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. 

Take care of nature :)

    We should be aware that each day we are losing our nature because of our mistakes that we make. It would be nice if we all could do something to preserve our flora and fauna because remember people, we only have one mother earth. There are a lot of endangered species out there that we are losing because of environmental pollution.  I have some good ideas we could do to preserve our nature:

·         We could plant trees in our schools

·         Recycle

·         Help endangered species  reproduce

·         Preserve our flora and fauna

Here is a link that gives us some ways of preserving our nature: http://www.ehow.com/how_2170618_preserve-nature.html/

Artistic Response :)

Hi Melissa,

For our artistic response we are going to summarize a short story from Sherman Alexie’s book and we are going to perform with Sock Puppets.

Our group is:

Zexian Wang

Xing Yi

Yi Fei

Heng Xu

Sherry Jiang

Seimy Briones

Hopefully, we can come up with something fun and entertaining.

Thanks to Kohl and Paco

Thanks to Kohl and Paco you guys did a great job on presenting at school. I really enjoyed having you guys at school. It was very interesting everything that you guys talked about. I agree that we should all learn more about our history that way we don’t repeat the bad things that happened in the past. It is important to know our history and where we come from, so that way we can find our self. I hope that Kohl and Paco can visit us again or maybe we can go to their college. It will be interesting to know other students from their college that way we can learn from each other. Kohl and Paco are amazing people :)

Indigenous people from Costa Rica

I found this link from indigenous people from my country "Costa Rica".  Take a look :) http://www.travelcostarica.nu/indigenous-costa-rica

What did I learned today from peer review!

I learned many useful things that will help me improve my papers. I liked the peer review because it let us work as a group and get to know each other better, and I like talking to people and discussing things that could help me learn new things. Some of the things I learned from doing peer review are: how to organize my paper better and reword some of the sentences, mistakes I made while doing my paper, and that it is hard to revise a paper. One of the things that interested me the most was seeing the writing of others, because every person has their own writing style. It is a good idea to do peer reviews, because sometimes it is hard to see your own mistakes and maybe other person could spot your mistakes easily. When I was summarizing my paper I found that it was good rewording some sentences and make a clear point of my ideas, because sometimes when others read it, they may not get my point. 

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part- Time Indian

This novel is one of the best novels I have ever read! Sherman Alexie did a very good job on using humor for talking about very difficult topics like racism, poverty, bulling, differences between races, etc. Alexie wrote about how this Indian kid, called Junior, had to go through difficult times in order to find his true identity and get a better education. Junior accomplished his goals because he was persistent and refused to be defeated. Junior is living proof that you can’t allow setbacks and small disappointments to stop you from achieving a successful life. When I was reading the novel one of the parts that really touched my heart was when Junior family didn’t have money to take his best friend, the dog, to the hospital. It really made me think about how I would feel if that happened to me, and how sad is not having money to pay for things that we need in our daily life. I really liked this novel because it was easy to read and understand, it also had cartoons so that made it easier to follow the story since it give you a mental picture of the characters. One day before the reading was due, I was very tired and I wanted to go to bed, but I was reading about Junior and all the efforts he had to make to accomplish his goals and that inspired me to continue reading until I was done. It made me think that if I want to achieve my goals in life I have to be persistent and never give up no matter how hard things can get. This novel was great and it taught me how to see life a different way.

Reflection on Diversity Training

            Great experience! If you haven’t attended a Diversity Training before, you should do it because is very useful and you could learn different things that would make you be a better person and think different. The Diversity Training was taught by Eric Davis; a very smart man with a different perspective about life. This was my first time going to a Diversity Training and I really enjoyed it because I learned many different things that would help me to think different in life; it helped me to have a better understanding on different ethnicities.

            One of the things that I liked a lot about the training was that Eric made analogies to explain some concepts and also he had us participate in many games. That is a good thing because I usually learn more by doing things and participating as a group. Some of the topics that Eric talked about were Multicultural: that everything has a culture in life. Political correctness: Saying something the right way at the right time. Oppression: Many people that have been oppressed in life by many situations. “When we have a social culture that is being oppressed that is why we have diversity training, so people can help others and we could all grow as a community”. This training is to help all to learn to be a better person in life, and be a giving person. We have to deeply understand the social history, because if one person is oppressed all of us will be oppressed to.  Eric gave an example of these by saying “Some of the students that are here today share some common cultural values, because you go to the same school at Cascadia”. Eric says that we don’t have to act the same or think the same to be part of a community; we should be able to maintain our identity and still be part of it. We should learn to accept people regardless of the way they are.

