Pictures Say it All...

 

For this blog post, I was basically thinking that pictures are stronger than words. These pictures are all things that I found on Google or Pinterest, when I searched "Native Americans", except the last picture, which I took myself. A lot of these pictures are really disturbing, like the first man pictured, with his shirt off, the caption under that one read "Indians are hawt". The one woman showed, in the sequence of three, really was blatantly gross. The woman was clearly portreyed as a sexual object. Also, notice that there are a lot of headdresses. Notice the dog and car dressed up as "friends" AKA the Indian and the Pilgrim. I am also a fan of the bike with tie die that had the caption "an Indian bike, if they rode bikes". Yes because I'm sure Natives are too odd or are dead, hence they cannot ride bikes, but If they did they would apparently ride hippy bikes. Good, that makes sense. The "historical" pictures are great and I'm sure really accurate. Why is this okay?

I would also like to say that until this class I wouldn't have known the magnitude of how offensive some of these things are. I think on the surface I would have realized that it was probably a little sad or rude but I would never have been as incensed as I am now. I have really learned so much from this class, not just the main points like rhetorical sovereignty or the different themes in Native humor, but small things that I never would have thought of. Such as i never would have thought that I would have pounced on someone for making an "Indian headdress" or calling someone chief. I wanted to thank everyone who was in this class for making it really intellectually stimulating and thought provoking. Also a special thanks to Dr. Morris for being an innovative and extremely interesting teacher and facilitating a fantastic class. I am so happy I took this class. Thanks again!

The National Museum of the American Indian- Washington D.C.

So, our class went on a field trip today to visit the National Museum of the American Indian. It was a really impressive day, from start to finish. I really loved the museum, in the fact that there were so many things to look at. The first thing that I noticed that I really liked was the architecture of the building. It does not look like the rest of the buildings that are on that block, it completely stands out in that the building is made of some type of natural stone. It honestly looks like sandstone. Then, you walk around the building and there is a hugely impressive fountain that is just chilling there, with even ducks living there. Overall not only is the exterior of the museum esthetically pleasing it also makes perfect sense to me and was so beautiful.

We then went inside. The first thing that I noticed was the rotunda-like ceilings. There was so much natural light pouring forth, and there were prisms on the wall so that at each different point of the day there were rainbows scattered along the walls and floor of the main area.

Then, we went to go see the actual exhibits. It was so cool; honestly I have no idea where to begin. I really liked how the curators separated the different tribes but still made the area open up to the whole main part, showing unity of the whole space. I had no idea that Native beliefs differed so much until I saw the displays that explained what each tribe believed. I really loved all of the costumes, the part about how horses are a part of many Native cultures, the presentation about the Inuit people and their love of the whale and how they could not exist without each other. I also loved that we had the opportunity to sample some real Native food. The frybread was absolutely fantastic and I know that I will be going back to this museum one day and spend the whole day there again, because there was so much great stuff, that I don’t know that I got to see everything.

Ranting, What Else is New?

Can I just start off by saying that I am so glad that we aredone speaking about humor in class… Obviously everyone knows how much I do notfind Native humor funny. It does irritate me though because of the fact that Ido not find Native humor funny, people in our class assume that means that Ihave no sense of humor. I am not the Grinch or Scrooge; I laugh quite a bit,and make others laugh as well. I realize that everyone has different senses of humor;I just wish that people wouldn’t judge me based on my “lack” of humor. There isno reason for people to be snarky and say things like “what a shocker” or “wellshe doesn’t find anything funny” while speaking about humor in class. Justbecause I don’t find this kind of humor funny does not make me have a monotonepersonality. (If you still think so, you should see me watch The Big Bang Theory-I think that most of the class would be taken aback at how much I laugh). Personally,I don’t know all of the people in our English class, and I thought that we weretrying to stop judging people through what we have learned in this class, but Iguess I was wrong, apparently being judged on what I find funny is still fodderfor others to poke fun.

Also, I was really alarmed when Joe was talking today aboutsomeone thinking our program was racist. If anything, it really is the exact opposite;we are fighting stereotypes, racism, and the social norms. It was reallyirritating that people would take the poster out of context, and I agree whenTaylor said that they probably will not be attending our program. People reallycan be so irritating and ignorant.

"Fighting Stereotypes"

Sorry for the rant, this was obviously not the best blogpost ever; I was just irritated for a change.