Sean's ComAlt Field Study

Final Presentation –

People’s overwhelming desire to be happy is what makes them so miserable. In the concluding chapter of An Indigenous People’s History of the United States, Robert D. Kaplan downplays the significance of the U.S. army relative to the impact of the settler vigilantes. Kaplan states “a race to innocence” occurs when when individuals assume they are innocent of complicity in structures of domination and oppression. This quote represents potential ideological falsehoods present in the belief of the sense of self being fixed in time.

The constant adaptation of the self to satisfy immediate personal needs was reinforced this quarter through the exploration of assigned texts in the context of Dr. Alan Watkins’ visual representation of how the body physiologically supports conscious thought. As shown in Conroy and Allen’s article regarding the perception of self identity, the visual aid of The Iceberg Systems Thinking Model of Intervention shows “problems” as a symptom of a hierarchy of unseen mechanisms. The conceptual similarities of these two ideas in relation to varying subject and their correlating scale of focus encapsulates the necessity for introspective reflection of the exposure to certain systems and its effect on a person’s subconscious.

The visual aid of C.S. Holling’s The Adaptive Cycle in combination with a self-produced 2D linear model based on Lanza’s theory of Biocentrism provided a framework to imagine the effects of social systems on an individual’s subconscious within a larger context. Various scientific peer reviewed articles helped outline a careful approach of an individual’s assimilation into a group identity and how a group can provide a moral framework for a smoother transition of individuals with good intentions, unhealthy coping mechanisms, and varying moral centralities into a shared group space. The scale of this information alone does not yield desired results unless an attempt is made to think through the least-bias perspective of how to understand the impact of a small scale group on larger surrounding social systems. The versatility and simplicity of The Adaptive Cycle and the sketched visual aid allows for simple, yet complex ideas to be more easily connected.

Kotomi’s tea tasting labs inspired the utilization of tea as a method to neutralize the varying moods of individuals attempting to comprise a group. Tea houses ask people entering their space how they feel rather than what they want. Using Dr. Alan Watkins’ explanation of how physiology affects conscious thought to understand the effect of a subtle change in language In the context of Conroy and Allen’s adaptation of DiClemente and Prochaska’s The Stages of Change Continuum, it becomes clear that the tea house encourages guests to accept a tea picked specifically for their mood to more easily process emotion and channel natural energies through intuition and creativity rather than temporarily fulfill biological and psychological needs with the extraction of emotion through the consumption of what the person desires in that moment. If an individual were to be unaware of the subtle change in self, the chances a person would revert to old habits rather than maintain the new behaviors would decrease because (depending on how the tea master’s role is revealed to the group) an individual might assume they are supporting the change of another person (respecting the space, or potentially the tea master’s learning process), reducing the risk of adding toxicity to the space through the introduction of previous coping mechanisms or habits of reversion into the shared space. The tea master could also be in a position to share the general state of the group to the person in charge of daily activities.

Information gained from course materials in addition to An Indigenous People’s History of the U.S. can be better understood through the lense of C.S. Holling’s The Adaptive Cycle. The social systems that were designed in the exploitation and conservation phase can transform the goodwill of an individual to match the integrity of the social systems their goodwill passes through. If an individual is not consciously aware of the implications of widespread commodification of shared interests, a person might think through a quantitative perspective, unknowingly assuming a priority in quantity, creating an assumed inferiority to the quality of the quantity. One might even consider the commodification of a shared interest a sacrifice for a gain as presented as the most efficient way to get what you want (how unenjoyable is work? Who benefits the most from you?), but so often you are unaware of the qualitative sacrifice, and in this case the common interest is of your well-being and the qualitative state of who you are as a person can become lost in how and what you decide to do. Can you agree that people’s overwhelming desire to be happy is what makes them so miserable? Over time the good intentions of a person can become locked into a filter of the metaphoric mind of an alcoholic writer’s palimpsest.

