Medal of Honor

Since we have been talking about some of the characters going to war i thought it might be interesting to see if any Native Americans have won the Medal of Honor.

this link shows all Native American recipients of our nation's highest honor.

Henry and His Convertable

Does anyone think that the convertible went down with Henry because it was a part of him?  The words he used in a certain quote show how it was liek the car was almost searching for Henry himself.  What do yall think?

Red Tomahawk

Red Tomahawk is credited with killing Sitting Bull. Lyman says Henry Jr. has a nose like Red Tomahawk who is on boards all over North Dakota.

Shell Shock and Henry Jr.

http://pb.rcpsych.org/cgi/content/full/24/6/225

        This website describes what shell-shock is, and what Henry Jr. goes through.  Many people are never the same after war: he has has the worst case scenario however.  Does anyone know any one who has experienced this?  

Pembina and the Red River

When Henry Junior comes back from the war and after he fixes the car, Henry and Lyman go to Pembina and the Red River to see how high the water is. In 1997, the Red River flooded Pembina. If you want to read more check out http://nd.water.usgs.gov/photos/1997RedFlood/

Jack Rabbit Bus Lines

Albertine rides the Jack Rabbit Bus Line to Fargo, North Dakota. 

It is an actual bus line that travels all through the Northwest. 

You can find out more about it at http://www.manta.com/coms2/dnbcompany_hqbp1l

rabbits

Rabbits are small mammals in the family Leporidae of the order Lagomorpha, found in several parts of the world. There are seven different genera in the family classified as rabbits, including the European rabbit(Oryctolagus cuniculus), Cottontail rabbit (genus Sylvilagus; 13 species), and the Amami rabbit(Pentalagus furnessi, endangered species on Amami Ōshima, Japan). There are many other species of rabbit, and these, along with pikas and hares, make up the order Lagomorpha.

This is probably what henry jr and lyman's convertible looks like

Chicken History

there's a real place called Chicken, Alaska

Why Do They Call it "Chicken?"

Good Question. In the late 1800's, early miners traveled far in search of gold. Food was sometimes scarce, but a particular area near the South Fork of the 40-Mile River was abundant in Ptarmigan, now the state bird which bears a resemblance to a chicken (Ah the foreshadowing is thicker than steel.) The miners kept themselves alive with the help of the Ptarmigan (if you consider being eaten as helping.)

In 1902, Chicken was to become incorporated, the second town in Alaska to do so. The name "Ptarmigan" was suggested. Many people liked the name, but felt the quotation marks were too presumptuous. The name was shortened to Ptarmigan.

The only problem was that nobody could agree on the correct spelling. They didn't want their town name to be the source of ridicule and laughter, so they decided on "Chicken." (The irony is thicker than the foreshadowing.)

http://www.chickenalaska.com/chicken/history.html

Lyman smashing Henry's car reminded me of this famous scene in The Big Lebowski, when Walter Sobchak takes a crowbar and goes crazy on some kid's car, thinking he bought it with stolen money

"You see what happens, Larry? THIS is what happens, Larry! THIS is what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps!!"

2 brothers by a car..

In "The Red Convertible" Bonita takes a picture of Henry Junior and Lyman near their car.  I couldn't find a picture of 2 "smiling" brothers near a car but this looks pretty accurate to me. 

Going to War...

Would anyone know what war Henry Junior signed up for around 1973 or 1974?  I'm just curious. 

1973 RED CONVERTIBLE

1971 (closets i could get to 73) Oldsmobile cutless convertible
this could possibly be the car that they drove

so have any of yall seen the movie Flags for our fathers? Well if not in the movie one of the marines is a Pima Indian, Ayra Hayes. He was mistreated for being an Indian in public places. At the end he died of drinking too much. I thought it was just kind of relevant to Love medicine just because in the sense that he is Indian and he drinks alot.

this is Ayra Hayes


If you have not seen the movie go see it, it is really good = )

http://members.cox.net/academia/coyote.html -- here sorry I don't know how to add the link

Trickster Spirits

If you want to read about some other Native American trickster spirit stories, go here:

Windigo

This is a picture of a Windigo eating people

Hey guys! I was hoping somebody could send me their class notes while I'm out this week so that I can keep up with "Love Medicine"?? Pretty Please

Canned Apples

Canned Apples like the ones Marie brings Sister Leopolda

Circles

In The Plunge of the Brave and Flesh and Blood, Erdrich has both Marie and Nector circle back to where they met. Nector goes back to Lulu and Marie back up the hill to the convent.

End of Plunge of the Brave..

