Creative Projecttt :)))

The Cheater Cheated

The inclusion of this scene is necessary to understand that cheating can become cyclical. The French tradesman boasted about how great of a cheater he was, but it was not until a man on the street told him of Iktomi. Iktomi was said to be the best cheater there was, he could steal anything from you without you even knowing. He was as witty as they came and it is because of his modest attitude that he was able to get away with these sneaky deeds. However, in life there will always be someone better than you at everything no matter how good you are at something. Iktomi faces this problem as he rides off into the horizon.

As Iktomi rides off into the horizon with his newly acquired horse, jacket, hat, and boots, the French man screams, “Sacre Bleu.”

Iktomi removes his jacket to reveal his backside back to the French man and sticks out his tongue to prove that he was tricked. This is when Iktomi makes the mistake of his cheating career. It is at this moment where Ikto bends down to unveil his jacket that the horse is spooked. He begins to kick and flail as he notices that it is not his French owner. Ikto is thrown to the ground during which his horse runs off. The horse runs off out of sight while Ikto is forced to walk back to the town towards the French man.

When Ikto reached the town the French man was the first to greet him.

“I see you have returned without my horse.” The French man said.

Ikto was rather embarrassed, but confidently remarks, “Yea, I realized if you and I were to team up and work together we could cheat the entire world.” Confused by Ikto's reply the trader hesitates a minute and decides that this will be a great idea. The first trick they decided to do was get a ride from these two men on horses. They get these two men's attention and they come over to speak to Ikto and the trader. The men ask, “What can I help you with?”

“Well, we just need a ride to our place, can you do that for us?” The two men reply, “Sure, we just need you to remove all of your clothing except underwear so we know you do not have any weapons.” As both of the men strip down to their underwear and put their clothes in the bag at the back of the horse, the two men look at each other with a coy smile. With the kick of their legs the horse gallops away with all of their belongings. They trot off with elegance and grace and yell back to the two fools, “Maybe next time you will not cheat others.” Little did these two know these two men were watching these two from the beginning. He watched Ikto cheat the trader.

Trip to Cherokeeeee :)

Cherokeeeeee!

First off I think you should follow the link above and you will have an idea of what I am about to say about Cherokee, North Carolina.

 This picture just shows that it was a tourist full trip.  The way the indians portrayed themselves was very discouraging to me.  People were waiting in front of shops just waiting to perform for the white man.  They were wearing very extravagant costumes, not even clothes they would be wearing in the past, just clothes that would catch our attention and entertian us.
But to move on to the actual learning experience of the trip...
The overall experience from the museum was very entertianing.  I think I learned in about an hour than I could of ever learned in my lifetime.  Overwhelmed with reading I began to skim very quickly.  I was drawn towards the information that was about the games they played such as chunkey.  It was played by rolling disc shaped stones across the ground and throwing spears at them in an attempt to place the spear as close to the stopped stone as possible.  I think if I could throw a spear and be that accurate I would be amazed with myself, but the game overall interests me.  The other parts that I was drawn to in the museum was more of the trickster tales.  There were a couple of different writings on how things came to be. 
The second part of this trip was to go to the Cherokee mound.  The picture below is the picture I took while there.  You can not see much of a mound, but I promise its there.  This was probably the best part of the trip.  I enjoyed it because I love being outside and the weather was gorgeous.  Plus, it was kind of an experience to actually walk around it.  Not exactly invigorating, but it was something different to do for the day. 

After that we took a trip to the casino were I was amazed to learn how much money the kids get when they turn 18.  Almost 100,000 dollars is given to them on their 18th birthday in hopes to help pay for college and an education and to further their lives.  But this part seemed to be more of a sales gig to me so I honestly stopped paying attention :/

The final part of course was trying the traditional Native American food.  FRY BREAD!  A super dense, fried bread.  This was made into the more modern taco, which was also a dissapointment.  I would probably never eat it again because I may have exploded if I ate anymore of it.  But overall the trip was fun, it provided me with a whole bunch of new experiences and I learned a lot more than anticipated. 

Respect- (n) esteem for or a sense of the worth or excellence of a person, a personal quality or ability, or something considered as a manifestation of a personal quality or ability.

The Lakota way is a book that is based around valued principles.  I focused on the chapter about respect.  Not only becuase it was assigned to me, I feel like respect is one of the most important values to understand and have for everyone. 

In this chapter they focus on the deer woman, a beautiful woman with long, black hair down to her knees.  Ultimately she can be compared to a siren, men would be attracted to her and spend the night with her, but they would forget about their families and loves of their lives and never want to return.  She only shows herself to the lone hunter.  One night she comes across Kokalaka, an experienced hunter, and tries to lure him in.  He is tempted, but while growing up his grandma had told him about the deer woman, and although she was very persuasive out of the respect of his grandmother he did what he was always told.  He refrained from going with her and she turned into and angry deer and he shot her with an arrow and she was never seen again by him.  If he had disrespected his grandmother's wishes he would of fallen into the siren's trap. 

There are a couple of other scenarios in this chapter that come into play and all focus on respect, like not killing innocent animals for fun, but out of neccessity.  Respect helps keep the world in check. 

