At the end of this quarter

    Today is the last of this quarter! At this time, I want to say that I am enjoy for working with you guys for this English 102 class. At this class, we do lots research on Indian Americans and really learned a lot. Before this class, I have no idea about Native Ameircans.

    In this class we read Sherman's book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, this is an interesting book, it brings me the first image for Indian's life, becasue of this book I decided my reseach paper was Inidan education. At this class, we wrote lots paper, this is my first time to wrote 10 to 15 pages paper, I have try to wrote this much in Chinese. We changed our paper and learn from other students writing , that did help me a lot. And the very interesting part of this class was the artistic project, I were enjoy working with my team members and I thought we did a great job on that project!

   Like I mentioned, My topic for research paper was Inidan education, before writing this paper I went to library and searched web sources on this topic. I learned a lot from doing those things.

   Now, it nearly to the end of this quarter, I hope all of you can have a great Spring break!

   Bye-bye!

Indian education historic background

    Before Columbus and the invasion of Europeans, North American Indian education was force on teaching children how to survive. This education taught children to take their responsibilities to their family, group, the clan, band and their tribes. Children were taught about child rearing, home management, farming, hunting, gathering, fishing, and so on. “Each tribe also had its own religion that told the children their place in the cosmos through stories and ceremonies. Members of the extended family taught their children by example, and children copied adult activities as they played.” (American Indian/Alaska Native Education: An Overview, 2010) from this we can see that before Columbus and Europeans invaded, the education for Indian people was taught them to do some basic things, all the things they studies just in order to know how to survive and take responsibilities for their family and tribes.
    In the beginning of 15th century the European invaded India that brought tremendous changes to Indians life. I found information about this invasion, it is said “Even more damaging than the aggressive warfare of the Europeans was the introduction of new diseases, such as smallpox and measles, for which the indigenous Americans had no immunities.” (American Indian/Alaska Native Education: An Overview, 2010)
    Usually after a territory was occupied there are some new elements will be brought from other people into that territory and the invasion of European did bring some new element to Indians. After European invasion, the missionary of European came to Indian. Those missionaries did not accept Indian beliefs; in their minds Indian religions was kind of the Christian devil. So the early efforts by Europeans at Indian education were focused on converting Indians to Christianity. After the aggression of European, the education of Native was changed at earlier they were taught how to survive and then they were taught how to become a member of Christian. But the missionaries demand was totally rejected for Indian people to accept and those Europeans racism did not recognized Indians as equals even if some Indians were changed, they spoke, dressed and acted like European colonists, they still not get equal right as European people. The European was pushed any Indian survivors to the western side.

Something about Normative Communication

In our daily life, we need to speak every day, speak to friends, to teachers and some strangers. We can make friends through talk to them, but we also can lose some friends through conversation. In my opinion, communication is a good skill which worth to learn about, if a person knows how to talk with different people, he may have lots friends. There are many people want to make friends with him. I think that most important thing during conversation is respect others.

This article mentions that disabilities often feel uncomfortable during conversations, because of people not given them eye contact or subtly avoid in other ways. When I was young, my mother told that do not ask disabilities some embarrassing questions and do not gazing at their deformity part of bodies. So, if I have chance to communicate with some disabilities, I always try to avoid some questions which may cause them feel uncomfortable, I avoid looking at them. During conversation I talking carefully, because I am afraid of some of my words could hurt them. After read this article I know I am wrong, conversation is interactional action if I avoid something information the disabilities will notice it, and they will feel you just think them as a different people, so they will not talk to you more about themselves. Now, if I have chance to talk with disabilities people, I will look their eyes without sympathy and I will speak to them sincerely just let them feel they are not different from other people in my mind, I think that is what they want.

During conversation we also need to respect others cultures. Studying in American we have lots opportunities to work with different people who come from different countries. Different countries have different cultures, all the things we need to do just respect their cultures do not offence them. This article, it has a chart of different race people’s communication styles. It shows that African people have more animation, gesture than Asian people. From this we could see how different cultures make different community style. African people have lots festival which link to music and instruments; they are dancing, singing that make them have a vivid expressions, they good at use gesture to show themselves to people. Compare to African people they have kind of silence actives like writing, reading or something others in door actives, that makes Asian people character are more inclined to silence.

To be concluding, if we respect other during conversation, we respect other people, respect their cultures and don’t judge people’s cultures. If we pay more attention to get into different cultures, it will be easy to talk with other people and have a comfortable conversation.

The Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History website

At the begining of this class Melissa recommend us to look at the The Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project website. Today I look this websit again and I find this is very useful website. It tells the civil right history which just happened in Seattle. Civil rights movements in Seattle not just relied on African American activists; they also relied on Filipino Americans, Japanese Americans, Chinese Americans, Jews, Latinos and Native Americans. This website provides us oral video histories, hundreds photographs, documents, movements and histories personal biographies to help people know deeply about civil rights movements which have been happened in Seattle.

