Assignment: Blog Entry for Monday, October 7, 2013

First Peoples of North America

Assignment: Blog Entry for Monday, October 7, 2013                      Dan Grigsby

Online resource: Maps of Native American Tribes in the United Sates

http://www.native-languages.org/states.htm

Since our readings for this module started with the native peoples of the arctic and the subarctic and because they are the native peoples I know the least about, I decided to do a short study of those territories and the customs the tribes that make those areas their home.  My study starts with the web source listed in the heading of this blog provided to us by Native Languages of the Americas website. I think this link was provided to show the diverseness of cultural geography, as it exists in all the regions of North America.  One thing I found is that the harsher the environment the more harsh the lifestyles turned out to be. Looking at the maps online and seeing where these people made their living was quite a surprise to me. I didn’t really realize how different the climate could be in just a short distance in the Arctic Circle. Some areas have enough of a warm season to make vegetation a viable form of sustenance for the natives who lived in those subarctic areas. However, in just a distance of fifty to a hundred miles or so the cultural geography would show evidence of some distinctive changes, some you might see as being mild and some that I feel will be viewed as extremely harsh. I do understand however that these harsh cultural practices are influenced by the environment and have come about over thousands of years of living under such conditions but will, without a doubt, seem somewhat gruesome and a bit ghastly to must of us in this class.

There are some similarities as well and those similarities seem to draw a common thread from the subarctic areas lifestyles to the far more harsh western arctic areas’ lifestyles.

Allow me to put what I see as “the best foot” forward and then we can talk about the harder to accept issues.  All the native peoples of both the western arctic and subarctic territories relied greatly on local game ranging from caribou, moose, bears and various birds along with fish and sea mammals for their food, housing and most importantly, their clothing. “Arctic peoples were organized socially and politically to maximize the individual and communal procurement, distribution, and consumption of food . . . no family could survive without the combination of a good hunter and a skilled woman. Both group and individual hunting were important and food was always shared . . . People generally ate almost every part of the animal that was possible to eat . . . upon a successful hunt, they would divide the meat among the crew and then distribute what was left to the rest of the people . . .Hunters were required to be respectful and thankful to the animals they killed, as the souls of the animals would eventually be reborn and, if they were unhappy about their treatment, would not allow themselves to be killed for food again.”[1]

“As clothing was very important, considerable time was spent in its production and maintenance. Ugandan clothing needed to be warm and waterproof especially for the men who worked on and near the water much of the time. Hooded shirts and full-length parkas were commonly used and were typically made from gut, the intestines of sea mammals . . . woman generally wore clothing of seal or otter skin. Both sexes carried small pouches for personal items.” [2]

They all used dogsleds as a mode of transportation however less in the subarctic areas then in the arctic and western arctic areas. In the subarctic areas where the winters were more seasonal, dogs were used but more to pull toboggans. Also the natives developed snowshoes for winter use but when the weather was permitting the main mode of transportation was often in canoes.

                                                                                                [1] An Introduction to Native North America, Mark Sutton, pages 56-57.

                                                                                                [2] An Introduction to Native North America, Mark Sutton, page 69.

Even the western arctic and arctic natives used and developed boats made ingeniously from natural materials to travel and more importantly to hunt for food. In all three regions what was their the “technology” was dominated by the use of skins, kayaks and or canoes to hunt for food, make their clothes and to build their homes. Another thing that they all seemed to have in common was what I refer to as the native one-two punch. That is to say the all became, at one time or another, reliant or dependent on relationships with white trading posts and experience devastation of their native populations through foreign diseases.

Those native peoples who lived in the harshest of environments practiced the harshest of cultural lifestyles. The Unangan natives, for example, of the western arctic were forced at times to practice infanticide and very rarely cannibalism. I found it ironic that most of the time the babies that were killed were female babies but by the same token most all the adult conflicts or arguments were over women. Perhaps if there were more women, there would have been fewer conflicts? Being someone who is planning to earn a Masters in Ethnomusicology I found it intriguing that they settled there deputes most often with singing.