Cherokee Forgiveness

Not being a very emotional person I found it extremely hard to try and connect with Patricia Grant speak about the Cherokee Forgiveness.  She is a member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. She explained to us the troubles her people endeavored, her meanings of trauma, and the sacred hoop of balance. Trauma, to her, is cumulative, and psychic wounding across generations was related to the massive root trauma. This trauma was a direct result form the Trail of Tears. Where 17,000 Indians were removed from their homes and forced to march through the winter months with almost no sleep in attempts to try and exterminate them. Indians owned almost all of America and after a period of 500 years it dwindled to a mere 50,000 square acres. I knew it was hard for her to stand up there and talk about what she has dealt with and the horrific events that occured, but I was unable to fully understand the pain she felt since I am not a compassionate person. 

Sacred Hoop

Throughout her presentation she compared Indians to Americans. Indians work in a circular fashion while Americans work in a linear way. The sacred hoop emphasizes balance, harmony, the whole, and spiritual being. They have different morals and way of living that we do not. The first thing she said was that WE did this to her people and at first I took it personally because it was not I who did this and she seemed as though she was holding a grudge. Afterwards, I decided that it was not us she was mad at. It was our ancestors and there is nothing we can do to change the past, but it is still hard to deal with the trauma that emerged from this event.

The journey to forgiveness is an effort to help enlighten people about the tragic events suchs as the Trail of Tears and hopefully make people realize the amount of trauma that has been passed through the generations as an effect to these events.  More information about the journey is provided through the link below and there is a video on the site :) Enjoyyyyy!
Journey to Forgiveness and Healing

It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know. -RWE

The other day in class we were confronted with the question of what we have learned so far throughout the course. Off the top of my head I went blank, had I learned nothing so far? It took a couple minutes to start piecing things together throughout the course. The course requires me to think further into the blatant and more into the undefined. Reflecting upon the material studied made me realize how much I had truely learned about the Native American culture and life in general.

First of all I realized that prejudiced is still happening everywhere. I never thought of how often it occured because it is not as blatantly stated as it used to be, but it is still there. I also never realized the extent to which it could affect a person. How much of our past do we let define and effect our future.

A began to realize these thoughts when learning about Sherman Alexie. He would display his feelings and troubles through his writings and his fellow people did not understand why he would display his awaful past. He was filled with hurt and pain but allowed himself to reveal these thoughts through his works which made them easier to deal with and keep going in life. He stood up to his past and did not allow it to affect him too much.

People would also use Trickster tales to seperate themselves from a traumatic past. The tales would be a way of displaying their feelings, but in a way that would make them humorous and easier to deal with. Coyote would deal with bad event but the story would be twisted to make it funny and resonate with the pain easier. People still do that to this day. Laughter is the best medicine.

Even after dealing with it though how do you confront these troubles? You separate yourself away from the hurt and pain, do you forget it completely or confront the pain and make it be known that your ok with it and that you have learned from it?

From History to Disney

While reading The World Turned Upside Down I read a section and it had to do with John Smith.  Naturally, while reading I started to doze off and think back to watching Pocahontas and remembering her relationship with John Smith.  While going off on this tangent in my head I began to wonder how historically accurate can this Disney movie truely be? So, I decided to use the wonderful world of Google to do some research. 

From To

Matoaka, or more known as Pocahontas, was the daughter of Powhatan, the ruler of the land called Virginia.  To change history into a kid's cartoon is a hard thing to master and along the way some things must be sacrificed.  Disney had to eliminate all of the "bad" things that John Smith did in order to more concisely state the love story that occured between Pocahontas and John Smith.   In the Disney cartoon John Smith and Pocahontas met in the woods and immeadiately fell in love.  In reality, they met when Pocahontas rescued him from his execution.  The movie also showed that John Smith was captured one night when he went to sneak out to see Pocahontas.  The true story is that he was captured when him and his Indian guide split up during one of their expeditions.   Then the Powhatan adopted him as their son where he was widely accepted in the tribe.  In reality John Smith went back home to England so she got engaged to Kocoum  and she actually married John Rolfe instead.

Although Disney created a great love story, the story was fairly accurate. It had most of the love between John Smith and Pocahontas accurately represented but, unfortunately you could not use the movie for educational purposes.  I would of loved to watch this movie for funsies :)

FANCYDANCING

Trailer for "The Business of Fancydancing"

"The Business of Fancydancing" provided me with a new insight about the American Indian culture.  Overall, the movie was not one of my favorites.  The movie was very choppy and presented the facts in a fashion that I did not find interesting to follow.  The movie would be in the present time then flip to a flashback very often, then ocassionally switch to a moment of dancing and chanting.  Although it presented moments of heartfelt moments that touched the heart, I am not a super emotional person so the movie did not keep my attention.  I also found the movie to be very provacative, the language and open sexuality of the movie made me feel uncomfortable. 

The movie was about Seymour, the main character, conflict between his heritage and his life with his white boyfriend.  The movie begins as Seymour returns to the reservation for the funeral of his friend Mouse.  His friends from the reservation begin to question his motivations for writing his poems and making them public.They say that their culture should not be open to the public.