Through year of 1910 to 1960, people of Seattle have been divided into color only white is the supremacy. People who have different color were excluded from jobs, schools, neighborhoods and stores, restaurants and hospitals. From my standpoint, it is really unfair I don’t know that civil rights movement through up to 1960s, which just 50 years to now. Seattle also had racial discrimination, the target not just African Americans but also Native Americans, Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders, people of Mexican ancestry, and Jews. I read a power point it is says “Green lake neighborhood  “No person or persons of Asiatic, African, or Negro blood, lineage or extraction shall be permitted to occupy a portion of said property or any building thereon except a domestic servant or servants who may actually and in good faith be employed by white occupants of such premises” (Seattle Civil Rights with Labor History Project, 2007) after I read this, I feel lucky that Seattle doesn’t have unfair polices in this time, if there were no any civil rights movements, the other colors children probably can’t go to school.

Actually, until 1966 there were nine “black school” and there were nearly one hundred “white school” in Seattle. Also at the year of 1966, civil rights groups organized two days boycotts to protest school segregation; at the end more than 3000 children went to “Freedom school” in nearby church. This website also shows the picture of Freedom School Letter and Boycott leaflet of the year 1966. Boycott was not easy to get success; there were many organizations, parents and the Presbytery of Seattle supported this boycott, but there also some organizations did not support this boycott, like Seattle Times and school board. This boycott had last for two months, from February to April of 1966. This civil rights movement made more than 3000 children can go to school to accept education. The Seattle public school boycott just one example of people took direct action to get civil rights; there also many civil rights movements are mentioned in the website.

In year 1939 to 1942 African American had a battle at Boeing, they were fighting for get jobs. In 1944 December 17^th, there was a movement called “Seattle’s Debate over Japanese Americans' Right to Return Home”. And during 1969 to 1973, Seattle Asian Americans also had lots movements in order to get more rights and the equal treatment like white people.

This website also listed all the Seattle civil rights organizations through 1910 to 1970. From these long lists, I can see how Seattle people struggle to get their rights and now they finally get success. Now Seattle is one of the modern cities, we can’t ignore those people who attended the movement. Their names and those movements all are remembered in the history. This website provides a good way to let people know the past Seattle; it can help people to know Seattle deeply.

Sweet Misery

My friend sent an video to me, she knows that I'd like eat candy. She said I need to see this video. After I watched Sweet Misery I was shocked, this was my first time to hear about aspartame. I don’t realize aspartame exist in many kinds of food, almost every food which I’d like to eat contain aspartame. Aspartame can cause many terrible influences for people’s body, like brain damage, brain cancer and some neural problems even can cause people death.

Aspartame is one kind of additive of food, to make food taste sweet. In this movie, there is a woman who gets the diabetes said, she thought sugar free contain no sugar so she drinks sugar free drink, one day after she dank four or five drinks, she fall in a faint. I was scared, because I’d like to drink coke, since I was young, coke is my favorite beverage. I thought coke is bad for my body because it contains caffeine and sugar, so I choose diet coke which contains none caffeine and sugar, now I know the diet coke contains aspartame which also can damage my body. I think I should stop drinking this kind of beverage.

When I do some research I find that it is nearly 180 to 200 times sweeter than sugar, so aspartame is widely used in many foods like tea, coffee, pudding and yogurt. I don’t know if aspartame can cause many problems for human’s body. The movie showed in the year 1967 Dr. Harold Waisman made an experiment called “week oral Toxicity study in the infant monkey”, he used 7 monkey babies and feed them with milk which contain aspartame. This experiment took 52 weeks, after 52 weeks one or two monkey died and five of monkeys were epilepsies. They sent the experiment result to FDA, but FDA still allowed aspartame add in food. Why FDA allowed aspartame? Because “the FDA calculated that an individual's daily consumption level would not likely exceed 1.3-1.7 grams per day. These calculations were based on the intake of the following foods sweetened with aspartame shown in the following table. Because of the conservative nature of the no-effect level derived from the animal tests and the 100-fold safety factor employed in relating the tests to man, the FDA believed that the uses approved by its regulation constituted an acceptable daily intake of aspartame with a sufficient margin of safety” (LEDA at Harvard Law School, 2005) from this I know, people can eat aspartame just don’t eat more than 1.3-1.7 grams per day, for me I will avoid to eat food which contain lots aspartame.

