History and Description of a Subordinate Group Member Essay Example for Free

History and Description of a Subordinate Group Member Essay Throughout the history of North America, there has been one ethnic group who has given up almost everything to the European settlers. Land, home, resources, and dignity were stolen from Native Americans. The long history of the American Indian is being written, even today. Approximately forty thousand years ago, the earliest ancestors of Native Americans migrated across the Bering Strait from Asia on pack ice (Hoerder, 2005). The population rose steadily, and by the time the first substantial settlement of Europeans was established in the New World, Native Americans lived throughout the continent. In the search for more farmland, European immigrants quickly pushed the native population out of their traditional homelands. This migration began the crowding of other native bands, forcing eastern natives to move beyond the Ohio River, thus starting a series of relocations for the Native Americans that continued through the next two centuries. Less than fifty years after the end of the American Revolution, many of the tribes in the northeastern United States sold their land under pressure from the newcomers. Before 1850, these natives migrated west of the Mississippi River. If you traveled to Oklahoma today you would find the same bloodlines that once roamed the New England hills (Indians The Readers Companion to American History, 1991). Wanting to live apart from the natives and expecting them to remain controlled, reservations were established, including an Indian Territory (est. 1825) in present-day Oklahoma. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 was enacted to populate these newly established areas. President Jackson ordered the forced migration of Native Americans from multiple southeastern tribes. Approximately 4,000 Cherokee Indians perished in 1838-1839 on their 800-mile march, or during their succeeding internment. This tragic event has become known as the Trail of Tears. (American Indian Policy, 2002) Trying to Americanize instead of segregate the Indians, in 1887, Congress passed the Dawes Act, which broke up reservations and gave land to individual Indian families. The idea of the Dawes Act was to assimilate Indians by giving them land from which they could profit. What followed were laws, over the next few decades, which dissolved tribal governments and placed Native Americans completely under the jurisdiction of U.  S. laws (American Indian Policy, 2002). The reservation system is one distinctive aspect of the Native American culture that materialized from their relationship with other Americans. The United States has 310 reservations within its borders. The federal government owns 298 reservations and 12 belong to the states in which they are located. A total of 437,431 Indians resided on reservations or trust lands. That is approximately 22 percent of the Native Americans defined by the 1990 census (Shumway Jackson, 1995). The United States has proven itself unreliable on its policies and treatment of Native Americans. The government teeters between a policy of segregation, under which Indians are treated as a self-sustaining culture, and assimilation policies, which try to integrate Indian and European cultures. The United States acknowledged Indian sovereignty and established treaties with them. Unlike foreign nations, Indians shared the continent with the quickly growing nation who needed resources, and were quick to form treaties, giving Indians land rights and territorial sovereignty but repeatedly found ways to revoke those privileges.

Biography of Isaac Newton :: Sir Isaac Newton Essays

Sir Isaac Newton Jan 4 1643 - March 31 1727 On Christmas day by the georgian calender in the manor house of Woolsthorpe, England, Issaac Newton was born prematurely. His father had died 3 months before. Newton had a difficult childhood. His mother, Hannah Ayscough Newton remarried when he was just three, and he was sent to live with his grandparents. After his stepfather’s death, the second father who died, when Isaac was 11, Newtons mother brought him back home to Woolsthorpe in Lincolnshire where he was educated at Kings School, Grantham. Newton came from a family of farmers and he was expected to continue the farming tradition , well that’s what his mother thought anyway, until an uncle recognized how smart he was. Newton's mother removed him from grammar school in Grantham where he had shown little promise in academics. Newtons report cards describe him as 'idle' and 'inattentive'. So his uncle decided that he should be prepared for the university, and he entered hi s uncle's old College, Trinity College, Cambridge, in June 1661. Newton had to earn his keep waiting on wealthy students because he was poor. Newton's aim at Cambridge was a law degree. At Cambridge, Isaac Barrow who held the Lucasian chair of Mathematics took Isaac under his wing and encouraged him. Newton got his undergraduate degree without accomplishing much and would have gone on to get his masters but the Great Plague broke out in London and the students were sent home. This was a truely productive time for Newton. He conducted experiments on sunlight and prisms. He discovered that sunlight was made up of different colors. This lead to his work on reflecting telescopes. At the same time he was working out his ideas of planetary motion. He returned to Cambridge in 1667 and became the a fellow, earned his MA and the following year became the chair of the math department. he then wrote a book on optics. Newton worked cooperatively wiht other scientists such as Robert Hookeand Edm und Halley on planetary motion. But he was later bitter and resentfull not wanting to give other any credit for their contributions to his work. Newton went on to serve in government positions such as a member of Parliament and later as Warden of the Mint. His only words spoken as a member of parliament were "shut the window." He had a mental breakdown of sorts resulting in thoughts of persecutiojn mania later in life.

