HAPPY BIRTHDAY EMO ERIN! WOOOOOOO

It's EMo-Erin's birthday today, so if you get a chance wish the broad a happy b-day.

checka-

=P

this is the end....

well blogging was a blast! haha I enjoyed reading the blogs that I did, and I hope that some of you liked mine or had a few that inspired you to watch the X-Files or something like that. Class was wonderful, I know that I will take the content of this class with me through the rest of my college career and beyond. Hopefully one day I will be able to tell stories like the myth tellers and other oral people we have talked so much about can. I will miss the interaction with the class, but not the texts...eh oh well.

and I am totally stoked to not blog anymore...i don't know how some of you do it... kudos to you all that kill it at blogging. and for those that are like me congratz on getting through it.

Dying to Live-my paper....

Ishi the last “wild” and purely oral individual to inhabit this nation brought himself out of the woods and into a world of literacy almost one hundred years ago. He hid in the mountains that created him and his people, the mountains that kept the oral culture of the Yahi alive. The small band of natives lived hidden from the white settlers and print culture for many years out of sight in the mountains and the thick brush keeping their culture alive though words that only Ishi and his family members understood. He was clearly a man of many words when he walked out of the mountains and onto a domesticated farm in the foothills of Oroville, California in 1911.
Ishi was a portal into the past, a gateway into a culture that was lost by many other ancient Tribes after the European settlers took over the land and destroyed the oral traditions with their printed words and dictionaries filled with meanings that were non-existent to the Natives of America. But it is part of the continuation of evolution to die to recreate something more apt to survive. “We have to die o continue living” (Ong 15). Words are like any other creature on this planet, changing and adapting to survive. As he walked out of the woods his culture was dying in order to live on through print. This man survived snowstorms, floods, heat waves, animal encounters, and massacres but he could no longer survive in his oral culture. He was the last of his tribe the Yahi.

Sean Kane talks about the connection between the two worlds—our world that we live in now and the otherworld in his book Wisdom of the Mythtellers. “Each kind of power makes the other kind possible” (Kane 172). Ishi could no longer exist in his oral culture without anyone else. He needed to venture into the world that we all know—the print culture—to survive. Taking written notes, translating his oral culture onto permanent ink smudged paper was the last of ancient oral America. And even if one world cannot exist without the other and print would have never happened without the spoken word there comes problems translating a culture into something it was never meant to be.

Ishi was given his name by the anthropologist Dr. Alfred Korebel from the University of California Berkeley after he had spent a few days with the man. Ishi meaning “man” in the Yahi language was actual an epithet rather than his real name. “Oral fold have no sense of name as a tag, for they have no idea of a name as something that can be seen” (Ong 33). Yahi custom was to never speak of names or the past. Names are important to us in the print culture because they give meaning to the things surrounding us. Names give us order, and to completely understand this man names were necessary.

The death of this enduring man was the death of the past that modern day print cultures could/can only imagine and write about in our alphabetized world. We in the modern ages of print try to get back what Ishi knew, and what his tribe knew as the only way of life: a life of gestures, expression, experiences, and lessons taught by speech and not by textbooks.

Ishi’s rich history and his culture-helped anthropologist understand more about the ancient inhabitants of their new country, but for Ishi it was a challenge to share this information. The Yahi believed that talking about the past was bad luck and caused a disruption in the spirit world. He was afraid of what could happen when he shared the past with his new literate supervisors. Instead of giving into the semi-sympathetic scientist he chanted an ancient tribal myth of the wood duck lasting more than six hours putting some men to sleep as they listened to the ancient three-note song about the Wood Duck and his wives. What these anthropologist and reporters did not understand at the time was they were listening to the past and not the future. With that performance Ishi’s oral culture was being recorded and taken out of the other world and placed in the world we know. He was sealing the fate of the last ancient oral traditions in this country.

The similarities between the literate world and the oral world are strong, and suggest that it was inevitable that oral societies would become dominated by print sooner or later. Ishi was one of the last to know what it was like to live in a simpler world of words. Our complex system of spelling, punctuation, grammar, gestures, definitions, and names was completely foreign to Ishi. His culture was not less intelligent than the one he walked into, it was simply oral, and focused on the traditions of memory and experience. He knew how to hunt and fish, how to survive the elements, he knew what plants to eat and what plants to use for medicinal purposes, he knew how to live outside in harmony with the natural world. Walter Ong suggest, “human beings communicate in countless ways, making use of all their senses, touch, taste, smell and especially sight, as well as hearing” (Ong 7). In Ishi’s life he used all these senses but in a way that the modern culture had lost to print. We still communicate using all our senses, but perhaps literacy has numbed them by a certain degree because we do not have to use our memory theater the same as primary oral cultures. The complex system used by literate society draws from the oral but expands further than the oral will ever be able too.

