Not so spiritual

Seeing the other post of my classmates on the blog, I found some that questioned the traditions or rituals that a culture of a certain country or religion had. Because they think that these traditions were not respected the rights of people, and I remembered what I once read about the Hindu religion.

But before delving into my main topic, I wondered .... What is generally known about Hinduism? The most common answer is that it is a religion that is focuses on the development of the soul, which is extremely respectful of their environment and is nihilistic (pleasure-seeking). But few respond the true, or the else. Like everything this is a stereotype, Hinduism is generally associated with something spiritual and mystical, but that is not everything.

The Hinduism religion is the third largest in the world, has 330 million gods and various forms of practice.  But one aspect of this religion quite controversial is that the Hindus are part of castes and these are estates. The higher the priestly caste, followed by that of the rulers and soldiers, after traders and shopkeepers. The lower caste people sweep, wash clothes, fix shoes, and usually are the servants of the higher castes. The latter are called the "untouchables". 

Untouchables are outcasts, and they can not do anything about it. Being a stratified caste, if your parents are "untouchable" so you'll be and that will never change.

And that's my big question or maybe my great disappointment, how a religion based on respect, can divide people by their socioeconomic status? ...... This is Hinduism we know, that is we want to know? ... I think it is much easier to keep the mystical religion, with its wonderful traditions and ancient rituals.

So this is a great example of stereotypes, one would never think that there is this controversial fact a religion. So as an advice, or maybe just opinion: not because it is something that has been practiced for years, or because it is something that characterizes to a religion (in this case or any other situation), that should still occur. 

                        This has to stop!!

The Rez, How bad could it be?, How bad have we been?

Jailing the rightful landlords

The aim of this blog entry is to show a little bit deeper how the Indian reservations worked and how the natives were trapped and isolated in their own homeland.
As we have read The absolutely true diary of a part-time Indian and also learned in classes with Mr. Villa,

we can easily imagine how things in the reservations worked, the residents didn't only have a small amount of money to survive but they were also given a really bad education in order to keep them "under control",
but we do not know yet the history behind this problem.

It was 1851 when the United States Congress authorized to create reservations to "relocate" the Indians due to the conflicts that emerged because of the invasion of their lands.

Who would like to be forced to move out of your house? I guess nobody would.

 But that was just the beginning, even though they were forced to leave, they were promised decent homes and "a good life", but they only received a nightmare. The promises were no more than lies and everything turned into more conflicts, so now we had two sides of the natives:

• The unhappy inhabitants of the reservations
• The Indians who did not want to live in the reservations because they were too restricted

Unfortunately the government of the United States was not willing to give budge and so they sent the army to make them accept their terms, this was a bad idea and several natives were slaughtered and there were also wars between the two sides, the most known was the Sioux War.

So on has the government cheated Indians to take away their lands, as another cruel example of their lack of mercy there was an act called the Dawes Act, which consisted of two parts, a great one and an awful one.
First they promised to give small parcels to tribe members, quite a kind thing. But it was just to hide an awful truth, the parcels were to be placed very closed one from each other, and all the excess land after the placement was then sold to white settlers.

This is part of the sad history that the native Americans have suffered, and the main reason why I chose this topic was to make everyone think about how have we affected our own natives, our roots. In the news we just see bad things about the Mapuches and nothing about how their homes and lands have been taken is ever shown, the discrimination against these kind of tribes is omnipresent and is their unfair truth we should all try to fix.

May the rainbow always tocuh your shoulder.

On class we are learning about little cultures living on the big English speaking countries, one of those is the Cherokee culture, its amazing the traditions they have, and their conection with the Earth.

One of the things that capted my atention was this Blessing:

May the warm winds of Heaven blow softly on your home

And the Great Spirit bless all who enter there.

May your mocassins make happy tracks in many snows

And may the rainbow always tocuh your shoulder.

When i saw this i started to think about the kinds of blessings i know. I'm an catholic and until that moment i thought the kinds of blessing you must give was like: “God bless you” and “Bless your family”, and i felt really empty, maybe im just on a crisis with God right now but Cherokee culture has that special connection with everything that surround them , how can a culture that imrecently knowing can show so much than the tradition wich i grow up with.

