Native American Tribes

The west contained plains Indians such as the Cheyenne, Apache, Sioux, and Comanche.

                         - These Native Americans were hunters and gatherers of the plains.

                                      - They lived off the land and hunted the wildlife that did the same

                                       - They also farmed

                                       - These Native Americans were the stereotypical Indians that most people saw in

                            movies

                                       - They were strong warriors of the plains but were depicted as the villains of the movies

The Northeast contained Indians such as the Iroquois and Algonquian.

                                        - These Indians used the woodland for shelter by making use of the vast population of trees

                                         - The woodland was also used for tools and fuel

                                         - The large quantity of  plants and animals gave a bountiful food supply

                                         - They however where not just hunters and gatherers, they also fished and farmed the land.

There were also Indians in the Arctic known as Eskimos and consisted of tribes such as the Inuits and Aleuts.

                                          - These tribes lived primarily off of hunting wild animals for their fur and meat

                                          - They also fished when food supplies were low

                                          - They lived in igloos and adapted well to the harsh cold environment

Mind Map Connections

- Sickness
. Tayo suffers from PTSD from the war
. He has constant flashbacks reminding him of the traumatic experiences he witnessed in WWII
. There he also found acceptance by his fellow soldiers but once the war was over he went back to being discriminated against as an indian
.  “Here they were, trying to bring back that old feeling, that feeling they belonged to America the way they felt during the War.”
. He longs to find that feeling of acceptance again

- Society
. Society does not accept Tayo because of his mixed race
. He is both Native American and white leading to him being split between both worlds
. “You drink like an Indian, and you’re crazy like one too – but you aren’t shit, white trash.  You love Japs the way your mother loved to screw white men”
. Comments like this are why Tayo is lost. He is treated like he does not belong anywhere and this troubles him and only makes his illness worse.

- War
. Tayo was in WWII
. He has both good and bad memories from the war
. In the war he gain acceptance from other soldiers and became part of that family
. As a soldier he was treated the same as everyone else and not like an Indian
.  “Here they were, trying to bring back that old feeling, that feeling they belonged to America the way they felt during the War.”
. He also however experience sever tragedy with the death of Rocky which led to his illness

- Family
. Because of his mixed race, his friends and family constantly hurt him
. His family wished he died and Rocky lived
. This constant remembrance of what had happened in the war only fuels the illness further and adds stress to his life which is already extremely complicated

Stereotypes & The Real Injun

- Red Necks
- When we think of red necks we think of the gun loving, moonshine making, camo wearing country boy that lives out in the woods looking for something to kill.
- The media portrays these people as this through TV shows and social media sites
- Most people are not afraid of rednecks but they do come off as unintelligent leading to some looking down upon them
- these stereotypes are completely untrue, however. Some of these stereotypes that are place on rednecks might apply to a person but each and every one of us is a unique individual that cannot be summed up by a single word. They are no different than you or I and everyone deserves better than to be categorized by ones outward appearance.
- The Real Injun
- The stereotype for Native Americans is that they all know how to ride horses, are master hunters and bows man, hunt buffalo, and live in a tepee.
- They were branded with the name Indian and were treated like uncivilized savages. They were not even recognized as human beings.
- They movies from the 20th century did not help with their image. The films only reinforced the stereotype. They mostly only shown plains Indians and all of their customs became the standard for every other Indian in North America.
- These two stereotypes are very similar in that each and every one of us are too unique to be branded with a stereotype. We are all our own individual person and should not be judged before we are even spoken to

Connections: In the White Man's Image & Ceremony

- The white man tried saving the Indians by killing who they were
- "Kill the Indian, save the man"
- Exiled Indians were looked upon like zoo animals as they came in from the west
- Experimentation was preformed in Florida in attempts to turn the "savages"into civilized humans. They gave them soldiers uniforms to make them part of the community.
- This relates to how Tayo is always lost within himself and makes him questions who he is because he is both Indian and white. Tayo was also a soldier who gained a sense of belonging when he had the uniform on, just like the Indians in Florida. Once the war was over he lost the community of soldiers that he was with and was once again lost
- Schools are erected to teach the Indian children the culture of the white man
- Children were taken from their homes and from their communities to live in boarding houses in the east. This destroyed them mentally in that they lost their culture and their family. Their homesickness led to many of their deaths.
- These children are also like Tayo in that his community was not there to support him. Very few accepted him for who he was. This Isolation only deepened his condition.
- “Cattle are like any living thing. If you separate them from the land for too long, keep them in barns and corrals, they lose something. Their stomachs get to where they can only eat rolled oats and dry alfalfa. When you turn them loose again, they go running all over. They are scared because the land is unfamiliar, and they are lost. They don’t stop being scared either, even when they look quiet and they quit running. Scared animals die off easily.”