Ties that Bind: Societal Transformation in the Face of Relocation

The Ojibwa, a culturally heterogeneous people which called themselves Anishnabe, were historically, not a single tribe in the political sense but rather organized into a number of bands (or sub-tribes) who shared the same language and culture, yet their customs however also varied from one band to another.These bands were divided into permanent clans, which originally were subdivided into five groups from which more than twenty clans developed. Of these, a clan would claim hereditary chieftainship of the tribe while another claims precedence in the council of war.The family played an important role in their society, as clans were simply clusters of related families claiming a common ancestor. The division of labor was well established – men hunted and gathered food, and built weapons and other tools while women carried water, cooked food meals, wove cloth, fashioned pottery and tended the home, though either or both sexes could farm the land, prepare animal skins etc.Though th e family or the extended unit of the clan for that matter, had a strong influence on the broader social structures of Ojibwa community life, societal functions which tend to promote the good of the community generally determined the roles individuals were expected to play.Caring for and educating children were a clan affair, the children learning by example the tribe’s cultural values, e.g. strength of character, wisdom and endurance, and through oral traditions and the telling of stories, and participation in religious ceremonies.The Ojibwa of Grassy Narrows were devastated by changes to their community upon contact with modern industrial society. The Ojibwa encounter with modernization ultimately destroyed their traditional way of life, painfully emphasized by the poisoning of their river-lake system, which had tied them to the land through their primary activities of hunting, trapping, fishing, and subsistence agriculture.Granted access to unemployment benefits, alcohol an d other previously unavailable influences rendered the Ojibwa vulnerable to the manipulation and exploitation of others.Traditional Ojibwa culture was heavily influenced by the natural terrain of their habitat – they had adapted their semi-nomadic way of life to a heavily forested land with an extensive network of lakes and rivers. Primarily a hunting-and-fishing society, they would travel through the lakes and river systems in light canoes.Other economic activities include gathering wild fruits and seeds, as well as some farming, and the making of sugar from maple syrup. As with most Native Americans, their housing consisted of wigwams made with pole frames, and typically covered with birch bark. Their clothing was made largely from animal hides such as tanned deerskin and woven nettle fibers.In terms of religious belief, Ojibwa mythology appears to be elaborate. Aside from general belief in the Great Spirit, their chief religious rites centered on the Grand Medicine Society (Medewiwin), composed of practitioners skilled in healing. Traditionally, the Ojibwa view essential matters relating to health, their subsistence, social organization and tribe leadership, from a religious perspective.The central rite of the Medewiwin – the killing and reviving of initiates through the use of sacred seashells and medicine bags, recreated the necessity of death for the continuation and strengthening of life, as in the Creation Myth. It also carried on the hunting concern and imagery of traditional Ojibwa, going beyond mere imagery into hunting medicine to help them and their neighbors find game.Medewinin ceremonies also incorporated ritual components of traditional Ojibwa cult – tobacco offerings, dog sacrifices, ceremonial sweat baths, feasting and dancing in communion with objects of their religion, the performance of ceremonies for the help and blessing of the spirits.Familial relationships, as well as those in the community, were fostered on a myst ical reverence for nature reinforced by myth and ritual. The breakdown of these relationships and the disruption and ensuing disharmony among the community resulted in serious problems for the Ojibwa, which due to its foreign nature they did not seem competent of handling.It is important to note that the Ojibwa are participants in complex, multi-cultural societies with the preponderance of minority-majority relationships and interaction in the social milieu to which they function. Consequently, the issues they face, particularly environmental degradation and the failure of adequate and proper government support, also concern non-Native Americans.The community of Grassy Narrows, an Ojibwa First Nation located 80 km south of Kenora in northwestern Ontario, was forcibly relocated to its present location in 1962, five miles south of the original settlement. When they first ceded their land through Treaty # 3, local Ojibwa maintained most of their material and spiritual culture. Grassy N arrows folk held on to clan loyalties and political autonomy until the late 19th century, adapting their old skills to new conditions.The 20th century however, proved disastrous with an influenza epidemic wiped out around 75% of the population shaking the native economy, social system, and the local aboriginal religion. Traditional healers proved powerless to explain or combat the disease.

Global Warming Is The Environmental And Social Changes...

Overview Global warming is the environmental and social changes caused by emissions of greenhouse gases. Human activities have been the primary cause of this significant change, resulting with extreme weather conditions, increasing sea levels, and climate changes. In this paper I will compare and contrast natural versus anthropogenic climate changes of global warming, mitigation strategies, mitigation effectiveness, policy implications, costs, and address some policy changes to help stabilize global climate. Natural Climate change The Earth has been experiencing a considerable amount of climate change for the last several decades. Natural factors that contribute to the climate system consist of: solar output, volcanic activity and earth’s orbit around the sun. The two factors relevant on timescales of contemporary climate exist in volcanic activity and changes in solar radiation. The earth’s energy balance primarily influences the amount of incoming energy from volcanic eruptions, which have a relatively short-term effect on climate. Changes in solar output have contributed greatly to climate trends over the past century. The effect of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has been at least ten times that of changes in the Sun’s output and the ocean covers more than 70 percent of the earth’s surface, receiving twice the amount of earth’s radiation. Although the sun is the engine that drives all the weather, oceans and atmosphere control the sun s energy along certainShow Mo reRelatedGlobal Warming And The Planet Earth1588 Words   |  7 PagesGlobal Warming and the Planet Earth: We Broke It, Let’s Help Fix It! Global warming, often confused with the term â€Å"climate change,† is a problem of worldly proportions that knows no limits, caused in large part by human activity. 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