Aiming to achieve 12 out of 12 credits attempted

Proposed Credit Distribution –

3 – Commodification of Food in the context of Racism and Sexism

1 – Tasting Labs

6 – Independent Learning Contract

2 – Internship

Narrative Self-Evaluation

I could not convey my thoughts through the proposed format so I decided to explain my academic progress this quarter and go back and describe how it matches the credits I seek to obtain. While I read excerpts from the Winona LaDuke Chronicles I do not seek any credit for reading that text because of the limited credit distribution and the incredible amount of knowledge gained from Racial Indigestion. Tompkins beautifully illustrated in simple, yet complex rhetoric, the subtle differences in daily interactions that are blind to several members of our culture despite it affecting us all on a very personal level. The concise description of references found in other literature regarding the social structures implemented on members of our culture within the context of long term societal implications provided enough information for me to know what to look for and study through my independent learning contract discussing the implications of how to remediate this issues on a larger scale. As described in a paragraph in Tompkins’ conclusion,

“Might these discourses find origin in earlier modes of biological racism and nationalism? In what ways does their need to rationalize the pleasures of eating continue to work as a technology for reproducing whiteness? How might the study of eating, of the mouth as a “dense transfer point of power” in the production of the biopolitical life of the nation, be put to work in denaturalizing racial formation and, equally relevant, class formation?”

Tompkins addresses the why and what happens next after making her arguments. Another excerpt from the conclusion that comes a paragraph later,

“I have argued in Racial Indigestion that eating has a messy and promising history to tell about the dialectical struggles between pleasure and disgust, affect and aesthetics, dominance and resistance, and the interpenetrations of all the above.”

beautifully describes in concise rhetoric the subtle differences in daily decisions that can lead to long term behavior and as previously mentioned “a technology for reproducing whiteness”.

I seek one credit for my participation in the Tea Labs because I was able to connect why they were so affective for my learning in the context of urban farming social matrices.

The other requests for credit should be clearly articulated in the narrative self-evaluation.

Internship –

This week I met with Karen, Gail, and the rest of the interns and drove to Taqueria la Esquinita to have a paid meal. I was able to share concepts learned this week about utilizing tea as a method to calm the nerves of people entering a shared space with Gail and Karen. It was very interesting noticing their immediate increase in attention and Karen especially leaned in to hear what I had to say. She compared some of my statements with other herbal remedies that can accomplish the same function and mentioned there should be an additional meeting on Sundays to discuss “behind the scenes” planning. Gail revealed that she is going to place a board member Poppy into a manager-like position so she can do more background management. I revealed that tea can not only be used as a method to tune people’s energy to a similar frequency, it can be used as a secretive means to survey the temperament of an entire group of individuals to choose an appropriate activity that fits the post-tea mood.

Activities –

This week included some of the most difficult emotional challenges I have faced in my life thus far, and I thought I could benefit from releasing some emotion by dancing to a very rich, diverse mix of genres performed by two bands who just wanted to smile and groove. The first band was called the Pimps of Joytown and relied heavily on their extremely talented drummer to provide an atmosphere that couldn’t be avoided. The lead guitarist was also very talented and had a wonderful voice, so naturally he was upset when he had to miss a solo because no one on hand had a solution but managed to retain stage presence before coming to the conclusion he had to improvise. The lead guitarist saved the show and found a syncopated rhythm to add another layer to the current song. The band had their own unique sound, but included elements of afro-beat, salsa, rock & roll and electronica.

The second band, MarchFourth! retains influences from rock, ska, jazz, klezmer, Hip Hop, and swing styles of music, among others. Klezmer was a genre I had never even heard of before and got to research after the show. According to some quick wiki searches, Klezmer was brought to the United States by Ashkenazi Jews migrants from Eastern Europe and assimilated jazz.

Group dynamics were present in both bands performances. Every good band displays a support system for the main focus of every second of each song. There were moments in the first band’s performance where the drummer, lead guitarist, and bass player all stepped back and rhythmically supported the supporting singers/percussionist dancers. The second band supported an individual stepping in and having a solo in several songs and the transitions had to be well timed to accurately queue the solo artist. Having a constant rotation of supporting individual excellence was inspiring, especially when there was a grandma out dancing all of us youths.