This was something that I did not know, the practice of infanticide among the natives of the arctic regions. I was a little shocked by it. I can, with some amount of thought and survival rationale, see why but I just can’t rap my head around it completely. I imagine the site of such a thing to a missionary would have been horrendous and savage. But would it be any less humane to have watched a small child starve and/or freeze to death slowly over a period of months? These people have come to this practice after thousands of years of survival experiences and hardships. Can we really judge this behavior, I think not. The people of the western arctic who had the harshest cultural geography were directed by nature to live a lifestyle as harsh as their surroundings. They were called the Unangan. The native people of the slightly milder cultural geography had it a little better but still very close to the western arctic dwellers. They were called the Quebec Inuit. The people who seemed it have the most agreeable cultural geography also seemed to have the most agreeable lifestyles and they were the Athapaskan and the Algonquian. As if it were a celebration of life all of these peoples made highly decorative clothing in contrast to the hard lives they lived.

                                                Map of the territory highlighting the Subarctic

  Inuit People: Building a traditional snow house or Igloo

Unangan People : Show w omens traditional dress and ornamentation. I picked this picture of only women to contrast the Unangan practice of infanticide of female babies.

Algonquian People: A colorful example of tradition Algonquian regalia.

Additional Web Resources:

North American Indians – Subarctic Culture Area

http://www.cabrillo.edu/~crsmith/noamer_subarctic.html

Infinity of Nations: Art and History in the Collections of the National Museum of the American Indian

http://nmai.si.edu/exhibitions/infinityofnations/arctic-subarctic.html

 

Assignment: Blog Entry for Monday, September 30, 2013                      Dan Grigsby

Online resource: Indigenous Native American Prophecy video with Floyd Red Crow

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7cylfQtkDg

This video opens with a short reference to the native belief and concept of the circle, the “full cycle” of nature and natural creation. Floyd Red Crow used the words “time evolves and comes to a place where it renews, again”. Many may not have picked up on that his use of the word “again” albeit natural and without emphasis, is a key word in that it declares the native belief of the circle of natural creation.  I just want to talk about that for a moment before I go on. The idea that creation is chaos is very native and is something that is not feared by native people. The universe is huge and we cannot control what happens in it any more than we would be able to control any series of seemingly accidental events. I know we all want to believe that there is a greater power or something logical and sensible about how the universe operates, but the native cycle concept for creation makes the most sense to me. The universe has its very own pulse and it breathes independently of all that exists within it, including human beings. I feel this is one of the reasons we hang on to spiritually and religion, to give us a feeling of security and a bases for our belief and faith. On the other hand there have been intellectuals and scholars who argue that organized religion and even the very existence of God maybe just another arrogant attempt by man to control everything, including the universe and our existence in it. Don’t get me wrong I am a spiritual person; I pray and do believe in God but I take my native spirituality and natural teachings very seriously.

Floyd Red Crow also mentions “there is first a purification time, then there is renewal time.” You can see this thought process or what I feel is more like a collective memory of past events, with many native cultures. The Hopi and the Aztec for example have creation stories that tell of a cycle of earth cleansing and rebirth often attached to some natural cataclysmic event or events. Brother Red Crow then warns “we are getting very close to this time now”. I couldn’t help but notice how he said those words. There was no drama or fear, no evangelistic fever of any kind; he just made a simple statement. This is it in a nutshell, recycling is a natural process and all things in one way or another go through this process. Any lesson worth learning can be found in nature as easily as anywhere else. The wisdom of native peoples is proof of that.  Many of my classmates have commented on the prophecies foretelling the arrival of white people to these native lands. In the video Floyd Red Crow states another well know native prophecy. “We were told we would see America come and go, and in a sense America is dying from within because they forgot the instructions of how to live on Earth.”

One very riveting statement for me was when Floyd Red Crow remarks on Native American genocide stating that when Columbus came to this hemisphere there were sixty million native people here but by the Second World War there were only eight hundred thousand. This Native American genocide continues today.

 Genocide, dictionary definition: “the systematic killing of all the people from a 

 national, ethnic, or religious group, or an attempt to do this.”

 Genocide, legal definition: “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing bodily harm or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

“The reason that some people use the word genocide in discussing the treatment of Indians is that every single part of the dictionary and legal definitions of the word can be used to describe the historical treatment of Indians.” [1]

I repeat, “this Native American genocide continues today.” You always hear people say in regards to what the Nazis did to the Jewish people in World War Two that we will continue to show these atrocities so we will never forget and so it will never happen again. Sixty million natives at the time of Columbus . . . eighty thousand by the time of the Second World War. I ask you, never happen again? To whom?

