Tayo

During this past week my class and I have been reading the book Ceremony written by Leslie Marmon Silko. Although we are not very far into the book yet, it is already very interesting. The book focuses on a World War II soldier named Tayo who happens to be half Native American and half White. So far the biggest things that have stuck out to me from this book are the roles that racism and post traumatic stress play. Racism has already played a huge role in this book. This book is constantly talking about how Tayo feels rejected from both the Native American and White societies, and even rejected from his own family because of the fact he is both Native American and White. Another very prominent piece of this book that has play a huge role is post traumatic stress. As I said before, Tayo fought in World War II which lead to a huge mount of suffering in his life due to post traumatic stress. The book constantly refers to nightmares and basically hallucinations that Tayo has suffered from as a result of his service in the War. Overall, these were the two ideas that stuck out to me the most, and I believe the two things that have played the biggest roles in this book thus far. I am very interested to see if this trend continues and how these roles may change throughout the remainder of the book.

Ceremony

Navajo Tribe

    
        Treaty of 1868                                     Navajo Family

The Navajo Tribe is the largest federally federally recognized tribe of the United States of America, with over 300,000 enrolled tribe members. The Navajo tribe was established on June 1, 1868, as a result of the Treaty of 1868. The Navajo Indian Reservation is located in the Four Corners area, occupying parts of Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico, with the largest concentration of Navajo population being in the state of Arizona. The Navajo land is also the largest area of land belonging to Native American Jurisdiction in the United States, covering 27,425 square miles.
                                  
          Navajo Flag                                         Navajo Seal


       Navajo Nation Borders
Manuelito is one of the most important war chiefs from the Navajo Tribe. Manuelito lived from 1818 to 1893 and was born in Southeastern Utah. Manuelito translates to "Little Manuel" and he was known by different names in his tribe, such as "Holy Boy" and "Black Weeds". Manuelito was known for leading his nation in a rally against the oppression of the United States military.

                               Manuelito in his younger and older years

Cherokee Tribe

             
                 19th Century Cherokee Members

The Cherokee tribe is the second largest federally recognized tribe in the United States with just over 285 thousand members. The Cherokee tribe is located in the Southeast United States, primarily in Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and East Tennessee. The original Cherokee Nation was founded on November 7th, 1794.
     
                        Cherokee Nation Flag                                    Cherokee Nation Seal

One of the most famous Cherokee members was a man named Sequoyah. The name Sequoyah translates into the English name "George Gist" or "George Guess". Sequoyah lived from 1770 to 1840. Sequoyah was a silversmith, but was more widely known for his creation of the Cherokee writing system that became official in the year 1825.
                    
   A painting of Sequoyah               The Cherokee Alphabet, developed by Sequoyah

Dances with Wolves

Generally, films that we watch in school are boring and slow, but so far I have been pleasantly surprised by the film, "Dances with Wolves". I was honestly just expecting this movie to be a boring, old film but I was far from correct. There was something about this film that immediately hooked me and immersed me in its story.

The first thing that interested me was the fact that this movie took place during the Civil War. I have been strongly interested in the Civil War ever since I learned about it in fifth grade, so anything related to it instantly grabs my attention. Another thing that I have found very cool about this film so far is how big of a role animals had. I really enjoyed seeing the bonds between Animals and Humans so far and how they played into the movie as a whole. One more thing that really interested me about this film was of course the Native American culture that is displayed. I have always been interested in this culture, so it was interesting to learn a little bit about the culture of these people, and it made me realize how different two cultures can really be from one another, in ways such as clothes, communication, gestures, manners, and other things along these lines. All in all, the film "Dances with Wolves" has been very enjoyable so far, and I look forward to watching and studying the rest of this movie.

