A Hmong Shaman cleanses the Portland subway of disturbed spirits

Hmong Culture and History

A short film on the Hmong done for an anthropology course. Nice work.

Hmong Shamanism lecture

Hmong on the Web

Hmong homepage
Links to scholarly and popular resources for Hmong and students of Hmong culture




Hmong Studies Internet Resource Center
"This website is also a source of comprehensive bibliographic information about studies of
Hmong history, culture, and adaptation in diasporic communities around the world."



Hmong Arts on YouTube and Google Video





Hmong recipes
Home-cookin' Hmong style! You just need to stock up on some tshuaj rog, pawj qaib, hmab ntsa, qhaus, and koj ntsuab.

Protests in Peru

This is interesting:

Peru declares state of emergency over disputed mine 

From the NMAI Facebook feed. The government favors development and holds that a mining project has been democratically reviewed and agreed upon--but the state of emergency responds to widespread demonstrations by local, mostly indigenous, people. The last line of the report is interesting: The Environment Minister has resigned in protest.

Winsor McCay - Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend, c. 1907

The National Museum of the American Indian
invites you to come on down and
celebrate Native American Heritage Month

The Unconquered: Brazil’s People of the Arrow

In 2002, National Geographic sent journalist Scott Wallace into the deepest recesses of Brazil’s Amazon to track an uncontacted indigenous tribe—the People of the Arrow. Hear his gripping first-person account of adventure and survival as described in his new book: The Unconquered: In Search of the Amazon’s Last Uncontacted Tribes.

November 3 2011
7:30 pm
National Geographic Museum

1600 M Street, NW

Washington, D.C., US

20036

202 857 7700
Washington, D.C.
NG Member: $18; General Public: $20

Find out more here.

From The New York Times

Brazilian Amazon Groups Invade Site of Dam Project
By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
Published: October 27, 2011

BUENOS AIRES — Waving bows and arrows and dressed in war paint, hundreds of members of indigenous communities in the Brazilian Amazon invaded the construction site of the Belo Monte hydroelectric dam on Thursday.

Find the whole story here.

If you want to see a whole lot of Indians at once

The White House has announced the third annual Tribal Leaders conference, to be held at the Department of the Interior on December 2. That's that building one block down from us on E St. So if you hang out that day, you're going to see a whole lot of fancy clothes.

We Want to Scare You

It's not relevant to our course topic--

but it's awesome and it's free.

Alaskan Indigenous Whale Hunting

BARROW, Alaska — The ancient whale hunt here is not so ancient anymore.
“Ah, the traditional loader,” one man mumbled irreverently. “Ah, the traditional forklift.”

Excellent article in today's New York Times on indigenous whale hunting in the age of industrial technology, international controls, and global warming:

With Powerboat and Forklift, a Sacred Tradition Endures

Watch More TV

Nolana Yip passed this link on to me. It could be very informative, it could be kind of cliched (I'm a little worried about the part where Diane learns a traditional dance):

Diane Sawyer's Report on Today's Plains Indians on 20/20, Friday Oct 12 10 pm

Heart of Darkness

You can find a complete pdf text of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness in our pbworks site Electronic Reserves folder here. I chose this edition because it has some helpful annotations. Practically any of many paperback editions will serve well, too; and if you'd like to hear Heart of Darkness read to you--sometimes very dramatically--check the link here.

We will discuss Heart of Darkness on October 19 and 26. I'll provide some historical context. An essay in response is due November 2.

Blog It - For October 5 - Taboo and the Levitical Code

Our discussion of taboo, making use of the example of the Levitical proscriptions in diet and sexual behavior, should bring up some important topics for us:
--that laws and customs are "readable" as myths and legends are, and that deciphering and interpreting them offer opportunities for critical questions
--that customs and observances communicate worldview and defend societies against threats identified with the savage or barbaric (or witchcraft, or other evils)
--that the historical and cultural context of traditional and ancient texts, and inspection of problems of interpretation, may help us to develop new perspectives on even contentious contemporary issues.

For next week's discussion on taboo, purity, and the threat of disorder, please respond to the readings with a focused comment: 
Have the readings offered you any new ways of thinking about what is forbidden and allowed in contemporary American society, and how people argue in public discourse about what is forbidden and allowed?

One focused paragraph should be sufficient. Please respond by 9 am October 5 so everyone has a chance to look at your comment before class. 

The Wild Man in Myth and Folklore

Many of our discussions this semester will aim to cover three kinds of knowledge at once:

First, the actual content of the works we encounter, which are organized according to major themes in the history of Western ideas about indigenous peoples - for example, the contrast of nature and the wild, or of moral and restricted behavior vs. ungoverned, immoral or amoral lawlessness. This should allow us to analyze and interpret material in relation to critical themes in culture.

Second, the historical context, such as the ancient Hebrew world that gave rise to the Hebrew Bible. This helps us understand the historical and cultural institutions of the productions of culture--for example, the relation of European colonialism to The Tempest or Heart of Darkness.

Third, the critical and interpretive methods we use to understand texts, artworks, customs, etc.--whether they survive from cultures of the past, exist in other parts of the world, or are characteristic of the society in which we live. In other words, we may use the same methods to study Greek mythology as the Harry Potter books--the differences depend largely on our relative knowledge of the language, cultural allusions, and belief systems we need to know to understand each example. This reminds us to consider the differences between cultural systems--between myths and law codes, philosophy and literature, plays and novels, and so on, as we form hypotheses about their interpretation. It also encourages us to aim for interpretations that are both illuminating and well-grounded in logic and fair-mindedness.