[1] Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Indians But Were Afraid to Ask, Anton Treuer, Borealis Books, pages 36,37.

Assignment: Blog Entry for Monday, October 7, 2013                      Dan Grigsby

Online resource: Maps of Native American Tribes in the United Sates

http://www.native-languages.org/states.htm

Since our readings for this module started with the native peoples of the arctic and the subarctic and because they are the native peoples I know the least about, I decided to do a short study of those territories and the customs the tribes that make those areas their home.  My study starts with the web source listed in the heading of this blog provided to us by Native Languages of the Americas website. I think this link was provided to show the diverseness of cultural geography, as it exists in all the regions of North America.  One thing I found is that the harsher the environment the more harsh the lifestyles turned out to be. Looking at the maps online and seeing where these people made their living was quite a surprise to me. I didn’t really realize how different the climate could be in just a short distance in the Arctic Circle. Some areas have enough of a warm season to make vegetation a viable form of sustenance for the natives who lived in those subarctic areas. However, in just a distance of fifty to a hundred miles or so the cultural geography would show evidence of some distinctive changes, some you might see as being mild and some that I feel will be viewed as extremely harsh. I do understand however that these harsh cultural practices are influenced by the environment and have come about over thousands of years of living under such conditions but will, without a doubt, seem somewhat gruesome and a bit ghastly to must of us in this class.

There are some similarities as well and those similarities seem to draw a common thread from the subarctic areas lifestyles to the far more harsh western arctic areas’ lifestyles.

Allow me to put what I see as “the best foot” forward and then we can talk about the harder to accept issues.  All the native peoples of both the western arctic and subarctic territories relied greatly on local game ranging from caribou, moose, bears and various birds along with fish and sea mammals for their food, housing and most importantly, their clothing. “Arctic peoples were organized socially and politically to maximize the individual and communal procurement, distribution, and consumption of food . . . no family could survive without the combination of a good hunter and a skilled woman. Both group and individual hunting were important and food was always shared . . . People generally ate almost every part of the animal that was possible to eat . . . upon a successful hunt, they would divide the meat among the crew and then distribute what was left to the rest of the people . . .Hunters were required to be respectful and thankful to the animals they killed, as the souls of the animals would eventually be reborn and, if they were unhappy about their treatment, would not allow themselves to be killed for food again.”[1]

“As clothing was very important, considerable time was spent in its production and maintenance. Ugandan clothing needed to be warm and waterproof especially for the men who worked on and near the water much of the time. Hooded shirts and full-length parkas were commonly used and were typically made from gut, the intestines of sea mammals . . . woman generally wore clothing of seal or otter skin. Both sexes carried small pouches for personal items.” [2]

They all used dogsleds as a mode of transportation however less in the subarctic areas then in the arctic and western arctic areas. In the subarctic areas where the winters were more seasonal, dogs were used but more to pull toboggans. Also the natives developed snowshoes for winter use but when the weather was permitting the main mode of transportation was often in canoes.

                                                                                                [1] An Introduction to Native North America, Mark Sutton, pages 56-57.

                                                                                                [2] An Introduction to Native North America, Mark Sutton, page 69.

Even the western arctic and arctic natives used and developed boats made ingeniously from natural materials to travel and more importantly to hunt for food. In all three regions what was their the “technology” was dominated by the use of skins, kayaks and or canoes to hunt for food, make their clothes and to build their homes. Another thing that they all seemed to have in common was what I refer to as the native one-two punch. That is to say the all became, at one time or another, reliant or dependent on relationships with white trading posts and experience devastation of their native populations through foreign diseases.

Those native peoples who lived in the harshest of environments practiced the harshest of cultural lifestyles. The Unangan natives, for example, of the western arctic were forced at times to practice infanticide and very rarely cannibalism. I found it ironic that most of the time the babies that were killed were female babies but by the same token most all the adult conflicts or arguments were over women. Perhaps if there were more women, there would have been fewer conflicts? Being someone who is planning to earn a Masters in Ethnomusicology I found it intriguing that they settled there deputes most often with singing.

