The Cellar - November 17, 2008: Indians

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- - November 17, 2008: Indians (http://cellar.org/showthread.php?t=18730)

November 17, 2008: Indians

A group of what I believe are High School students in Texas, have put together a beautiful website. Using pictures of Indians from the National Archives and adding text that appears when each picture is clicked on, they've created an emotional experience.

Quote:

Picture the life of our first people. Hear the chanting and dancing around the fire. Smell the scent of herbs in the ancient ceremony. Listen to the medicine man and his mystical stories. Picture a land of endless boundaries and open range. Picture the prairie decorated by grass and wildflowers, undisturbed by modern technology. Picture a stream, crystal clear, providing bountiful food and life giving water. Picture a father showing his son how to string his first bow. Picture a boy riding a horse on his first hunt. Hear the whoop of warriors before the kill. Picture the women scraping hides for clothing, and smell the deer and buffalo, roasting slowly in the camp. Picture a time when Native Americans lived in harmony with the land. Picture the past, picture the future, picture-indian.com.

http://cellar.org/2008/indians.jpg

This is an unusual IOtD, in that I'm urging you to go to this linked site, check it out and if you like it, give the kids some feedback through their email link at the bottom of their home page...
but y'all come back now, ya hear. :D

Indians sure were short on smiles, weren't they?

Great idea for a site.

I spent my childhood summers travelling with my folks around the western states going to archives and Indian Days (which is what they're called - Browning Indian Days, for example). It was a great experience.

They may have lived in harmony with the land, but not with one another. The Iroquois, for example, were no friends of the Hurons.

If you ever get a chance to do a sweatlodge, take it. Brutal to experience but life changing.

Some of these are probably from the Frank Rinehart collection. About 800 of the original glass plates are stored at Haskell Indian Nations University here in Lawrence.

Quote:

Originally Posted by SPUCK (Post 505094)

Indians sure were short on smiles, weren't they?

People in general didn't smile in early pictures. I think it had to do with the long exposure times - too long to hold a smile.

There are also some cultures (today, not back then) where smiling in photos just isn't done. When we were buying our current house, we walked through one that had all these posed family photos on the wall, and not a single smile, anywhere. There is nothing creepier than a group of dead-serious children staring at you. Also, the mother had a pretty hefty moustache. That was pretty creepy too.

heh.

That reminds me that when my daughter was around 15 months old, we were trying to get her to smile for the camera. For some reason, she decided that "SMILE!" was a command to open your mouth as wide as you can. We have a lot of pictures from this couple month long period with her mouth stretched wide open.

Very cute glatt, could make for some interesting senior photos later in life.

It looks like she is yawning. Cute.

(Is it terribly wrong that I want to put a ping pong ball in her mouth and try to win a prize?)

Early photos did aim at dignity, but I also think that by the time those photos were taken, your average Native American didn't have an awful lot to smile about.

Email from the site creators...

Quote:

Bruce,

Thank you very much for your link to our site. You really helped us
get started. We greatly appreciate your contribution. Thank you again.
Please come back and visit.
Respectfully,
Brittani on behalf of the 5th period class

:thumb:

It is nice that these kids are learning about other cultures but the myths they learn bug me.

Quote:

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce (Post 504915)

Picture a time when Native Americans lived in harmony with the land.

This has always bugged me. Indians for the most part did not "live in harmony with the land" any more than we do. They would slaughter hunt and start huge wildfires to chase game. The reason they did not have as much a impact on the land as we may have now is that there were just less of them.

But just because they talked to some bear spirit doesn't mean they didn't burn him out of house and home.

http://www.wildlandfire.com/docs/biblio_indianfire.htm

They changed their ecosystem to fit their needs just as we do today on a bigger scale.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Coign (Post 505395)

The reason they did not have as much a impact on the land as we may have now is that there were just less of them.

That's true, but this website is written from the perspective of a modern person. The Indians may have burned the land, but it grew back. That mercury and dioxin in the nation's rivers will be there forever. You still can't go near Chernobyl. We have technology today that allows us to fuck things up on a much greater level than the Indians ever did. In comparison to today's human, the Indians did live in harmony with the land. So did the Pilgrims.

Beautiful site.

lmao @ Coign. Seriously?

Just because they didn't have the technology to mess up the land didn't mean they had the will. They were less "green" intending than many of the green conservatives of today.

My argument is don't point to them as your green land loving idols. They were not.