Did anybody know at the end of Plunge of the Brave that it was actually Zelda standing there before Nector? I wasn't really sure who it was. I thought that it was actually Marie, but for some reason she looked younger. When she called him Daddy it confused me though. It wasn't until pg. 162 that I realized it was actually Zelda, not Marie. I thought it was kind of a cool plot twist. Maybe it was just me...

twin myths

http://www.mythencyclopedia.com/Tr-Wa/Twins.html

this is a site about myths about twins in native american culture and other cultures as well

hill covered in dust

potting shed 

burning house

this might be what Nector is seeing at the end of "The Plunge of the Brave"

Lulu's Nash Ambassador

The end of "The Plunge of the Brave"

Biblegateway.com

This is a good site to get to know. It has many Bible translations and is totally searchable. This link should take you to a keyword search for "angel fire" and give you all sources in the bible where the words "angel" and "fire" appear in the same Bible verse.

You can use this to search for anything you might want to find in the Bible.

The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon

The other day in one of your classes I mentioned this book, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon by Stephen King. In it a young girl gets lost in the woods and imagines that she is being stalked by a strange forest creature. The creature she imagines is a little like a windigo in some ways. The girl survives by listening to the Red Socks on a little transistor radio that she has with her. Her love for Tom Gordon, a player for the Red Socks, helps her get through her ordeal. It's a fun book and a really easy read.

The Buffalo Jump

I read an article explaining how Native Americans hunted buffalo by chasing them off cliffs. These cliffs were called "buffalo jumps."

The Plunge of the Brave (1957)

At the end of The Plunge of the Brave Nector says he sees "Marie standing in the bush. She is 14 years old and slim again" (145). Then, in the last line of the chapter the figure Nector says is Marie calls Nector "Daddy." Could this be Nector and Marie's first daughter that died? Nector describes the figure as an angel, so is she a spirit sent to save Nector from the fire??

Plunge of the Brave

bird tatto

this looks like the tatoo Bev has

Hirsutism

Hirsutism is a condition in which too much hair grows on the face or body. Although hirsutism can occur in both men and women, usually only women consider it a problem.

Women who have hirsutism have dark, thick hair on their face, chest, abdomen and back. This thick, dark hair is different from the hair that some women have on their upper lip, chin, breasts or stomach, or the fine "baby" hair all over their body. Women from certain ethnic groups tend to have more body hair than others. This does not mean that they have hirsutism.

http://familydoctor.org/online/famdocen/home/common/hormone/210.html

Stuff to Buy!

If anyone want to buy some drums or flutes crafted by an Ojibwe man in traditional ways click here

Some familiar names and faces - Native American Actors

Adam Beach - OJIBWE

Wes Studi - CHEROKEE

Steve Reeves - BLACKFOOT

Tales of Burning Love by Louise Erdrich

So here is another one of Erdrich's books, and it made me think of two things: 1)it TOO has an apparent theme dealing with love 2)the pick-up truck on the front cover oddly matches that of the description of Andy's truck in the book

A few Ojibwean Salutations

Boozhoo - Greetings

Aanii - Hello

Aniish na? - How are you?

Beindigain - Come in

Aaniish Eshnikaazyin - What is your name?

______ Ndishnikaaz - My name is ________

Migwetch - Thank you

Gi zah gin - I love you

Gigawabamin Nagutch - See you later

http://www.nativetech.org/shinob/ojibwelanguage.html

Video link from my last blog..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niACoraPlO0

Okay, sorry.. i meant to put this link in my last post, but check it out... the video is pretty cool

Plains Ojibwe at Manito Ahbee 2008

If you click on the link, you can watch a really cool video of an Ojibwe drum performance.. it lasts about four minutes long, but it is really neat to see all the men in this particular family using one drum to perform a traditional song

info on wendigo

link

longhouse

In archaeology and anthropology, a long house or longhouse is a type of long, narrow, single-room building built by peoples in various parts of the world including Asia, Europe and North America.

Many were built from timber and often represent the earliest form of permanent structure in many cultures. Types include the Neolithic long house of Europe, the Medieval Dartmoor longhouse and the Native American long house.

Hirsuitism

 This is actually a woman..

longhouse

BABY LYNX

Lulu's metaphorical character

Lulu reproduces just like bunnies.  9 babies, so she is a symbol of reproduction

Windigo Creature

This is really creepy and hard to believe that there is a human underneath this: it kind of looks like sasquatch 

Lynx

Origin Myths

Here's a link to the Wikipedia site that discusses Origin Myths if anyone is interested

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_myth

The windigo and the tales associated with it are a way for the Ojibwa to teach their young of an act they find horrific in their culture. Its similar to fables in the bible that are meant to illustrate lessons to children.

