Native Americans and the Environment

 

Before the Europeans came to North America, the natives lived synonymously with the environment. They hunted, fished and grew crops, but only in amounts that were sustainable and necessary. The natives lived with nature, instead of trampling it. When the white man came ashore though, Indian agriculture was dramatically changed. As the Europeans bean to take over more and more land, they pushed away the ideas of agriculture that the Indians had to teach and instead, implemented their own. Not adopting the Natives' ways though, wasn't enough for the whites, they instead had to force their ways upon the Natives. The thoughts of the European's were that the only good kind of Indian, was one that was assimilated into European culture. This belief was so strong, that many whites thought that there was no point in a Native being alive if it didn't follow the European ways.

Cultural ideas such as language, schooling, and agriculture were forces on the Natives. After being relocated to specific reservations, the Indians were forced to cut out their old ways of hunting and fishing, and to implement farms. The Europeans were not pleased though, when they saw that the Indians were making a good profit off of their farms. Some farms were then cut into sections or taken over by the white men in order to cut off the Indians' profit.

We now know today, as we experience the effects of global warming, that the European forms of agriculture are not in any way sustainable or sensible.  It would have benefited the United States significantly more if the Europeans had listened to and observed the ways that the natives lived with the land.The Europeans could have leaned a lot from the Indians and we still could use their help in getting out of our current environmental crisis. This help that they could offer us though, is not what most people see. Instead, we continue to seclude the Indians to small unwanted pieces of land and then harm them with our terrible ways of polluting the earth. We should take a lesson from the Natives, instead of hurting them and ourselves more.


Below is a video of an old commercial that shows an Indian crying over what the white man has done to the environment.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7OHG7tHrNM

Letter to the President

Dear President Obama,

            I am a huge supporter of yours and I think that you have accomplished a lot in your first four years in office. I agree with almost all of the policies that you have put into place and the ideas you have for America. There is a lot more that I would like to learn though, about the specifics of your ideas. It is important that information is credible though. I recently watched the documentary Inside Job and learned some things that surprised me.

            When talking about your policies, the documentary says that in your campaign, you were very confident about economic reform. “Obama Pointed to Wall street greed and regulatory failures as examples of the need for change in America.” To me, this was very correct, because you have done a lot for the economy sense you have been in office. Next though, the film talked about what you did once you were in office and it didn’t sound good or right. According to the film, many of the people you appointed to office, had been very involved in the banks and Wall Street during the crash. For example, you appointed Timothy Geithner as treasury director. Geithner though, had been president of the New York Federal Reserve during the crisis and a key player in the decision to pay Goldman Sax 100 cents on the dollar for bets against mortgages.

            I trust the film on the fact that you appointed him, but I don’t trust the film in that they didn’t give a reason why you chose him. There must be a good reason behind the appointing of anyone. I would be very interested to learn some of the specific reasons behind why you appointed who you did. A decision may look bad from the outside, but can actually be good for hidden reasons. I want to know what those hidden reasons were.

Sincerely,

Eowyn Lucas

Inside Job

Informative Entertainment

To me, there is a huge difference between bias and giving an opinion supported by studies and fact.

This was the second time I watched the documentary Inside Job and the facts were still shocking. The film was made in a way to entertain so that the message being sent to the audience is very powerful. Most people would claim that a film like Inside Job is extremely bias, but the way I see it is a well supported overview of an important issue. The documentary goes into detail on the series of events that caused the recent world recession. The events are explained in ways that are  attractive to the viewer and are made easy to understand. The film uses compelling imagery, stimulating music, interviews with many different people and informative charts and graphs.All of these techniques combined help portray the intended message in a well thought out organized way and make this a very good documentary.

Of course there are always going to be people opposed to what a documentary has to say, and people people who will dispute anything said in the film. For me, if these people made a film, I know I would disagrees with everything that they had to say. There isn't one specific right or wrong, but this film intended to give a specific massage and it did an incredible job of it. Below is a link to an article that is against the views in Inside Job.

http://www.goldenstateliberty.com/2011/03/gsl-movie-review-inside-job.html

I was also interested to see what the director of the film had to say about what he had created. In an interview, he told exactly what the film was about."The film is about the systemic corruption of United States by the financial services industry." As I said before, if this is what the film is about, then defining this and backing it up with support is not bias. Below is a link to the interview in which I found the above quote.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vS0hj4kiqsA