The social dynamics of the show were fascinating to see. The sore losers stood out like a sore thumb. I was one of the first people to notice the show was about to start and headed towards the front of the stage and waited to see how long it would take me to be pushed towards the back. Usually at a show when I’m at the front I like to stay there, but this time I was willing to be pushed aside just to see who would look at me and think they deserved the front. Halfway through the first show I was in the third row with 12 or so white women 20-50 years old and a few rather obnoxious white older men all drunkenly muddled in the front. Several people were laughing and dancing; connecting with strangers and enjoying the shared experience. Unfortunately, a middle-aged white woman and her husband, who were trashed, thought I was apart of their experience. The woman linked arms with me and her husband quite a few times thinking I was apart of her drunken blur of an experience only to be politely brushed off. Finally I had to ask her to stop touching me when she was all about my fluffy hair, and she was extremely sorry and basically tried to jump into a hug and at this point I was just laughing, pleading saying “please stop this apology is still about you – it’s cool, let it be!”

There were several people who knew how to have a wonderful time and were excited to invite me into their dance circles. I spun and grooved through the crowds splashing waves that rippled positivity as my couchsurfing energy coasted on the shared energy of hope, happiness, and release.

This week provided the opportunity for more interpersonal insight than any other week I have spent at Evergreen. I have been analyzing the subtleties of every-day life symbols that are pushed through my subconscious without my conscious awareness, and it has been shocking.

Concepts Learned This Week:

I have not had the opportunity to watch Netflix in a few quarters at Evergreen and after an incredibly stressful week I thought I would try a Netflix original. I soon realized how text-heavy the symbolism was underlying the images of the show.

The Santa Clarita Diet

Watch Episode 7 of The Santa Clarita Diet

Quick description of storyline: A stereotypical suburbia household consisting of the high school romance that stalled into a marriage of two Real Estate Agents with one daughter. The mother catches an infection and becomes undead and has a new hunger to eat people (live animals will not work). This rejuvenates the marriage because the wife has a never-before-experienced sex drive that, in the husband’s eyes, offsets the baggage of being undead because he still “loves” her. As her life comically spirals out of control due to her uncontrollable consumption, her neighbors also start to act crazier without knowing her secret. Before this episode, there has been a theme of gender stereotypes where the wife comforts the husband because his ego is suffering from not doing the killing  (while ignoring the fact his wife is undead and gets a rush from killing). The show also mentions she gets incredibly turned on when she kills. The show may even be using foreshadowing in the form of the husband trying to restore the wife “back to normal “by researching for a cure, and the wife guiltily wanting to maintain her empowered, energized, sexual killing state.

Starting at 1:02 – 2:05: A scene that contrasts the tameness of a trivial housewife conversation with the realities of killing and consuming other people

2:05 – 2:25 (background: Dan is their neighbor cop that found out the married couple killed someone and then blackmailed the husband to kill criminals Dan couldn’t convict)

This scene shows a change in behavior after normalizing killing – “It just happened!” (in regard to killing Dan)

2:25 – 2:58

The wife appeals to the male ego and the perceived need to “defend” his wife, even though she’s an undead killing machine and he’s still a suburban dad who smokes weed. She then points out how previously in the show he attacked her for being impulsive, and when she points out his hypocrisy, he stops her with “honey” and she returns to pointing out how “sweet” and “gallant” his killing was.

2:58 – 3:31

The mention of Dan’s body leaving a stain on the floor particularly caught my attention when reviewing this section because of the symbolism that follows :

“And knowing Dan, he’s going to want to leave a stain.”

The wife potentially suggests the not-okayness of her treat.

Randomly, as the husband lifts up the torso of Dan he stops and appreciates the smell of coffee.

Husband: “I love coffee. Think about it. It’s a bean that you drink.”

Wife: “Are you high?”

