Wisdom is an important part of human society that can be hard to interpret. In the book, Wisdom Sits in Places written by Keith H. Basso, wisdom is expressed in stories that are all connected to places. The wisdom from places is something not just mentioned in Apache stories, it can be interpreted in myths and past events in our lives, which helps us to live a more meaningful life. The book Wisdom Sits in Places written by Keith H. Basso, is all about Place-names that are very important to Apache culture. Place-names have multiple important roles that effect Apache culture. Place-names take on the roles of giving people a sense of place by showing changes in landscape, giving you impressions of unfamiliar land through descriptive imagery, …show more content…
For example, in Shades of Shit those who wouldn’t share their corn got punished for their greed and those who hear this story would try not to be greedy, so they wont be punished for their actions. Stories like these linger within the apache culture and help them in multiple ways. These places give their people spiritual meaning. An example of this is shown in Water Lies with Mud in an Open Container, Basso was told he was offending people of the Apache culture because he wasn’t pronouncing the name correctly. he was told this was because your speaking the words of the ancestors who helped them become who they are today, so they deserve respect. These places also help maintain emotional balance within their lives. These stories linger to keep people on the right path in life. They are ways of saying you need to learn from this persons mistake. One thing important …show more content…
A certain event I experienced, helped me to realize that I was taking life for granted. An Apache name for this place would be, Windy Cliff Where Ashes Blow into Crashing Waters. When I was around the age of five, I attended a funeral. This funeral was for my grandma. At that time in my life I had not experienced the loss of someone close to me or anything else related to death. This funeral was held at the Marin Headlands(Windy cliff where ashes blow into crashing waters) at the top of a cliff on the edge of a hiking trail, where we scattered my grandmas ashes into the ocean beneath us. After releasing her remains into the ocean, we had a picnic to memorialize her. Throughout most of the funeral I didn't feel sad, I felt no sign of grief until our family started memorializing her. I began to think of all the nice things she did for me and my sister. She helped teach us how to bake amazing cookies, she taught us how to sew unique quilts, she would also take us to the store to buy us our favorite strawberry candy. When remembering these things I then realized I will never be able to do these activities with her again. I then began to feel sad and I began to grief. This loss in my life was my first experience with death and it helped me to understand the value of human life. This event taught me that death can impact humans greatly, that grieving is natural, and our lives will be remembered
There is a deep relationship between the environment and Western Apache people. The bonds between the two are so strong that it is embedded in their culture and history. Keith Basso, author of Wisdom Sits in Places expanded on this theory and did so by divulging himself into Western Apaches life. He spent fifteen years with the Apache people studying their relationship with the environment, specifically concentrating on ‘Place-names.’ When Basso first began to work with the Apache people, one of his Apache friends told him to ‘learn the names,’ because they held a special meaning with the community. (Cruikshank 1990: 54) Place-names are special names given to a specific locality where an event
Keith H. Basso’s Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language Among the Western Apache delivers a strong message regarding human connections between place, identity, and origins in relation to the idea of place-names. Every place evokes an association to a story and/or a person/ancestor bearing a moral message that allows the Western Apache to shape their beliefs, behaviors, identities, etc. It is through this connection to the land that the Apache begin to define their understanding of their lives.
My grandmother, who is the mother of my mom, passed away due to heart failure at the age of 87. Since I was 6 or 7 she had been living in our house. The reason for that was, my grandfather, that I was named after passed away a year before I was born, so she was alone, and she was starting to get old. Since she lived with us for so many years, she had been a very important figure in my life. I can honestly say that she was like a 3rd parent for me, and losing her, made me fell horrible and helpless. I witnessed how real death is because of her passing. Combined with puberty, my grief caused me to become depressed for a long time. As I’m looking back it sounds really extreme, but there were some days that I did not even leave the bed thinking that there was no point to our existence. Thanks to some psychological counselling however, I was able to overcome that mental
This week in class we learned about some basic facts about loss, the journey of dying in America, how life expectancy has changed over the years and some examples of how they have changed, we went through some questions like why to study grief and loss, how there is a lack of training for those helping professionals, different settings in which grief can be encountered as well as experiences that could generate reactions, and the benefits of training in loss and grief. Talking about these things made me feel more comfortable with the situation of loss. It also made me feel sad when people share their experiences for some reason. I guess I am more of an emotional person than I thought when it comes to death and dying and usually I just try
It is rare to find a book that is as informative as a textbook but reads as easy as a short story. But Keith H. Basso is successful in creating an interesting ethnography about the Western Apache culture by using two usually overlooked topics, geography and oral history. Geography and the location of places is usually forgotten or seen as just topography, but Basso proves that geography is more than a location. It is the forgotten history of the name of a place that makes the locality more important than it seems. While whitemen (a term frequented by the Apache to describe White European culture) has constantly renamed places for convenience and prove of colonization, Basso overturns this ignorant and offensive
Wisdom is of unlimited importance in our daily lives. As humans, one cannot survive without wisdom. The Apache culture says, “Wisdom is viewed first and foremost as an instrument of survival.” (131). Like air, without wisdom humans cannot flourish. Therefore, it is of extreme importance that, as humans, we find a way to discover wisdom and integrate it into our lives. However, Wisdom is not the same for everyone and therefore how each of us finds or locates wisdom might look different. Throughout this course we have discussed the concept of place and how it can help us find infinite wisdom. The Apache people tell us that to find wisdom we must have three mental conditions “Smoothness of mind, resilience of mind, and steadiness of mind…each
I was a sophomore in high school. I remember that day distinctly, my parent’s sat my sisters and I down to have a family discussion about how the tests my uncle underwent resulted in the diagnoses of stomach cancer. When I heard the words stage four and cancer, that I was losing an uncle who was more than just an uncle. He was my tutor when I was struggling in my English and math subjects in my pre-operation stages of life. Without my uncle, I would have fallen back cognitively because I struggled with language pronunciation and concrete logic with math as we saw in the video shown in class (Piagets Cognitive Stages). I helped take care of my uncle till his last few days of his life. It hurt me to see my uncle suffer. After my uncle passed, I grieved completely different than I did my papa. I cried over the loss of my uncle, yet the thought of knowing he was not suffering any more helped heal the heartache I felt. I think that the reason why I grieved differently on this occasion was because I was older and more cognitively developed. It is amazing how much a mind can mature and understand the concept of death in just a short span of death. Without losing both my uncle and papa to medical conditions, I would not have explored the career fields in the medical
During my sophomore year, I fell into the trap of mediocrity and a willingness to float along; not really challenging myself nor staying mentally engaged with the world around me. It was not until my grandmother’s death that I was shocked into motion, startled that I was not here on Earth to be a happy spectator. I learned that life is not just a calm sea. Instead, life features relentless crashing waves with rare reprieves from unlucky situations. Her sudden death reminded me that anyone could die at any time, including myself. Her lack of words on her deathbed spoke to me. Once you are dead, there are no stories left to tell.
