Do we have a responsibility to future generations? I believe we do, that we have a responsibility to ensure the best possible future for the future generations of not only out direct descendants but the future generations of the human species. What that responsibility entails and why it exists is the purpose of this paper, to define the reasons why there is a responsibility, what they are, and how many people are we responsible for.
The Native American concept of generations shown through the River of life book regards the importance of seven generation. This concept focuses on the wellbeing of the next seven generations, focusing on the preservation of culture and environment rather than short term and immediate gains. The Native Americans rely on culture, tradition and their history in order to make decisions, seeking to preserve the way of life and adjust more carefully. These ideas are also associated with being in tune with nature, which changes slowly and focuses on balance. The idea of life being interconnected is shown through the medicine wheel as described
“The Medicine Wheel is a powerful metaphor for the totality of life. All aspects of creation and consciousness, inclusive of the mineral, plant, animal, human and spirit realms are contained within the center and four directions of the Medicine Wheel. They overlap and interweave to form the whole. It is in the center of the Medicine Wheel that we find the void, black hole, sacred zero, the chaos at the course
The Native American’s way of living was different from the Europeans. They believed that man is ruled by respect and reverence for nature and that nature is an
In American Indian life, they believe their life is interconnected with the world, nature, and other people. The idea of a peoplehood matrix runs deep in Indian culture, in this essay the Cherokee, which is the holistic view of sacred history, language, ceremony, and homeland together. This holistic model shapes the life of the American Indians and how their sense of being and relationship to their history is strong and extremely valuable to them. This essay will try to explain how each aspect of the peoplehood matrix is important and interconnected to each other and the life of the Native Americans.
In the article “The Greatest Generation: The Great Depression and the American South,” Jeffrey DeRoven analyzes the economic struggles of the American South during the Great Depression in order to figure out why some people refer to people from that time period as the “greatest generation.” Below, this paper overviews DeRoven’s thesis, purpose, stance, audience, usage of literary techniques as well as logos, pathos and ethos, logical fallacies, and ultimately concludes with an opinion suggesting that DeRoven’s analysis is mostly sound and useful, but limited in proving his thesis.
For years, the Native Americans lived a very solitary life with their own unique way of living, that was until the European’s showed up with their very complex way of living. Harmony with nature was a very important aspect of Native American culture. The Native people embraced nature with no intention to modify it unlike the Europeans. They simply cared more about nature and what it had to offer. The spiritual connection between the land and these Natives were distinctive from the Europeans also due to the fact that to the settlers, land meant wealth. As a European, if you owned any land you were considered a wealthy upper class human being. As a Native, no one owned the land and anyone could benefit from the land.
Storytelling continues to be an integral part of Native American culture, providing us with an understanding of what was important to the Native Americans. Through their stories, Native Americans expressed an understanding of the environment, and the relationship that existed between themselves and their environment. These stories also provide us with a look at Native American legends, history, and a collection of knowledge critical to their survival. Native American stories are deeply rooted in their relationship with Mother Earth. Their many years connected with land, life, water and sky has created many stories explaining these important bonds with Mother Earth. From ancient times the Native Americans have looked to their
This paper addresses the results of interviews, observations, and research of life in the Ottawa tribe, how they see themselves and others in society and in the tribe. I mainly focused on The Little River Band of Ottawa Indian tribe. I researched their languages, pecking order, and interviewed to discover the rituals, and traditions that they believe in. In this essay I revealed how they see themselves in society. How they see other people, how they see each other, what their values were, what a typical day was etc. I initially suspected that I would have got different responses from these questions but in reality the results in the questions were almost completely the same. I studied this topic because mostly all the people that are
Native American, or American Indians, have a rich culture comprised of struggle, strife and success. For this paper, i will discuss the Native American Culture and it's history.
The “pig in the python” describes the role of the baby boomers generation through time. As the baby boomers creep towards retirement age, a problem comes in being able to provide retirement services for a large population from a comparatively smaller population of workers. The baby boomers were a generation that defined America, contributing much to it’s growth but in return created plenty of problems that we will deal with for years to come.
The first major liability of the United States was that no one had ever established a
All humans are interested in their origins and trying to account for their existence through creation stories. Native Americans tribes are no different from the rest of humanity. The tribes’ stories explain how people came into existence, how they came to be live on the lands they do and the how people interact with nature and each other. These trends can be seen in the legends of three tribes hailing from New England to the Great Lakes Region.
Culture is intertwined throughout out everything that Native Americans are. Their religion, way of survival, justice system, holistic views, and so much more, comprise their culture. Over the past 200 plus years, Native Americans have been subjected and forced to conform to European derived ideology. This has impacted Native Americans culture from a past, present, and future perspective. These perspectives will be addressed as well as combined into one.
By studying the history of Native Americans, we can understand some of their characteristics, qualities, and perspectives regarding America’s landscape. Many of these still persist today in either the original or a mutated form. The Native American quality of living unsustainably persists today in various forms because it is difficult to notice an unsustainable lifestyle. John Steinbeck, Barry Lopez, and Scott Momaday in The Log From the Sea of Cortez, The American Geographies, and The Way to Rainy Mountain describe this effect.
It is also this depressing lost of Native Americans’ culture that has motivated them to never stop trying to return home. However, in the memory of the speaker’s dad, these Native Americans were just “swollen bellies of salmon coming back to a river that wasn’t there” (CR 123). Salmon have the nature of returning back to the place, where they were born in, to reproduce. Comparing the Native Americans to salmon, the author identifies the importance of their land to their nature. That is, losing the land is the same as losing their reproduction. Therefore, taking the land away for the modern developments, the western culture has ultimately become the nightmare for the Native Americans.
Are Americans thinking about the world they are leaving behind for future generations? Some argue yes, but I disagree. If we are truly considerate of the future generations, global warming would not be a prominent issue. Americans are not seeking alternative sources for energy that do not omit harmful chemicals, thinning the ozone. It is hard to comprehend the damaging effects of our actions for the reason that they may not show for years. In order to better understand the harmful effects of numerous chemicals used in America and around the world, one must put his or herself in the shoes of a climatologist and study the changing climate. Data has proven countless times the climate is gradually getting warmer. This seemingly unimportant
Native Americans hold a type of esoteric concept that comes from their philosophy of preserving their environment as well as their kinship that ties them together (Access Genealogy, 2009). They not only have social ties, they are politically and religiously organized through their rituals, government, and other institutions (Access Genealogy, 2009). They work together to reside in a territorial area, and speak a common language (Access Genealogy, 2009). They are not characterized by any one certain structure (Access Genealogy, 2009). However, the society agrees on fundamental principles that bond together a certain social fabric (Access Genealogy, 2009). Different Native American tribes throughout the years have had different ideas, opinions, philosophies, which are not always predetermined by their past ancestors.