Casner Parfait
9/22/2014 09:34:46 pm
In Malea D. Powell’s excerpt titled “River” I really enjoyed how she looked at the technical definition of rhetoric and found multiple meanings in regards to the word. However, Powell still believes that rhetoric is a type of art, which I found intriguing. Powell also states that if we are all supposed to “eat from the same bowl” then we must accept all forms of rhetoric that appears in different texts or in different forms. The excerpt states how in the 19th century that whites spoke on behalf of Native Americans, and when Native Americans did speak on their own behalf they had to write in English to appease their white audience, they could not write in their own language. This led to other Native Americans not being able to read these books, that excerpt states that these days are now over. Native Americans have the right to write in their own language or their own rhetoric, which I believe Powell is trying to address in “River”.
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Jacob Jarred
9/22/2014 09:35:02 pm
After reading Down By the River, an essay by Malea Powell regarding the education and philosophy of respected Native scholar Susan La Flesche Picotte, I was struck by a lot of the motives within her work.
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Amy Quill
9/22/2014 10:08:11 pm
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Elizabeth Grillo
9/22/2014 10:11:26 pm
In the reading Rhetorical Sovereignty, I couldn’t help but feel sympathetic and sad for the Native Americans. The Native Americans had to go to a new school and pencils were the first Europeans technology that was introduced to them and they couldn’t believe what it was able to do. What saddened me was when they had to choose new Europeans names that were written on a board. Not only did they have to compromise some of their culture, but also they had to pick random names to be called for the rest of their lives. Our names are our identity and who we are, and they were forced to change theirs.
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Brittany Sobolewski
9/22/2014 10:40:02 pm
Malea D. Powell's Down by the River spoke to me out of both of the reading assignments for this week. The Native people learned how to write or were rather forced to write and become a part of the European race. Changing their old names to become essentially more "American". What down by the river talks about though is relearning the traditions of the Native people. In the first story Powell talks about her attempts to learn about traditional beadwork. She struggled with it for a very long time until her teacher helped her with it. The teacher tells her to not work so hard at it and to let everything come naturally. I feel that this lesson is a good lesson for not just the author but for everyone. We live in a day and age where we want everything to be perfect and fast. We work hard to get at that perfection when in reality nothing is perfect. Sometimes we even give up if its not as perfect as we want it. If we were to take this lesson as advice and guidance I think there would be less people unhappy with their lives because then instead of worrying about working for perfection they would instead be happy with what they have.
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Rachel Ivil
9/22/2014 11:07:14 pm
In the reading “Down by the River” by Malea Powell she talks briefly about how she aims to present information that will get people to take Native Americans seriously. She claims whether we are speaking about contemporary scholars, or historical figures we need to learn to take them seriously even though most writing about them up to this point had “done a pretty good job of not doing a very good job”(41). Not only does she want American Indians to be taken seriously, but she wants all stories to be considered important. She speaks about considering stories from all different cultures and viewing all of them as significant. That statement really got me thinking about how true that was, anytime I learned about another ethnicity’s stories whether it is African American, Native American, Latino, etc. it was always considered an extra. It was not included in our base history classes, and rather viewed as additional stories, because their authenticity was unclear or they had no significance in our lesson. I agree with Powell that these stories do need to be taken into account, and more importantly viewed as equal. As a future educator I want to be sure that I give my students a well-rounded and complete education, not leaving out major parts of peoples’ history because they ‘don’t fit into the plan’.