I never knew much about death. I didn’t understand what happened to someone. It was like they just disappeared into thin air, never to be heard from again. Almost like a character in one of my mystery novels. Only this time, there was no group of brothers or a crime-solving girl to look for clues and solve the case. It was probably because no one close to me has died when I was old enough to remember it. To this day, I’ve still never lost anyone very close to me.
Loss, it changes you. I cannot describe it or explain it. I am struggling with it. We as a family are struggling with it. I have decided to share one piece of how our family decided to celebrate my mother’s life at her funeral. We laid her down to rest on December 5, 2015, if you can call it that. More days than not it doesn’t feel that way to me. As we worked through the specifics we struggled, as a family and individually. We are all in a place together, yet we are individuals. We are dealing with the biggest loss of our lives. Each taking on a task for social and personal fulfillment. Each taking on the responsibility to ourselves to not regret decisions made during this time, or disappoint our mother’s life and memory at this memorial. We knew that so many others have been touched by such a beautiful woman’s kindness and genuineness, yet getting past our own grief to plan seemed to much a load to carry. We were and are not prepared for this, it had never been a fleeting though in my mind and I could not imagine it being a fleeting thought for anyone else.
We all suffer loss of loved ones through death. Loss is inevitable. We never truly get over our losses but we get through it overtime. This is the molding and shaping of the adult we are supposed to become. The day my grandfather passed away I felt I had lost everything in a blink of an eye. He was the only grandparent I had left. Nothing could bring him back. He was gone. I never thought he would have passed away so quickly The Melanoma had won the war. His life was over and so was mine. Overtime I became a man of faith and this only strengthened me as a christian. This was a test of my faith.
I never saw myself going through the agony and grief that I have been through in the past twelve years, but it has simply been another thing to help me conquer the hardships that I will continue to face throughout my lifetime. Going back to the struggles I faced in high school, having being bullied has made me appreciate everyone that I come in contact with in some special way, whether it is helping them through troubles that they might be facing or merely being someone’s friend. Death has also helped me to never take time for granted and to always leave with a smile on my face or a positive
Before I was born, my aunt lost something, something that the doctors had told her she could never overcome. She lost her thumb, due to cancer. The doctors told her multiple times that she would never be able to accomplish something like knitting ever again, although she proved them wrong. Now, she knits almost every day, and she even created my favorite sweater. Because of this, she has shown me how to persevere, to avoid the negative, and to be headstrong. It is her story that has started me on the path to becoming an oncologist. Furthermore, when I was only 15 years old, I thought that I might lose my mom. After months of experiencing discomfort in her abdominal region, feeling the constant need to use the bathroom, and had blood in her
My grandmother’s death was the first death I have experienced in my family. I have learned to deal with it but I still have not overcome it. It taught me how to be strong and what memories really can do. I am thankful that she got to spend fifteen years of my life with me so I can share everything I learned from her to any person I meet. If it was not for her unconditional love andsupport I would not be able to call myself a freshman at the University of Michigan all my years living, she has been the most influential person in my life as my mentor and friend. I find that with dealing with the difficult experience of her death I must also face the tough obstacle of her not being able to help me move in to collegeand start my new life. I do know
I am going to die one day. This is something I did not have to ponder over as a kid. During my childhood, there were many people that died, but since I did not know them well, I never bothered to think about their death. When I was about eight years old my paternal grandmother passed away. At the time, I did not know what it meant to die. Later on, I began to understand that when people died, it meant they were gone forever. It meant that I would never see them again, or meet them if they were already gone. It scared me to think that one day my family and I would die too. Eventually, I came to understand and accept that death and dying are a natural part of life and living. We are born, we live, we die, and life goes on. At the same time, it still does not make the death of a loved one any easier. In the novel, Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt, she was able to explain death and dying, life and living so effortlessly, through creating these fictional characters that could live forever.