Cultural Differences In The Great Spirit

“With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth and to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing here on earth God’s work must truly be our own” (Kennedy par 27).

Stagecoach – a movie that is widely accepted as the most damaging movie for the Native identity – helped to illustrate this image to viewers at the time. As a result, many Americans believed Natives were all uncivilized and violent, leading to nationwide stereotyping and prejudice. The Indian was the enemy of America as a result. Stagecoach also shows Natives being hunted like animals, which sends the image of them being non-human and thus they should be treated as such. Stagecoach and movies like it mispresented Natives for decades and caused a loss-of-identity amongst the Native community because Natives were dressed the same throughout various films. It was not until the 1970s and 1980s where Natives were properly represented on

In the movie, Native Americans are often portrayed as spiritual, noble, and free this ideal image of Native Americans captured the world’s imagination at one point. It all began in late 1800s when Native Americans were among the first to shot silent by Thomas. One of the common attraction that made

What happens when two very different or even mutually exclusive cultural perspective are forced into contact with one another? In Anne Fadiman’s The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, there is a division between the shamanistic insubordinate cultural of Hmong refugees in Merced, California and the cold analytical approach of western medicine. In the early 1980s, the child of a Hmong refugee family in Merced, California is born with epilepsy, her name is Lia Lee. Anne Fadiman traces the interaction between these two cultures and Lia’s disease, she reviews that misunderstanding and miscommunication can have calamitous consequences for all involved. The author introduces many characters throughout the book and they all

Today we watched a movie called club native. It was really good and touchy movie. This movie is all about the struggle, confusion and frustration of First Nations, who were wondering for their right identity throughout their whole life. They struggle was also about their identity and dignity which they were looking for many years. They wanted their rights which originally belong to them.

Both films don’t try to deny or completely erase the image of the drunken Indian, but instead provide a more sophisticated depiction of the reasons behind this obstacle of Native American communities.

The effectiveness of media in perpetuating and maintaining racial definitions is apparent through the consistent presence of such ideas in popular films such as Disney’s Pocahontas (1995) and James Cameron’s Avatar (2009). Despite over a decade difference in release, there are similarities between the two in terms of the racial labels applied to Native Americans as a race and how they are portrayed as a result. The producers behind Pocahontas claimed that the film is much more than a love story and is about maintaining an open mind in order to appreciate different cultures. By creating an animated picture about a

Arriving at a foreign country at the age of eleven years old was and exiting and yet intimidating experience. High buildings, wide roads, newer and nicer cars on the streets were some of the first things I noticed when I arrived to the city of Los Angeles CA. Living in a country where you were not born in could be difficult some times. Although Spanish is spoken at a grand scale in CA, it was difficult to communicate with and understand the teachers from my classes at the elementary level since all they spoke was English. Los Angeles is a city of great diversity, therefore it is believed to be the perfect place for any person arriving from another country to not feel like a foreign, such believe

All communication is cultural. It draws on ways we have learned to speak and give nonverbal messages. We do not always communicate the same way from day to day, since factors like individual personality, mood, and the context of the situation interact with the variety of cultural influences we have internalized that influence our choices. Communication is interactive, so an important influence on its effectiveness is our relationship with others. Do they hear and understand what we are trying to say? Are they listening well? Are we listening well in response? Do their responses show that they understand the words and the meanings behind the words we have chosen? Is the mood positive and receptive? Is there trust between them and us? Are there differences that relate to ineffective communication, divergent goals or interests, or fundamentally different ways of seeing the world? The answers to these questions will give us some clues about the effectiveness of our communication and the ease with which we may be able to move through conflict. The challenge is that even with all the good will in the world, miscommunication is likely to happen, especially when there are significant cultural differences between communicators. Miscommunication may lead to conflict, or aggravate conflict that already exists, or in the sad of case of girl developing epilepsy and both her parent’s Hmong culturally clashing with her Western medicine

In America and other countries of similar and contrasting cultures, we like to be right, we like to be on top, and we want to be recognized for both respectively. Competition is an underlying theme in so much of what we do in our daily lives. Whether it’s getting a better grade on a test than your friend, winning a football game or even speeding up faster than the car next to you when the light turns green. Competition, whether we like it or not, surrounds us and we participate in it willingly. We all want to stand on that podium and receive the gold medal, for then we are better than someone else and we can look down upon him or her because we have achieved something they have not. This competition and trying to be better than the person

For most of my life, the word “Native American” had immediately made me think of feathers, powwows, and a society uncorrupted by civilization. However, in watching the movie Smoke Signals, a movie that depicts the modern Native American culture, I learned many other things. For one, I learned that many of the customs that modern Native Americans have are very similar to my own. I also saw that the family life of the Native Americans in the film had many of the same problems that my family had undergone in the past years. This film was unlike any that I have ever seen; therefore, it reached me on a very personal level.

Throughout world history, it is evident that Native Americans have struggled in society ever since the landing of Christopher Columbus in North America. Ever since the film industry began in the 1890s, Native Americans have been depicted in many negative ways by film makers. One particular way film makers degrade Native Americans by making their white characters convert into Indians or “go Native” and eventually they always become better than the original Indians in the film. This notion has been repeated in many films, three significant films were it is evident is in The Searchers, Little Big Man, and Dances with Wolves.

In this movie, one may observe the different attitudes that Americans had towards Indians. The Indians were those unconquered people to the west and the almighty brave, Mountain Man went there, “forgetting all the troubles he knew,” and away from civilization. The mountain man is going in search of adventure but as this “adventure” starts he finds that his survival skills are not helping him since he cant even fish and as he is seen by an Indian, who watches him at his attempt to fish, he start respecting them. The view that civilization had given him of the west changes and so does he. Civilization soon becomes just something that exists “down there.”

Typically referred to as ‘Indians’ in popular culture, Native Americans were traditionally seen in Westerns as the antagonists. The Western genre typically tells the story of the colonisation and discovery of America, which saw the major Hollywood studios revive the interest in the Western. Westerns draw on “historical actuality, a romantic philosophy of nature, and the concept of the […] savage” (Saunders, 2001, p. 3). Westerns often split the “depiction of the Indian, with the cruel and treacherous [Indian] balanced by the faithful [Indian]” (Saunders, 2001, p. 3) which resulted in the portrayals of Native Americans witnessed in films today.

Is there spiritual culture in America? To answer this question, we must first describe spirituality and culture separately, and then fuse them in the end. In the dictionary, it states that spirituality is the "state or quality of being dedicated to God, religion, or spiritual things or values, especially as contrasted with material or temporal ones." Spirituality to me basically is the act of uniting with a higher being, whether it is an understanding or concept which is above all. This perception means that it is above all the people on this earth and even the religion that we might practice. The definition of culture states "a particular society at a particular time and place." The culture we will be