And then i realise that we forgot so much, and we don´t know so much because we don´t give us the opportunity of knowing the minorities, even when we study a forgerin lenguage we will never know how much its behind that, how much history and how much hope other cultures can teach us.

And then i realise, how much culture im missing in my own country, and my own city, maybe my own street, because im living on the tradition wich i grow up with, i’m always doing something else, but from now on i wanna feel that conection with things, and learn more about everything and my advice on this is:  leave the technology behind sometimes and take life with your heart and feel how the rainbow touch your shoulder all the time.

Hiding our garbage in Africa

                                

The focus of this entry blog is about the illegal waste dumping in Africa and the consequences it brought too. As we learned in class about the rubbish dump, we could imagine the tons and tons of garbage from all parts of the world which arrive there…we can imagine the probable health problems for people who live close enough of these dumps. But when we think about illegal waste in Africa the problem grows as well grow the consequences.

This serious problem happens when foreign companies throw away their toxic waste illegally in Africa, we already have many worrying news, and this is an important one about the problem:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7897631.stm

Examples of this dangerous garbage are pesticides or more polemic, they are sending broken electronics with the excuse to be “recycled” in these countries.

They do this because sadly, most cases of illegal dumping are not receiving accurate attention and justice for the irresponsibility of these companies; as well many companies try to avoid pay recycling costs too.

This dangerous dumping can affect human health in many ways; many diseases can be spread quickly, also because of this illegal garbage, many people dies thanks to the toxic pollution and more people has been affected severely, obviously the environment is being affected too, the toxic garbage can negatively change our entire world because this is a problem happening right now.

So, the important question is: What solutions could exist for this?

 

 

This situation causes a lot of problems. We are worried, and the problem will affect all of us in multitude, but we keep dumping more of this toxic garbage in an irresponsible way, and easier it will be to get close to a critical situation that might be irreparable.      

Foreign children victims of bullying

As everyone knows bullying is not a new issue in our society and this becomes even more present during the school years. Focusing on this controversial topic it´s important to know that the most agressive bullying we can find is in children who suffer for being non-native in the place that their live for example in French where according to a UNICEF investigation one in ten children suffer harassment or bullying at school.

 << Some 17 percent of children in the study had been hit, 18 percent had suffered sexual harassment (being undressed, forced kissing, touching) and 16 percent had been given a demeaning nickname. One in four said they had been insulted, with seven percent saying they’d been subject to racial abuse. >> **  as we can see in this investigation there´s a lot of children that are been bullied for different reason and in the case of french the main reason of bullying it´s the fact that french kids see the other foreign kids as “different”because they can speak very well french (they have accent) or because they have different life styles.

For these reason for the first time ministers have got involved in this problematic trying to resolve all the problems that foreign students have in their schools.

Besides the problem of "language" which some children are abused are also: religion, sexual preference, skin color, etc. As also can be seen in the book "The absolutely true diary of a Part time Indian" where we can see the insertion problems that a Indian kid has when he arrived to another school, to ehd with this practices and avoid that this continue with the pass of the years and generations we have to stop it, and there are many ways to do it, for example we have the ISPU association that helps teenagers who have suffered from bullying , in this association they can

overcome their problems and find professional support, to get into this association you just have to get to page http://www.ispu.org to learn more about this innovative proposal and be part of it. Bullying is not a practice which debemosestar proud, fight to end this.

** Extract from UNICEF investigation

What did happen with black american people after Martin Luther King?

They were free but they were not in the same place that white people. King formulated his speech like a dream where United States “fulfill the true meaning of its creed” described in the Constitution and in the Declaration of Independence. He had a dream, but what about the dream now?

King was admired en USA and recognize like a model in the world. The African Americans won in so many aspects, for example in politic, many black people could many people had access to public office ever designed for them: In 2001 Collin Powell became the first African American Secretary of State. In 2005 the famous Condoleezza Rice became the second. And finally in 2009 Barack Obama became the first African American President of the United States.