Husband: “No. I’m just feeling very grateful about coffee.”

Wife: “Now?”

Then the husband drops the head of Dan on the floor and immediately goes into an action plan on how he’s going to get rid of the body. How can I not be reminded of the first coffee houses in the context of consuming the other and mindless killing, especially through the voice of a married white male in suburbia?

3:32 – 3:56

The couple discusses the lack of room from material consumption to store the dead body and the metonymic association of mindless killing and mindless consumption becomes present (best represented in the sarcastic quote by the wife at 5:21: “Yes, I’m sorry. There’s no room for the dead guy you came home with.”). The wife points out the absurdity of the timing of his accusations toward her and he blankly owns up to it and walks off while she makes a face to the camera.

4:21 – 4:50

The husband asks if it would be weird if he robbed the dead body, and as the wife makes a face, the dead body farts in response. This transitions to her saying the last body did the same (all bodies do it) and that a female body would never do that. The husband struggles to believe that she’s going to eat the dead body and she points out how he does the same even after watching a slaughterhouse documentary. He defensively says he cut out veel and limited bacon to the weekends because “that’s all I can do”.

4:50 – 7:12

Their other neighbor, a black cop, knocks at the door as they are transporting the body. The husband tries shifting blame to the wife because the neighbor knew they were home since their cars were parked on the street.

I perceived the intention of having an African-American actor as the other cop in this scene as a way to represent perceived white scrutiny from the African-American perspective because of the scene’s given power dynamic and choice of camera angle at 6:04. After hearing the wife’s desire to “hear what he knows” and seeing this camera angle, I thought of the concept of white people seeing themselves, or their actions, through the voice/mouth of the other because it clearly shows the wife appealing to male importance by getting water for them, the white husband’s facial expression showing dismay, the black cop’s confusion, and the dead white cop leaned out of sight.

Throughout this whole conversation, the black cop was portrayed as being curious about the sex move that made them fight despite the fact he’s telling them their neighbor is missing. The black cop tells the white husband that he found  information regarding the potential whereabouts of a person with the “cure” for his wife’s newfound hunger (he was lied to and doesn’t actually know what it is for), but moves his hand back when the white husband impulsively reaches for the paper and asks to know the sex move that lead to them fighting. The white husband replies “You can’t handle the move” and takes the paper anyway and the cop leaves.
This section shows two men appealing to one another’s manhood while exchanging information regarding the status quo of women within the house. The inclusion of the wife using the last resort of kissing the neighbor to avoid getting caught adds to the discomfort of the scene because not only was the exchange present in front of the wife, but the white man in the conversation was changed by the information while the black man was under the impression he was doing a favor for a friend.

The episode until this point shows the subconscious sense of entitlement of the white man, the male hypocrisy that tends to come with that, the absorption of blame by the wife, the tolerance of the wife dealing with emotional male projection, the tactful understanding and utilization of male ignorance, the unawareness of meat being a dead body, and the seemingly oddly timed mention of coffee in the context of several different forms of oppressive symbolism regarding historical and present hierarchical power dynamics.

I am curious to hear other people’s thoughts on this show and some of the symbolism I did not catch and if my perceived symbolism wasn’t congruent with yours. After these scenes I was ready to turn off the show, but skipped ahead a few minutes to see if it was like this throughout. After storing the dead body in the tub upstairs, a deputy sheriff played by an African-American woman is invited into the house to discuss Dan’s disappearance in the kitchen at the dinner table. I don’t know the dialogue of this scene, but the show seems to target middle class or upper-middle class white women and the setting of this scene reminds me of the cultural tension between white women and women of color discussed in “Eating the Other”.