When Ishi stepped out of his home and into a world entirely opposite of his own he was taking a step from primary orality into secondary orality. He would never become completely literate, but his language would never become completely lost in print. He kept the spirit of his ancestors alive in his mind and in his heart, sharing sacred stories and places of worship with the anthropologist that took him in and incorporated him into the literate culture of San Francisco and surrounding areas. He lived in the mountains behind farms and ranches for years, two separate world living simultaneously in sync with one another not knowing or understanding one another.

A Hiller Myth

Ok so this is a personal family myth that my father came up with while we were driving through the Eastern Sierra's in California up highway 395. He would always make up stories for my brothers and myself while we were on road trips to shut us up. (i'm sure some of you have had this same experience) So anyway, he would make up these stories and would get really into them trying to make them as in depth as possible for my little but wild imagination. My brothers would stop listening after the first few lines because they knew it couldn't possibly be real...but me, oh how I believed and how deep down inside I still believe all the stories my father has told me over the years. SO here it goes...(if any of you have driven the road from Reno to LA you might know what I'm talking about)

In between the tiny town of Lone Pine, Ca and the even tinnier town of Olancha, Ca there's a giant lake, Owens Lake that is all dried up now (thanks to the Mulhullen Project supplying the greater LA Basin with water). And on the edge of the Highway there's an old abandoned factory. Well this old factory apparently was not a factory at all but a disguise for a giant hole in the ground. And this hole in the ground went deep into the Earth, farther than you or I have ever been, so far down that no light could penetrate the darkness. So far down that the center of the Earth was but a stone's throw away. And deep down in this hole there was an army of giant human eating ants. I mean HUGE, the size of houses, with long legs, and giant pinchers that would grab humans and shove them into their mouths devouring them whole! So these ants they would only come out at the turn of the new moon. And they would travel up and down the valley in search of food for their offspring. But these ants, they didn't stay underground all the time. These ants were very sensitive to loud noises, that's why their whole is placed in such a remote area, but still had enough food to live off of. So these ants could hear screaming and yelling in between the two towns. SHHHHHH...my dad would say...SHHHHHH...you don't want to startle the ants and have them come out and chase us down the road...our car is fast but not fast enough. So I would get really quiet for the stretch of road that these ants could hear. And extra quiet when we passed the old rundown factory. Always watching and always wondering when the next time these ants would come out to feast.

The End...or is it?

p.s. if any of you have seen the movie Tremors with the giant worms in the ground that can feel the vibrations of walking, well this is pretty much right where that movie was filmed and I pretty sure this is were my dad cam up with his wonderful and yet completely terrifying myth about the giant ants that would come out and eat me if I was too loud on our car rides. haha what a guy.

Lists upon Lists

Everyone has them, whether they are written down, or in your head, there's a list somewhere in your life. Especially at a time like this when finals are just around the corner and graduation is happening for you lucky students! Plus the list of sh*t you're going to need to get for job interviews and the actual list of places to apply.

My List for the next 3 weeks:
4/29
-oral traditions paper
-law & policy paper
-reading for all classes
-EMO's Birthday

4/30
-research paper for nas100

5/1
-pride & prejudice paper

WEEKEND
-library sesh studying for finals

5/4
-Brit Lit 2 final paper due
-English 342 final

5/5
-Native American Studies Final

5/6
-study/break!

5/7
-Nat. Am Law final 8am!
-oral traditions final 6pm...?
(DANG)

5/8
American Lit 2 final 8am...

DONE AND GOING TO TAHOE!!!

a tweek to my paper

I was originally going to write my paper on some form of Native American traditional story. And thought my new idea is not far from that, it is not as broad but at the same time broad enough. Ishi the last "wild" Indian came out of the woods in Northern California about 100 years ago into a world of literacy. HE had to leave the comfort of his home in the hills outside of Oraville, CA to survive. His oral culture was dying with every step he took closer to the town of white settlers, many of whom had killed his family members in years past. This man survived snow storms, floods, heatwaves, animal encounters, and massacres but he could no longer survive in his oral culture. He was the last of his tribe the Yahi. He embarked on a magical and magnificent journey that seemed to have taken him in a time machine from ancient traditional ways of life-by living off, worshiping, and caring for the land his people were created from-to a modern time filled with trains, automobiles, millions of people, and the alphabet.

