Blackfeet Indian Reservation

This semester in history, we talked about many things that I would not think about on a daily basis outside of school. Our lessons made me think in new ways about different concepts. The two things that made me most interested were learning about the Dakota Access Pipeline involving the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and the requirements for voting for the President of the United States. DAPL made me more aware of our environment and realize how one thing could drastically affect so many areas of…

The Badlands is in the Southeastern corner of South Dakota, located to the East of the Black Hills. It was declared a national monument in 1929, and then was declared a national park though an act of congress in 1978. (Stoffer 2) The park is most known for its rugged, desolate appearance, with jagged rocks and interesting formations. The core of the “badlands” (meaning the “badlands” associated with Badlands National Park) is part of a dissected plateau region bounded by the Cheyenne River (to…

Beginning in July of 2016 and continuing on to the present day, protesters have been actively camped out near Cannon Ball, North Dakota; protesting as, or in solidarity with, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe of North and South Dakota. Calling themselves “Water Protectors”, they are actively protesting a 1,172-mile long oil pipeline being built by a subsidiary of Energy Transfer Partners named Dakota Access (Time 1). The pipeline is proposed to run diagonally from Stanley, North Dakota all the way…

There is a current sociological event happening right now, where thousands of people have passed or are passing through the camp of Standing Rock calling themselves water protectors. A 1,200-mile-long pipeline is being constructed by a Texas based energy company called Energy Transfer. The pipeline also known as the Dakota Access Pipeline, is designed to transport 570,000 barrels of crude oil per day from North Dakota to Illinois. The Pipeline project originally proposed to go over the…

The North Dakota pipeline protest is arguably the most influential protest of our time, regarding Native Americans and the environment. There are certain things that should be endowed to any human being. And two of those things are access to clean drinking water and a place to lay their loved ones to rest. Native people have been protesting the construction of the North Dakota access pipeline for months now, with no end in site. The construction of this pipeline threatens not just native peoples…

hroughout his journey from his poor Indian reservation to a neighboring all white school. Arnold Spirit, the main character in “The Absolutely True Diary Of A Part Time Indian”. By Sherman Alexie Junior experiences on and off the reservation helped him understand to ignore all the hate, so you can focus on more important thing and follow your dreams even if other disagree. (Body #1: One of the life lesson that Junior learned through his experience was to follow your dreams even if other…

high pompadour. On special occasions such as war, religious ceremonies, and festive decorations, they painted their faces in majestic patterns. Similarly to the women, the men adopted European calico dresses and felt hats. Some clothing all at the Blackfeet wore: moccasins and buffalo hide robes decorated with earth pigments or plant dyes and elaborate porcupine quills in cold weather. Common Tribal members and chiefs looked practically looked the same, but for one detail: the chief would wear a…

In Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Alexie channels his voice through Junior, a poor young boy living on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Alexie writes of the impacts of poverty to himself and to an unnamed audience in the form of a diary. The author adopts a bitter and hopeless tone to tell the story of a hot July day when his dog, Oscar, fell ill. Alexie’s inclusion of specific details demonstrates his feelings of resent towards him and his family having their…

teeth, had seizures, a lisp, lived in poverty on an Indian Reservation, and had to deal with many family alcohol addictions and deaths. His life wasn’t easy and it didn't help that we was continuously made fun of and beat up at school. During Junior’s transition into Reardon, he struggled with finding himself. “Traveling between Reardon and Wellpinit, between the little white town and the reservation, I always felt like a stranger. I was half Indian in one place and half white in the…

The Absolute True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie resembles a native American boy, named Arnold, who decides to change his fate and leave his reservation school and go to a rich white school to become more than someone who just stays on the reservation his whole life. Alexie shows that bullying is humiliating and sometimes soul- crushing, but if you keep your hopes high you will eventually overcome it. Arnold gets bullied on the reservation and bullied at the rich white school…