This week we'll discuss three works that may be called folklore or perhaps myth. Although they appear in literary forms, each represents a story that has been told in many, many other versions. A large part of the interest in myth and folklore is in exploring why a story is so widely told. How did it achieve the cultural authority it has? Why did this story survive the centuries?

Our study involves the three dimensions stated above:
1. What do these Wild Man stories tell us about some of the themes in popular Western depictions of "savage" peoples? What are the most important actions and characteristics attributed to savages?
2. What do we know about the Greek culture that gave rise to Homer, the Sumerian civilization that fostered the heroic myth of Gilgamesh, and the cultural world of fairy tales?
3. What do we need to know about myth and folklore as a mode of narration to understand stories like these? What does the consideration of narrative tell us about how cultures communicate ideas, and even settle issues of power and authority?

Bolivian police break up Amazon road protest march

You may want to look at this story from the BBC, which includes video and links to further background on Amazon deforestation. (There is a lot online about this topic.)

Native Americans get the cheapest cupcakes and college tuitions?

There is no mention of why the Native Americans pay the least amount in today's news.  Also, this is not the first time that someone has done something like this to stimulate race conversation:


SMU halts race-based bake sale
Anti-affirmative action group used ethnicity, gender to set prices
08:51 PM CDT on Wednesday, September 24, 2003
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/988931/posts

Bucknell Race-Based Bake Sale National News

by LA SHAWN BARBER on 06/23/2009

In April, Bucknell University deans shut down a racial preferences bake sale that a conservative student group hosted to illustrate the unfair and demeaning nature of lowered admissions standards based on race. 

http://www.acri.org/blog/2009/06/23/bucknell-race-based-bake-sale-national-news/

Berkeley College Bakesale Incites Debate Over Racism

A group of students are planning an "Increase Diversity" bake sale in Berkley, Calif. in which the price of baked goods will depend on the buyer's gender and race. (ABC News)

By OLIVIA KATRANDJIAN  Sept. 24, 2011

An "Increase Diversity" bake sale planned by a group of students in Berkley, Calif., in which the price of baked goods will depend on the buyer's gender and race is drawing cries of racism, which is just what the organizers say they wanted.

The bake sale, run by the Berkeley College Republicans, was created in reaction to SB 185, a bill currently being considered by Gov. Jerry Brown, which would authorize California public universities to consider race, gender, ethnicity, and national/geographic origin in the admissions process.

"The Berkeley College Republicans firmly believe measuring any admit's merit based on race is intrinsically racist," reads the description of the event on its Facebook page. "Our bake sale will be at the same time and location of a phone bank which will be making calls to urge Gov. Brown to sign the bill…The pricing structure of the baked goods is meant to be satirical, while urging students to think more critically about the implications of this policy."

The price of a baked good is $2 for white people, $1.50 if you're Asian, $1 for Latinos, 75 cents for African-Americans and 25 cents for Native Americans, the original Facebook event read. Women of all races get a discount of 25 cents.

According to the original event page, the pricing structure was put in place "to ensure the fairest distribution, and make sure that there are a DIVERSE population of races of students getting BCR's delicious baked goods."

"Hope to see you all there! If you don't come, you're a racist!" the original event page read.  The page has since been taken down and replaced with less controversial text.  Shawn Lewis, the president of the Berkeley College Republicans, planned the bake sale.

"The pricing structure is there to bring attention, to cause people to get a little upset," Lewis told ABC station KGO-TV in San Francisco. "But it's really there to cause people to think more critically about what this kind of policy would do in university admissions."

Lewis said several members who created the event on Facebook have been threatened or received nasty comments.

"It certainly is stirring emotions, and that's what we want," Lewis told KGO-TV. "But we certainly don't want people to think that we're making fun of racial issues or laughing at them because that's not the message of the bake sale."

But Campus Democrats president Anais LaVoie has asked for an apology.

"The way they made the statement, the words that they used, the fact that they humorized and mocked the struggles of people of color on this campus is very disgusting to me," LaVoie said.

One student looked at the situation more humorously.

"Being black, this whole event is even irritating for me because now everyone wants me to buy them cupcakes at a discount," Raymond Stone wrote on the Facebook event page.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/berkeley-college-bakesale-incites-debate-racism/story?id=14597584

National Museum of the American Indian

In advance of our visit to the NMAI Wednesday, September 21 at 3 pm, here are the questions I suggested you consider during the visit and in writing about the museum afterwards.

• What messages are sent about indigenous peoples of the Americas, their history, cultures, and present ways of life?
• How are these messages communicated?
• What objects and media are presented, and why?
• What particular exhibits, images, objects or presentations strike you as especially important and meaningful in understanding the museum and indigenous peoples?
• What’s the point of view in the exhibits?
• Who is the intended audience?
• What’s the point of the exhibits? What are they aiming to do?
• What topics, themes, categories or ideas are emphasized here? How is indigenous experience conceptualized?
• How are the tribes differentiated from non-indigenous society?
• What’s your stake in this? Is there any way it’s especially meaningful to you?

 As time allows, I'd also like to ask you what you thought of the reading from Brown on Cultural Property--during our visit and in the following week's session.