Aholode Herve
Intercultural Communication Project #1
Barry Regan
March 14, 2013 Response to the Interview
Like it says in the assignment, “understanding the beliefs and customs of different culture is integral in not only avoiding Ethnocentrism but in becoming a more culturally sensitive speaker” that phrase already explains everything. I’m from West Africa (Benin) and I’ve interviewed LaShea Preece 28 year’s old woman who is Apache Indian. While asking her some question, I realized some interesting things that I want to share with people, some of those things are; the difference between Apaches culture about their communication and mine, the cultural communication that I just learned about them, the most significant difference between apaches Indian culture and my culture, and the thing that surprised me the most about LaShea and her culture value. First, Apache Indian considers talk less as strength, they don’t talk much, they used sight languages a lot and they are very secretive. Apaches Indian does not communicate with outsider of their village. In my culture, we communicate well talk less is basically considered as weakness, in order to be respected or to be known, you have to be able to speak well with others, be talkative communicate with outsider, try to know about other culture and at the same time be sure to teach other about your culture. There are not much sight languages and we do not keep thing secret to each other or to other culture. For example if you if you don’t want other culture to be disrespectfully to your religion, you have to teach them a lot about your religion and learn about their religion so you both can be able to respect each other religion. While interviewing LaShea, I noticed a lot of eye contact from her and also a lot of short answers. I’ve never know that there will be some culture that talk less, be secretive, and use a lot of sight languages, because I was born and raised in a culture where we don’t talk less or have secrets to keep between us, and we do not use much sight languages either, so I was surprised to know that about apaches Indian. They are very private when it comes to interaction, they can shake hands at their house but they won’t do that in public, they can’t show affection in public either. There is physical interaction between them but not in public only at home or during a ritual called “dance ritual” which happens when there is a wedding or a full moon. Those are new things that I learned about the Apache Indian. The most significant difference I found between Apaches Indian and my culture is; if you are born on Indian reservation, in order to migrate off the village, you must have a blessing from the chief of the village before u leave the village and you are not allowed to comeback before 7 years. Also women are recommended