Cultural Mixing with the American Indian Community

The American Indian community is inherently diverse: it encompasses hundreds of tribal nations, each with its own distinct culture, language, and history, as well as hundreds of different native perspectives ranging from reservation to urban experiences.  With this understanding, it is easy to see how this diverse community in itself represents a positive model of cultural mixing and coexistence.

My name is Kenneth Ramos; I am Diegueño Indian, and I grew up on the Barona Indian Reservation in San Diego County.  I am a Tribal Member of the Barona Band of Mission Indians <http://www.barona-nsn.gov/>, a federally recognized sovereign nation, consisting of a citizenship of almost 500 Native Americans.  Our ancestors inhabited the lush San Diego valley before the arrival of Father Junipero Serra, and the implementation of the Spanish Mission system, the first being built in San Diego in 1769, which led to the colonization, enslavement, and mass genocide of California Indian tribes along the coast, ranging from San Diego to San Francisco.  Missionization plays a huge role in the shared histories of California Indians, and is unique to our experiences as indigenous people.

This experience differs from that of the other 562 federally recognized tribes in the United States, who, along with their individual cultures and traditions, have their own stories of surviving centuries rape, colonization, assimilation, relocation, genocide, and so much more.  The Iroquois Confederacy dealt with French, Dutch, and British colonists in present-day New York, the Cherokee were forcibly relocated from Georgia to Oklahoma on the deadly Trail of Tears under resident Andrew Jackson, the US government attempted to ethnically cleanse and deport the Navajo people through the Long Walk, and of course, the massacre of Lakota by the US Calvary at Wounded Knee.  These are just several famous examples of Native Nation’s struggles, which differ from that of my own Native Nation’s.  Although we are all different people with different beliefs, it is this shared experience of survival that has brought our tribal nations together, to share our cultures and pass down our stories, as the American Indian community.

This cultural mixing manifests itself in several different ways today, but one of the most popular being in the form of a Pow Wow.   Pow Wows are traditionally practiced by Plains Indians, however today, they have become a staple to pan-Indian culture.  Pow Wows are gatherings for native peoples from all other to come together to meet, sing, dance, socialize, and essentially celebrate our diverse community and cultures.  There are native vendors of crafts and food (always fry-bread), and dancing and drumming competitions.  The dancing that occurs at the Pow Wow also reflects the many different cultures of our community, as we have specific styles that belong to specific regions of the country, such as fancy shawl, jingle dress, gourd dancing, northern cloth, northern buckskin, southern traditional, grass dancing, and so much more.  My tribe, for instance, has Bird Dancing, which is only practiced by the women.

Last weekend, my tribe hosted our 43^rd Annual Barona Pow Wow.  Culturally, we are not Pow Wow Indians, and although we host a Pow Wow for members of the American Indian community to come together on our reservation, those of us from Barona use the Pow Wow as a gathering.  My Aunties and Uncles and cousins all set up camps and we spend the weekend together.  We take care of our Great-Aunties and Great-Uncles and grandparents together during the day, and spend the nights at the Pow Wow grounds until the sun rises and the Pow Wow starts up again.   We set up traditional ramadas and have inter-tribal sports competitions, as well as playing peon, a traditional game of our tribe.  My tribe’s Pow Wow exemplifies a positive model for cultural mixing and sharing.

With Ms. UCLA Pow Wow Princess, Gladys Dakam (Lakota) at Barona Pow Wow.

Traditional Diegueño Ramadas

Pow Wows happen almost every weekend all over the country on the National Pow Wow circuit.  There are many that happen in Los Angeles, due to the fact that Los Angeles has the largest population of urban American Indians than any other county in the country (this is mainly due to relocation).  Pow Wows have become a common event amongst our people, and have demonstrated the positive effects cultural mixing has within a community that has been stricken with centuries of racism.

If you have never been to a Pow Wow, I encourage you to go.  The American Indian Student Association (AISA) at UCLA will be hosting the 29^th Annual UCLA Pow Wow this coming May and I hope to see you all there in attendance!