Silko, Leslie Marmon (2006-12-26). Ceremony: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) (p. 74). Penguin Group US. Kindle Edition.

Splendid China (Chipotle Essay Constest)

Submit a short, original (and amazing) essay about a time when food created a memory. 

Have you ever had a time when you were craving something so badly that you would do anything to obtain it? Well that was me last thanksgiving. My brother and I were visiting Florida to go see our family for the holidays when we got the bright idea to make the night a little more interesting. Our friend at UCF had been talking about this abandoned amusement park, known as Splendid China, near him that he had been dying to see. So my brother and I packed our gear and headed off into the darkness to begin, what would be, one of the most memorable nights of my life.

After a 3 hour drive we made it to UCF and picked up our friend; from there it was only another hour of driving. As we approached our destination we took note of the ominous clouds in the night’s sky and we knew that this adventure was about to get much more interesting. All of a sudden it hit us, overwhelming gusts of wind followed by a torrential downpour of rain. It was a tropical storm! Just our luck... but we were not going to let the weather hold us back, so with spirits still high, we trekked onward into the night.

Finally we made it. To gain entrance into the park, however, we had to cut through thick overgrown vegetation that engulfed the park with only the brief flashes of lightning to illuminate our path. As we immerged from the foliage we entered a whole other world. Crumbling replicas of China’s iconic landmarks stood abandoned in the raging storm, slowly being reclaimed by nature. We wandered the park for a few hours, taking pictures as we pleased to capture the surreal land that we entered. Before long it was time to leave. Drenched by the rain, we piled into the car and started making our way back to UCF.

After such this long journey, we were wet, tired, and STARVING. We all had one thing in mind though… Chinese food. When we left Splendid China it was around 1 o’clock in the morning leaving most restaurants closed. Lucky for us, college town restaurants stay open much later. Time was not on our side but we were determined to get what we wanted. We floored it back into town and made it in the nick of time. I savored every bite as it completed a truly memorable journey. It truly is the simplest things in life that bring us the most joy.

We Don't Need No Education

Pink Floyd: Another Brick in the Wall

The plot of this video is following Pink Floyd's childhood though his school. In this video he depicts how schools abuse, mold and manipulate children into what they want. In the video, the molded children are depicted as deformed and expressionless by the masks in which they wear. They are not freed until they take that mask off and express themselves in their own way. In the video, however, the children erupt into chaos destroying everything including their teachers. It is not until the end that it is revealed that the more chaos was merely a dream by the Pink and we are flashed back to the classroom from which he came.  

In this scene from the music video, a student is in a tunnel as a train passes by. In this train, there are children hanging out the windows with identical masks on their faces reaching out for help. Through editing, these scenes are shuffled quickly with a focused shot of the boy, surrounded by darkness, looking back at them leaving the viewer puzzled as to whats inside the train. I believe the train is representing the return journey to the school where they are forced to become these faceless bodies.

In this scene, the children are walking on a conveyor belt to a hole at the end. As the camera moves down, we see that the hole is a meat grinder that is pumping out what remains of the children.  I believe this represents the final product in which this school wants. The children are forced to become these expressionless zombies only later to be thrown in with the rest and literally become nothing more than a pile of meat. 

In this scene, the children have broken free from their captures control and total chaos ensues. They start tearing down the school brick by brick. In this rather important scene, a wall is shown in the middle followed by two figures on the right, who are breaking it down with sledgehammers. These figures are shrouded with smoke, while on the other side, it is relatively clear. The wall is a very important symbol to the artist throughout the full film. The wall symbolizes a mental wall that Pink built in order to isolate himself from the world due to traumatic events in his life such as: the death of his father, over protection from his mother, and abusive from his teachers. In this scene the figures are trying to breakout of the haze. They do manage to tear it down, but in the end it is shown that it was only a dream indicating that Pink's wall is still up leaving him locked away in his own mind.

Westboro Baptist Church

The Westboro Baptist Church has gain a sufficient amount of media attention due their hateful protests against homosexual people, Jews, and politicians at major events such as funerals, large public gatherings, and televised events. These unethical methods of protest leads to their overall disapproval by most of the nation but also contributes to the success of their power in social media.

The Westboro Baptist Church uses social media differently than most groups do. They do have a webpage but instead of advertising it on websites they take to the streets to let the people do it for them. By protesting at such inappropriate places with such blunt and hurtful messages, they manage to attract a large amount of media attention to themselves. News teams film them protesting, allowing them to get their message out through mass media. This message can therefore attract those who agree with their point of view allowing the cult to grow.

