This class different from any experience I have taken at OSU. There were long days and intense moments throughout the week. There was also a unique bond between students that took place. After spending day and night together we began to come together and truly work as a team.

What I’m taking away from this class:

I’m taking more than what I expected. Yes, I expected to obtain information about the Paiute way of living, and perhaps about their conflicts and social issues and I did.

I come home with a new perspective on a group of people living as a minority in their own Country, what oppression for this people really means, how they have to deal with racism and be racists at the same time; having to buy back the land that they once owed for generations and generations, and deal with new social enemies, or at least enemies that their past generations did not have to deal with, like drugs and alcoholism. So, yes I am taking this knowledge with me, but when I say I'm taking more than what I expected is because I never expected to get so much more out of this course.

I come home with and incredible sense of unity, friendship, and “RESPETO” for each other. It is amazing to see what we accomplished as a group in six days of sharing together so many hours of work being as we were, a group of 24 individuals. It was not easy at all, in fact I think it was harder than I expected, but this gave the group the opportunity to use the strategies learned in this course in a real life situation and prove them right. This new model learned will not only help me in my future classes, but in my future career.

I am really thankful for what I've obtained from this course. I think that the way the facilitators handled this project was very educational and professional. There is one thing I would change for future classes though. That is, time set apart for the whole group to do the reading and journal entries. I found out that not only for me, but for many others was hard to read or write with so many distractions and if it is said to do this when ever you can that means different times for everybody. I know these memories will stay with me forever.

Thank you all very much for everything.

The issue that our group presented was race relations. This can be a tough thing to talk about, but the issue existed and we felt as a class that it needed to be addressed. The main point of our presentation was to acknowledge that racism exists, provide factors that contribute to racism and give examples of placing that we see as taking positive steps to improve race relations. Here is the general outline that was used for our presentation

1. Acknowledge presence

 

 

2. Causes suggested by stakeholders


Lack of understanding between cultures.

Learned racism. Passed down from parents

Isolation-lack of interaction between Paiute community and the rest of Burns

Institutional Oppression-Separate learning styles, no Paiute teachers
 
 

3. Reasons for Hope

Cultural events that celebrate diversity in culture. Pow Wows and boxing matches

Burns Community coming together to support Olympic dancers from the Paiute tribe

All stakeholders expressed interest in ‘Building Bridges’

Through interviewing the different stakeholders in the Burns community and the Paiute tribe, we were able to sense the two-way street race issues between both communities, as some of the stakeholders stated. None of the businesses in Burns hire Native Americans, whereas the casino hires a large percentage of whites. To this matter it was said that the tribal members never apply for these positions, because it could be that they never felt welcome.

It was also mentioned that the lack of understanding between the community and the tribe keep them from sharing programs and ideas. The tribe members are so self-contained that they do not go outside of the tribe for help. Some Paiute people come to the community meetings, but they don’t interact with the community. There is a feeling that the communication is falling apart, but the effort to keep this communication is going to continue. It was said though, that the success with obtaining community and tribal goals depends on personalities.

One of the stakeholders stated that racism is more less like everywhere else and it was mostly individuals. Generally it was more visible in 1970;s than today and that the only factor that came to his mind could be, alcoholism. The graveyard gave us no evidence of Native American burials. (Assuming that none of them had their names changed) We also, consider the museum and how it treated the Paiute display in all ways, no archeological, no dates, not even tribal names on top of being buried behind Anglo displays upstairs.

Links: Tribal History National Coalition Building Institute OSU's Diversity Page Native Americans and the Environment Native American Movement Native American Issues and Activism Overcoming Racism Toward Native Americans Indigenous Guatemalan Issues United Methodists Examine Native American Issues Links regarding Mascots and Racist Portrayals