Last Year’s UCLA Pow Wow Poster!

First Fridays’ Kogi Food Truck

For my extra credit assignment, I am choosing to write about positive cultural mixing within food and festivities. Every first Friday of the month, Venice beach puts on a festival where food trucks come and open their doors to the people of the LA area. There are at least 50 food trucks lined up on Abbot Kinney (one of the main streets in Venice beach) from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. The food trucks range in the type of food they serve. The trucks serve everything from Chinese noodles, to Indian chicken tikka masala, to Italian sausage and meatballs, to Mexican tacos. Any type of food can be found at First Friday at Abbot Kinney making the festival a very cultural place.

There are food trucks that even serve food items using two or more cultures in one dish. One of these unique trucks is Kogi, also jokingly known as “the little Korean-taco-truck-that-could”. Kogi serves up a fusion of Korean and Mexican food, wrapping Korean BBQ meat in a tortilla with Mexican spices and cilantro infused salsas. Although the Korean taco is definitely what Kogi is most famous for, there is more to the menu, with the most unique dish being the kimchi quesadilla.

The idea for mixing the Korean and Mexican cultures into a single dish came from the owner and founder of Kogi, Mark Manguera. Mark is a Filipino-American from the LA area, who married into a Korean family. He was inspired to combine Mexican and Korean food as a result his upbringing and his marriage. Because he is from the streets of LA where Mexican food is prevalent, this fusion seemed natural to him and he thought it would appeal to much of LA, seeing how about 48% of Los Angeles is Hispanic or Latino and about 13% of Los Angeles is Asian.

This mixing of the Mexican and Korean cultures to create new dishes can be regarded as only positive. Kogi has won much recognition, including a “Bon Appetit” Award in 2009 and “Best New Chef” for chef Roy Choi by Food & Wine in 2010. People in the LA area look up to this food trucks’ originality and the way it combines cultures to make something new and relatable for many different cultures.

– Christina

Jazz: A Music of Cultures

Since I absolutely love big band/jazz/swing musicians such as Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Ella Fitzgerald, and numerous others, I thought a good example of a positive relationship of cultural mixing exists within a variation of my favorite genre: jazz.

Jazz grew out of the New Orleans in the early 1920’s. The saxophone, clarinet, bass guitar, flute, piano, and banjo are amongst some of the many wonderful instruments that jazz musicians use to create the liveliness and spontaneity of their songs.

As a result of the 1800’s Atlantic slave trade, many Africans were brought to the United States and with them came a culture with many musical traditions that would later influence the genre of music. A defining feature of jazz music is improvisation. Often in religious rituals Africans engaged in what is known as call-and-response, which one person says one distinct phrase and the other person replies to what the first person said. This African influence call-and-response pattern initiated improvisation as an important feature of Jazz; improvisation allows the music to be interactive and requiring participation from the audience or other band group members.

Aside from the African origins, jazz was influenced by Western forms of music. Blues is one example of Western form that was essentially a precursor to the different levels of harmony that jazz music incorporates.

Thus, because Jazz combines aspects of African traditional music with Western forms it demonstrates cultural mixing, especially in the context of history. Despite the tense period of history that surrounded the United States, a beautiful genre of music emerged from a country wrought with strife. Jazz, during the post-slavery era and in the midst of racial tension and racial divisions, managed to gain momentum. It provided freed African Americans the chance to seek out opportunities in the entertainment business. The creation of jazz is one of the first acknowledgements of this idea of coexistence of cultures. Music is very personal; it can be personal on an individual level or on a cultural level as well. The fact that jazz is a product of two distinct cultures, two cultures that have had a difficult past showed this progression towards coexistence. Although most original Jazz musicians were African American, as time progressed more and more popular elements of American music were further incorporated into the genre, so much so that other mini-genres branched out from jazz such as punk jazz and M-base.

