1. The authors of your text make an argument that California should stand as a separate region of the United States and Canada, despite the vast differences between southern and northern California. Do you agree? Should northern California more appropriately be connected with the Pacific Northwest? Why do you believe California has had such a hold on the American imagination? To what extent does the picture of California as painted by the media differ from that presented in the text?
After reading this week’s assigned chapters, I can say I don’t really agree with the belief that California should stand as a separate region of the United States and Canada. I believe that within California, we have very distinct local identities within the state that divides us into two regions within one state. Both regions are well off, with high costs of living in both. Industry and Innovation drive Northern California, and I completely agree with the writing that Defense and Entertainment drive the South. The Wine Industry (of course) is sprinkled throughout the entire state from Temecula all the way up to Napa.
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Many people that live in Northern California consider Southern California part of Arizona, and Mexico. I feel Northern California would be a closer match to the Pacific Northwest Region, with its forests, rain and social makeup. Even the Hispanic Gangs are divided into two regions. The southern Gangs, and the “Nortēnos” in the North have their own groups, and
Through visiting La Plaza De Culturas Y Artes, I have learned a lot more interesting, yet, surprising new information about the Chicano history in California. For example, in the 1910’s and on the high immigration of Mexicans and other Chicanos, into coal mines and farms by major corporations, made California one of the richest states in the US. I also learned that most of California 's economy was heavily reliant on immigrants. Immigrants were the preferred worker for major corporations because they didn 't have American rights and were given the harder jobs for less pay.
The purpose of this essay is to examine and analyze Katrine Barber's book, "Death of Celilo Falls". In this book, Barber successfully seeks to tell the story of a momentous event in the history of the West, the building of the Dalles Dam in 1957. Celilo Falls was part of a nine-mile area of the Long Narrows on the Columbia River. Despite the fact that the Celilo Village still survives to this day in the state of Oregon (it is the state's oldest continuously inhabited town), the assembly of The Dalles Dam in 1957 changed the way of life for the surrounding areas forever. Barber tells this story very well, and as it is the first book-length account of the inundation of Celilo Falls, it is a very valuable and insightful look at an influential event in the history of the American West. Barber's purpose for writing the book is summed up in the introductory chapter of the book when she says, " this book examines what happened to two neighboring communities when a large public dam was built adjacent to them." (pg. 9). She goes on to say "This is not a story about impersonal federal force swooping down to rearrange two defenseless communities: it explores relationships between federal representatives and local residents, as well as between residents of The Dalles and Celilo Village." (pg. 9). Barber argues that the Columbia River and those living in its vicinity would never again be the same. The effects of the building of the dam have impacted society up until this very day, with Barber describing the dam as "a tangible reminder if the complexity of Indian-white treaties and their ongoing negotiation, the simultaneous promise and destruction of progress, the loss of a natural river and the life it sustained, and the transformative power ...
In a lively account filled that is with personal accounts and the voices of people that were in the past left out of the historical armament, Ronald Takaki proffers us a new perspective of America’s envisioned past. Mr. Takaki confronts and disputes the Anglo-centric historical point of view. This dispute and confrontation is started in the within the seventeenth-century arrival of the colonists from England as witnessed by the Powhatan Indians of Virginia and the Wamapanoag Indians from the Massachusetts area. From there, Mr. Takaki turns our attention to several different cultures and how they had been affected by North America. The English colonists had brought the African people with force to the Atlantic coasts of America. The Irish women that sought to facilitate their need to work in factory settings and maids for our towns. The Chinese who migrated with ideas of a golden mountain and the Japanese who came and labored in the cane fields of Hawaii and on the farms of California. The Jewish people that fled from shtetls of Russia and created new urban communities here. The Latinos who crossed the border had come in search of the mythic and fabulous life El Norte.
In some accounts of California’s history, the state’s native people were pastoral pacifists who led an idyllic communal existence before the arrival of the Spanish. This view of history suggests that the native population meekly submitted to the missionaries; active resistance (or at least, violent resistance) was a trait learned from the Spanish over several generations of contact. This misreading of history, perhaps motivated by the ideology of the teller, may have at its root the fact that resistance to the Spanish occupation was not, at first, organized resistance.
Q 1. The American colonies were divided into three distinct regions and these regions were different from each other in their origins, populations, economics and agriculture, religious makeup, and connection to England .write an essay comparing and contrasting the New England, middle, and southern colonies with specific examples.
Regionalism is a growing concern for Canadians` as it affects economic stability, nationalism and western alienation. The economic stability is reliant on the regions having strong economic bases (Stilborn, 19). Nationalism with Quebec is a prime example of how distinct regional cultures hinder Canada’s unity, as they want to separate from Canada, while still having the federal Canadian government financially support them. Western Alienation is also a prime political culture that is regionally distinct.
The author provides a couple of interesting evidences about land and liberty in California. The first thing that I found interesting is a story about Governor Echeandia and his administration. He arrived in California and formed study groups back in 1825. This actually got some young men involved and excited about the ideas of liberty and equality. An ironic fact is that male children born to original settlers and presidial soldiers maintained control over the concerns in California, which in today’s society is hard to believe.
