Cultural Ecology In The Film Nanook Of The North

Being a Hmong-American in the United States was hard. Growing up in a community that was full of Americans, and being in a private school in my early years, (consisting mostly of Americans and little diversity) was difficult. In that kind of environment, I never saw each person differently. The characteristics that I saw were our skin color, and another distinction that I saw was our religious and cultural backgrounds. I started to lose touch of my own culture and identity as a Hmong-American girl. My family told me that in the stages of my toddler years, I used to be good at speaking my native tongue until I started school.

In Hmong’s, they have their own traditional beliefs in which they hardly ever alter due to a different atmosphere. Some of the Hmong beliefs are they prefer traditional medicine, are culturally active, host ritual ceremonies, and are spirituality influenced. In the book The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, refers to the Hmong culture and their beliefs on medicine while their baby Lia Lee, is suffering from epilepsy in which they have a hard decision. Traditional Hmong’s have their own medicinal beliefs which they obey prior to obtaining Western medicine. The gulf between Western medicine and Hmong health beliefs is an impossible abyss. Also, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down describes the life of Hmong refugees assimilating to

The Hmong were well known for being a self-sufficient people producing their own food, making their own weapons, hunting their own game including birds, monkeys, deer, wild pigs, tigers, and more. They fished, gathered fruit, wild vegetables, and honey. These individuals were farmers and have very intimate relationships with the natural world(pg 120). Foua Yang grew up in a mountainous clan such as this. She had revealed that everyone in her village performed the same tasks therefore causing no class system. “Since no one knew how to read no one felt deprived by the lack of literacy.” They believed that anything of importance that the children needed to know could be learned through spoken word or by example. The elders were essential for teaching the younger generation among many things how to hold sacred their ancestors, play the qeej, conduct a funeral, how to court a lover, how to track a deer, and how to build a

     The Hmong had trouble adapting to American life. With no driver’s license or bank account, they had to make a living doing whatever they could. Not knowing the language in a foreign land doesn’t help either. The Hmong women adapted much more quickly than the men did because of the fact that they interacted more with English-speaking people. While the men were at work, the women were spending time interacting. The Hmong men also refused to change more that the women did. This shift of power caused a lot of changes in Hmong households. What even caused more of a power shift was the fact that the Hmong children learned about the culture easier than the women did. Instead of the father having control over the family like it was back in Southeast Asia, the children now had the upper edge. The children could communicate, interact and even drive with Americans. You could see a 16-year-old Hmong

What do you think of traditional Hmong birth practices (pp. 3-5)? Compare them to the techniques used when Lia was born (p. 7). How do Hmong and American birth practices differ?

Firstly, increasing one’s cultural competence is instrumental to becoming a more empathic and understanding person and teacher. Cultural competence involves understanding another person’s culture without judgement and realizing that even if their ideas or beliefs are different, that does not mean they are wrong. If one learns about their students’ cultures and backgrounds, they will be able to speak and interact with these students in an appropriate way. If the students are refugees and come from a traumatic past, teachers should approach any personal questions they have sensitively. Sometimes people have prejudices or believe stereotypes and they may not even realize it. The Hmong people were widely dispersed and no two Hmong people will be the same. It is crucial that teachers do not assume that each person has the same values and

The Lees, a Hmong family, came to the United States in the 1970s as refugees from Laos, and lived in Merced, California. Unlike most immigrants, the Hmong population was less amenable to assimilation. The traditional health beliefs and practices of the Hmong population were disputed by the practices of Western medicine. This became very event when the Lees took their three-month-old daughter, Lia Lee, to the emergency room in Merced. Lia was diagnosed with epilepsy a disease that had two different meaning among the Hmong population and Western medicine.

Lia Lee was a Hmong infant born with epilepsy. Lia’s parents were immigrants to a Western nation. However, the parents held tightly onto traditional beliefs from their native country. The incongruent belief structure of the East and West created difficulty when the two systems collided in an effort to care for Lia Lee. Specifically, when the drug therapy prescribed for Lia Lee was not followed by her parents. Subsequently the child’s medical team contacted child services, which lead to Lia’s removal from her family. The result of the cultural misunderstanding was fragmented family. In addition to fueling the distrust of the western healthcare system by an already marginalized community.

I absolutely believe that the author was evenhanded in her presentation of the two cultures. Throughout the book it was clear that she tried to look at everything from as many perspectives as possible to accurately portray the Hmong culture and medical culture.

The Hmongs are an ethnic race, originally migrated from Eurasia and settled in river plains of China. The Chinese hated them, calling them ‘Miao’ or ‘Meo’ meaning barbarians and tried to gain mastery over them but the Hmongs wanting to be left alone began to migrate. By the beginning of the 19th century, half a million Hmongs had migrated to Indo-China. Disliking persecution, some settled in Vietnam, Laos and Thailand. They detest being ordered or bullied, do not like to lose, are fighters who would rather die than surrender. Though they never possessed a country of their own, they have marched through the pages of history as free men desiring personal liberty. The Lee family travelled to Merced, California along with other Hmongs who fled to Laos in 1975, when their country became a prey to communism.

At 7:09 p.m. Lia Lee was born on July 19, 1982, at Merced Community Medical Center in California. Her family was Hmong descendant, a refugee from Laos that relocate themselves in America, California. The family was culturally oriented, but language limited. They cannot express themselves in another language except their cultural dialect. After Lia birth, Dr. Thueson noted that she was a “healthy baby” with the weight of eight pounds and seven ounces. Besides her weight, Lia’s assessment of a newborn infant’s heart rate, muscle tone, color, respiration, and reflexes was right within

I choose to analyze the Copper Inuit of the Arctic who are a modern foraging group who reside within North America. This was a large band of hunters and gathers who sought to not just survive but thrive within North America's harsh climate in the North where most enemy tribes dared not to go. With little vegetation growth in their region, the Inuit relied heavily on hunting and fishing animals such as seals, beluga whales, oxen, fox, and bear. With such an abundance of land and sea life. The Inuit were able to grow quiet vastly in numbers, reaching to it's highest population size in the 1990's. This also meant they didn't need to travel as far or as much to collect food due to how abundant the supply had already been. Families would spread

Another source of conflict was the cultural barriers between parents and children. Through their engagement with American peers and American media, 1.5- and second-generation Vietnamese Americans familiarized themselves with American culture while their parents instilled in them traditional values and customs. Vietnamese culture is maintained through, among other ways, celebrating Vietnamese holidays like Tet and Tet Trung Thu; the formation of and engagement with Vietnamese enclaves, such as Little Saigon; and foodways, the cultural practices relating to the production and consumption of food (Lee, “Maintaining Cultural Continuity,” Week 7). It is by engaging in such practices that first-generation Vietnamese Americans successfully transmit traditional values, morals, and customs to their children (Lee 134). In the discussion forum, Helen Huang discussed going to Chinese school when she was younger; she has, however, forgotten some Chinese words which occasionally makes it difficult to communicate with her family

Anthropologists should also study the sociocultural context of the environment that is being affected by the environmental damage.

What is traditional ecological knowledge? Traditional ecological knowledge as defined by Fikret Berkes is the knowledge base acquired by indigenous and local peoples over thousands of years through direct contact with the environment(Berkes, 1993). This knowledge includes the spiritual, physical, emotional, and mental aspects and related components of the earth and universe. Traditional ecological knowledge is often passed from generations to generations through oral form. The basic principle of TEK is about stewarding the “land” for the benefit of future generations. To the indigenous people in northern Canada, the concept of land does not always mean a physical entity, it also includes the living environment like plants and animals(Leopold, 1949).