**Please note that all historical information has been summarized/paraphrased from wikipedia. Since wikipedia can be unreliable I compared it with other sources to make sure the information matched up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazz#Smooth_jazz

-Marisela

K-Pop Influence in South America

Music is a universal form of expression where music, as a language, brings cultures of the world together. Today, it is almost impossible to listen to music and not hear the influence of other cultures. In addition, specific genres have been rising in popularity in different countries, leading to cultural mix amongst the various countries. For my extra credit blog, I will be writing about the impact of K-Pop (Korean pop) around the world, specifically in South America.

K-Pop is a genre of music that is used to describe modern forms of South Korean pop music that includes dance, electronic, and hip-hop. K-Pop sparked in the 90’s and has been rising in popularity through social networking sites like Youtube, and through Korean musicians efforts to popularize this genre to the world. Over the years, K-Pop has been more of a culture than just a musical genre. It consists of a particular fashion that K-Pop artists follow, as well as trends and expressions that artists popularize through their music and media.

Over the years, K-Pop has been spreading around Asia to Europe and North America, and most recently to South America. This spread of Korean pop culture has been called the “Korean wave.” Recently, the “Korean wave” has reached South America and has greatly influenced a stronger cultural mix with Asian and South American cultures.

In the past few years, K-Pop artists have been holding concerts and dance competitions all over South America and has been widely viewed successful in bringing Korean pop culture to a country that Korean culture never really had a connection with before. Specifically in Peru, Chile, Mexico, and Brazil, the Korean pop culture has become so popular that fans have been creating their own music groups to resemble a specific K-pop band and promoting K-Pop to their local TV stations. A huge accomplishment was when TV Azteca’s program “Venga la Alegria” and their “90 Segundos” segment displayed K-Pop artists. In addition, according to Anjani Trivedi from Time World, “there’s a shopping center in the Peruvian capital with entire floors dedicated to South Korean music, cuisine and clothes. On YouTube, K-pop videos with lyrics translated into Spanish notch up millions of views, as fans in Peru and throughout the Hispanophone world log on for their K-pop fix” (Trivedi). K-pop fans in South America have been translating Korean into Spanish for other Spanish speakers who want to understand the lyrics. These fans have also been researching and learning not just about Korean music, but also about Korea’s heritage.

Overall, K-Pop shows the great impact of how music can influence two cultures to relate and to appreciate each other’s cultures even though they come from two very separate origins.

Source:

Trivedi, Anjani. “Times World.” World Forget Politics Lets Dance Why K-Pop Is a Latin American Smash Comments. N.p., 1 Aug. 2013. Web. 08 Sept. 2013. Why K-Pop is a Latin American Smash

-Tricia

Coexistence at UCLA

In my life, the best example of constructive cultural mixing has been right here at the UCLA. I am only a burgeoning sophomore and already in my one year I have seen and learned more about other cultures than I have in my entire lifetime.

According to UCLA’s website there are nearly 30,000 undergraduates and a little over 40,000 students total if you count the graduate students. With this many people co-existing on one campus, there is no way not to be exposed to someone else’s culture or to exchange your own culture with someone else. This word “culture” is stretched out quite eclectically here as the student body makes up a plethora of religions, ethnicities, races sexual identities and many more. Two people coming from the same high school may have as many cultural differences as two people from countries on opposite sides of the world. One of my roommates last year was coincidentally from my home state of Pennsylvania and my other roommate was from Beijing. In our time living together we all blended cultures by sharing customs, beliefs and living habits. As a whole we found that we had many similarities and differences based off of our cultural upbringings. My roommate from China made me understand that although you can be seen as a minority in one place, it’s important to take into consideration that somewhere everyone is a minority.