When Spaniards colonized California, they invaded the native Indians with foreign worldviews, weapons, and diseases. The distinct regional culture that resulted from this union in turn found itself invaded by Anglo-Americans with their peculiar social, legal, and economic ideals. Claiming that differences among these cultures could not be reconciled, Douglas Monroy traces the historical interaction among them in Thrown Among Strangers: The Making of Mexican Culture in Frontier California. Beginning with the missions and ending in the late 1800s, he employs relations of production and labor demands as a framework to explain the domination of some groups and the decay of others and concludes with the notion that ?California would have been, and would be today, a different place indeed if people had done more of their own work.?(276) While this supposition may be true, its economic determinism undermines other important factors on which he eloquently elaborates, such as religion and law. Ironically, in his description of native Californian culture, Monroy becomes victim of the same creation of the ?other? for which he chastises Spanish and Anglo cultures. His unconvincing arguments about Indian life and his reductive adherence to labor analysis ultimately detract from his work; however, he successfully provokes the reader to explore the complexities and contradictions of a particular historical era.
...he rest of the world views California as the “ideal place to live.” However, if California continues to infringe the negative, discriminatory political view its immigrants, the “California Dream” will no longer subsist.
Peter Schrag presents the ills of California?fs current politics in an angry and persuasive tone. He says California used to be ?gboth model and magnet for the nation—in its economic opportunities, its social outlook, and its high-quality public services and institutes?h; however, California started to fade after the passage of Proposition 13, the initiative of tax limits (7). Schrag?fs work clearly shows what is the problem in today?fs California, and it is easy to understand even for those who have little knowledge of politics. By focusing on issues of ?gneopopulism?h which is easy to find in California?fs diversity, he succeeds in giving his readers the sense of crisis not only about California?fs politics, but also the national wide politics because California is the place ?gwhere the new American society is first coming into full view?h (23). Schrag says, about California politics, that: For nearly a generation, there has been increasing focus among scholars, politicians, and journalists on the growing gaps in California—ethic, social, economic—between those who exercise political power and the larger population, and particularly those who are the most immediate users of its public services. What has gotten little discussion is the dynamic of the plebiscitary process itself. While it?fs ad hoc in nature—each measure is decided by voters on its own apparent merits without much reference to the wider context—it has a larger cumulative effect through which statewide majorities restrict the powers of local political majorities, which are often nonwhite. Almost by definition, it is also a device of impulse that tends to be only marginally respectful of minority rights or interests, and that lends itself to demagogic wedge campaigns designed to boost voter turnout for other political purpose. (21) Schrag divides his project into five sections. The middle sections, ?gThe Spirit of 13,?h and ?gMarch of the Plebiscites,?h in which he carefully discusses each important measure in the last two decades, show why so many issues rose. In the first section, ?gGolden Moment,?h Schrag describes ?gCalifornia?fs heyday of post-World War ‡U optimism?h and how it crumbled. Citations from magazines prove that California was a really paradise even from the nationwide view. Schrag also notices that the demographic change deeply relates to California?fs politics in the last t...
In the early days of America’s expansion westward, travel from the coast of North America into the heartland of the continent, was certainly a reoccurring problem. DeWitt Clinton, who served as the mayor of New York City and later Governor of New York State, had the vision and drive to build the first 363-mile long Erie Canal. In doing this DeWitt felt that America would control the expansion westward. It was feared that if the United States did not have a good connection to the west, that Canada could connect to the west and further more en...
“Freedom was in the very air Californians breathed, for the country offered a unique and seductive drought of liberty. People were free from censure, from Eastern restrictions, from societal expectations.”1
...’s contentious history. They sometimes saw the implications of race and gender in their stories. Harte ventured to California in 1854, briefly worked in mining, but later decided to become a writer. He flourished here. According to Hurtado, “gold-rush stories like “The luck of Roaring Camp” and “Outcasts of Poker Flat” were best – sellers that brought Harte to the favorable attention of eastern critics as well as western readers” (Hurtado, 137). Mark Twain ventured to California in 1861 where he continued his journalistic career. He wrote about the women’s attire. Ambrose Bierce was the last to come to California. He was not only attracted by California’s local color and the recent gold rush but also by a story of interracial and gender. His bitter story The Haunted Valley “captured some of the icy truths that most Californians wanted to ignore.” (Hurtado 140)
One of the major themes throughout this book is the need for more collaboration, coalitions, and alliances at the regional level dealing with major political, economic, social, and environmental problems our metropolitan regions face. One example the book provides for increasing collaboration between regional actors is to create a dialogue to establish “mutual understanding through a process that suspends judgment, reveals assumptions on both sides, and includes diverse perspectives..” A dialogue replaces the inefficient process of debate with a collaborative one that builds trusts and helps to reconcile difference between seemingly competing interests. In San Diego for example, in the 1980’s civic leaders had UCSD set up an organization to spell out all the regions problems and bring the community together to help work at solving the region’s challenges. The San Diego dialogue was noted for helping to build connections that broke down borders between different groups and the shift in focus from individual grievances to community solutions.
The Pacific Northwest combines the best of abundant natural beauty with cosmopolitan flair. From the peaks of the Cascade Mountains to the emerald lowlands of Puget Sound to Seattle's eclectic port-city charm, the state of Washington offers a vibrant mix of urban and rural settings. LoopNet puts the vast northwest within your reach.