Learning and Researching Ethnographically

Before beginning my weekly blog post I did not really know anything about the Spokane Tribe. I had previously learned about the Coeur d’Alene Tribe that is located near Spokane in Idaho, and they are similar to the Spokane Tribe. Before conducting some of my research on the Spokane Tribe all I knew was that they were located in Eastern Washington.

Over the past couple of weeks I have conducted research on the Spokane Tribe beginning with finding were exactly the tribe is located (Spokane) and some of the health problems they are currently facing ranging from polluted air to radiation. Next I learned about their annual Labor Day Pow Wow were their entire Tribe comes from all around and people dress up and participate in a celebration full of dancing and food. Then I researched about the problems they are facing with pollution and a giant pit left from uranium mining that was done years earlier, and how they are still battling the effects caused by the mining and the pollution that it resulted in. Lastly I found a few pictures of the tribe one of a child at their Pow Wow, another of them years before in a traditional setting, and a last one of a pit left over from uranium mining that is just like the one they currently have on their reservation. So far from this research I have done on the tribe I have learned so much by studying another culture, one thing in particular is that no matter how different another person or culture may seem to you or me they are just a person that is facing hardships, having fun, and living life they are just like you and me.

Throughout the process of research the Spokane Tribe I did not feel that I had much difficulty seeing the practices and traditions of the tribe their perspective. I had previously take a class (Ethnic Thought and Culture) and I feel that I had prepared me and shaped me in such a way that I have little to no struggles with ethnocentrism and evaluating the Spokane Tribe compared to my life and culture, and it also was helpful that I have not yet found many practices of the Spokane Tribe that I have not seen or heard of before. In my Ethnic Thought in Culture class it was critical to see other cultures from the perspective of that culture and because of that I felt that I had a good grasp on cultural relativism and it allowed me to do valuable and productive research on the indigenous people of Spokane. Also as I stated above I have not encountered anything yet that the Spokane Tribe does that I have not previously known about, for example the tribe participates in an annual pow wow and when I was younger I would play in an annual soccer tournament near the Puyallup river and every year there was a pow wow held right next to the fields at Chief Leschi High School and for me it became a regular and normal thing to see and hear.

One example of research that I did that was ethnographic was while I was searching for health problems of the Tribe I found an article that was a partial interview with a member of the Spokane tribe that talked about the radon pollution that they were facing and it recounted the experience of one of the members of the Spokane Tribe that lived on the reservation and the experience that she was having and had. Another example of my ethnographic research was when I was looking for videos of the tribe and I found one of the tribe at their Pow Wow and it was the grand entrance that a member recorded and how their culture is from the view of a participant. This ethnographic really helped deepen my understanding of others because it let me see their culture as a participant rather than an outsider who may not normally see some of those things.

Some of the new research strategies and techniques that I used and found extremely helpful were searching for pictures using creative commons and using sites to help find some health problems of a particular indigenous group for example Cultural Survival. What made using the creative commons search so helpful for me when doing research was that it allowed for me to find pictures to make my post look less boring while knowing that I will not be violating copy right laws, and what made the health problem search sites helpful was that it let me not just type search words into google and have to search through numerous sites to find what I was looking for the search engine would allow to go directly where I wanted to.

Spokane, Their People, and a Really Big Pit

This is a photo of a child who is a member Spokane tribe at a pow wow clothed in their colorful traditional dress. This photo does not violated copyright law because it is listed under creative commons.

M. (2007, August 26). Jingle Dress [Photograph found in Wikipedia, Spokane]. Retrieved May 17, 2017. (Originally photographed 2007, August 26) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:JingleDress.jpg

This photo shows a few members of the Coeur d’Alene Tribe, which is a neighboring tribe of the Spokane Tribe and most likely shared a few cultural traditions, in front of a couple of tipis on their reservation in Idaho. This photo does not violate copyright law because it is listed under creative commons.

Harlow, M. B. (1907). A group of Coeur d’Alene Indians on the Desmet Reservation, Idaho [Photograph found in Coast Magazine, De Smet]. Retrieved May 16, 2017. (Originally photographed 1907, May) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Coeur_d%27Alene_people_and_tipis,_Desmet_Reservation,_c._1907.jpg

This is a photo of a uranium pit after it had been fully mined and then left open, and the Spokane tribe has been effected by a mine just like this for the past couple of decades resulting in pollution and many health problems. This photo does not violate copyright law because it is listed under creative commons.

