Quileute Reservation

Over mid winter break, me and a couple of my friends went to Forks for a couple days just to kinda get out of town for awhile. We like the Twilight series, but were not like obsessive over it, we mostly wanted to see what Forks and La Push were all about. Forks is like a mile long and there is literally nothing there, but La Push was really cool. The reservation/town is right on the beach and even though it was superrrr windy and rainy, I had a lot of fun. The view is amazing! What I wasn't expecting was how run down and small the reservation was. The houses were old and out of shape, and there was a lot of trash on peoples lawns. It also seemed abandoned, I think we only saw like 5 other people the whole time we were on the reservation, but that could have been because of the weather. We went there before I was in this class, so I didn't really know anything about Indian reservations. I kinda pictured them nicer and much larger, nothing like this. I think this experience made me more interested in Native American culture, I'm not sure why.

I really liked Khol and Paco's talk on Wednesday. I've never had the chance to hear a Native American's side of things, I've only heard white peoples sterotypes on what happend. Being in this class has made me really interested in everything thats going on in reservations, and Native American culture so it was great to get their prospective of whats going on. I want them to come back! It was really sad to hear Khol say that on average 3 people would die a week on his reservation back home, and looking through that website today that talked about his county and its demographics it was a real eye opener. I couldn't imagine living in those conditions. But anyways, I really want them to come back! Their stories were really interesting and I want to hear more.

Tribal Loyalty Today

In Sherman Alexie's book loyalty is an always present subject. I thought it was crazy how junior went back to his old high school and everyone literally turned their backs on him, I've never heard of anything like that happening. I was wondering if someone were to leave the reservation today would they be shunned like Junior was or is it acceptable to live outside the reservation today and attend a different school that isn't on the reservation?