Tammy's Story

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8VXrHeLqBA&feature=player_embedded

Tammy’s story is very sad. There are so many people like Tammy; they are under the poverty line and work hard to make money. In the video of “born rich kids”, those kids’ life is easy. I do not think born rich is a wrong thing. People should not blame them just for their money. Tammy and these kids’ life are so different. The same thing is that they are both the minority group in the society.
Rich people in the society have more power, so they like bourgeoisie, and people who do not money are proletariats. The born rich kids are bourgeoisies in the society, they have money and they can hire people like Tammy. Over generation and generation, the rich people still have high economic status. People like Tammy are still working hard and earn money for living. 

Supermarket Secrets

Yesterday I saw a movie called Supermarket Secrets.The movie Supermarket Secrets shows people how the chicken meat comes from. Before the reporter came to chicken farm, she made two experiments. Twelve people attended this experiment. In the first test, people need to eat the traditional butcher’s prime sirloin and Morisons top quality sirloin steak , ten of twelve people thought the traditional butcher’s prime sirloin was more delicious than Morisons steak. In the test two, people ate the Sainsbury’s lamp chops and the traditional butcher’s lamp chops, nine of twelve prefer to eat traditional lamp chops. Why meat comes from supermarket is not as delicious as meat from traditional butcher’s meat? The reporter came to chicken farm to see how the chickens grew up.

In the year 1970 people consumed 200 million chickens per year, till the year 2004 people consumed 850 million per year. From this data, we can see people eat chicken meat more than before. That means people need more chicken, so the factory farming need chickens to grow up quick. Donald Broom, a professor of animal welfare Cambridge University said that, 30 years ago a chicken grows old need 75 to 80 days but now a chicken grows up just need 35 to 40 days. These chickens must be feed by some special feeding stuff which can let them grow quickly. In the movie, I saw more than thousand chickens were feed in the farm and some of them got diseases, some of them were died and some of them can’t be able to stand, and the flies around chickens. I can’t imaged the chickens which I have eaten lived in this terrible condition; this condition provides a good way for bacterial reproduction. Farmer use drug to stop chicken get diseases “When a farmer treats a chicken flock with the antibiotic Baytril, it kills most of the bacteria responsible for the respiratory infection — but it also kills many of the campylobacter bacteria that naturally live in the chickens' guts.”(Livestock kick a drug habit, 2005), from this we can see drug can’t stop chicken get disease. The chicken meat in the supermarket Tesco and Morisons were had brown spots on legs, I don’t think this kind of chicken were nutritious.

Topic Proposal

The topic I choose for final research paper is Indian education. I remember in the book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian, one of Junior’s teachers Mr. P told him that “The only thing you kids are being taught is how to give up.” And “we are trying to kill Indian culture” After I read this sentences I want to know what was the education of Indian, what exactly they have been taught. How they were being taught to give up. I also want to figure why they want to broke Indian culture, for doing what in education people can destroyed Indian culture.

For research paper, at first I will force on background of Indian education, I will introduce some of Indians history like how white people treat them, in order to know the environment for Indian to live. For the next in the education area I will force on what courses were taught to Indian and how teachers and white classmates treat them. Is this just happened in school of reservations or the discrimination also happened out of reservations? What was the main reason for most Indians to give up and why they give up? I will find resources online or go to the library to find some books that can help me getting know this topic deeply.

Indian Education

This article talks about an Indian man named Sherman Alexie, his education history. I have to admit that I was moved by his story. The most important thing I learned from his story is never give up no matter what problems will happen, just keep dreams in mind and become the person who I want to be.

When we face troubles the easiest choose for us is giving up and we always can find an excuse to give up making it sounds acceptable. In this article, when Sherman was a grade one student, he should to ensure his classmate teased on him. When he got into grade two, his teacher asked him to finish the spelling test which was designed for junior high students in order to make laugh on him. But he spelled all words correct and then his teacher asked him to be respect. After I read this, I ask myself what I can do if these things happen to me. I think I may escape to home and refuse to go to school. Then I may become someone just as same as Sherman’s classmate who can’t read. Sherman didn’t give up even if he faced his also dark skin teacher unfair treatment. Sherman got success, at the end he finished high school and got scholarship. His former classmates, some of them even can’t read, some of them just given attendance diplomas, some look forward to the parties and some are shaken, frightened because they don’t know what will happen in the future. They were become callousness people.

I noticed a segment from this article, when that man Wally Jim killed himself and the white trooper asked “why’d he do it?” all the Indians just shrugged their shoulders and looked down at the ground. In my opinion, those people were already bow to their destinies so that they became indifferent people who even do not care their compatriot’s death. In Sherman’s education history not just white students teased him but also some Indian students teased him too. It often happens in school, when teacher does not like one student the other students may stay away from the student, in order to keep themselves safe. I remembered when I was a grade three student, one of my classmates she did not study well so teachers did not like her. And my classmates they were keep distance from her, she had no friends. I decided to become her friend, so my classmates just stay away from us. Until today, when I recall this memory I did not regret at all and I am glad what I did.