Garcia, A. O. (2009, November 22). Ranger Uranium Mine [Photograph found in Wikipedia, Jabiru]. Retrieved May 15, 2017, from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ranger_Uranium_Mine_01.jpg (Originally photographed 2009, August 07)

 

 

Radioactivity on the Reservation

 

The Dawn Mining has come up with a proposal to fix the damaged area of land that they mined years earlier on the Spokane Reservation, by filling it with more toxic waste. This article talks about how after many years of the mining on the Spokane Tribe’s land and then leaving it as an open-pit for radiation, the same company wants to fill it will more toxic waste as a way of fixing what they already damaged. The state of Washington originally came up with a plan for the company to pay 40 million and fill the pit with dirt to close the site, but the company complained that they did not have the finances. Instead the company proposed to fill it with low-level radioactive waste. Now the Spokane tribe, after there already being some link to cancer from the radiation that they were being exposed to in the years earlier, will be exposed to even more radioactive waste if there is not a stand taken.

The author of this article, Ben Jacklet, is a writer, editor, and publisher. He is currently enrolled in Portland State University to get his Masters while studying the need to shift from fossil fuel to other alternatives, so the article closely relative to his expertise and interests. Ben has been involved with Journalism for 28 years. Jacklet has been associated with 7 different newspapers and companies having to do with his profession and is currently employed by Shred hood as their editor and publisher. The goal of Shred Hood is to inform the Mount Hood community of news, including weather, sports, and entertainment. The article itself is a bit out of date as it was written roughly 20 years ago. The author in this particular article is addressing the people or even just the everyday newspaper reader, to inform them want is going on at the Spokane Reservation. The article is mostly opinion with some fact, it appears to be well researched, the ideas are in line with other similar works I have read, and the authors point of view seemed to be impartial.

Jacklet, B. (1996). New poison bury old ones. Progressive, 60(3), 14.

Konnie Lemay discusses in this article the dangers of Radon and breathing it, and how it greatly increases the probability of lung cancer. She talks with a member of the Spokane tribe who recently tested her house for radon and found extremely high levels, so high that it was like her household was smoking about five packs of cigarettes a day. She explains the dangers and how the Spokane Tribe has some of the highest rates of cancer in the area, because of the radon in the air and it is most likely due to the open uranium pit that was left open years earlier.

Lemay currently works at Lake Superior Magazine, where she is the editor. She studied at the University of Minnesota where she got her bachelor’s degree in journalism in 1980. This particular article does not seem to be written directly in Konnie’s area of expertise. She is associated with a reputable organization in this particular article it is Indian Country Media Network, and it stands for Serving the Nations and Celebrating the People. The article is relatively current, being published in October of 2014, so it is very applicable. The article that the author is addressing the general audience for education. The article is mostly opinion with some fact, it appears to be well researched, the ideas are in line with other similar works I have read, and the authors point of view seemed to be impartial.

Lemay, K. (2014, October 1). Radon: The Invisible Killer In Native Homes Across Indian Country. Indian Country Today. Retrieved from http://www.spokesman.com/picture-stories/radioactivity-spokane-reservation/

The Spokane Tribe’s Annual Pow Wow

Every year the Spokane Tribe, located in eastern Washington, holds a Pow wow during labor day weekend. Each year they begin the ceremony with a Grand Entrance. They begin with the entrance of three flags the American flag, a P.O.W. flag, and their own Tribal flag. After the flags have been brought in, they proceed with the entrance the men followed by the women and the children of the tribe, all while dancing dressed in the elegant and extravagantly colored clothing. The entrance can be seen in a video called  Saturday Grand Entry Aug. 31, 2013 99th Annual Spokane Days Spokane Tribe Pow Wow Wellpinit, WA, that was published on February 11, 2014 by Jeff Ferguson under the Standard YouTube License. It is posted to educate people how each year the tribe begins their special ceremony. Ferguson is a professional photographer who grew up in Spokane, WA and is a member of the Spokane tribe but currently resides in Beaver, WA.

image by Donald Healy, 31 January 2008

During the Pow Wow many members of the tribe participate in various dances while dressed in traditional pow wow clothing. In 2014 Gathering at the Falls Pow Wow Riverfront Park, Spokane WA Women’s Traditional 2nd Dance, it shows a group of the Spokane Tribe women, both young and old, participating in a traditional dance to the beat of the drums, and dressed in their beautifully colorful traditional pow wow dress. This video is posted for the entertainment of the tribe and other that may be interested in seeing what a traditional dance during a pow wow looks like.  The video was posted on September 9, 2014 by Jeff Ferguson, who also uploaded the previous video shown above, under the Standard YouTube License as well.