Reflection

Generally, if I am being completely honest I am not very fond of language arts classes, but this class was a breath of fresh air from the average language arts class. One of the thing that I enjoyed most about this class, which was actually a huge surprise to me, was the amount of writing we did. We wrote far more than any other language arts class I have been a part of. Even though while I was in the process of writing it may have been horrible, I realized that all the writing that we did this semester formed me into a much more skilled writer by the time the end of the semester came around. It is in a way like practicing a sport, even if all you do is watch and research baseball, the only way you will ever get better at the sport itself is by actually playing it. I say this because I realized that if all you do is learn about writing but never actually write, you will never improve your writing skills as much as you have the potential to. Overall, I believe that this class has helped me become a far better writer over the course of only one semester which is one reason why I have enjoyed the class so far.
Another big reason why I have enjoyed this class so far is the fact that it has helped so much with me preparing for college in multiple ways. The first way it has helped me prepare myself for college is the fact that it has given me a taste of what the amount of writing we do in college will be like. I know that in college it is much more, but I am hoping the amount of writing we do in this class will make the transition to college not as much of a rude awakening. The other big thing that this class has helped me with in regards to college preparation, is not helping with college itself but helping with the application process. This class helped me so much with writing my college essays, and I actually believe that without it my essays would not have been half the quality that they turned out to be. I truly believe that this class has helped me develop greatly as a writer, and even though I never expected to say this about a language arts class, I actually really enjoyed this class.

Laramie.

After reading the Laramie Project, I was very impacted by the story it told but one thing that enhanced this a lot was watching the film of this play. Even though the reading of this play was very detailed and vivid, watching the film version gave  me a whole new view of the events that happened. One of the things that happened in this story that the film really emphasized was the verbal violence that took place after Matthew Shepard's murder. One example of this violence was the fact that the Westboro Baptist Church picketed Shepard's funeral. The film really showed me how intense this picketing was and the extreme measures people went to on topics about this case. Another huge thing that the film version of this play did a great job at portraying and emphasizing was how eerie and desolate the location of Shepard's murder really was, while at the same time still being a beautiful place. This may sound rather insignificant, but I had a completely different picture in my head and this film showed the viewers exactly what Matthew Shepard had seen during his last hours which I believe is very important. Although the written play, the Laramie Project, did a great job at explaining the events that revolved around Matthew Shepard's murder in great detail, the film version of this play opened a completely new window and a new perspective on Shepard's case and the events that happened because of it.

20/20

During this week my class watched, read, and discussed many different topics related to the killing of Matthew Shepard, but the one thing that we watched that impacted me the most was easily the 20/20 Report on this case. This is because this report presented so many different views and so many different ideas that were not presented in any of the other items we read or watched. One of the things that shocked me that was discussed in this report was the fact that members of the Westboro Baptist Church Picketed Matthew's funeral, saying that he deserved to die because he was homosexual. This amazed me because I never thought anyone could go so low to ever say something like this about a person. Another reason why this report was the thing that shocked me the most, and probably the biggest, was the fact that both of Matthew's killers, Aaron McKinney and Russel Henderson, were interviewed during this report. This was very interesting to me because of some of the things that they said, and just the fact that it was the first time that they were ever interviewed after Matthew's death. One of the big things that Aaron McKinney brought up during his interview was that Matthew's murder had nothing to do with the fact that he was homosexual, and this was very interesting because almost everyone believed that this was the sole motive for Matthew's murder. Another thing that was brought up during this interview that was very shocking to me was during Russel Henderson's interview when he said that all he did was tie up Matthew, and other than that he never touched him. He even says that he tried to stop Aaron from beating Matthew, but Aaron responded by hitting Russel with his gun. During his interview, Aaron says that all of this is indeed true, and that he feels that it is completely his fault for Russel being in jail. Overall, this report was packed with shocking information, and it was the one thing that impacted me the most out of all of the different things my class went over.

The Laramie Project

Although the Laramie project is a very entertaining play full of information, it can be very hard to understand. I have really enjoyed reading this play so far, but the style of writing that it is done in can make the play hard to follow. In my opinion, the biggest thing that causes this is the fact that the play is constantly jumping back and forth between characters. One example of where the book jumps from character to character is in the beginning of the book where a rancher named Eileen Engen talking about how important it is to maintain your land in Laramie, and then out of no where a character named Doc O'Connor came out of no where and said "I Love it here." (Kaufman 7). Things like this happen very often throughout the book, and although it is possible to adjust to, it still makes it very confusing in the sense that it is hard to tell who is talking and when. Another thing that made this book hard to follow was the fact that all of the characters would be responding to questions, but the questions would not be presented. I would have changed this by making the questions much more obvious and also by having better transitions between the characters. I understand that this play would be much more understandable if it was presented to me in a visual form, but I still believe there are better ways that this play could have been put together.

This is a picture of how the play may look, and an example for how the stage for this play may be set up.

This video shows a visual representation of the play, and even though this video makes a few things more clear, it is still somewhat confusing because of how it was written.