An amazing thing about UCLA however is that there is really no such thing as a being part of a “minority” culture, because even if you are part of a smaller classification, there are still likely thousands of other students in that underrepresented group. For example, according to UCLA Undergraduate Admissions, out of the approximate 27,941 undergraduates enrolled in 2012 only 3.88% were Black. However since the student body is so large, that still meant there were 1,083 black students enrolled total. In my high school in suburban Pennsylvania there were less than 40 black students total. At UCLA I have had the rare chance to branch out and meet many types of people I had not gotten the chance to interact with before college, and may not get as much of a chance to afterwards. This happened on the opposite front as well because many of my friends told me that I was the first Jewish person they had ever met. In those cases I was able to break down many of their preconceived serotypes about my culture the same way they were able to change the way I saw their own.

Since the focus at UCLA is on education, every student shares a shared common goal and thus when we are being exposed to the differences in each others cultures we are still about to draw back on the collective understanding we all have towards our degree aspirations. It’s certainly not a perfectly harmonic system, but I doubt there are many other environments in the world where culture is positively hared on this level.

-Zach

The impact of food in positive cultural mixing

leche flan

“Food is the center of our ritual celebrations, our baptisms, weddings, funderals. You can’t describe a real Pinoy without listing what’s most important to him-food, music, dancing, and love-most probably in that order” (Dogeaters p. 154). With this in mind, I am writing my extra credit assignment on the impact of food, specifically on leche flan in the book Dogeaters.

In a general aspect, food (psychologically) acts as a catalyst that breaks social tensions and unlocks specific parts of the brain that stimulate openness and willing interaction. As such, the function of food in the interaction between people of two separate cultures is to break the barriers of difference between the two and bring them closer together. With the Spaniards and the Filipinos, foods that are a fusion of both cultures are such that allow a positive cultural mixing.

In the chapter “High Society” the fusion foods we see in the feast between Rio’s father’s family (Spanish) and Rio’s mother’s family (Filipino) attest to breaking contentious boundaries. The baby lechon,” three-tiered cakes oozing custard, guava jelly, sugar, and cream”, and leche flan are derived from foods unique to Spanish culture and mixed with foods unique to the Filipino culture; the result is food that both cultures can enjoy, remark about, and open up in conversation while feasting at the dinner table. While it is interesting to note that Rio (the narrator) does not enjoy most of the foods, she takes a passionate liking to leche flan; it’s “all [she] can stand to eat at the family parties” and even Lola Narcisa (who is strictly Filipino and pro native culture) enjoys them for a “secret midnight feast.”

Overall, food is a sensible symbol of positive cultural mixing. Psychological implications express that food breaks tensions among people and allow a more open and open-minded interaction to occur. With political relations as stormy as the Spanish and the Filipino, fusion foods that incorporate a food native to each culture into one such as leche flan allow the usually tempestuous atmosphere to soften up between interactions of the two cultures.

-Daniel

Partners in Health

An excellent example of positive cultural mixing is the Partners in Health (PIH) medical organization. Originally started by Dr. Paul Farmer, Dr. Jim Kim, and Ophelia Dahl in Haiti, the organization works to bring free medical care to the underserved across the globe. This undertaking requires a huge amount of cultural understanding and community support.

PIH has been an amazing model for cultural mixing within healthcare. By bringing modern medicine to global underserved communities, a hybrid form of medicine is forming based on cultural relevance and quality care. Traditional methods of treatment in the US do not transfer to people in countries where the GDP is a fraction of the US’s, and drugs are hard to come by. By meshing cultural norms with medical practice, PIH is able to bridge the gap between developed and developing nations and bring care to the underserved.

Beginning in Haiti, Dr. Farmer set up a large health center called Zanmi Lasante where he would see patients from the surrounding villages. Many people were a day’s trek away if not more, and poor infrastructure meant patients were walking over crumbling mountainsides and along dirt roads to get care. While Dr. Farmer would make frequent trips to see his patients, he also enlisted the support of community health workers from the local community. These people were trained to follow up with patients in their homes and ensure they were taking medications, as well as noting things that had to be improved in the patient’s house, like leaking roofs causing the growth of mold indoors. Dr. Farmer also worked closely with the women who were part of the village elders, as they were the ones receptive to changing their community for the better. They helped change the meals they would cook for their families according to his advice to improve health starting from one of the simplest ways — diet. Traditional Haitian foods heavy in salt or fat were reduced in frequency in the kitchen, helping those with cardiovascular disease to eat more fruits and vegetables.

