important part about Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is the corroboration between actual primary source documents and the movie. The main character of this film is Ohiyesa or Charles Eastman, who is a member of the Sioux tribe. He completed his education at Dartmouth, an Ivy League school that was created for the education of Native people to assimilate them into White American culture. In the film, he investigated something called the Ghost Dance, in which the native people tried to call upon the spirits of the dead to kill the white people. This corroborates with the historical document about The Ghost Dance War, where he said, “…We learned that Big Foot’s band of ghost dancers from the Cheyenne River reservation north of us was approaching the agency, and that Major Whiteside was in command of troops with the orders to intercept them.” As in the film the ghost dancers caused a lot of trouble among the white American troops and caused them to fear for their lives, even though Eastman assured them it was simply a dance would calm down. This seemingly small aspect of the film makes a big difference between the native people being mythicized and the native people being represented as they were and how it was.
This film took the obvious bias towards the Sioux and the other native tribes of the area, perhaps leaving the “white perspective” out of the film, if you will. But the white perspective of history is shown through more sources than through film, but also through historical accounts commonly given during high school, through modern media interpretations of the people, and stereotypes given through television shows and often times from person to person. In the film, General Miles aggression towards the Sioux, along with the aggression of the President was exaggerated to a larger extent than what was shown in historical documentation. In the film, General Miles was shouting aggressively at the natives at a meeting and spoke about how the U.S. Government was not going to treat them any kinder, while in the historical documents, he spoke about the failure of the government to the natives rather than the success of the government, such as in the film. “Failure of the government to establish an equitable southern boundary of the Standing Rock agency reservation. …To expend a just proportion of the money received from the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul railroad company, for right of way privileges … to issue to such Indians the full number of cows and oxen provided in article 10, treaty of 1876.” These claims and other such claims corroborate to the actual treaties and the native first hand accounts, proving that these were, in fact, failures of the government and did show that General Miles was very critical of the government’s treatment of the natives but in the film, he was shown to be very critical of the native people instead. It may have been for the benefit of Hollywood and to give a perspective of how the native people might have viewed the government officials.
The human story of the Massacre of Wounded Knee was further given life by the film’s reenactment of the event. The protagonist of the film, Charles Eastman, had heard horses come to the small town he was living in and providing medical assistance to. Through the people he was treating the wounds of, he heard of the death of Sitting Bull and then the events of the massacre. While dramatic and emotional, the scene was historically inaccurate. That was perhaps the largest piece of inaccuracies in the film, as Sitting Bull died almost over a week before the massacre happened. However, for reasons such as time constraints and risking having the story become boring or too drawn out, the film combined the events together. Despite the inaccuracy, the film gave a very human look to the massacre, showing the native women and children fleeing from the hostility of the 7th Cavalry in unjustified fire of guns and cannons. It showed graphic images of the people dying and children getting shot down and injured. Because of the storytelling and how they director made Eastman the protagonist, the viewers had been rooting for the Sioux for the majority over the movie over the hostile and aggressive whites, further impacting the impression the death of native people in that scene and in others. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee built up our positive view of the natives from the very beginning of the movie with the starting scene being the Battle of Little Big Horn where the people were shown more like the “savages” the media attempts to make them look like, and ending the movie with the now very fleshed out and human characters that were native people. This build helped the viewers break their stereotypes of Indians. This is why representation of different cultures in the media is extremely important, even if they are not completely historically accurate. They give human sides of people that have been stereotyped into something other than human, and may inspire the viewers to investigate into events even further or on a smaller scale, helped to break negative views of minorities.
In conclusion, giving the emotional and human side of minorities is extremely important in taking strides to eradicating or reducing racism, sexism, and other classist issues. Discussing the tragedies and the successes of those people is very important in giving perspectives outside of those that are most commonly listened to, and gives an irreplaceable perspective on events that you might not be able to get outside of the perspectives of the people it directly influenced. More films like Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee should be produced in order to show mass amounts of people another side to the story of the native tribes outside of the white-washed perspective that we commonly receive. I have hopes that more films showing people of color, different sexualities, and genders will be produced instead of more historical dramas about the founding fathers or other white figures of America.
Rhetoric and Ideology Project
In this project, we studied how to deconstruct America and how to analyze the rhetoric of politicians and other contemporaries. After we learned about rhetoric and rhetorical devices, we chose something we are passionate about and transformed that into an oral presentation of some form using these rhetorical devices and attempted to persuade people into our beliefs, the way rhetoric does. I created a slam poem on my perspective of sexism and the objectification of women, for example, while other people created TED Talks on the Finland Phenomenon, white privilege, and other topics.
Click here to see my seminar writings!Seminar Topics:
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Reclaim Yourself - A Slam Poem |
Project Reflection
In this project, our goal was to deconstruct America and use rhetorical discourse to persuade people to our beliefs. We built up to this project by learning a lot about American history and reading and analyzing primary sources for bias. Later on in the project, we looked into the rhetoric of politicians and learned how to use their rhetoric effectively. I did my project on sexism and the objectification of women, and decided that I wanted to make a spoken word poem that involved a lot of audience participation. I suffered a lot of writers block through the process of this project, and dedicated most of my time to watching poets perform and how they used their language like they owned it. And after I got out of that initial blank page and through a process of multiple critiques, I started writing this piece of work that I felt really proud of. Through researching sexism, I found a lot of things that I closely related to, and discovered a lot about myself and my own empowerment through this project. To me, my project transcended a school project and became a personal task for me to achieve; I really truly wanted to empower my audience. This project was extremely important to me and I believe that I made it into something I greatly valued and loved.