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Stephanie Papasodero
9/22/2014 11:50:22 pm
After reading “Down by the River” by Powell I realized how important it is that all human beings need to come together and learn the different ways of life each person uses so we can keep up with the changing world. Native Americans were the ones that came up with “the middle ground” which is a political, economic, and social system based on equal sharing and borrowing between allies. They knew that to help themselves they need to borrow European ideas and goods. During the 19th century whites spoke on behalf of Indians and when Indians did write their own books they had to address it to white people, since they were writing in English and their people couldn’t read them. The Native people knew that things had to change if they wanted to their communities to survive and that was to learn from the white people. If they wanted their people to be able to read the books they wrote or even understand the English language, they needed to learn from the best, the white people. Native people wanted to put an end to the way the United States Government was treating them and get the attention of people by telling them the harsh and cruel things the government was putting them through. Helen Hunt Jackson decided to write a record of our broken treaties and call it “A Century of Dishonor”. She wanted to tell the people of America what we have been guilty of this whole time in dealing with Indian Nations and the wrongs that had been perpetrated upon the Indians. The U.S. government is all about if someone breaks the law then they have to face the consequences for their actions, but when it comes to them being the ones breaking the law there are no punishments for them because they have a sense of entitlement since it’s their laws. The U.S. robbed them of their land, homes, and basically their life. Jackson thought that Indians should be given citizenship, education, and property to make up for so much pain and suffering they went through.
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Brittney Melvin
9/23/2014 12:16:28 am
Brittney Melvin
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Scott Elliott
9/23/2014 12:29:10 am
Scott Elliott
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Zack Teixeira
9/23/2014 04:21:45 am
Having read “Down by the River” by Powell it was refreshing to hear of a victory shared amongst the Native Americans thanks to alliances made between the tribes. Despite the Europeans military dominance the Native Americans were able to come together to defeat them in a large scale battle. It’s not a surprise as to why these alliances were made since they helped ensure survivability of the people. Though it goes against the Native American’s thinking, I wonder what a fully united tribe of Native Americans would have been like. I also find myself agreeing with the statement made in the article that a culture must adapt to its surroundings to survive. Perhaps that is the reason why that Native Americans were having such a hard time warding off European intrusions was because they weren’t adapting well enough. Many think that by keeping a culture static and unchanging they are keeping it pure however no culture in the world could survive like that. Native Americans did take in many European resources and even some of the customs as well. Even the large scale alliances were uncommon until the settlers arrived and it became vital to do so for them to survive. I also wonder at what the Native American history was like before Europeans arrived and how much life differed once the Europeans did show up. Most accounts of American history is from only after the Europeans arrived and much of what life was like before their arrival is a mystery to me. Powell raises a good point that the minority ethnicities deserve a much larger role in rhetoric and academics especially in history rather than giving one central viewpoint of the more dominant powers. Though I believe that problem is hard to avoid since history has always been written by the victors, it’s nearly impossible to have an unbiased account. The article “What Do American Indians want from Writing?” by Scott Lyons touches upon the distrust Natives have when reading English accounts of history or rhetoric due to this bias. Again this is why giving the minorities, such as the natives, a larger role in academics is important however daunting that task may be. As a student with an education minor I already believe that the education system is in dire need of reform and this is just one of many examples as to why.
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Caitlin Seddon
9/23/2014 07:44:28 am
In “Down by the River”, Malea Powell begins by telling a story of a tribe. I found the beginning of this story to be interesting because it talks about an alliance that was between many Native American tribes. This was the greatest defeat Americans suffered by Native Americans. Though it appears that this was savage, we have to realize that the tribes were protecting their land and family. After this the Native Americans decided to change their culture because this was a way of survival. “We borrowed European goods and ideas, and these became part of our cultural traditions. After all, all cultures must change if they are to survive,” (Powell, 39). I think this is where the stereotype that Native Americans no longer exist. Many people thought they didn’t exist because they changed and adapted their culture. It appeared to everyone they were gone because they made the decision to adapt like the Europeans. Like everything you have to adapt to survive, I don’t know if Native Americans wanted to change their culture or did it only for survival. Though I know, and we all know that his or her culture did survive, not everyone conformed to the European culture. I think many people were forced to change. Knowing that their culture did and has survived this long, I think the alliance mention where understanding and respect of each culture occurred. Many people must have been clueless to the world around them. Considering there were probably Native Americans around them.
