Yeeee !!!

Nice the quarter is over again yeeee... Time to relax and have fun fore the summer :)

Thanks :)

       This was a great class! I am very grateful because I learned many things in this class. I’ve learned to be a more critical thinker and to find answers on my own. It was a class where you had the opportunity to be more open to your classmates and I like that. I also learned good techniques that I should do before starting to do a research paper and that was very useful because this time it wasn’t so difficult to write a paper. The theme of the class at first I thought was going to be difficult because I didn’t know anything about it, but now that I know more about Native Americans it’s actually a very interesting topic. It would be nice that in school we could have more classes that teach us more about Native American culture. I thank Kohl, Paco and Gordan for coming to class this last Wednesday; I enjoyed having them in class because they always talk about important topics that we should consider in life. I enjoyed the artistic response presentations from my classmates it was very nice seeing how every person has their own way of being artistic. Overall this class was great :)

School is almost over :)

         I am happy that the quarter is almost done, but I am going to miss this class and all of the people that I have met. This class was excellent for me because it made me open my eyes and learn about different ethnicities and Miss. Estelle is a great teacher. I have now more knowledge on Native Americans and how many difficulties they face every day. Also, I had the great opportunity on working in a group project. Our group project was great and was very entertaining working with people that you don’t know. I had a good experience going to the Tulalip Campus and interacting with the students. I felt that I had gain experience and information of their tribe by going and having the opportunity of talking with them. I really enjoyed this quarter :)

Artistic Response

          I’m happy that our group is done with our artistic response. I thank all of the girls in our group that made a great job. (Zexian Wang , Xing Yi, Yi Fei, Heng Xu; Sherry Jiang). They all are very creative and good at working as a group.  We changed our project; we made something else, but it is still very good. I am excited to present our project  :)

Reflection About Tulalip Get Together

            I had an amazing time with the Tulalip students and some of the professor that were there. I thank all of them because they made us feel very welcome and we had a great time. I talked with some of the Tulalip students and they seem very friendly and outgoing. It would be a good idea if we could do more of these events, that way we could all get to know each other and have better interaction. I also thank Miss Estelle to have us come to the event because it was great quality time.

            The discussion about the Sherman Alexie’s book was great and interesting. We were divided in discussion groups to share our thoughts about the book. There were many people with very good ideas and that made me think of aspects about the book that I never tough about. Some of the topics from the book of Sherman that we talked about were: How Junior used his comics to express himself and his feelings. That is very true Junior loved drawing comics so that way he could express to others the way he felt. We also talked about the education in the Tulalip Campus. Some of the teachers talked about how they wanted to help their students to get better grades in school. We talked about how alcohol is one of the biggest problems in their reservation and how Sherman Alexie brings that up in his book. They wanted to help young people in their reservation to overcame problems with any type of addiction like alcoholism.  Kohl talked about how the book of Sherman Alexie means a lot to them and he also thanked us for making the effort of coming to the Tulalip Casino for the discussion. I’d like to thank Kohl for being so nice with us and being a great person. I admire Kohl because he seems that he really wants better things for him and his reservation, keep up your great work Kohl.

We saw the movie “Smoke Signals” and it was great. This move is a very interesting movie and it had many different meanings. The main characters of this movie were Thomas and Victor; they were very interesting characters with different personalities and made me laugh a lot. Thomas was my favorite character; he just had his way of engaging people into his stories and he also had a good sense of humor. I really enjoyed the movie it was a good one. This movie helped me to appreciate the people that surround me. Also, it doesn’t matter how many mistakes our parents made in life; we have to forgive them because in the end they still love us and they want the better for us, besides we are all human and we make mistakes, there is not perfect parent.

            I had a good time at the Tulalip Casino and I wished more of our classmates were able to go. I thank all of the people from the Tulalip Campus for inviting us and I hope they can come to our campus some day too. I enjoy meeting new people and having a variety of friends from all over the world. Having friends from different ethnicities helps me to be more open-minded and learn new things from different regions as well as their needs.

Movie: “Wounded Heart-Pine Ridge and the Sioux”

      Last Monday in our class we watched a movie that Kohl gave to our teacher Melissa. This movie for me was an eye opener! In general the movie was great because it showed many hard situations that the Lakota tribe goes trough. Most of the time we all think that they have a good job and easy housing, but things are not that easy for them.  The movie showed that many of members of this tribe live in very bad housing conditions; some of their houses have mold and insects inside of their houses. Also, Lakota tribe have very bad health services; they showed a man talking about how once he went to the dentist because he had a tooth that hurt and the dentist took the wrong tooth by mistake. The movie also showed how some people in this tribe have very bad health because they can’t afford food sometimes, so they have to go to foods banks where most of the time the food they get is very unhealthy for them. That is why some of them have high blood pressure, obesity, among other problems. This reservation also has issues with alcoholism that leads to domestic violence inside their families. One of the old men from the tribe said that the only way they could help their tribe with this problem of alcoholism is by getting families more involved and aware of this big issue. Some of the children in the reservation have a very difficult time going to school because of family problems. Some of the young kids go to school with lack of sleep, hungry and many other problems. It is difficult for them go trough school without someone that gives them the support they need. I feel so sad about how Indians have been oppressed for a century or two and they still don’t have the rights they deserve. One of the hardest things in life is to put ourselves in somebody else’s shoes because it is hard to understand how is their life and how many hard things they go trough that we can’t really imagine.

Research paper

I am writing my research paper on Native Americans and Indigenous from Costa Rica. I want to do research about specific Tribes from Washington State and from Costa Rica and find some similarities they have. I haven’t find very good scholar sources for my research paper, it seems that we don’t really have a lot of information from Native Americans in our Library. I think that is sad! If someone finds a good scholar source about tribes from Washington let me know please. I am doing more research on my topic and there are some good websites, but I need more scholar sources.