Internship – This week at Fertile Ground was spent preparing the garden space. I helped Gail removed metal fencing from a garden bed facing the west on the south side of the property. Afterwards I weeded the entire bed and then got to take off my shoes and hop into the garden bed to comb through feet of soft soil for morning glory vines. I know there will be morning glories coming up in that bed, but I removed several incredibly long vines. After weeding and sifting through the soil I put the fencing back against the wall of the EcoHouse and at the back of the garden bed. At this point I tied down the fencing and showed the other interns how to trellace plants with the proper knot and what to look out for when tying up the plants. Once that was done, I traded places with Karen and let her rake this garden bed while I shoveled awful muddy dirt while the other interns boxed in a garden bed with 2 x 4s.

Week 7

This week has been packed full of learning opportunities to apply concepts learned from class into real life. I continued to work on a potential presentation to a younger audience regarding health, thinking, and personal identity that I will elaborate on in the Concepts Learned section. After coming up a rough draft of the presentation I decided to call Port Townsend High School’s Athletic Director and Vice Principal to discuss the possibility of me coming into a classroom and sharing this outline. He seemed receptive to the idea and mentioned that if I wanted to I could come and show the presentation to a few faculty members to see who would be interested. This week I discussed methods of record keeping for non-profit organizations and how selectively gathering information can provide incredible dividends. This discussion was separate from other discussions I have had with Gail about my supplementary grant writing class because it was through the lens

of Fertile Ground. The organization has records of individual community members sending them letters of appreciation to represent how Fertile Ground satisfied their need along with a historical record of all organizations within the community that have originated from, expanded from, or have just relied on Fertile Ground. On Saturday I attended a Fertile Ground potluck to discuss the details of the farming season with people potentially interested.

Concepts Learned

In this process, I articulated the correlation between low moral centralities and the likelihood of changing ethics to match behavior. During the presentation I gave to the class regarding physiology and mental health, I intentionally separated behavior from the other processes because it is a reflection of the health of the other processes. When I wrote out a way to articulate the individual-to-group engagement processes I realized the potential of utilizing the separation of behavior from an individual’s action towards a task in my explanation. After illustrating information regarding both concepts along with their visual cues, I intend on suggesting meditation as a technique to satisfy the need to act on this information without facing the identity crisis of trying to drastically alter a routine and sustain that alteration because wisdom is only as accessible as the emotional capacity of the user to digest the information gained from the wisdom. I realized meditation fits because it removes you from your conscious state for a small period of time to train your brain’s ability to focus while training your nervous system to relax. In my spare time I explored different types of meditation to confidently suggest the method in which you sit and breathe without giving a thought a second thought, turning your brain into an ongoing dialogue with yourself.
In this week’s texts, I learned about the Ze

bulon M. Pike expedition of 1806-7 and how it lead to the U.S. colonization of northern Mexico. I also learned that some well-off Mexican families who were in favor of Spanish colonization of Mexico ended up moving to New Mexico, creating a strong Anglo affinity within the ruling class with arriving entrepreneurial American traders. I also learned more about the effect of popular artists at the time augmented the belief that life should be glorious and heroic.
I learned the history behind Bob Marley’s Buffalo Soldier song this week. This invaluable piece of knowledge came forth in Dunbar-Ortiz’s quote on page 142, “In an effort to create Indigenous economic dependency and compliance in land transfers, the US policy directed the army to destroy the basic economic base of the Plains Nations – the buffalo.” The systematic destruction of the symbolic buffalo still affects the state of our plains’ ecosystems to this day. The act of total war on a group by another marginalized group shows up throughout history in rather unpleasant situations. I learned about one of the most globally destructive pieces of legislation passed in US history, the Monroe Doctrine. This vague piece of law states that any nation engaged in any activity that threatens perceived US economic or political interests will be disciplined militarily by the United States. I also discovered te

xt that illustrates the direct connection with industrialization and frequent intervention on the side of big business in domestic conflicts between a corporation and their workers. The case example provided especially caught my attention: the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, the first nationwide work stoppage.

In August 1917, white, black, Muskogee tenant farmers and sharecroppers in several eastern and southern Oklahoma counties took up arms with a larger goal of overthrowing the government to establish a socialist commonwealth. A hundred years later, history is hoping to repeat itself with the emphasis on railroad distribution of tar sands for the Dakota Access Pipeline.