Video showing multiple interviews with WBC members.

The Westboro Baptist Church also attracts unwanted attention. Due to their heinous methods of protests, multiple individuals and groups have attempted to blocked the Westboro Baptist Church out of events. One example happened in Aurora, Colorado where the community came together to form human walls in attempts to deter the Westboro Baptist Church from protesting at a memorial service for the victims of the movie theater shootings. They have also been attacked both physically and through the internet. Multiple members have been assaulted and groups such as "Anonymous" have shut down their web page. Although the Westboro Baptist Church is one of the more disliked groups on the web, it is a perfect example of how an organization can use social media to proclaim their message.

Wall of people blocking WBC members from entering a memorial service for the victims of the theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado

Anonymous hacking and exposing Westboro Baptist Church's webpage 

Foo Fighters mocking WBC members for protesting at their show

Works Cited

"About Us." Westboro Baptist Church. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 May 2015. <http://www.godhatesfags.com/>.

"35 Times The Westboro Baptist Church Lost Badly." BuzzFeed. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 May 2015.

Democratization 

With all of the advances in today's technology, more and more people are able to be discovered and originality is able to be exploited. What was once unheard of in previous years is now able to flourish and reach the viewers who are interested in the way someone or a group of people take art and enhance it to make it their own original piece. In the video above, a group of friends took an already popular song and molded it in their own unique way to create something that others might want to listen to. Today these people known as "The Bottle Boys" go on tour to share their creation with the world. Youtube, which is mass communication, allowed them to reach out to the large audiences of people who like their work. “The word influence… refers to the effect the mass communicated message has on the audience” (Wilson-Wilson) Throughout their videos, they constantly thank the viewers because they know that without them and the mass media capabilities of YouTube, they might have never have been where they are today.  

Mediocrity

 

Mediocrity can be defined multiple ways. For example it could be a lack of skill or professionalism reflected in ones work or it could be a lack of originality in the way someone expresses themselves. In the video above, the song "Stupid Hoe"(edited to make suitable for a blog post) by Nicki Minaj is a prime example of how an artist could lack professionalism in their work. Pulling a line from this song gives the viewer a perfect example of the artists immaturity and inability to show pride in their profession. One example is "Ice my wrist-es, then I piss on bitches, You could suck my diznick, if you take these jizzes" These lyrics are what make the song mediocre. In today's society, “...anyone can record music now…”(Dworsky and Kohler). This also means anyone can become popular and influence their fans in the wrongest of ways. Children listen to this music and are influenced by what they hear. Mediocrity should not be accepted and allowing those who poison the minds of the innocent is something that we cannot tolerate in today's society.


Works Cited:

Press, Pause, Play. Dir. Victor Kohler and David Dworsky. Perf. Olafur Arnalds and Seth Godin. FilmBuff, 2011.

Wilson-Wilson. Mass Media/Mass Culture, An Introduction. 5th ed. N.p.: McGraw Hill Companies, 2001. Print.

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John Trudell's poems/philosophies and their connection to Ceremony

In Ceremony, Tayo is lost in his own mind. He is pushed in and out of reality by his illness obtained from the war and is attempting to find his place in this world. Tayo however cannot do this because he is holding himself back. He has pushed all of this guilt onto himself for the actions that he has done, one of them being Rocky’s death. John Trudell says that “Guilt gets in the way of us being able to recognise and react to our life choices”. Tayo must learn to move on and accept what has happen. The more he blames himself, the greater his illness will become. We are all responsible for what we do in our lives so one must take control and lead him/herself down the right path.

In our lives now, everyone is focused on how they can better themselves. The cancers of the world such as greed and war fog our judgment and disconnect us spiritually from our past. We are hollow in spirit walking the land waiting for death. Tayo is in many ways like however he is attempting to connect back to his spiritual side, back to his past ancestors. He is struggling to acquire what he lost due to the pressure of his situation, not being a full blooded native american. He must accept both sides though. One cannot just accept one of the sides he is from. He must learn to combine both and own the person that he is.

We are all humans, different in many ways but countlessly similar in others. Although society wants to brand us with names and put us in groups, they cannot take away the undeniable element of our humanity. Tayo deals with this first had but in his case. he is rejected by both sides. The native american community does not accept him, nor the whites. Because of this, enormous amounts of stress and inner conflict are brought upon him. John Trudell make an amazing point in his poem. It is that “We’re the People”, all of us. The sooner we as a society realizes this, the sooner we can accept each other.

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