The First Inhabitants of Washington

One particular group of indigenous people who I have found some interest in is the Spokan or Spokane tribe. The Spokane tribe is located in eastern Washington, mostly in Stevens County with some of it also being in Lincoln county including part of the Spokane River. One of the main reasons why the Spokane people interest me is because they were the first people to inhabit the Spokane before it became one of the biggest cities in Washington, and they also indigenous people who are relatively close to where I live and to learn more about their health and some of the health concerns that they are facing seems very intriguing to me. The Spokane people face many problems like many indigenous groups. Some of the issues facing the Spokane tribe are air quality, pollution and radiation from a nearby uranium plant, and an inability to obtain good healthcare. Air quality is one main issue that is being focused on by the Spokane tribe, with a majority of the focus being on air pollution from the many wildfires that occur in the region, and that poor air quality harming many people in their tribe. A problem that the tribe has face for many years is pollution from a uranium plant, that has now been closed, but for 50 plus years it has been damaging the health of the tribe. Lastly the people of Spokane have struggled with a difficultly to obtain healthcare because of two make reasons, a lack of insurance support and their high poverty rates.

In this map it shows the continent (North America) and state(Washington) where the Spokane tribe can be found, and to the right of the first map you can see Spokane, and that is where the tribe is found. Here in this second map you can see a more exact location where the Spokane tribe and reservation is located which is along the Columbia and Spokane River in Eastern Washington.

“Public health is a negative. When it is at its best, nothing happens”

 

One of the first examples that surprised me when reading about global health was the statistic that said that more than 2.5 million people live on less than $2 a day. To me that stat was so surprising because I thought about how much money I might spend in a day on things that I probably have no need spending my money, and that really put things into perspective for me. The next thing that I found surprising was the 6th highest cause for death in the United States was accidents. Accidents were so surprising because some of the other causes for death that were behind accidents were the flu, diabetes, and Alzheimer’s disease, and for me it was crazy to think that there are more deaths from accidents than any of those others. The last thing that I found extremely surprising was about tsunamis and when there were fisherman that went out fishing they would return home to the port from a trip and they would find that everything had been devastated by a tsunami yet they felt no rough waters at sea. What shocked me with this was how something that has so much power and force can be felt so greatly by some people, but miles away at sea the fishermen could feel nothing at all.

The first article I chose to focus on is called “Peru’s new President must act on oil clean up, say indigenous federations of the Amazon“, and this particular article was published on October 23, 2016. This particular articles deals with the some of the indigenous people of the Amazon focusing in Peru. In this report they talk about the problems that the indigenous people are having with the oil spills and how instead of cleaning up the spills they are just covering it with dirt and pretending nothing has happened. They focus specifically with trying to get the new president of Peru to help initiate a cleanup of the oil spills because the indigenous people are now consuming contaminated water and food because of the lack of cleanup of spilled oil. Because of this severe contaminated the indigenous people have to knowingly contaminate their bodies with unclean food and water, because of the lack of support from the Peruvian President.

Another article that I found interesting was “Battling Pollution on Our Lands: Mekasi Horinek”, and it was published in September 2016. The main group that is involved in this article are the indigenous people of Ponca Nation that are found in Ponca City, Oklahoma and were previously relocated from Nebraska. The main issue that the people of the Ponca Nation are facing are diseases like cancer and lupus, and even more specifically leukemia. Their biggest problems come from the surrounding areas around their reservations, there are very many plants and factories, i.e. oil refinery, waste facility, dump, and carbon plant, and they have even built a dump on top of their reservation burial site (cemetery). They effects of the pollution have been devastating to the entire community so much so that just about everyone has in some why been affected by cancer, with a specific example being a 14-year-old dying a year ago and a 16-year-old currently battling cancer, and with a small community that is very rare. This issue of pollution is currently having drastic effects on the entire Ponca Community.

The last article that I focused on was “Crisis Point: Failure of Indigenous Health Care in the Upper Rio Negro Region, Brazil“, and this particular article was published on March 27th of 2013. This article centers on the Hup community in the Upper Rio Negro Region in Brazil. The Hup population is facing many challenges originating from diseases that were brought to them from outsiders, specifically white people. The Hup people have increasing mortality rates of their children due to influenza, malnutrition, and many other illnesses that involve diarrhea as a symptom. The problem they are having is they have no way to fight these illnesses because first of all they are not natural illnesses to their people so they have not built immunity to them, and second they are not getting any support from their source for indigenous health care so they are just being left alone to face these illnesses and most likely die from them.

One of the challenges that I faced when doing this assignment was narrowing down what I wanted to focus my blog post on. There are so many interesting health topics surrounding the indigenous people of the world that I had a difficult time deciding which topics would be the best to focus on. One specific success that I found during this particular assignment is that I feel more informed, if only just a little bit, about some of the indigenous groups throughout the whole.

 

 

First blog post

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