Gila River Indian Community: Video Analysis

In this video, the focus is on unemployment in a community where the common job supplier is a company called Electrolux. The major issue that the video seems to analyze is, not only the effect of the job loss on these individuals (who lost their jobs), but also the effect this takes on their families. A few children of these workers were questioned about the whole situation. According to the structural-functionalist paradigm, one can easily view the function that well-paying jobs, like those in this company, have a function of maintaining families and keeping our children educated. Because this video focuses on how the children of these workers are suffering from the job loss (especially in school), we can see that there are a dysfunction that …show more content…
The mixture of the modern, U.S. culture with this Native American community involves a great deal of preserving culture through the gardening portion of the school. A large part of all of this began with the drastic change that was brought with the building of a dam, which changed the lives of the Natives. The issue of diabetes in such tribal communities is especially focused upon due to the way that the dam changed the river, affecting these communities. Traditional practices, such as farming, were revoked. All of these issues, combined, have been considered with the school of this community and a garden program has been set in place. The daily interactions between the people of the Gila River Indian Community brought forth the symbolic importance of gardening. In the culture of this group, gardening with family members such as aunts, uncles, and grandmothers allowed for children to learn the value of treating other people and learning to share. This program would keep the Indian culture alive (specifically the symbols of this activity) and address the rampant diabetes and obesity issues. Henceforth, the garden program at this school can “kill two birds with one stone,” for a lack of better words. The social interactions that the people once had allowed for them to have a shared meaning of learning values and morals: gardening. This prompted them to ask the school board of their community to implement a gardening program in that school. Now, their children are understanding the culture’s symbols, thereby keeping the heritage of their culture, through daily interactions at school (despite the loss of their