Extra Credit Opportunities — Instructions

Ethnic Studies 110, Spring 2008
Professor Ross Frank
Office: SSB 227
Phone: (858) 534-6646


Extra Credit Assignments - choice of 4 listed below.

You may earn 3 additional points on Essay #2 or Final Exam, which ever has the lower score, by completing the following 2 steps:

1. Attend any of the following 5 events listed below.

2. Submit a 2 page paper of how the event helped you understand some aspect of cultural world view tied specifically to this course. The paper is due in class by the date listed below each event.


Event #5:

Michael Connolly Miskwish, presenting on his Kumayaay: A Hisory Textbook, in ETHN 11B (History of Native Americans in the US) — Friday, June 6, 12:00-12:50, U413 (temporary classrooms near Sixth College apartments across Lyman Lane).

Please turn your 2-page essay in with your Final Exam.


Event #4:

Louis Guassac (Mesa Grande), presenting on the Chancellor's House repatriaion case and other Kumeyaay issues, in ETHN 112B (History of Native Americans in the US) — Friday, May 30, 12:00-12:50, U413 (temporary classrooms near Sixth College apartments across Lyman Lane).

Please turn your 2-page essay in with your Final Exam.


Event #3:

Ethnic Studies Spring 2008 Colloquium

An Invitation from the Kumeyaay Cultural Repatriation Committee
Presentation on the Repatriation of Human Remains and UCSD

Members and Guests of the
Kumeyaay Cultural Repatriation Committee

Thursday, May 8, 3:00-5:00pm
Barona Community Building

If you wish to attend, you must RSVP by APRIL 31st for the event. A limited number of seats will be available on a bus that will leave campus at 2PM and return about 6PM. You must reserve a reserve a seat.

Email Professor Frank with your:

NAME & PID & YES/NO (whether you need a seat on the bus)

Directions to Barona CLUBHOUSE Building from UCSD Cross Cultural Center
(about 30 miles driving distance; allow about 1hr drive time):

1. go 2.1 mi south on Gilman Drive
2. Take ramp onto I-805 S - go 2 mi
3. Take the CA-52 exit onto CA-52 E - go 11.2 mi
4. Take the MISSION GORGE RD exit - go 0.3 mi
5. Bear LEFT on MISSION GORGE RD - go 2.4 mi
6. Continue on WOODSIDE AVE - go 0.5 mi
7. Turn LEFT to take ramp onto CA-67 N toward RAMONA - go 3.5 mi
8. Turn RIGHT on WILLOW RD - go 0.9 mi
9. Turn LEFT on WILDCAT CANYON RD - go 4.3 mi
10. Continue on BARONA RD - go 0.9 mi
11. Bear LEFT on HARRY HERTZBERG WAY - go 0.8 mi
12. Turn RIGHT on BARONA RD - go 0.1 mi
13. Arrive at 1054 BARONA RD, LAKESIDE, on the RIGHT - go < 0.1 mi

Description:

The Kumeyaay Cultural Repatriation Committee (KCRC), a cooperative group of representatives from each of the 13 Kumeyaay Bands in San Diego county, formed in 1998 as to recover and properly culturally affiliated human remains removed from their original resting place. In 2006, the Kumeyaay Cultural Repatriation Committee requested the return of two burials removed in 1976 during a field class excavation from the site of the UCSD Chancellor's House under NAGPRA, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. Under NAGPRA, human remains must be repatriated to a Native American claimant that either establishes direct ancestry or likely "cultural affiliation".

Radiocarbon dating indicates that this double burial took place about 10,000 years ago. Claims of scientists have often provoked custody battles around the disposition of burials of such very great antiquity, such as in the case of "Kennewick Man". Scientists maintain that the age of these remains recovered at UCSD places them at the earliest period of known human habitation in North America, as old or older than the tiny handful of comparable burials, such as Kennewick Man, Spirit Cave Woman, and Minnesota Man. According to some researchers, the importance of these individuals lies in the possibility of identifying the oldest genetic heritage of Native Americans, or possibly of an even older population that is hypothesized to have entered North America along an ice-free route at Pacific shoreline.

These and other repatriation issues will be presented and discussed from the perspective of the KCRC at the first Ethnic Studies Colloquium, held outside of the UCSD campus.

For more information about the UCSD Kumeyaay remains at issue, see:

http://www.kumeyaay.com/?p=395

Your 2-page essay is due in class on or before May 22.


Event #2:

Attend Ethnic Studies Colloquium
Wednesday, April 23, 3:00pm, Social Science Building, Room 107:

Ordinary and Extraordinary Trauma:
Race, Place, Hurricane Katrina, and the Tunica-Biloxi Tribe*
Brian Klopotek
Assistant Professor, Ethnic Studies
University of Oregon

Social Science Building, Room 107
Reception Follows, SSB 103

Two quotes about displaced people of color made by privileged white women more than sixty years apart illustrate the striking parallels between the extraordinary trauma inflicted by Hurricane Katrina and the ordinary trauma inflicted by everyday racism and colonialism:

“Almost everyone I’ve talked to says, ‘We’re going to move to Houston.’ What I’m hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this — this is working very well for them.”

– Former First Lady Barbara Bush to reporters while visiting Katrina evacuees in the Houston Astrodome, September 2005

“All the young people are anxious to move to Houston, Texas, where they will be free of racial discrimination and feel they will have a better chance. Unless they can be content with their present very meagre scale of living, this seems the best plan, for Marksville is a small town with limited opportunities for work and with very strong color prejudice. Before moving they wish information as to their rights to sell the land or possible money aid.”

– Anthropologist and BIA employee Ruth Underhill,
speaking of the Tunica-Biloxi tribe in an official report, October 1938

Like Barbara Bush, Ruth Underhill failed to appreciate the deep connection of a people and their culture to place, did not challenge the oppressive local conditions from which the people sought relief, and did not comprehend that racial orders would simply be reconstituted in a new context without significant intervention. The Katrina/New Orleans example is instructive in demonstrating what was at stake when Underhill casually suggested that the Tunica-Biloxis give up their ancestral home. Like most Americans, however, Underhill envisioned Tunica problems as predominantly racial, when in fact their problems emerged from both their racial status and their status as an indigenous nation in a colonial society. This paper explores these themes as part of an ongoing effort to theorize the distinctions and convergences between race and indigeneity in American studies, ethnic studies, and American Indian studies and develop a comprehensive, holistic approach to studies of race and empire.

* co-authors Brenda Lintinger and John Barbry, Tunica-Biloxi Tribal Nation

Your 2-page essay is due in class on or before May 6.


Event #1:

Attend the following:

US GRANT
Presidential Ballroom
A Celebration of
American Indian Music and Dance
Sunday, April 20, 2008
2:00-5:00 pm

2:00 p.m.                   Welcome by Andy Ebona

2:05                           Prayer

2:10 p.m.                  Miss Indian Nations, Shere Wright

2:20 p.m.                  The Choctaw Nation Dancers
                           Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma

2:45 p.m.         Native American Dance Group from the United Tribes Technical College of Bismarck, North Dakota

3:10 p.m.                  The Samala Singers
Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians

3:35 p.m.                  Yaaw Tei Yi          
Tlingit dancers, Juneau, Alaska

4:00 p.m.                  Acoma Group

4:25 p.m.                  Southern California Intertribal Bird Singers

4:50 p.m.                  Closing Remarks

Your 2-page essay is due in class on or before April 29.


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