Soc 10 Spring 2013 Second Graded Essay

For your second graded paper you will need to carefully view the video: Edge of America. This video was shown on April 9th with the director, Chris Eyre. The video is also available on reserve in the multimedia library in Sills Hall. For the paper, please think about how the issues raised by the main characters in the movie (Kenny Williams, Annie Shortie, and the young women on the basketball team) compare to or contrast with the story of Mary Crow Dog and her family and friends in her memoire, Lakota Woman. Remember that both are based on true stories. Please discuss family issues, tribal language usage, housing issues, vehicular (cars and trucks) roles on the reservation, financial issues, White hegemony and conflicts with neighboring Whites, alcohol issues, blood quantum issues, boarding schools for Indians roles, religion’s roles including witches, and constraints keeping tribal members on the reservation. Also keep in mind and discuss the differences in the book and movie of Black and Native responses to oppression in the USA. Be concise.

This is a five-page (double-spaced) paper that calls for comparing and contrasting issues raised in the book and the movie through a very careful reading of Lakota Woman and an equally careful viewing of Edge of America. This will require taking extensive notes on both the book and the movie. A successful paper will also carefully consider the impact of poverty on Native peoples while discriminating that impact from the impact of racism. In other words, what outcomes are caused by poverty and what are caused by racism? You will need to consult at least five (5) learned/juried journals and/or resource books by social scientists (sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists, political scientists, and economists) or historians on Native issues to support your arguments. News articles or non-scholarly online sources can be used but do not count toward the five scholarly articles or books. Writing a detailed outline should help in organizing your essay. As always, I am asking you to highlight or underline both your thesis sentence in the first paragraph and your conclusion sentence in the last, concluding paragraph. Use Hacker.

Remember that the body of your paper is used to provide evidence from the variables that I have noted in the first paragraph. Use your observations on these variables to form a question, which will be the basis for developing your thesis statement (i.e., a statement inspired by the question). Your conclusion will be your answer to the question developed for your thesis statement and should tell the reader what you discovered in doing your research and writing the essay.

This essay should undergo at least one draft to be reviewed by the Writing Project or a reviewer of your choice. While I will happily talk to you about your essays, I want you to develop other resources for actually reading your essays. Remember that access to the Writing Project is limited and needs to be done in a timely fashion. The final draft of the essay is should be emailed to Prof. Partridge no later than on April 30th. Please email me or ask any questions in our next class.

More than one-quarter of the American Indian and Alaska Native population is liv- ing in poverty, a rate that is more than double that of the general population and one that is even greater for certain tribal groups (e.g., approaching 40%)
Overall, there are fewer individuals within the American Indian and Alaska Native population who possess a high school diploma or GED (71% versus 80%) or a bachelor’s degree