And anyone would think that United States lives in a realization of the vision of King, where black and white people hold hands and sing a song of Barney. But in spite of the battles of the 60´s, the reality is so different. The system operation really has worsened the situation of millions of black people during the last decades. Now millions of African Americans still live at the bottom of society, coping with low paying jobs, if they get it.

Laws were passed that made unlawful discrimination, but we still see black people living in crowded ghettos. The Infant mortality rate for black children exceeds the white children´s by almost 250%, the life expectancy is 6.3 years less for African American men than for white men and reports documented that black people receive worse medical care even when they have insurance. In the cities the school segregation is as strong as forty years ago; and the disparity in funding for schools aimed at suburbs mostly white and cities mostly black is still accentuated. Now there are more than 900.000 and the number is increasing, this amount is ten times that during the Montgomery bus boycott. A lynch mob has replaced the police.

Then, what you think did happen with black american people after the dead of Martin Luther King?

Why Africa see it as a “Rubbish dump”?

When we talk about Africa, automatically we think about poor, famine, black skin people, apartheid, always associate it with something bad or sad; it is because this is the true story of this country.  Over 300 million people live on less than one dollar a day; 30 million children under five years are malnourished and 43% of the people lack access to drinking water, these causes drought. Every 3 seconds a child dies from hunger.

Child malnutrition is one of the most serious problems of this continent. There are many institutions in order to overcome these problems. For example UNICEF; AESNET.

The drought and its consequences such like famine and disease, and the desire to find a better life, have encouraged the emigration.

This is associated with the southern part of Africa because the north has a more comfortable lifestyle. But in the south Life expectancy is 46 years. The disease AIDS is primarily women, causes more than 2.2 million women a year die.

Africa has some of the world's largest reserves of gold, diamonds, copper. Human selfishness is so strong, because other countries make use of these territories, and Africa receives a small percentage of these riches. Ironically, despite all its mineral wealth is one of the poorest countries around the world.

Africa's children don’t have education, many children don’t have parents and they feel forgotten.
And many companies throw all your garbage to these places for their lives thinking that will not worsen.

In this video the children talks about their life, EVERYDAY!

With all these facts, we can say that Africa is regarded as a “rubbish dump” country, a country with poor living conditions, a country that fell into the oblivion, a country with few opportunities to be happy.

African People look to the white man as a lucky man and elegant, modern. Instead the white man sees himself as someone who always missing material things to be happy.

Legal Segregation

In the USA during the first half of the decade of 1870 the southern politicians against Afro American people freedom and rights started to win the elections in their states, sometimes by sabotage or threats, and little by little they started to take an important part in the American parliament.

So, what happened when all of this politicians against Afro American people became majority in the Parliament?  Well they created new laws that separated white people from Afro American people.

The slogan “separated but equals” was used during the decades in which the segregation laws were “legal”.

The slogan of course it’s a cruel lie, because most of the laws that separated Afro American people from white people, were based on “medical issues” like that “Negros” could have some infections that white people didn’t have, and the things and places were Afro American people could go, were in bad conditions.

Most of the laws prohibited Afro American people to be in the same room eating with white people, use the same things as white people, take the same sites in the bus as white people, go to the same bathrooms, and so on.

After a lot of death, fights and a lot of years in the decade of 1960 in most of the USA states the segregation laws were abolished and proclaimed against the constitution.  I don´t think that it’s necessary to mention that Martin Luther King was a big character during the fight for the rights of Afro American people.

It’s been more than 50 years since the laws were abolished, but, don’t we have similar laws nowadays? Aren’t we discriminating our own kind?

We have a constant struggle with the mapuches; we are treating them as terrorists, not as a community a nation that has traditions, a lifestyle, that is part of us.

We tend to eliminate the things that cause us troubles, we don’t face the things, but that doesn’t mean that we have to get rid of a culture because they are different from us, because they believe in different things and have their own past.

I think segregation is a problem that remains till these days, and we are so focused in ourselves that we cannot see how much damage we are creating, how many wounds we have opened and how many laws we will be letting get approved just because we are not paying attention to the world, our world.