Much of the oral culture is unknown to us in the literate world. We think we know, but truly we don't. Ishi was one of the last to know what it was like to live in a simpler world of words. Our complex system of spelling, punctuation, grammar, gestures, definitions, and names was completely foreign to this man of little words. His culture was not less intelligent that the one he walked into, it was simply oral, and focused on the traditions of memory and experience. He knew how to hunt, and fish, how to survive in the elements, he knew what plants to eat, and what plants to use for medicinal purposes, he knew how to live outside in harmony with the natural world. Ishi had a connection to spirituality that no one in the literate world will ever be able to feel, he was in sync with his soul.

just a sream of conscious thought about my paper....

Even though much of Native American culture relies on the oral traditions that have come from the ancient times that are no longer with us because of literacy it has lost much of the impact that it once had on society. We have converted the oral culture into literature, word, print, ever lasing. IT doesn’t lye in the mind anymore, it lies on a page, a piece of paper. Print has ruined the romance in speech. It takes away the passion ans the determination of each individual story to create meaning to the people that come up or experience these epics. Humans use what ever means they can too create art. Language is a form of art and a form of expression. The meaning of life does not lie within a story but with in experience and nature.

because of the oral culture families were closer they spent the time together to listen and interact with the stories. it's like when bedtime stories are read to the generations of today. the "psychologist" say that it is important to have that oral connection to your children. bring them closer and make the connection between voice and minds through stories. Native American's pride themselves on the closeness between tribal members. they aren't just a group or race of people, but they are a family connected maybe not through blood but through the bond between humans. it is a bond that we take for granted or just don't acknowledge anymore in the culture that we as American's live in.

blah blah blah....

It's our choice to pass on oral traditions

Would we consider our parents more oral than ourselves because they are the ones closer to the oral traditions of our ancestors than we are? And they are the ones that can either keep or delete our past traditions that have been pasted on for generations? If they don't care then we don't have a chance of keeping our traditions alive. Do we blame our parents or do we demand from them the stories that we are inclined to hear? Are we even inclined to the stories or are we just a capsule for another story?

We as individuals have the ability to pass on or not pass on stories that we hear. It is a conscious decision that we make to either keep or not keep our oral traditions that our family has kept. When we create our families of our own we then have the ability to make our own traditions for our off springs to pass on. We can use the traditions that our families have used from the past or we can create our own. It is the decision of the parent to keep past in the present as well as past in the past.

So when you become or if you already are a parent remember it is your choice to pass on oral traditions that your parents passed on to you.

dream group

the dream presentation was difficult because the lights were off but it made me focus not on the person speaking but the actual words. The presentation was more oral than the rest of the group presentations, because of the focus they forced on the class through the darkness. Words create more meaning when the visual is gone, just how Zach talked about his high school English Teacher turning off the lights and it emphasising each point he had made. It make the listener focus on the actual oral part of the presentation because that is all that there is. I think it was a good connection to the idea of dreams, though at times i got confused because I was awake from my 4 cups of coffee, i still really enjoyed listening to each voice bring me closer to the other world as they dove deeper into the world of dreams without having to put me to sleep.

Sex and the City...a modern day Myth?

I know this might be far fetch, and some might get offended by this, but Sex and the City is one of the largest myths for women today.

We as women want to be Carrie Bradshaw, with our Manolo Blahnik stilettos, our Chennel handbags, cute sun dresses, and too many guys to count wanting to sleep with us, all while living in the most expensive city in the world. Oh and not to mention having four girlfriends that go out to lunch or some meal during the day everyday.

The life they live is what millions of woman want and desire to obtain. We have created this myth for women that help us cop with our ordinary lives, dreaming of the day Big will pull up in his limousine get down on one knee, and pull out that enormous rock.

In someway the sexy foursome of Sex and the City are our modern day goddesses. Possessing the power to control millions of women, while seducing a countless amount of men.

But hey it's entertaining and that's what myths are now a days...for some cultures...and i for one am a believer of the myth that one day I too will have an apartment on the Upper East Side. HAHA just kidding.

For all you skiiers and snowboarders...Coyote makes Mt. Hood

www.oregonlive.com
Coyote makes Mt. Hood
Torsten Kjellstrand/The OregonianFor Kathryn Jones Harrison, it started with Coyote and Grizzly.

"During Kathryn Jones Harrison's 84 years, she's seen the Grand Ronde tribe terminated, then restored. She's raised 10 children, served on the tribal council on the reservation east of Lincoln City for 22 years and today helps hold the memory and oral traditions -- of the merged Umpqua, Kalapuya, Chasta, Rogue River and Molalla tribes -- by telling stories.

"I'm really proud to be here to tell you a Coyote story about Mount Hood and something about my people, the Molallas. This story is called Coyote and Grizzly."