 

This week has been extraordinarily busy due to the drastic increase in workload for my other program about writing grants. I cannot list the hours spent working on grants for this program, but I would like to discuss concepts learned from that experience. A grant is comprised of several components in effort to illustrate how the chosen methodology solves the need as reflected in the objectives. This interconnectivity between these three components of the grant more-or-less outline the rest of the argument. I had to ask Gail and Karen specific questions regarding any documentation of history at Fertile Grounds to demonstrate how Fertile Ground has historically met a need for individual community members and organizations within the community. Understanding the grant writing process helped me understand how and why they chose the method to collect the information that they did.

Internship

This week was interesting because I was able to count some of my discussion hours with Gail about grant writing with program material from this class. I have learned the approach to writing a grant from my other program, and with a freshly detailed account of the process, I can ask Gail for specific information that she may or may not have and in that process I have learned invaluable steps to document progress in order to receive grants. This includes photographing events, documenting noticeable changes to the environment, tactically asking for documentation of ideas that are hard to convey unless expressed intentionally (such as personal emotional growth which can be the need based portion of a grant), and documenting a history of organizations interacting with your non-profit. I was also able to participate in the Fertile Grounds potluck and I got to listen to honest concerns from people who are not used to engaging in these sort of events.

Week 6

I had my midterm evaluation this week and began coursework with a reflection of the previous five weeks. During this process I recombined my learning

objectives as I will elaborate on in my concepts learned from this week. The reflection on the previous five weeks allows for an interesting weekly evaluation of concepts learned because I thought about them in the context of completing the second half of the program.

Concepts Realized this Week

I have learned enough through limited exposure to the texts listed in my ILC to focus the direction of my learning contract. I have combined the learning objectives: “What interdisciplinary symbolism of eating food can the student relate to the concept of sharing the experience to promote social cohesion?” and “How has racism and prejudice in the U.S. been used as a tool to divide members of the working class.” and connected their concepts together. The new single objective is: I want to better understand the historical origins of the biopolitical infiltration of the domestic space to increase my awareness of the pressures applied to culturally appropriated groups of people in effort to understand how a community oriented collective could support the engagement of an individual with a social group through food.

I have discovered that, according to Grenier, the historical origin of the biopolitical infiltration comes from previously developed violent tendencies in colonists before and especially after the civil war. When national identity was attached to the white body, the desire to kill the other was masked and all non-white bodies were emotionally and spiritually fed upon. The ingestion of the other can be complicated when the black subject inhabits their own stickiness and the consumer is upset by the black subject attempting to leave the stickiness. As argued by one of the most respected scientists in the world, Robert Lanza, and one of the most widely read astronomers Bob Berman, consciousness can be explained as the product of the interaction between the individual spirit or soul and the simulation-like interface of the universe. The conscious deprivation of a “soul first, human second” perspective coincides with the history of misdirected emotions of unresolved frustration and attachment to materialistic goods. The origin story of man’s explanation of reality changes when man removes himself from nature, just as the origin story of a nation changes when citizens believe another culture to be primitive, as mentioned in An Indigenous People’s History of the United States. The misdirection of overwhelming human emotion fuels an origin story not grounded in reality that lead to brutal, inhumane treatment of non-white bodies which was followed by the seemingly safe ingestion of the other. Moving forward into the next half of class I intend to question the direction of human emotion and whether the ingestion of something that extends beyond food can be a beneficial tool to help bring people together. I found this direction by asking how people ingest the message behind the politically inspired Ben and Jerry’s ice cream flavors in seminar. Can the ice cream and the message attached to the ice cream be consumed without being a consumer? This concept came up in An Indigenous People’s History of the U.S. when the author discussed the peoples of the corn. The food was humanized by having spiritual representation of deceased members of the tribe in each kernel of corn. The appreciative consumption of the values respectfully and spiritually invested in the food through group ce

lebration and dance created a bond between people over a shared interest. The one tasting lab that stood out from the rest was Annie’s corn lab. The recently acquired knowledge of the history of corn and the historical representations of it in the context of current events invoked a gag reflex when intentionally tasting the corn puree and I was having a very hard time ingesting the corn products despite the absence of an overbearing repulsive taste. Moving forward into the second half of the class I hope to increase my understanding of this concept.

