Reflections on and Learnings from Module 2

I chose the Jake Thomas Learning Centre as my source to review. It was created by Jake Thomas, his wife, and friends as a way to preserve and promote Haudenosaunee culture. This preservation includes digitizing the Jake Thomas collection, which includes over 90,000 documents, as well as teaching beading workshops. According to the website, “so far our team has scanned and edited approximately 2,500 documents of the 90,000 document Collection” (Jake Thomas Learning Centre), which is entirely scanned by volunteers.The Jake Thomas Learning Centre’s goal is to “make all of the material from the Jake Thomas Collection accessible on the internet” (Jake Thomas Learning Centre).

Overall, I think the perspective that it is meant to convey is that the Haudenosaunee, especially through the late Jake Thomas have a long and rich history that can be shared and provide more context to who these people are and what they do. Thomas himself worked incredibly hard to share Haudenosaunee culture. Here is part of his bio (and the part I am sharing does not even cover everything he has done) from the website:

“He was a well respected cultural leader, craftsman, singer, dancer, orator, and medicine man ritualist-ceremonialist who founded two institutions mandated for the maintenance of cultural integrity among the Iroquois, worked as a Museum Curator, and an Assistant Professor with the Department of Native Studies at Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario.

Jake handmade many different types of arts objects to support and preserve the oral tradition of passing on the longhouse speeches he learned to recite during his lifetime, including explanations of international agreements between the Hodenosaunee 608, neighbouring nations and colonizing nations in North America” (Jake Thomas Learning Centre).

I think these web resources were selected and put into this course and not others because many of them were created by the very people they represent. The Jake Thomas Learning Centre was created by Thomas, his family, his community and supporters. The Tulalip Tribes Hibulb Cultural Center was created by the Tulalip Tribes to “. . . revive, restore, protect, interpret, collect and enhance the history, traditional cultural values and spiritual beliefs of the Tulalip Tribes who are the successors in interest to the Snohomish, Snoqualmie and Skykomish tribes and other tribes and bands signatory to the Treaty of Point Elliott” (Hibulb Cultural Center). This is also true for the Seneca Art & Culture Center at Ganondagan website, Native Languages website. The Indian Country website is incredibly informative, but as dug, I realized that it is funded (and possibly now owned) by Ancestry.com, which I have a lot of complex thoughts about and feel unsure if it is a trustworthy source. In all, I will likely trust the source because it was recommended by the teacher and I trust her expertise much more than my own.

The information I have read thus far has not changed my view of native communities. I think a good chunk of my view has been turned topsy-turvy in the last module. I honestly feel incredibly grateful that there are so many resources that detail just how resilient Native communities have been. Moreover, it is especially exciting to me to see that many have been actively working towards combating language and cultural attrition. I strongly believe that cultural traditions are a strong indicator of who we are and where we come from. While colonizing powers, even today, advocate for assimilation and homogenization, I think that makes for an incredibly boring world. I want to be able to learn about other people and their cultures, just as I would like to share mine.

Works Cited

Hibulb Cultural Center. The Tulalip Tribes Hibulb Cultural Center Is More Than a Museum.
https://www.hibulbculturalcenter.org/. Accessed 21 June 2019.

Jake Thomas Learning Centre. “Jake Thomas Learning Centre.” Jake Thomas Learning Centre,
https://jakethomaslearningcentre.ca/welcome. Accessed 21 June 2019.

Comments

  1. Lawrence S.June 30, 2019 at 12:27 PM

    The Jake Thomas Center and places like this are important to everyone's history. I think everything important that has been written, drawn, or photographed needs to be digitized. First it preserves the document forever, so that future generations can learn from the past. Second, digitizing these documents make them available to everyone. We need to never forget important lessons taught throughout time.

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