My rhetoric was directed towards the emotions of my audience. I made my project to appeal to people’s emotions, their values, their womanhood, their manhood. I wanted to portray my project work in the best way to reach a person’s core, and I believe that way is through poetry. I feel as though having a slam poem helps put my message out a lot clearer and a lot more impactful than a speech or a ted talk would. I think this because the topic of sexism and the objectification of women is a sore spot for a lot of people and feminism is often the punch line of a joke. So if I directed my rhetoric towards them emotionally rather than through the usage of statistics and other documents, they would feel more inclined to change their thoughts or perspective on the topic of sexism and feminism. I think my message became powerful through pulling at their emotions and empowering them to be more than their skin. I feel as though my poem jumpstarted some of the audience member’s empowerment, and as long as I had an influence on one person, I think my rhetoric was effective.
I connected very deeply to this project as a woman in this day and age. It’s almost harder to be a woman in the 21st century than it might have been years ago. Girls are not okay with the norms that have been forced onto them and if they push back onto these norms they are threatened, hurt, and sometimes violated in severe sexual ways. Women are objectified and expected to like it. And I took this very personally the more I studied. I think through my research and my project I sort of blossomed into this woman who is not okay with being objectified, being paid less, and expected to take harassment as a compliment. I am done with being an object. So I sort of became this ultimate feminist and still wanted to hang onto my feminine side. As Jessica said, she’s a femininist. This project became a task of self discovery, and I hope that I can move forward this year and take on future projects with such passion.
I had a hard time getting through the first phase of writing. I had such a horrible writer’s block that it was nearly impossible to write for a whole week. I think that if I could do this project all over I would internalize the idea that this project is my own work and that I could write whatever I want and get through that initial blank page syndrome. Other than that, I feel as though this project was not something I slacked on and was not something I put less than 200% into. I worked as hard as I could on this project and I honestly would not change a single thing. I would not want to change my process, but I would’ve liked to perform my piece more to get my jitters out and smooth out any problems I had with speaking on stage in front of a large audience.
Through this project, I learned how to be somebody. I learned how to take a stand and how to get my voice heard. I learned a lot about what it means to be an American on a global scale and on a local scale. Through this project, I learned about how politicians don’t actually lie, but rather say everything to our faces and it is my job as a citizen to understand what they are saying. I think through this project, I didn’t just become a strong woman, I also learned a lot about my new political perspective on not only the politicians, but on our foreign policy, new and old. I’ve learned how to be a critically thinking citizen, and with this new knowledge I will become a wiser and more intentional voter and learn to stand up for what I believe in. I think that I understand more about American politics than my own dad does, and so now I can form my own opinion about politics without being almost forced to conform to my parent’s political beliefs because I just don’t know much about the system. I feel a lot more independent now that I understand the rhetoric and the ideology of the modern, political, and social age.
My rhetoric was directed towards the emotions of my audience. I made my project to appeal to people’s emotions, their values, their womanhood, their manhood. I wanted to portray my project work in the best way to reach a person’s core, and I believe that way is through poetry. I feel as though having a slam poem helps put my message out a lot clearer and a lot more impactful than a speech or a ted talk would. I think this because the topic of sexism and the objectification of women is a sore spot for a lot of people and feminism is often the punch line of a joke. So if I directed my rhetoric towards them emotionally rather than through the usage of statistics and other documents, they would feel more inclined to change their thoughts or perspective on the topic of sexism and feminism. I think my message became powerful through pulling at their emotions and empowering them to be more than their skin. I feel as though my poem jumpstarted some of the audience member’s empowerment, and as long as I had an influence on one person, I think my rhetoric was effective.
I connected very deeply to this project as a woman in this day and age. It’s almost harder to be a woman in the 21st century than it might have been years ago. Girls are not okay with the norms that have been forced onto them and if they push back onto these norms they are threatened, hurt, and sometimes violated in severe sexual ways. Women are objectified and expected to like it. And I took this very personally the more I studied. I think through my research and my project I sort of blossomed into this woman who is not okay with being objectified, being paid less, and expected to take harassment as a compliment. I am done with being an object. So I sort of became this ultimate feminist and still wanted to hang onto my feminine side. As Jessica said, she’s a femininist. This project became a task of self discovery, and I hope that I can move forward this year and take on future projects with such passion.
I had a hard time getting through the first phase of writing. I had such a horrible writer’s block that it was nearly impossible to write for a whole week. I think that if I could do this project all over I would internalize the idea that this project is my own work and that I could write whatever I want and get through that initial blank page syndrome. Other than that, I feel as though this project was not something I slacked on and was not something I put less than 200% into. I worked as hard as I could on this project and I honestly would not change a single thing. I would not want to change my process, but I would’ve liked to perform my piece more to get my jitters out and smooth out any problems I had with speaking on stage in front of a large audience.
Through this project, I learned how to be somebody. I learned how to take a stand and how to get my voice heard. I learned a lot about what it means to be an American on a global scale and on a local scale. Through this project, I learned about how politicians don’t actually lie, but rather say everything to our faces and it is my job as a citizen to understand what they are saying. I think through this project, I didn’t just become a strong woman, I also learned a lot about my new political perspective on not only the politicians, but on our foreign policy, new and old. I’ve learned how to be a critically thinking citizen, and with this new knowledge I will become a wiser and more intentional voter and learn to stand up for what I believe in. I think that I understand more about American politics than my own dad does, and so now I can form my own opinion about politics without being almost forced to conform to my parent’s political beliefs because I just don’t know much about the system. I feel a lot more independent now that I understand the rhetoric and the ideology of the modern, political, and social age.