            Eric made a pyramided called “The Slippery Slope” and it had to be with different bias we fall in to. Stereotyping people: when we have a positive or negative attitude for a person. Prejudice or discriminating people: We prejudice somebody but then we discriminate that person by doing or taking an action. The last one is ISMS: the systematic result of everything we have done. We need to do more critical thinking, be more sensitive for other people. Change the way we talk, for example: Don’t say, “That is so gay” just for the sake of saying it. We should think before saying things that can hurt others.

            The Diversity Training was great; I learned good things that will help me to be a better person. It is a good idea that when we go to these events, we should talk about what we learned and share with others. It is always a good exercise to share your story and what you think. I had a good time and I liked that I had the opportunity to go with other classmates and hear their opinion. It would be nice that more people were interested in this kind of topics because we all need to know more about them. That way we have better communication with each other and understand different ethnicities. We have a large variety of ethnicities in Seattle, so it would be nice to learn from them; for example, if we all could learn more about Indian Americans and their needs that would be great because maybe then we could all get along with each other.

  

Lummi Tribe

Here is a website about the Lummi Tribe :)
http://www.lummi-nsn.org/

“Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project”

     It is nice to know more about Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project! It is hard to see Seattle as a segregated city, and how only white people were the only ones allowed in most parts of Seattle. I came to the US in 2007 and live in Kirkland, which is a beautiful place, were everything is peaceful and the neighborhoods are very nice. Seattle for me is a beautiful place to live because of its friendly and very polite people. Also, Seattle has beautiful places to visit and one of the things that I enjoy the most is that we are free to live and go wherever we want, the people is very tolerant with each other since nowadays there is a big variety of cultures and different nationalities; here one can meet a lot of different people from all over the world.

            Based on my reading, in the past Seattle used to be a segregated city where the only ones that had power were white people. I didn’t have any idea of how Seattle used to be, but I am happy that nowadays that doesn’t happen any more. In the past non-white people had a lot of limitations in Seattle. It was hard for them to get a job and even worse they couldn’t live in Seattle’s nice neighborhoods. For example, Kirkland, Bellevue and other places in downtown Seattle like Capitol Hill, only allowed white people to rent or buy a house. It seems that African Americans, Native Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos and even Jewish were having difficult times. I know in the past there was a lot of racism in the United States, but I didn’t know which were the most affected areas.  I used to believe that racism only affected African Americans, but it turns out it was affecting many different races. Who would have guessed that Seattle used to have a lot of racism, given that today those kinds of situations are hardly seen. It is very sad to know that hospitals in Seattle would not provide service to black people in the past, since services were only for white people. That was extremely unfair!

            People that work in farms in Washington State are a big group. These people have very dangerous jobs, minimal pay, inadequate housing, are subject to mistreat, among other problems. Many people might not know how much farms contributes to Seattle’s economy. It is because of that people working in farms that we have food to consume at home. My grandfather used to work in a farm and sometimes he would take me along to help him; trust me, it is not an easy job. It is nice to know that there is a social movement that strives for minorities labor rights, because many of these people need the help. It is good that some people stand up for their civil rights.  Also, in the past only guys could work in a farm, but nowadays there are women that are capable of doing the work. Before, only white people and men could work in farms, but that has changed. Today, we have a lot of immigrants and minorities working in farms; that is a good thing because someone has to do that job, and this provide these people with income for their survival.

            Thanks to the Black Student Union at University of Washington (UW) many minorities, like me, will have the opportunity to go there for college and other degrees. There were very few minority students in the past that started studying at UW, and some of the first students that began studying at UW were African Americans. Thanks to this Union they made a campaign that allowed minorities to have education opportunities not only in UW, but also at different Universities and High Schools in Washington State. This is how now many African Americans, Latinos, Asians and other minorities have the opportunity to study and attend any school they want in Washington State today. This was a huge improvement in civil rights that allowed minorities to decide where to study. Also, this Black Student Union at UW helped to change some of the admission and academic policies, so that every student including minorities were treated as equals.

            Now I know that it is because of brave people who struggled with bad situations, fought and stood firm on their beliefs, we have now better civil and labor rights. I didn’t really know how many things people had to go through to make Seattle the safe city it is today. I always thought Seattle has been a very friendly and safe city since the beginning, with no racism or groups like the KKK, but I was wrong. It is nice to know that now we can have a better life, decide what school to attend, where to work or live. We don’t have to be afraid about not being allowed in a restaurant, hospital, or neighborhood. That is great!

