Reflection 16

This week the class continued reading "Ceremony" while doing other assignments during class. On Monday we discussed the book which I always enjoy because it helps me understand what I am reading. On Tuesday we had a work day and got to read for our homework that night, or catch up if anyone was behind. I was where we were supposed to be in the book so I got to work on the homework for that night. I love work days like that because it gives me time to relax and work on whatever I need to get done for class. There was a lot of reading assigned for those three days so it made me thankful that I got to read in class. The reading that was assigned was long but it was given three days in advance (assigned Tuesday and due Friday) which I like because it gave me time to read and place it on my own time instead of being required to read a large amount in one night. I was smart when planning the reading and read a quarter of the reading in class. Later that night I read another quarter plus some so that I was already more than half way done with the reading. Then, on Wednesday night I felt like reading a lot so I read until there were only 5 pages left that I needed to read. Finally, on Thursday night I read the last 5 pages and was on track for Friday.

In class on Thursday and Friday we watched a documentary called "Reel Injun" about how natives have been treated in films throughout history. I liked the documentary because it was very well put together. The music always went perfectly with whatever the people were talking about, so it added to the emotion that the film gave the viewer. It also changed because some parts were sad and made the viewer think about how wrongly natives have been treated, but then directly after someone would make a funny remark that cheered up the viewer. I think it did a fantastic job in showing how natives have been treated. In the beginning, natives were portrayed as something completely different than who they actually are. It showed them wearing headbands, which hardly any tribes wore, and was English spoken backwards which made them sound satirical. In every film early on natives were always portrayed as the evil killer that killed everyone they saw and were heartless about it. As time progressed, natives became drunks or stoic. They just stood there and would not express any emotions no matter what was happening. Then, Marlon Brando had a native woman reject an academy award for him because he wanted her to talk about how wrongly treated the natives were in film. After that incident, natives were portrayed much better and many films were made by natives. Now, there are a number of films that portray natives correctly, as well as the documentary I just discussed which shows how the portrayal of natives has improved up to now. I enjoyed the film and think it's very educating. My only critique for this week is that we have done a huge number of reflections. We did a reflection last week about what we did, Friday on what we thought of the documentary, and now this weekend about how the week. It makes it difficult to write these, especially this week because Thursday and Friday we watched the film and then had to write a reflection about it. Now we have to write a reflection about the week and that only leaves Monday and Tuesday, however Tuesday was simply a work day, so that only leaves Monday to write on this post. I decided to write about the film again, but it just feels repetitive because I already wrote a reflection about the film. Other than that, I enjoyed the documentary and the work day on Tuesday.