Michaelkobylarek's Weblog

Jamake Highwater

michaelkobylarek — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 06:39:34 +0000

I found Mr. Highwaters opinionated perspective on our culture and Native American culture to be rather thought provoking. Some of the most obvious points that I, on my own, would have never thought of consisted of his views on the two languages, nature/wilderness, and concept of time. I’ve heard of names such as pink footed bird, as quoted in the movie, but I never would have thought of the english language to be lacking in descriptiveness by using the word duck instead. I see how just calling a duck, a “duck”, could lack some description, but the simplicity of the primal language is where the lack of description actually comes into play.

I also found it interesting that he could not appreciate the meaning of the word wilderness. This coming from a man that was supposedly raised as a boy in a primal family makes total sense though. While he views the wilderness as a calm place that he can call home and be able to live off the land, city folk may very well be afraid of the wilderness. Interestingly enough, he seemed to be afraid, and find more meaning in the word wilderness, when he moved to New York City.

It almost seemed comical to me when he said that us Native Americans have no concept of seconds or minutes and even months, just moons and seasons. This seems funny to me only because I’ve been around this concept all of my life and only know how I was taught; while Mr. Highwater has experienced both based on his claims of Native American origin.

All points proved to be interesting to me, but their validity may be questioned by you or others…even by people of his supposed Native American origin.

10 ?’s From the Hateful Things Exhibit

michaelkobylarek — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 03:57:25 +0000

I was told to enter this as a blog entry even though the work was unnecisary

“Hateful Things” was not quite the exhibit I had expected. I was imagining something more along the lines of going through some sort of historical dateline, covering hateful racist moments throughout history. I didn’t even know that Ferris State had such an exhibit, let alone a traveling exhibit. I found the object descriptions to be quite interesting, mainly because there were many things that I would not have concluded to be racist at all.
The most straightforward hateful object in the exhibit would have to be the sign that says “No Niggers, No Jews, No Dogs”. It’s basically saying these two groups of people are no better than a domesticated animal. Such things should not be destroyed, they remind us how evil and racially hateful things used to be.
I think it went a bit too far to call the Aunt Jemima Pancake Flour a racist advertisement. I think it may have been included because one may have tried to relate it to the cream of wheat ads.
The only thing I may have seen from the exhibit may have been the kkk related material. For the most part I just felt angry that my ancestors would be so cruel to someone just because of the color of their skin.
I was not raised in a racist household, so it is hard for me to say that certain words and practices against African Americans have disappeared from our society in my lifetime, but in general I would have to say yes. Race is slowly becoming a non issue, or at least something that people can keep to themselves.
Several hateful things, words, and behaviors will always remain. It’s like telling someone to forget how to walk, once they’ve been learned they will never be forgotten, maybe used less often, but never forgotten.
Each ethnic or social group has had hateful things used towards them, but in defense for themselves, they fire right back at the other ethnic and/or social groups. So yes in this sense, hateful things have been used to depict all groups of people
I have not had any hateful things said to me based on race, but I have had things said to/about me for being white (specifically referring to when I am hanging out with a group of black friends).
If I were to witness a hateful act towards someone, I may react in their defense depending on the situation, but other than that, I don’t know if I would have much of a reaction at all other than my disgust on the issue.
Some music, movies, and even books can use these things to their advantage. These hateful things can sometimes be very entertaining, so yes I would purchase something containing such terms or images if they were used in good taste, if there is such a thing when referring to this.

Hateful Things

michaelkobylarek — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 03:53:33 +0000

In viewing the “Hateful Things” exhibit from the Jim Crow museum of racist memorabilia, several items depicted standard racism from the past, but the item with the most prevalent racism, I would have to say, would be the “A Comical Game. Atta Boy” card game. Within these playing cards it shows various characters, both black and white doing day to day things. While one card shows an older white mail with a cigar and cane smoking a cigar, there is another card with a black male doing the same thing. The differences between the two are subtle, but also where the racist aspects arrive. Both white males with these outfits on are both wearing top hats, which I believe used to represent wealth and/or class depending on how tall the hat was, while the black man is wearing a hat that is fitted to his head showing that he is somehow inferior to the white man.

When looking at all of the cards as a whole, you can see distinct differences between the white people and the black. All of the white people seem to have some sort of wealth in their nice clothes, doing things such as reading or painting. The black people seem to be depicted as dumb and poor. They are all dressed up in what seems to be rags for clothing in comparison to the white people’s attire. Also all of the black people’s expressions are dumb looking, implying that blacks are dumb. Other than just their looks on their faces, the cards have them doing things such as riding in a boat with a man overboard looking as if he cannot swim, another of a man standing still on ice with icicles hanging from his body. The sum of all of these pictures is that it portrays blacks to be inferior to whites, in style of dress, daily activities, and even intelligence. It may be a stretch, but one more possibility would be the card of the dog. One would assume that the dog is owned by a white person, sitting pretty with a tie on its neck, but the dog is brown. It may be coincidence or intentional, but the color of the dog could be tied to blacks being as important and intelligent as a domesticated animal, in this case a dog.

The Weaping Camel

michaelkobylarek — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 03:53:06 +0000

I’ll start off by saying I’m glad I drank some coffee before class today; otherwise I would have been asleep within the first five minutes. It was rather frustrating having to bob and weave my head to be able to read the subtitles through the heads of the crowd, and I’m still trying to find the correlation between the documentary and our history class. Trying to have a positive outlook on this, I’ll say that watching a camel give birth to a calf was very interesting and at the same time, nothing I’d want to see again. Other than the birth of the baby calf, the only other thing I found to be particularly interesting was when they had the violin player come to perform some sort of ritual to allow the baby calf to feed from its mother. I thought these were things that were only told in stories and not actual remedies for such altercations in raising livestock. I also agreed with the grandpas decision on not getting a television because of it is a big waste of time, however I feel that these people are underprivileged not having all of the royalties that we now have today. I mean they rode camels across desert land to pick up six batteries for a radio and get a violinist, that’s got to suck!