This was something that I did not know, the practice of infanticide among the natives of the arctic regions. I was a little shocked by it. I can, with some amount of thought and survival rationale, see why but I just can’t rap my head around it completely. I imagine the site of such a thing to a missionary would have been horrendous and savage. But would it be any less humane to have watched a small child starve and/or freeze to death slowly over a period of months? These people have come to this practice after thousands of years of survival experiences and hardships. Can we really judge this behavior, I think not. The people of the western arctic who had the harshest cultural geography were directed by nature to live a lifestyle as harsh as their surroundings. They were called the Unangan. The native people of the slightly milder cultural geography had it a little better but still very close to the western arctic dwellers. They were called the Quebec Inuit. The people who seemed it have the most agreeable cultural geography also seemed to have the most agreeable lifestyles and they were the Athapaskan and the Algonquian. As if it were a celebration of life all of these peoples made highly decorative clothing in contrast to the hard lives they lived.

 Inuit People

Unangan People

  

 Algonquian People

Additional Web Resources:

North American Indians – Subarctic Culture Area

http://www.cabrillo.edu/~crsmith/noamer_subarctic.html

Infinity of Nations: Art and History in the Collections of the National Museum of the American Indian

http://nmai.si.edu/exhibitions/infinityofnations/arctic-subarctic.html

Assignment: Blog Entry for Monday, September 30, 2013                      Dan Grigsby

Online resource: Indigenous Native American Prophecy video with Floyd Red Crow

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7cylfQtkDg

This video opens with a short reference to the native belief and concept of the circle, the “full cycle” of nature and natural creation. Floyd Red Crow used the words “time evolves and comes to a place where it renews, again”. Many may not have picked up on that his use of the word “again” albeit natural and without emphasis, is a key word in that it declares the native belief of the circle of natural creation.  I just want to talk about that for a moment before I go on. The idea that creation is chaos is very native and is something that is not feared by native people. The universe is huge and we cannot control what happens in it any more than we would be able to control any series of seemingly accidental events. I know we all want to believe that there is a greater power or something logical and sensible about how the universe operates, but the native cycle concept for creation makes the most sense to me. The universe has its very own pulse and it breathes independently of all that exists within it, including human beings. I feel this is one of the reasons we hang on to spiritually and religion, to give us a feeling of security and a bases for our belief and faith. On the other hand there have been intellectuals and scholars who argue that organized religion and even the very existence of God maybe just another arrogant attempt by man to control everything, including the universe and our existence in it. Don’t get me wrong I am a spiritual person; I pray and do believe in God but I take my native spirituality and natural teachings very seriously.

Floyd Red Crow also mentions “there is first a purification time, then there is renewal time.” You can see this thought process or what I feel is more like a collective memory of past events, with many native cultures. The Hopi and the Aztec for example have creation stories that tell of a cycle of earth cleansing and rebirth often attached to some natural cataclysmic event or events. Brother Red Crow then warns “we are getting very close to this time now”. I couldn’t help but notice how he said those words. There was no drama or fear, no evangelistic fever of any kind; he just made a simple statement. This is it in a nutshell, recycling is a natural process and all things in one way or another go through this process. Any lesson worth learning can be found in nature as easily as anywhere else. The wisdom of native peoples is proof of that.  Many of my classmates have commented on the prophecies foretelling the arrival of white people to these native lands. In the video Floyd Red Crow states another well know native prophecy. “We were told we would see America come and go, and in a sense America is dying from within because they forgot the instructions of how to live on Earth.”

One very riveting statement for me was when Floyd Red Crow remarks on Native American genocide stating that when Columbus came to this hemisphere there were sixty million native people here but by the Second World War there were only eight hundred thousand. This Native American genocide continues today.

 Genocide, dictionary definition: “the systematic killing of all the people from a 

 national, ethnic, or religious group, or an attempt to do this.”

 Genocide, legal definition: “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing bodily harm or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

“The reason that some people use the word genocide in discussing the treatment of Indians is that every single part of the dictionary and legal definitions of the word can be used to describe the historical treatment of Indians.” [1]

I repeat, “this Native American genocide continues today.” You always hear people say in regards to what the Nazis did to the Jewish people in World War Two that we will continue to show these atrocities so we will never forget and so it will never happen again. Sixty million natives at the time of Columbus . . . eighty thousand by the time of the Second World War. I ask you, never happen again? To whom?

[1] Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Indians But Were Afraid to Ask, Anton Treuer, Borealis Books, pages 36,37.