My Life Is My Sun Dance By Leonard Pelois

I sat in a small, dirty and crowded holding cell in Fort Bend County jail. Sitting here waiting to get processed and see the nurse, Mane! These men in this holding cell were all fucking trifling. There were cells for suicidal inmates, crazy inmates, murderers and those going through drug withdrawal. The smell of musty underarms, alcohol and feet made it unbearable to breath. It was time for me to live with the consequences of the choices I had made. The newest consequence was the foreboding environment of a small, overcrowded county jail.

Leonard Peltier is a Native American man currently imprisoned for crimes he did not commit. Peltier is currently serving time in Leavenworth, Kansas, and it is likely that he will live the rest of his life in prison. Examining Peltier’s experiences through several different community systems frameworks will push human service professionals to help not only individuals but whole communities as well. In particular, the ecological systems theory, historical trauma, and the theory of social capital are helpful in making sense of Peltier’s experiences, and seeing them not as random events but as the culmination of years of mistreatment, oppression, and marginalization.

Weatherford begins to convey his argument in the introduction by stating that Columbus's reputation was already ruined due to his actions and people can’t look the other way from the truth. Weatherford says that Columbus was not seen as such a great person: “Native Americans had built great civilizations with many millions of people long before Columbus wandered lost into the Caribbean.” Weatherford emphasises his point by using strong negative diction whenever describing Columbus and the falseness that was spread around him. Weatherford also addresses all the wrong in the time period as if Columbus was the only reason it happened. His negative connotation “Unable, Contrary to popular legend, and less meaning” were all describing the wrong that Columbus has issued. His repetitiveness throughout the piece will automatically make the reader believe that his statement must be true because of how strongly he believes in it. Weatherford truly believes that Columbus Day should be changed to something that actually defines who we are as a country.

In the United States, there has been many cases of Racial injustice. From the beginning of the start of the United States of America it was the injustice to the Native Americans being captured and used for slave labor while their bison be slaughtered for sportsmanship. But this paper is on the specific race of the African Americans. There are many races that have been racially profiled and ostracized by the English people. But the treatment that African Americans have endured even till this day is disheartening. African Americans have gone through enslavement during the early 1600’s to the mid 1800’s. Then the African Americans were obstructed by the Jim Crow laws creating the ‘Separate but Equal” propaganda during the late 1800’s into the 1960’s. After the abolishment of the Jim Crow Laws, people were considered equal until the recent actions of many police officers using deadly force on African American youths in the early 2000’s.

In one of these chapters, Bayard Rustin detailed the twenty-two days he experienced on a chain-gang, where he was sentence to by the courts in result of one of his various arrests during the civil rights era. Immediately, he illustrated in great detail the abominable conditions of the camp. The building being festered with roaches in every room and, in the living quarter, approximately a hundred men were closely stacked together in double-decker beds like sardines. The odor, Rustin had gone on further to describe, was absolutely rancid and he went on to later explain that it was largely due to the fact that "each week [the inmates] were only given one suit of underclothing, one pair of socks, a shirt, and a pair of socks. Even though [they] worked in the mud and rain, this was

Is it more afflicting to him to leave graves of his fathers than it is to our brothers and children?” In other words this means that the seventh President of the United States does not respect the history of Indians and their traditions. For him they are just an unnecessary ballast that he has to remove. Of course as a white men he only wants what is the best for his people but he might have forgotten that white men are the ones who came to the United States while Natives were already there. They are the ones that should adapt to the lives of Native Americans. One thing that I do not understand is why he could not let white men and Indians live together, both of them would finally accept the way the others live.

The distressing experience of operating as a prison guard in such a notorious penal facility as New York State’s Sing Sing Penitentiary is one that is unlikely to be desired by one not professionally committed to the execution of prison uniformity. However, the outstanding novel written by Tom Conover illustrates the encounters of a journalist who voluntarily plunged himself into the obscure universe of the men and women paid to spend the better portion of their lives behind prison barriers. In Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing, Conover creates a noteworthy document resonating personal emotional occurrences that nonetheless suggest the cultural sensitivity of a true prison guard. From the standpoint of our studies

Conditions inside the prison were no better. For starters, many of the prisoners were those who had committed menial crimes. Worse so, many were war heroes, back from Vietnam who couldn’t find a job and thus had to go about other illegal means to stay alive, and thus were thrown in prison. Attica prison in particular was famous at the time among prisoners for having the most horrific treatment of their inmates. Guards did whatever they could both legally and illegally to keep their prisoners in perpetual fear and discomfort. The prisoners were not just treated like children, but as animals. The one thing prisoners treasure the most is their contact with the outside world. It keeps them sane and allows them to remain in some type of contact both with their families as well as with what is going on outside the prison walls. But, guards did whatever

Ted Conover’s book, New Jack, is about the author's experiences as a rookie guard at Sing Sing prison, in New York, the most troubled maximum security prison. He comes to realize that being a correctional officer isn’t an easy task. This is shown from the beginning when he is required to attend a 7 week training program to become a correctional officer. He comes to realize what inmates have to endure on a daily basis. Throughout his experience into a harsh culture of prison and the exhausting and poor working conditions for officers, he begins to realize that the prison system brutalizes everyone connected to it. New Jack presents new ideas of prisons in the United States in the ways facilities, corrections officers, and inmates function with

Conover’s purpose in writing this book not only to share his experience as a correctional officer but to also help readers get beyond the stereotype of the brutal guard seen on television and rumors but to see correctional officers as individuals, offering us a chance to understand

In the case of the California’s Corcoran State Prison the prisoners were being mistreated. The situation that brought this case to the forefront was Dryburgh (2009) found that “Preston Tate was shot and fatally wounded by a corrections officer after Tate and his cellmate fought against two rival Hispanic gang member. Tate death was at the hands of a prison guard prompted two whistle – blowers to approach the FBI with tales of abuse and brutality toward inmates by correction officers”. Moreover, this was not the first time that an inmate had been shot by a correctional officer.

In the novel, prisoners were treated horribly and they all had different behaviors. Some prisoners were hard workers that were grateful for every small win they got, other prisoners were a no good, jerky, snitch. One prisoner was named Pablo. He was a hard worker and wasn’t afraid to stand up to authority figures when it was necessary. Pablo was also very moral and honorable. Tiurin was another prisoner in the book, and he was the squad leader. He worked really hard for his squad so they wouldn’t get the jobs that no one wanted. He was noble and he was a hard worker.

There were many reactions and emotions that I felt as I read this excerpt. First of all, I did not even know how harsh prison life could actually be. The author describes it to be brutal, ruthless and unforgiving. From this description, I can understand that I wouldn’t want to go there no matter what someone said. According to Tookie, you barely even get any space in your prison cell. You are not allowed any physical contact with friends or relatives that are visiting you. You do not even get good food and you always have to watch your back. Prison life is not a lifestyle to joke about and my view of being sent to prison has been altered after reading this

The guards, although placed in a simulated environment, allowed their evil nature to triumph and, as a result, abused the civil rights of others. Throughout history, literature has portrayed this transgression of human nature and revealed evil’s presence, goals, motives, and strategies.

I chose this speech as the topic for my essay because I had heard of this speech many times, but never taken the opportunity to completely watch the lecture, or educate myself on this mans life journey.