The Energy and Place project started out with a significant amount of researching and learning the basics of how energy is produced, where it comes from and how it affects the environment. We also did some preliminary stuff to prepare for our sense of place essay in Humanities and for our final capstone lab in Chemistry. We then went into creating our sense of place essays, mine focusing on my connection with the city and also relating it to Durango which is much different than the city, it was a great way to really put feelings about where I live into words. We also completed nature journals that consisted of either responding to a prompt or creatively writing about our surroundings, nature and other topics. We also did a Take Action project that consisted of creating a way to express a problem in our society relating to the environment and figure out a way to turn that into a project. A few students did art pieces as well as another student who organized his own protest, and me and my group filmed a video about saving endangered species and preserving the planet we live on. You can watch the video below by clicking on the link!
To really think about my sense of place I had spend a lot of time thinking about what I loved about the city and also what I loved about the mountains and Durango, and it really helped me see the whole picture because I never really thought that much about the place I live in. It also changed me as a person because it really did get me thinking about how where I live makes me feel and thats a huge part of your life is the place you live in. It opened me up to an entirely new way to look at things and I don't think ill ever see the places I live in and will live in the same.
I think im evenly proud of both my projects, the video I edited together I am most definitely proud of, and my essay I turned out really well in my opinion, and I got a lot of great feedback and comments about it from teachers and my peers. And as well as meet all the requirements and exceed a few, I got to really explore a lot of things about my life and it turned out more than just another project, it turned out as an experience that I really enjoyed and like I stated it opened my eyes to a lot of new ways to look at the place we live in and the environment around us.
How does energy production impact place?
My reaction and my answer have both changed to this question throughout the project. And I think the most drastic change to that answer has been that I always thought energy really wasnt that big of a deal, that I never really had a huge effect on the place that it was being produced in, and that it was relatively easy to produce. And when you flip on a light switch, you never really make any connection to where that energy actually comes from, its just a source of light or electricity to charge your phone or use other kinds of technology. But after this project, I learned so much about where energy comes from and how it affects so many different things in our lives. Not only does it contribute to the pollution and waste in our world, but it also creates jobs for people, its nearly the biggest money maker in the world and I never thought of it like that. It impacts the world around us, and if we were without power and energy, life would be totally different and just that thought really sums up how I feel about this question and my views towards energy production and the impacts of energy production on place.
Native American Studies Project Reflection
The Native American studies project was in my opinion the most influential project that we did this year so far. It gave me a lot of insight into what it was like to be a Native American in the early days of the United States and also what it was like from then on forward. It was a fantastic way to explore our nations history, and with my Essay/Project I really got to explore into some of the interactions between the US and Native American tribes by doing my project on the Navajo Code Talkers of WWII. The whole experience and all the class content really did connect with me in a lot of ways, one way in particular being how we as a race impact their culture and the long lasting effects we had on their way of life. It was overall a very eye-opening project and unit in general, and is definitely knowledge that I will carry on for the rest of my life.
Wounded Knee Mini-Project
The Wounded Knee Mini-Project was a quick project that we did focusing on the Massacre at Wounded Knee creek and the events leading up to it. We started by analyzing historical documents that each focused on a bunch of different perspectives of the actual event and what happened. These perspectives allowed us to utilize that knowledge and create a textbook passage about the Massacre at Wounded Knee meanwhile trying not to incorporate a bias and make sure we stayed relatively neutral on both sides. We then watched the film Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee which gave us a directors rendition of what happened during the massacre and how it effected all the people involved. And as a final part for this project we wrote a film response essay for Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee and wrapped up our learning of this really important event in the history of the Native Americans.
The Massacre at Wounded Knee was a major event that occurred on December 29th, 1890 near Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota. The conflict that led to the wounded knee massacre all started when the Lakota Sioux started raiding the white settlers camps in the northern part of the United States. Once the settlers found out that it was the Sioux tribe that was raiding their camps, they took action and demanded that the Lakota Sioux go back to their reservation by January 31st 1876. The tribe refused to leave the land and the white settlers had no choice but to get the military to force the tribe back to their reservation land.
Throughout the time in-between the white settlers demanding that the Lakota Sioux go back to their land to the Massacre and Wounded Knee, the U.S. seized a lot of land that the Lakota Sioux had been living on. There was unrest in the Sioux tribe and resources were scarce and it was hard for them to find food. A lot of members of the tribe died in this time and was consistently building tension between the Lakota Sioux tribe and the U.S. Government and military.
Closer to the time of the massacre, many of the Great Basin and Plains tribes performed what they called was a “Ghost Dance” and this alarmed a lot of the US military due to the sheer numbers of the native people gathered to perform these ceremonies. With growing worry with the US soldiers, they set out to arrest Sitting Bull, one of the most influential leaders of that time.
On December 15th 1890, 40 officials came to Sitting Bulls house to arrest him, and this caused an uprising with the townspeople and many came to crowd around his house protesting and demanding that he not be arrested. Within that day, the first shot was fired and descended into chaos. The officer holding Sitting Bull shot him and caused the town to fall into mass hysteria. This also caused the deaths of 8 of Sitting Bulls supporters, and 6 police officials that were sent to arrest him along with the death of Sitting Bull himself.