Coyote was busy putting together earth and rock and making a big mountain, which later became Mount Hood. So Grizzly comes along and he says, "What are you doing and where will you be going?"

Coyote says, "Oh, I'll be going yonder."

Grizzly says, "What will you do there?"

Coyote says, "I will be making the world."

Grizzly says, "So who told you to do that? We should fight over that."

Coyote says, "No, we should swallow things."

Grizzly keeps saying, "No, we should fight."

But Coyote sticks to his guns and says, "Well then, we might as well swallow all these stones fast and get busy."

Grizzly says, "OK, right away. Let's get to it and swallow stones. How many are we going to swallow?"

Coyote says, "Let's start with five. Go ahead, you go first."

So Grizzly looks at the hot stones and swallows five, one after another. He looks at Coyote and says, "Now it's your turn."

Coyote being the trickster, instead of swallowing hot stones, he swallows five strawberries. He doesn't have any trouble so he tells Grizzly, "Now you need to swallow all those stones."

And Grizzly swallows those hot stones, lots of burning hot stones. He gets burned out of his whole life and he dies.

And so Coyote thinks, "What will I do now? What's best for me? I'll go. I'll never come back here and the world will go on."

But he takes Grizzly, skins and cuts his body into quite a few pieces, and throws the pieces everywhere. He takes the heart and throws it over to Molalla country and says, "These people here, they will all be good hunters. They will not be worthless low-class people. They will be always on the hunt and that will be their way."

"That is the end of the Coyote and Grizzly story.

"And I have two sons who were always good hunters for my family, so I guess it's true.""

Group Presentations

I think the creation of images in the oral tradition is one of the most important parts to remembering a story. The teller creates a memory theater for his or her audience internalizing each memorable point to the story. Group six i felt did an excellent job of recreating an image in my mind to help me picture each individual story as the teller engaged the audience.

portmanteau

a new form of the classic game of scrabble is all about stacking the words making layer upon layers of words, a game specifically for portmanteaus if you will.

Test

I tend to not do well on written tests. For some reason or another my mind shuts parts off and even with my studying I seem to miss more questions than I hoped to miss. My dad always tells me I just didn't try hard enough, and that if I really studied than I would get the A. So I spent hours studying for tests in high school and failed to ever get that A. It was only test grades that did not reflect my work in the class until I started to take Spanish and my tests were based around speech. The oral test i aced and the written tests i frequently bombed. Perhaps all of us that are not good test takers have a closer connection to the oral culture than we think, and we need to get back to our roots, and demand more oral tests rather than these tedious written tests that could be interpreted in more ways than one.

Where We Come From

It's all different. The places we say we come from and the places we know we come from, or the places that others tell us we come from. But who is right? Is the anthropologist right, your geographics, or is your grandmother right? For many people it's not an issue, or more like it's not a care. We European American's have the idea that we are American's with European heritage, but a lot of us simply pass it by and don't pass it on. We are left in a rut of the never ending I have some of this and some of that...but we rarely have ancient traditions passed on to us that we can pass on to the next generation.

Take for example myself. I know "who I am"...Lisa Hiller, I have two older brother, and two parents, who have siblings and parents of their own. I grew up in La Crescenta, CA where I played soccer, rode bikes, hiked, surfed, fished, and laughed. That's about it. Apparently my ancestors didn't have stories memorable enough to pass on, or a catastrophic event happened to the story and never made it to the 21st century. What i have learned is basic my family originated in Scotland on my mother's side and Germany on my fathers side. But beyond that We are lost in the rest of the Emigrants stories.

It is strange to think that I have little to say about my European Ancestors and where they came from, but even more strange to say that I know even less about my ancestors that lived on the same soil I am living on now than I do about my European Ancestors. The idea that a culture can be lost in a matter of generations forever if people do take the time to preserve it is sad and discomforting. I only hope that once I am passed on to whatever lies beyond this life that my future family will have a story to help them know where our family comes from.

class notes...

Due to my current condition I have not been able to take the notes for the test on Wednesday.
BUT I do have a personal note taker now, and you can find all the information here:

http://erinoraltraditions.blogspot.com/
Thanks Emo.

My Semester Paper

Native American Oral Traditions.
I'm thinking of looking closer into the tribes of Central/Southern Oregon and Northern California. The Klamath Tribes have had a rich history filled with creation stories, and other essential oral traditions to keep their clans heritage alive through the years of white settlers. If anyone has any suggestions, or knows anything about these tribes please share the wealth of knowledge.

There are so many places to start from, I'm thinking of looking at two different tribes (The Klamath, and Modoc) from the same area and comparing their creation stories. They have creation stories of Creator Lake, The Klamath River, Tule Lake, and many other places around this region.