Native Art by Mario Peters

Canadian Wendigo

This is the Wikipedia info on the "Windigo" murder Ms. Deckard discussed in class. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_McLean

When I read the article about the Windigo, I immediately thought of two awesome creatures- zombies and werewolves.
As we all know, zombies are the living dead brought to life by either magic or a crazy virus. They spread their virus through bodily fluids passed through cannibalism. And the only way to kill a zombie is to blow its head clean off and burn the body.
And werewolves also spread their disease through biting, come out at night on the full moon, and have to be shot in the heart with a silver bullet to die.



^A zombie from the original 1996 Resident Evil




^"I saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand, walkin' through the streets of SoHo in the rain"...

Poll: Indians Vs. Cowboys

who do you think wins this epic battle of magnificent proportions ?

Has Anyone seen New World?

I heard it was ok 

The Windingo

What is a windigo?

It is a malevolent cannibalistic spirit into which humans could transform, or which could possess humans.

stigmata

Cinderella

ORPHAN

Stigmata

A preview to the movie Stigmata (1999):

Hansel and Gretel

This is a picture of Gretel pushing the witch into the oven, much like Marie wanted to push Leopolda into the oven. Both stories are sad fairy tails discribing children being tourtured.

Stigmata

This is a picture of the stigmata. I thought i was really scary looking and I don't know how people could chose to do this to themselves. It seems really painful!

Fairy Tales

Remember the fairy tales we mentioned in class today, well most of them are from Grimm's Fairy Tales, by the Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. The stories were called "Children Tales", but they were not suitable for children at first. Here's a preview of the movie The Brothers Grimm:

Siste Leopolda

Rhubarb

I wasn't really familiar with what rhubarb was until reading this book. Rhubarb is a plant with large leaves that is normally a nice rosy pink color. The leaves are not for consumption, but the stalks can be eaten. The stalks have a tart flavor which makes them ideal for pies and other various foods.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stigmata

information on stigmatism 

stigmatic 

Saint Marie

I would not want to sleep behind a hot and scary stove. Sister Leopolda makes Marie think of the stove as Hell.

Stigmata

The 5 point Stigmata.

Heres a website with a  bunch of info on it if yall want to check it out.

www.motherofjoy.com/ images_files/stigmata.jpg

Mustang

Here's a picture that might resemble Albertine's car, it might not be this model though

background info on Louise Erdrich

Louise Erdrich is one of the most gifted, prolific, and challenging of contemporary Native American novelists. Born in 1954 in Little Falls, Minnesota, she grew up mostly in Wahpeton, North Dakota, where her parents taught at Bureau of Indian Affairs schools. Her fiction reflects aspects of her mixed heritage: German through her father, and French and Ojibwa through her mother. She worked at various jobs, such as hoeing sugar  beets, farm work, waitressing, short order cooking, lifeguarding, and construction work, before becoming a writer. She attended the Johns Hopkins creative writing program and received fellowships at the McDowell Colony and the Yaddo Colony. After she was named writer-in-residence at Dartmouth, she married professor Michael Dorris and raised several children, some of them adopted. She and Michael became a picture-book husband-and-wife writing team, though they wrote only one truly collaborative novel, The Crown of Columbus (1991).  

The Antelope Wife was published in 1998, not long after her separation from Michael and his subsequent suicide. Some reviewers believed they saw in The Antelope Wife the anguish Erdrich must have felt as her marriage crumbled, but she has stated that she is unconscious of having mirrored any real-life events. 

She is the author of a number of award-winning novels, including Love Medicine; The Beet Queen; Tracks; and The Bingo Palace. She also has written two collections of poetry, Jacklight, and Baptism of Desire. Her fiction has been honored by the National Book Critics Circle (1984) and The Los Angeles Times (1985), and has been translated into fourteen languages. 

Several of her short stories have been selected for O. Henry awards and for inclusion in the annual Best American Short Story anthologies. The Blue Jay's Dance, a memoir of motherhood, was her first nonfiction work, and her children's book, Grandmother's Pigeon, has been published by Hyperion Press. She lives in Minnesota with her children, who help her run a small independent bookstore called The Birchbark.

Louise Erdrich

Here's to you, Mr. President.

Quote Question

Does anyone get Sister Leopolda's quote about stigmata on page 59?? I believe its a religious reference. "I have told my sisters of your passion...how the stigmata...the marks of the nails...appeared in your palm and you swooned at the holy vision".

Saint Marie (1934)

Can anyone give me a basic summary of what happened in this chapter?  I was a little hard to follow for me. Is she possessed by the Devil or what? 

Louise Erdrich

She doesn't look like your stereotypical Native American.

In response to the chinook wind comment

This is a picture of the weather-related term for Chinook Wind..

Traditional Easter

rock on