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Merrilee Brown
9/24/2014 07:18:06 am
Merrilee Brown
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Timothy Morrison
9/24/2014 09:15:13 am
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Nicholas Machado
9/24/2014 09:43:33 am
This is my OLD post from Tuesday on Powell and Lyons, but I wanted to share it here because I put in on the other thread since this one hadn't been posted yet.
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Nicholas Machado
9/24/2014 10:05:21 am
Here is today's submission on Thomas King's work.
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Katharine Trahan
9/24/2014 01:35:19 pm
Response to Thomas King’s Work
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stephanie papasodero
9/24/2014 03:18:02 pm
After reading “The Nations Within” by Deloria I began to think of how hard it must be for Native people to believe that the United States government is actually trying to help and protect them because it seems like the only reason they do this is to keep taking from the Natives. We seem so greedy and after everything we have and the power we have, it is never enough we always want more. Even though when we think of Indians we think of people with feathers, costumes on, dancing to Indian music, living in tee-pees, etc. in the end they are no different than any other American. Most Indians live in poor, isolated places and there are many American people that live in these conditions as well. American Indians represent the only aboriginal people still practicing self-government after a new and modern civilization has been brought into their lands. One thing that is important to them is keeping their culture and history alive and keep it going forever. Just because a new updated government has been created does not mean they have to jump right at it and leave everything they once knew behind, they are not going to follow the U.S. just because they have power and tell them this is the way to live. The way they are living has worked for them in the past and is working for them now in the present and will continue to work for them in the future and when the world does change they will have to adapt better but on their own terms. There are some things they could learn that would benefit them and help make them stronger but that does not mean that they have to give up and have the U.S. government take over all it means is that they need to change up some things and figure ways out that would benefit them.
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Ronaldo Fontes
9/24/2014 10:22:32 pm
Ronaldo Fontes
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caitlin seddon
9/24/2014 10:26:10 pm
Stories are unique and different. Something that is told from one person to another in the Okanagan understood this. They knew that each time they heard a story it would be changed somehow. It would be changed by the accent, and dialect. Or it could be changed by the order, or possibly something added to the story. This is an interesting perspective on storytelling, whereas I always thought a story would be the same. I suppose it is like the game of telephone, which I never realized before. This doesn’t bother the Okanagan people, they embrace the changes in the story, they believe they are merely retelling the same story in a different pattern.
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Brittany Sobolewski
9/24/2014 11:20:51 pm
In Thomas King's The Truth About Stories he tells about an early life with his mother. Growing up fatherless his mother had support them. In a male centered society women were often forced to be seen and not heard, in the kitchen. Whatever job a woman did have was as an assistant and even then they did not get as much income as a man would have. The sad thing about these stories is that they become reality more often then they should. A couple get married and have children and then the husband leaves after realizing he can't deal with the commitment or stress involved with raising a family. Raising a family takes self-sacrifice and many people do not understand this. The author and his brother become the children that were left behind. The whole story becomes a part of the normal tale. This happens in America more and more because people marry and have kids without understanding the responsibility. Stories are what give lessons such as this to fellow readers. If readers can get the advice out of what is being told then there is hope that the lesson will sit in the minds of the reader.
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Brittney Melvin
9/24/2014 11:45:48 pm
Brittney Melvin
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Kyle Tocher
9/25/2014 12:22:17 am
Sovereignty and other such governmental and national aspects of cultures never really peaked my interest. This reading was no different, but again, it got me thinking about Native Americans in a way that I never have before. When I think of Native Americans back in the older times never once did I consider that they had an organized ‘government’ of any kind, or as it is referred to for the entirety of this reading, their sovereignty. I’ll admit I did always think of Native Americans as the barbarians they were believed to be for quite some time, with the scalping and massacring they were remembered for. However, this reading was actually an eyebrow raiser, the Native American people actually fighting for their independence. I knew that they would fight to protect their respected tribes, but not in unison as a culture rather than tribes.
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Scott Elliott
9/25/2014 12:41:54 am
Scott Elliott
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Zack Teixeira
9/25/2014 03:16:24 pm
Zack Teixeira
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