            

Reflection on “Summary of Normative Communication Styles and Values”

Have you ever felt like you can’t communicate with people in your surrounding? Well that is what happened to me when I arrived to the United States and I didn’t know English; and the worse thing is that I didn’t know the culture. There were times that in a conversation I felt like invisible, and that happened because I didn’t know the language that well, so I couldn’t be part of a conversation. The reading “Summary of Normative Communication Styles and Values” explains how people from different ethnicities have different ways to communicate and how not knowing the differences of communication can cause misunderstanding and destroy trust among individuals.

            The reading shows how sometimes stereotyping people might not be the best way of communicating. We should avoid stereotyping and do not assume that people has or lacks of a particular communication skills just because they way they look; we have to see beyond the looks. For example, I have being stereotyped many times, when I had a meeting at work they would think that I will be the last one to show up; but just because I am Latino they can’t just assume that. Not all people from the same ethnicity will have the same good or bad habits. I disagree with the reading when it talks about people having a group of pattern depending on their ethnicity, because every person is different no matter if they are from the same country. In the other hand, I do believe that people tend to follow what others do in their environment, independently of their ethnicity. For example, it is well know that a lot of people from Latin America do not strive to get a degree, while most people in Seattle have a career; that influenced me to get a career because I know that without a Bachelors degree it will be hard for me to get a good job.

            Based on the reading some people have biases about what normal should be. We should not have biases about what we think is normal for us. Instead, we should learn how to adapt to other people “views and behaviors to the needs of others”. For example, when I came to the United States and started working at my current job, my boss used to talk to me looking at my eyes very closely; and I used to get nervous because I was not used to do that. Then, he asked me if that bothered me and apologized because he saw how uncomfortable I felt; he made an effort to look beyond what was normal for him and changed his way of talking to make communication effective. What this means is that we have to be careful when we are talking to a person that is not from our same ethnicity, because what we think is normal for us it might not be for them.

            It will be good that we could learn from other cultures and the way they communicate, that way we don’t make others feel uncomfortable or give them a hard time. I have experienced the feeling of being excluded from social groups, and it wasn’t a pleasant experience. That is why it is good that we can learn and trust our instincts when we are dealing with people that are not from are same ethnicity, that way we can have a better communication experience.

This is what I think about Microaggressions :)

Reflection on “Microaggressions in everyday life”

            Have you ever been treated different just because the way you look? We all should be treated as human beings, with respect to one another, and make people feel like they are in home. Dr. Sue wrote the article “Microaggressions in everyday life” and she talks about how Microaggresions affects non-white people in their every day life. Dr. Sue divides Microaggresions in three forms that are: microassault, microinsult, and microinvalidation.  I found this article interesting because it makes you think about how white people unintentionally discriminate against people of color, and most of the time they don’t even think about their actions.

            According to this article written by Dr. Sue, “Microaggressions can be verbal, behavioral and environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial slights and insults to people of color”.  It is hard to know how this kind of behavior happens in our every day life, and the worst thing is that many white people might not even know that they are making some one feel bad. I would be good that schools provided more information about microaggressions to their students. That way we could all learn about how to deal with different ethnicities and have better communication with each other.

I liked the examples from the article a lot, and how they explain each of the different Microaggressions. I have experienced one of the examples mentioned in the article; sometimes at work white people ask me how I got my job. I try to not take it offensive because it is just a question and many people do that kind of questions. Even when I try not to take it seriously, sometimes I feel bad when some people ask me that question as it makes me feel that I don’t deserve to be working at a front desk position because I am Latino. Another example that has happened to me related to Microaggressions is that many white people don’t think before saying something. For example, while at work one of my coworkers asked me if I was from Mexico. Only because I have dark skin it doesn’t mean that I am from Mexico, or that any dark skinned person has to be Latino. I can say that I have experienced many times this kind of Microaggressions in my every day life. It would be nice that we all learned more about this harmful topic.

Talking about this kind of topic is hard because it affects many people. I liked the article a lot, because made me think about how we should all live respecting each other. It doesn’t matter where we come from; in the end we are all the same, we are all humans. We just have to learn how to coexist and learn from each other. Microaggressions are always going to happen in life because many people might not even notice that they are making somebody feel bad.

This is not a general problem among all white people. I have met a lot of white people that are actually very nice and kind and very careful about what they say. It doesn’t mean that because I am minority I have to believe that I’m going to be rejected or mistreated. I have learned that there are very good people out there, and no matter their ethnicity they could end up being your very best friends. We just have to learn to treat each other with respect. 

Tribal Sovereignty

Here is an interesting website about Tribal Sovereignty. Take a look!
  http://www.airpi.org/pubs/indinsov.html