Sometimes people may lost themselves in the daily life, the hardest thing in the world may be hold on and become the person who you want to be. Sherman got success, I hope I can get success and become the person who I want to be in the end.

Artistic Respond

When we did our artistic work together, we did change our minds for how to make our work looks more special than other team’s works. We spent one hour to deciding make our work into 3D dimension in order to make the characters of the book looks alive.

All of us chose one or two characters from Sherman’s book, and then we draw the characters or scan the picture from the book and cut them down then painted them in color. After we all had our people done, we began to create the box which we needed to put those characters in. Our group’s purpose was, to make the Indian’s reservation in front of people, when people see our work they will understand the Indian’s reservation condition deeply. In order to make our artistic work looks vivid, besides human we also made sun, clouds, trees, Indian style house and dogs in to that box. After we done our work looks like a real Indian family, Junior’s family they lived in the little box.

Outside of the box, we also devised it to make it look good and also connect to Indian life. After we talked, we download a picture of map from the reservation where Junior’s live mentioned in the Sherman’s book then we download an Indian women’s picture and adhere it out of the box. So, no matter from the outside of the box or inside of the box, people will know out artistic work has link to Indian life. After we done, we all singed our signatures on our work.

This is a memorable experience with my team mates, I like to working with them.

Something I read

I read an article which link to Native American's life. I think the author is mainly talking about the treatments of the indigenous Americans which were the Indians and the African Americans. I knew that the Indians have been suffered a lot since the Europeans immigrants have landed on the America and the white people got their land and destroyed their culture and ‘kill’ them in the ‘Eugenic’ way. What really surprised me is that some people even sold the tracts which were originally belonged to the Indians for profits of so-called their own race. Moreover, those ‘some people’ were presidents of America: Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson. Those two presidents hold the point of view that the Indian people should not survive in the white society, they not only consider the forests which the Indians had relied on for so many years were useless but also forced and segregated them to the reservations.

As for the African Americans, they were included in the white society but with inferior status which were slaves. This was the biggest contradiction that had existed in American society for hundreds of years. When all the white Americans were told that ‘all men are created equal’, the African American were being slaves and doing laborious work for the white people. The white people totally forgot that the blacks made a lot of fortunes for them and the only thing they were afraid about was the slave insurrection. Which shocked me is that after the Civil War, slaves were given freedom from their ‘Massa’. They didn’t think there were free and they kept working for rest of their life. And they even thought their ‘Massas’ were nice and kind.

My elementary school stories

    After I read Junior's stories I began to think my elementary school in China. I don't know why, there were few students be considered as "bad student" in some teachers eyes just because they were not get highly points on their exam. At that time, in China after grade exam teacher would speak out student's scores in front of all students and berated students who got fail of exam. In those teachers eyes, those F students were "black sheep" of class. I remembered that a little boy who always fail in the exam, teachers were laughing at him and asked other students do not speak to him, if some one told to him then other students were not be allowed to speak to you too. Since that time, no one told to him. Every student was afraid to speak with him. Now, I do not know where he is, but I am sure that his elementary school stories was shadow of his heart. At that time, we did not have ability to describe bad or good, in our mind teachers always right. I did not know why teachers can humiliated a eight years old boy.
  When I was grade two student, our math teacher was very stringent. If we got mistakes on homework she would slap our in the faces, it was illegal in China, so every time he slaped students faces she would alarm the student do not tell their patents. I remembered one day a boy of my class, he did not pass the final exam, the math teacher asked him in front of the class and asked all girls to scrape his nose in oder to humiliated him. At the same time that teacher was keep slaping on his face till he was bloody then she stopped and she was scared. She asked others students "Did someone watch me hit him?", we were slience and she kept asking "Did someone watch me hit him?" "No" we answered. That day was the first time I considered a teacher is not alway right. She told us how to lie, that was terrible. After few days later, school's persident knew this thing and the teacher was fired. But I know to the student who was hitted by her will not forget that day.

something about Stillaguamish Tribe

Here are two links that I found to help me get knowing Stillaguamish Tribe deeply.
http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1574.html
It is says that,

"The Stillaguamish Reservation is located in northern Snohomish County near Arlington, Washington, between the Cascade Mountains and Puget Sound. The Stillaguamish Watershed drains 694 square miles of Snohomish and Seattle." Since I came to Seattle for almost two years I have not noticed that there is an indian tribe here.

http://www.stillaguamish.nsn.us/index.htm

The Stillaguamish Tribe also has their own festival, remember that a festival called Pow Wow which opened in UW last Sunday, that is the most festival of Stillaguamish Tribe!