Week 9 Essay: Opposites

For this weeks Essay I decided to try something new and do the Cartoon Essay option. I spent some time looking through the different cartoons and this one made me giggle when I read it, which is always a good thing to be able to draw emotions in such a quick time.

Yesbody Cartoon by Rick Detorie

When reading this cartoon, it took me back to the days of learning antonyms and synonyms. I just wanted to ad un- in front of every word to make it the opposite of a word. I always wanted to say that I was unsad. I still to this day do not understand why unsad is not a word. If you want to say the opposite of happy you could say sad or unhappy. But, if you want to say the opposite of sad you can only say happy. It made no sense to me as a kid learning the rules of opposites. I can definitely relate to the little kid in the picture. You have always been taught that yes is the opposite of no so it seems logical. I think that kids actually think more logically than adults sometimes.

I tried to follow the thought process of the boy and see if he was trying to say that a person had no body and the opposite would be that yes the person had a body. So this would be thinking in terms of describing physical characteristics of a person. You can also take it as looking at the word nobody as an adjective with a negative connotation. He is a nobody- not important, not exciting, a downer. And a yes body is the opposite- someone important, someone exciting, someone who says yes to adventure. Based on the expression of the boy in the images, I believe the second explanation is what the cartoonist was aiming for. In the nobody image the boy has a gloomy look on his face. In the yesbody image he is smiling.

This cartoon reminds me of the struggle learning all of the rules of the English language and of the pure creativity we have as children. We start thinking there is only up and down. Then they throw left and right at us. And then they expect us to think in diagonals and opposite angles. This cartoon made me laugh at remembering how simple it all used to be.

Week 9 Storytelling: Black Bear in the Sky

Ursa Major (Bear) Constellation map, Source: wikipedia

“Once there was a young woman with many suitors, but she refused to marry. She had seven brothers and one little sister. Their mother had been dead many years and they had no relatives, but lived alone with their father.”

Her name was Seke. Her brothers had tried to get her to fall in love with one of their friends. They had held competitions to see who could bring Seke the biggest deer that they had shot down with their bows. Many men had lined up and proclaimed how mesmerized they were by her beauty; how they could not imagine anyone else being her husband.

And Seke was beautiful. The eldest sister resembled their mother, who had passed in a tragic accident right after the youngest sister was born. She had big brown eyes and thick black hair that hung long to the small of her back. Her skin was made tan and rough from the long days spent in the sun.

One day, the little sister was bored picking berries and decided to follow her oldest sister while she was getting wood from the forest. The little sister followed Seke far into the forest where the thickest trees began to keep the rays of the sun from shining through. She could just make out the form of her older sister in front of her. She began to wonder why Seke would come so far into the forest just for wood when she saw a large black bear emerge from behind one of the trees and walk towards Seke. The little sister was frightened and was about to scream out when she saw her older sister lean in and hug the bear. They caressed while the younger sister stood in shock at what she was seeing. When she collected herself enough to move, she sprinted all the way back to the house.

Upon arriving at home, the little sister told the seven brothers and father of what she had seen. Seke and the bear were lovers. The father and brothers grew angry and now knew why Seke would not take any of the suitors they had arranged as her husband.

When Seke returned from gathering wood in the forest, she could see something was wrong with her brothers and father. They told her of their knowledge of her bear lover. The siblings wanted to meet him. If she did not oblige to this, they would kill him. Seke was distraught that her secret had been revealed, and she knew her family would not approve of her marriage to a bear. She cried herself to sleep that night, but knew the next day she would have to bring her family to the bear.

The next day, Seke, her seven brothers, and her younger sister ventured into the forest to find the bear that she claimed as her lover. Seke was nervous and did not know how the meeting would unfold. They traveled deep into the forest until the sun disappeared and the trees were thick. Seke went ahead of her family and called to her lover to come out of his cage. He approached Seke slowly and a gentle smile spread across his black lips on his bristly face. But then he growled and stood up on his hind legs, towering over Seke. He was a black beast with fury in his eyes. Seke did not expect her lover to be that furious with her for bringing her family to see him. She turned around to apologize to her family, when she saw why he was raging and growling.

There stood her family with loaded arrows pointed at the bear, ready to kill him. As her family began to charge towards her lover with arrows ready and he began to charge towards her family with teeth showing and claws out, Seke began to cry. Her family or her lover would die if she could not do something to stop them. But the fury in their eyes showed there was no peaceful solution.

Seke closed her eyes and said to herself “may they be in the only safe place I know, where no human or animal can harm them” And with that her seven brothers and younger sister disappeared from the forest. She was left alone in the forest with her lover, the bear, and they lived a happy life together.

