Community

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Community

The point that community has an important effect on the shaping of a person’s character is key in both Pythia Peay’s essay, “Soul Searching” and Winona LaDuke’s interview transcribed in essay form entitled, “Reclaiming Culture and the Land: Motherhood and the Politics of Sustaining Community”. The two authors present ideas, similar and different, of what it means to live in and be a part of community. Through examining these two essays, summarizing and synthesizing, we can gain a better understanding of what community is and how it affects those within it.

Pythia Peay explains that for everywhere that she has resided, each place had a unique effect on her character. Each of the five cities in which she has lived contributed in some part to who she is today. She goes on to point out that each city or town has its own unique sense of soul. Peay believes that in our present day people are beginning to lose their sense of place. A city’s inhabitants lay blind to the fact that in some way their own character is shaped “within the city’s larger reality” (4). The body of her essay consists of six methods to help anyone discover the soul of their hometown.

Winona LaDuke’s essay is a little different. Since it is a transcript taken from an interview it is not as straight forward as Peay’s essay. She begins by explaining the way children are commonly raised in her Native community on the White Earth reservation in Minnesota. She asserts that the role of raising children is done by the community as a whole, not just the parents. The children learn by the example, not only by what they’re told. LaDuke does state that the tribal school system has some problems claiming it is “a mediocre rural school...

... middle of paper ...

...rce, street life, history, nature, geography, politics, art, and people that offers a perpetually renewing source of life” (7).

Through these two essays, a greater sense of what community is really about emerges. Not only is community about ones surroundings, but also about the values and ideals held by that communities inhabitants. The community in which one may or may not choose to immerse ourselves in deeply effects who we are. The character, or soul, within each of us is in part shaped by the community or communities in which we belong to or reside in.

Works Cited:

Gruber, Sibylle, Ed. et al. Constructing Others, Constructing Ourselves. Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/Hunt, 2002.

Peay, Pythia. “Soul Searching.” Gruber 3-7.

LaDuke, Winona. “Reclaiming Culture and the Land: Motherhood and the Politics of Sustaining Community.” Gruber 9-15.

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