Kanehsatake Flim

After watching a portion of the Oka-crisis I was slightly lost so I had to do some reading up on Wiki...(of course!). This land dispute I think quite frankly should have never happened and for some reason while watching the film it seemed to be like a modern war where food was being withheld. I thought it was amazing how the Mowhawk people actually made a blockade on the bridge to keep people from coming in and coming out. I think that this situation of the white people holding the land would have happened years and year before, and not something in 1990. The city should have just gave them their land because it was there, rather they wanted to build something erroneous as a golf course? That is the ultimate disrespect, and I think that they should've honestly seen this conflict coming. I can't wait to watch more!

Film from 9/24

Today we watched the film on the Indian Boarding schools, and I think possibly the one the stood out to me that was the most striking was how some of the children would really embrace the whole boarding school thing. I mean do understand it as being a way for survival to just go with the flow in order not to be beaten or seem weird, but I wonder how others felt about those who easily when along with the "kill the Indian" ideology. There was a girl whom really embraced this and she played the lead when they did Hiawatha where they would wear "traditional clothing" and this would be one of the only times it would be acceptable to be Native. There is a book by Tim Giago called Children Left Behind...where he recounts his time in boarding school, and all of his memories of interaction with the white people who ran it were nothing but negative. He would talk about how names were changed in order for acceptance in white culture and to get rid any ties to ones former, and the notion that your history begins when we say it begins. They were taught to forget everything before even coming to the boarding school because it should not be apart of whom they are today in "killing the indian ideology". He also accounted for when the children were bathed how they were to almost bathe in kerosene...would this be like the cleansing process for the women of the fur trade-how they were to be cleaned in order to be accepted....anyway all of this makes me want to explore on negative and positive associations with indian boarding schools...lemme know what ya'll think...

Charla


I feel as if I were in this situation were being Indian was acceptable when white people felt like it(which was never) I feel I would resist...but really how could I say that. Would I just need to conform to cultural genocide....what would others do?

Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide (Intro & Ch.1) & Changing Ones Ch 1. & 2.

Intro
In the intro the reader is introduced to the how sexual violence is way and goal of colonialism. I made notes in the margin asking is that the only way? Did people believe that in order to penetrate and change and culture you go directly for the women first? I am not sure how much I understand that concept. Later on it is said that it would stop women from having that desire to reproduce I guess it would supress it slightly, but that notion is ignorant all together.

Ch. 1
Chapter 1 begins with Rape being patriarchal control and that it "undergirds the philosophy of the white-dominated women's antiviolence movement"

Changing Ones
I can honestly say that I never even heard of the Berache men that identify themselves as two-spirited, but really they would be considered as gay or trans. I know this is completely stereotypical of me, but you only see Native men as stoic- but it was interesting because they wore they women's clothing, and did "gendered" activities like whatever was considered women's work, but tI think the most interesting thing was that sex waith a berdache was a source of power. I would have just imagined that these men would be shunned or considered taboo in the culture, but yet they were accepeted. is this because they were called "two spirted"?..... just some thoughts...