And as for her siblings, they were cast into the sky in the shape of a bear. The little brother is the North Star. The six brothers and the little sister are seen in the Great Dipper. The little sister and eldest brother are in a line with the North Star, the little sister being nearest it because she used to carry her little brother on her back. The other brothers are arranged in order of their age, beginning with the eldest. This is how the seven stars came to be.

Author’s Note: This retelling comes from The Bear Woman. In the original story there is a quarrel between the eledest sister and her siblings when they find out she is in love with a bear. The eldest sister becomes angry with them and turns into a bear to kill them. She kills four of her brothers and then one of the eldest brothers finlly shoots her in the head with an arrow and kills her. The brother then brings the four dead brothers back to life and with no family left, they decide they have nothing left on earth and decide to live in the sky. I kept the idea of the woman being in love with the bear the same but changed how the siblings came to be the constellation in the sky. I thought it was a happier ending, and made it more interesting that the sister wanted to protect both her family and her lover, so she cast them into the sky. The name Seke means black and I thought it was appropriate as a black bear.

Bibliography: The Bear-Woman. Tales of the North American Indians by Stith Thompson (1929).

Reading Diary Week 9: Native American Marriage Tales

For this week’s reading diary I decided to focus on one of my favorite stories from the Native American Marriage Tales unit: The Bear Woman.

Upon first reading this I immediately thought of Beauty and the Beast, of a woman who fell in love with a bear. I thought this would be a love story about a woman who fell in love with a bear and then by some magical powers was turned into a bear and lived happily ever after with her bear husband. This is a unit about marriage, so it seemed logical. However, I was very wrong. But, I was pleasantly surprised with how the actual story unfolded.

            One of the points that made me ponder, was when the big sister and little sister pretended to be bears in the woods. The big sister warned the little sister not to touch her kidneys. While they were playing, the little sister accidently forgot and touched her sister above the kidneys. She watched as her sister turned into a bear and ran away into the town and killed many of the people. My thought when reading this was: did the big sister want her little sister to touch her in the spot to make her turn into a bear?

            She warns the sister not to touch her there, but it could be in hopes that the little sister would be curious and touch her there anyways. So, my next thought was why would she want to be turned into a bear when she knew she would most likely kill innocent people? Then I had the idea that maybe she did not go off and kill innocent people, but the people that killed her bear lover. Maybe it was planned as revenge to make those people pay for killing her true love.

            I enjoyed the ending of the story with the arrows being able to kill but also being able to revive the four dead brothers. They decided the only safe place to live was in the stars and they became the constellations. I love astronomy and think the sky is a beautiful work of art. I enjoyed this tale for providing one tribe’s tale of explanation for the beauty in the sky.






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From the second half of the unit I focused on the story: The Youth who Joined the Deer

The story of the deer and the people really had me thinking about the relationship we have with animals. I think this is the purpose of the story after all. It speaks volumes about the beliefs and rituals of the Nlakapamuk people. When first reading the part of the story where it explains that the Deer people lived by hunting and killing each other and then reviving themselves through throwing the bones in the water, I thought this was very clever. I thought this was just a story about a group of people who had found a clever way to keep their people alive and thriving.

I also found it interesting that some of the young deer were always anxious to be killed for the benefit of the people. It seemed like it was almost a privilege to be killed and then provide food to nourish your people. It seems like a sacrifice. But then again, these people know they will be revived, so is it really a sacrifice? To sacrifice something usually entails that something must be lost in order to gain something else. But these people are not essentially losing their lives.

                The section about the rutting-season and the bucks with the deer-man’s wife was not my favorite part of the story. I felt bad that the deer-man was jealous and territorial of his wife. He did not want the younger bucks with his wife. It might have been put into the story to show the “animal instincts” of the deer to mate with multiple partners, and show a contrast between the deer and people. I was, after all, appalled at the mention of the “other younger bucks [who] came and beat him off and took his wife.” But, then I began to think that in the beginning of the story it mentioned that the man had multiple wives even before meeting his deer-wife. This can actually show a similarity between the humans and the deer.

                The ending explains that the hunting of deer is sacred and I think throughout the story it has showed the relationship between humans and deer. That the humans and deer have many similarities and the deer should be respected. When hunting, the deer’s bones must be returned to the water to be revitalized, or at least burned and really die. The bones are not to be thrown about as the deer will get offended. The ending shows the beliefs of the Nlakapamuk in the relationship between the humans and the deer.