After many of his supporters fled, on December 29th 1890, 14 days after the death of Sitting Bull, troops were sent into the Lakota Sioux camp to completely disarm the tribe. After they discovered that all the weapons weren’t turned over, they began searching people and when it came to searching a deaf man named Black Coyote, he couldn’t understand the situation was reluctant to give up the gun he had on him. After a short encounter, the first shot was fired. Most of the weapons had been taken away from the tribe and many of the people involved were women, children and people not capable of fighting back. Yet the soldiers fired upon everyone indiscriminately killing everyone they could including the women and children. Over 200 men, women and children were killed and 51 people were wounded, some which died shortly after. Only 25 soldiers died and 39 were wounded during the fighting that subsided shortly after.
Essay
Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee Film Analysis ~ Devin Feilen
Ever since the first film was created, they have been used to tell stories and give people a personal look into peoples lives, conflicts and experiences, and recount important parts of history such as the massacre at Wounded Knee. Now the film Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee observes the struggles and the hardships that the Sioux tribe went through in their struggle for survival in the white settlers land. Telling a story like that through a movie can be a challenge but to capture that sense of pure chaos and confusion for the natives can be especially hard to accomplish without a little embellishment. Now how can we successfully tell a story incorporating the important historic details and making it appealing to a hollywood audience? Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee captured the details and seamlessly incorporated the emotion and the hardships of the Sioux tribe during the indian removal act of 1830 and beyond.
The most captivating and emotional parts of Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee were a hollywood directors portrayal of what really happened on that day, and his embellishment of those scenes. And how he created an accurate portrayal made it look so real was all so that the audience really gets the full emotional impact out of that story and captures what the filmmaker really wanted the audience to see. Now this brings the question on is it okay to embellish certain historical details so that you can have a more profound emotional effect on the audience? I believe that yes, you can embellish certain details without really changing the story.
There were a few inaccuracies in the film Bury my Heart at Wounded Knees story, the most notable was the time gap was almost completely cut from when Sitting Bull was murdered to when the actual massacre at Wounded Knee happened. There was a 14 day difference in between those two events and it was up to that movies director (Yves Simoneau) to cut that time gap to really enhance and keep that emotion right after Sitting Bull was killed. To me personally, this feels like a well thought out decision and is acceptable to really change that small detail. In the time period between Sitting Bull’s murder and when the massacre at Wounded Knee happened, not a lot went on and was mostly just build up from both sides being scared and enraged. In the movie, this allowed the audience to keep that sadness and that emotion portrayed in the scene where Sitting Bull was killed, and then go straight into the horrific chain of scenes that depicted the killing of many innocent Natives and the massacre of the Sioux tribe.
In conclusion, it is okay to make subtle changes when creating films like this. The goal of films such as Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee is to really captivate and make a long lasting emotional impact on the audience or the viewer, and to do that, you have to really captivate and bring your audience on that emotional journey through the events that transpired during that time. I personally felt very impacted and really angry almost because this gave me a first hand look inside of the events leading up to the massacre at Wounded Knee and also the massacre itself. It brought a lot of strength and emotion to the directors depiction of what really happened to the Native people from that time.
The Massacre at Wounded Knee Creek (Image courtesy of Genealogyreligion.net)
Rhetorical Discourse Project
Throughout the course of the year so far in Humanities, we have been learning about rhetoric and ideology and how they really influence our world and how we think and act. Rhetoric can be defined in many ways but the way I like to define it is using words or actions to persuade an audience to think or behave a certain way. We looked at many different types and examples of rhetoric and ideology and how we come across these things almost daily through advertisements or even talking with friends or family. This was really an eye opening project and when it came down to using that rhetoric and putting it into a project to present in front of a live audience was really a fun yet challenging task that I really enjoyed.
The Rhetorical Discourse project was project that was put together and created by students to show their skills in using rhetoric to persuade an audience or show an opinion or claim. The project itself started by thinking of a presentation/speech/poem/ TED Talk on a subject that interested you, then going ahead and researching that topic and finding evidence to support your claim and also to support your rhetoric. We then got to work using our research to create these pieces in which we had to create an informative yet appealing performance that used some of the skills we learned throughout this unit. The final piece was a highly refined, well-supported piece of beautiful work that was presented at the Animas City Theater on stage in front of a live audience. I personally did a TED talk on how income inequality is affecting America and how it all relates back to everyone trying to live the American dream.
My project definitely tried appealing to the audience; giving them a sense that they needed to start striving for this “American dream” that everyone wants to live, the nice house, the nice cars and an overall healthy and easy lifestyle. I used a lot of Ethos trying to get my point across, and by using a lot of this appeal, I was able to impact my audiences thinking and really make that long lasting impact and stand that I was going for with my presentation.
I connected to this topic and presentation quite well coming from a family who when I was a kid, made a lot of money and was considered an upper class family. But as life went on we became more modest and lived more simply. This also was mainly because my dad stepped down from a manager position in a nationally known printing company to a small town Colorado Springs printing company where he worked a basic desk job. The inequality between what is boss was making vs. what he was making was definitely apparent. But I really did like researching and presenting this project, as it was something that I had experience in and could personally relate to and I also felt strongly about it.
The thing that I definitely kind of struggled with was at first I wanted to do the Whiteboard animation which I quickly realized that was much easier said then done, so I then was going to make a video but I realized that the script I had wrote for the Whiteboard Animation/Video would definitely make a good speech if I performed it live and made some tweaks to it. I would definitely next time start off on researching what I really wanted to do for the project and find some examples that I could reference for a project.
This project definitely taught me a lot about how I should be more aware about what’s really going on around me and in my country. Researching it also gave me more insight on future jobs and what to look for really when looking for a good job that pays well that is also supporting the economy while helping create more jobs and make a difference in our economy.