The reflections I made from this week’s content specifically are linked to a few quotes from the text:

“[tobacco, tea, coffee, sugar] were the first objects within capitalism that conveyed with their use the complex idea that one could become different by consuming differently” (Newman 2013: 83)

Newman quoted H.S. Irwin, “The original purpose in building the coffee house was to provide appropriate facilities for the “genial institution of Change”.” (Newman 2013: 79

“We would say that the strongest have survived, that is these salmon,” says Dirk of the Fisheries. “You guys here get excited about a run of 100,000 fish, we talking about 2.5 million.” (LaDuke 2016: 60)

Newman has been discussing occupations filling the middle-man role between certain products and consumer. Modern farmers adapt to a market of the consumer and their newly monetized services begins to shape the mind of the farmer. At what step in the production of heavily commodified crops does the misdirected intention of farmers of varying degrees of moral centrality affect the food? Do the methods used to grow the food reflect the moral centrality of the farmer?

Newman’s quote of Sidney Mintz identifies the ingredients used to appeal to individual identity through food. This observation is supported by the quote from H.S. Irwin because all ingredients were present in early coffee houses. Coffee houses also became trading centers for coffee beans. Irwin’s stated purpose for the coffee house was outcompeted by an outside interest that altered the intended collective agenda to benefit from sharing the interest of commodifying the shared interest of others. The commodification of the space affects the culture that grows from using the ingredients Mintz mentioned and the coffee consumers entering the incipient space. The effectiveness of a group appealing to individual identity can be shown in Conroy and Allen’s study from 2010.

The presence of one value system imposing their “superior” beliefs over the other also came up in The Winona LaDuke Chronicles. The stories of Indigenous leaders siding with oil corporations and assimilating the origin myth and identity of the people with the outsi

de interest remind me of the political hijacking of the coffee house. In the mentioned communities, the perception

of shared interest in land changes when the concept of promoting the land (and other values central to the group’s identity) now includes extracting oil in the context of personal identity, potentially altering individual moral centrality.

 

The last quote about Maori and Wintu observation implies complete unawareness of long term consideration, and specifically disrespects millennia of Indigenous observation by assuming the other methods of observation are inferior to their own biological DNA testing methods. The necessity to validate other methods within your own value system suggests a potential nonalignment will be found, and in this case, because of inferior methods by the other.

Activities
This week Natasha and Erik came over to my house to have a workshop on WordPress. I sat back and watched Natasha give Erik a broad outline of WordPress and the key places to look for common uploads. Hearing Natasha’s understanding of WordPress shed light on the important factors of uploading and helped narrow down the overwhelming display of options when devising the presentation of an idea. This week I read An Indigenous People’s History of the United States Chapters 5 and 6 in addition to chapters 6, 7, and 8 of Newman’s The Financial Life of Food and pages: 1-6, 15-63, 130-156, 212-240 from The Winona LaDuke Chronicles. I uploaded a lot of week 4 content at the beginning of this week for my midterm presentation.

I also created a moral framework component to educate a younger person on how to establish and maintain a sense of self identity.

Internship
The meeting on Thursday with Fertile Ground was to review the brochures for any mistakes and go over the final edition of the Fertile Ground Collective Garden contract. We ended up touring the neighborhood; passing out brochures and talking with community members we encountered about the garden cooperative. This experience gave me so much confidence with the project going forward because of the receptive and enthusiastic encounters I had. People who I encountered were willing to pass brochures onto other housemates and neighbors within apartment buildings. A few people were very thoughtful with their responses and asked questions that showed honest consideration. Gail called me on Monday and we discussed another day in which we could pass out brochures.