A sister organization of Partners in Health, Companeros en Salud, was started in Mexico. Government doctors and community health workers work in government-run clinics in the mountains where rural villagers lack consistent medical care. By understanding the community, the medical workers can implement changes that are specific and culturally-relevant to reduce diabetes and cardiovascular disease by recommending particular diets that are based on local foods.

By combining the training and expertise of modern medicine with the cultural norms of peoples in foreign countries, PIH has been able to bring healthcare to some of the world’s most underserved and in-need people.

-Christian

Gayane Ballet

Armenian and Russian cultures has long history of coexistence. As both of them are countries of former Soviet Union, the cultures of these two countries have had huge influence on each other. As an example I have chosen to discuss Armenian classical music and ballet impacted by Russian culture.

One of the most respected Armenian composers is Aram Khachaturian (1903 –1978). He is also considered one of the three greatest composers of former Soviet Union along with Dmitri Shostakovich and Sergei Prokofiev. Khachaturian moved to Moscow, Russia at the age of 19 and graduated from Moscow Conservatory. Most of the composer’s works are influenced by European and Russian classical music. One of his masterpieces is four-act ballet Gayane composed in 1941, which represents the vivid mixture of two cultures: Russian and Armenian. The ballet is considered to be the mixture of Russian classical and Armenian national music. The Ballet Gayane tells the story of young Armenian woman named Gayane who, suffering from unhappy marriage, falls in love with commander of the Soviet frontier guard Kozakov (of Russian descent). The ballet conveys the atmosphere of the Second World War, as well as raises the issues of patriotic convictions and treason.

The ballet Gayane was choreographed by Russian dancer and choreographer Nina Aleksandrovna Anisimova (1909 -1979), in which she danced the lead in the “Sabre Dance” (one of the acts of Gayane ballet). Gayane was first staged in 1942 by Kirov Ballet in the Russian city Perm. Nowadays the ballet is performed on Armenian and Russian stages and is equally popular in both countries, as well as all over the world.

In the “Sabre Dance” the ballet dancers wear Armenian folk costumes, while the Armenian national music impact is mostly felt when prima ballerina dances her Gayane part.

Having studied under Russian composers such as Nikolai Myaskovsky and Sergei Vasilenko in Moscow Conservatory, Khachaturian didn’t lose his Armenian essence. He managed to combine the elements of Armenian and Russian music creating a new style of his own, which made possible the coexistence of two cultures in his breathtaking music.

-Diana

The Bund and the recalling of the colonial culture

When thinking about Shanghai, the first thing that comes out is probably the Bund. It witnesses the modern history of Shanghai, the shame as well as the pride. Its history starts in the International Settlement. Magnificent commercial buildings in the Beaux Arts style sprung up in the years around the turn of the 20th century as the Bund developed into a major financial center of East Asia. The most famous part of it is that it has dozens of historical buildings, lining the Huangpu River, that once housed numerous banks and trading houses from the UK, France, the US, Italy, Russia, German, Japan, the Netherlands and Belgium.

Beauty remains. However, it can never be denied that all these glorious images are born in the colonial history. The Shanghai International Settlement began originally as a British settlement. It was one of the original five treaty ports which were established under the terms of the Treaty of Nanking at the end of the first opium war in the year 1842. Later, Shanghai is divided by the foreign powers into the French Concession, the British Concession, the American Concession and so on. Those exotic achitecture shown in the pictures were used to be the banks and the consulates of the foreign countries.

Indeed, we can’t simply forget the shameful history of being invaded. We shouldn’t forget the board outside the Bund park which read “Chinese and dogs not allowed.” as well as those factory workers who are under the oppression of the western capitalism. But the truth is, it seems easy for us to catch “selective amnesia”. Until now, the French Concession refers to the most wonderful part of Shanghai as the French invaders tried their best to build another Paris there. Even after so many years, the sense of luxury still remains. It’s still preserved as one of the most luxurious spots in Shanghai. The most representative spot is called Henshan Road which are full of exotic restaurants, bars and garden villas.

And not only do the beauty of the streets along with huge plane trees and the Western achitecture remains, the intangible impact on the ideology remains in a more profound way. The Protestant thoughts brought by the British and German colonizers taught the Shanghainese what was professional spirit and instrumental rationality which were totally new to our nation at that time. And the romantic and dreamlike culture brought in by the French inspired the Shanghainese to have a sentiment of “petite bourgeois”. And the impact remains throughout the modern history, mixing with the local culture and traditions and developoing into a special Shanghainese culture.

Right on the other side of the river opposite to the Bund locates Lujiazui which has developed so fast as a CBD that become the representative of the prosperity of Shanghai nowadays. It’s undeniable that the colonists brought sufferings here through exploitation. However, it’s also undeniable that the colonial history is part of the reason why Shanghai has become such an marvelous metropolis. The same thing also happens in Hongkong. When Western capitalism meets the diligence and creativity of the Chinese, they mix together and become a stronger driving force of the development of a nation. These cities which has a colonial history have learned a valuable lesson of overcoming the weakness of their own by acquiring others’ strong points and the openness lying in the culture is their key to a brighter future.

-Angel

Mother / Daughter Relationship in Dogeaters

Hello Everyone,

I am Diana. This week I am one of the cohorts together with Christina and Tricia and I am going to discuss mother /daughter relationship in Alacran and Gonzaga families of the Dogeaters. In the chapter The Weeping Bride pregnant Baby Alacran suffers from mysterious illness. She talks to her mother on the phone complaining about her health.

“The weeping bride apologizes for being ill, as she apologizes for most things in her life. Her mother says nothing. She is more annoyed than concerned with her only child’s precarious health. Her daughter immediately senses this and gets of the phone.” (The Weeping Bride)

Being alone and ignored by her husband, who she married to escape from her family, Baby finds herself in loneliness again, as it used to be in her father’s house. Now she longs for her mother’s supports, but instead she receives the same indifference form her part. My question is the following: why do you think Isabel is so annoyed and discontent with her daughter? Is it because of her being ill constantly or unattractive appearance?

In the same chapter it is depicted that she suffers because her husband is never home.

“She remembers her servants. How quietly they enter and exit, bringing her hot kalamansi juice, chamomile tea, aspirin, icebags for her headaches, hot water bottles for the sore muscles. They take turn massaging her, saying very little. They pretend not to notice blisters on her hands. She has the whole house to herself, ghostly servants on tiptoe, at her beck and call”. (The Weeping Bride)

I think through these lines the author implies how mach Baby suffers from her mother’s and husband’s indifference. She feels alone and unwanted, abandoned by her family and husband. She has only her servants who just do their job massaging her, but in reality they don’t care about her health. It is obvious that she suffers from the lack of love. She prefers spending time in her room, isolated from the outside world instead of fighting for her happiness. What do you think Baby Alacran could do to change the situation in which she appeared? Does she have chance to change her mother’s attitude towards herself?

Throughout the novel we can see the complicated relationship between Rio and Dolores Gonzaga. However, in comparison with Baby, Rio is more complete and stronger character. She finds happiness in spending time with her grandmother and is mature enough to contradict her mother in behalf of her preferences. In the chapter Her Mother, Rita Hayworth, Rio claims: “I hate dresses, and I don’t want a birthday party”, even though she knows that her mother will stand her ground. What are the differences and similarities between Rio’s and Baby’s relationships with their mothers?