Cross-Cultural Blog

Natalie: Description of photo (salmon)

In this image there are at least 20 salmon washed up on the shore of a river dead. Two of the fish toward the middle of the photo have torn skin from which their pink insides are showing. There are big fish along with a smaller fish and there is a smaller fish in the bottom right corner on which I can see the salt and pepper sort of pattern of it scales on its skin. The larger fish right next to it in the middle of the photo has a hooked sort of nose and I can see its little teeth. I can also see on the skin that is not torn, where there would be the same tiny speckled pattern, it appears that the scales have been rubbed off so it looks more grayish. The visible eye of the large fish in the center of the photo is either blackened or missing, while the little one next to it has a grayish dulled look in its visible eye. One of the fish more toward the background looks rotted and it appears more mutilated than the others along with the other large fish in the middle. All of the fish are lying on their sides with one fin underneath them and one fin up in the air, and all of their mouths are open. In the background, there are dark green trees and a misty sort of fog along a river bend. The rocks under along the shore are a mossy greenish brown color, and some of the fish have some of this substance on them, giving them a filthy appearance. The river is calm and there are no visible rapids, and this creates a glassy mirror-like effect so that there is a reflection of the trees visible.

Natalie: Personal beliefs behind the Salmon image

My image speaks to my cultural and spiritual beliefs, as well as my moral and ethical beliefs because it is an image of salmon, which is a sacred animal in my culture, and this sacred animal is lying dead along the riverbed. These salmon were photographed in the summer of 2002 when the Klamath fish kill happened in which, 68,000 Chinook salmon died mainly due to the dams along the Klamath that created low water flows and toxic algae growth in the water. This unfortunate event happened in my area and so it had a huge impact on me. I am sad that people would continue to block and divert the water even when it has been made extremely obvious that the effects of the dams are harmful to the environment, by the protesting and lobbying that has been done by members of the tribes that were impacted. The salmon are eaten by the tribes of my area, and are also thought of as sacred beings so we hold ceremonies to pray for the well-being and return of the salmon along with other sacred animals and foods every two years. These salmon are also a staple food for the tribes fishing in the Klamath and the Trinity river tributary, and in a place with high rates of poverty, when a staple food item is no longer accessible, the people become even more disadvantaged and there have also been higher rates of people getting diabetes. As a person who cares deeply about the well-being of my people and of the Hupa way of life, the death of so many salmon, cuts deep into my conscience and thoughts. My culture is who I am and when a piece is damaged or removed, I am damaged or a piece of me is taken as well. I know that it is wrong for people to stand by and force the extinction of a species just for profit, the issue now is getting others to realize that this is wrong so that we can work together to fix it.

Rebecca Castro: Description of Landfill

A piece of heavy machinery operated by a man in a neon green/yellow vest plows over a giant heap of rubble. One cannot tell the actual size of the mound, but the tops of a few very dark green trees can be seen peeking out in the distance to the left. A retaining wall emerges to the right in the photograph, but very little is visible behind the massive pile of garbage. The garbage itself is very colorful and seems to either have decayed a lot or is mixed with a fair amount of dirt, ashes (gray dirt?). No single piece of this trash can be identified as an object used in daily life but is small and jumbled. The tractor is climbing over the pile and disturbing a multitude of birds. These birds are mostly all seagulls and there is black bird perched on a wooden pole on the right. The birds are circling the rubbish pile, mostly around the tractor. The sky is slightly dark, cloudy, but it is daytime because there are hints of light behind the clouds and snatches of yellow in the bluish/purplish sky. The birds cannot be distinguished from the waste on the ground and add to the jumble and confusion of debris littering the forefront of the picture. This picture is taken on a horizontal, with the scrap pile weighing down the front third, the tractor, birds and trees making up the middle third, and the birds and sky as the top third.

Rebecca Castro: An experience my image reminds me of

When I look at this picture, it reminds me of a trip I took last summer. I was a new, incoming freshman to Stanford University and I had signed up for Native Retreat, which was a kind of pre-orientation trip with other incoming Native American freshmen to the Marin Headlands above San Francisco. One day of the trip, we took a walk to the beach and the sight of the beach will forever be ingrained in my memory and was the most prominent image I recalled when I first looked upon this picture. The sand had a few different zones, some areas had fairly soft, fine grained sand while others were purely comprised of small pebbles and rocks. There were many small shells, broken bits as well as whole ones and lots of strands drying kelp. However, what struck me the most was that the beach was littered with trash and as we walked, we realized that what we were seeing wasn’t just the careless beach goer’s waste, but mixed in with the debris scattered everywhere were dead animals. We saw countless rotting jellyfish, corpses of birds, fish, and even a dead seal. The ocean view was spectacular. The waves were calm and small, gently rolling in, rocking the dead seal on the shore in its wake. It was late afternoon, so the sun was setting over the water and the sky was deep orange, red, yellow, and purple. It was a slightly cloudy day, slightly chilly, and we ran around, taking pictures, climbing on the rocks, pushing each other off of a log that had come in with a heavier tide before. We wore our shoes, even though we were at the beach and in the nice sand, so as not to step on the dead jellyfish or accidentally touch the rotting birds and fish. The beach was small and didn’t seem to be a site of heavy tourism or daily activity, seeing as it was located a pretty good distance from the main tourist attractions of San Francisco and the sand wasn’t ideal for scrunching between your toes. Also, the water, as the Pacific is known for, was cold and the day was less than sunny.

We left as dusk settled in.

This memory comes back when I look upon the picture of the tractor driving through the landfill because I recognize that landscape of trash as similar to that of the beach, though much more extreme in the photograph. I notice the beautiful sky and the birds, and how when looking at the ground in the picture, you can’t tell if those shapes are garbage or dead animals.

Charles Amaya: personal experience connected to my image (mountain of garbage)

One day around the end of winter quarter, I walked out to Lake Lag, having not seen it since fall. The last I remember, it was covered in light brown, thistly growth looking dry and dead. We walked across it one night, and I could hear the dry plants crackle with each step I took. To my surprise, as my line of sight passed over the hill approaching the lake, I was greeted by lush green and the sparkle of water. The once-dry lake had transformed into an actual lake. I found a spot on the slope facing the lake, got on the ground, and propped my head on my backpack. I pulled out my laptop and began to work on my IHUM final. There was a group of children playing close to the edge of the lake, while their caretakers were lying on their stomachs on beach towels tanning. A group of ducks was wading in the lake, occasionally disappearing below the surface of the water to grab whatever they were feeding on. The sun was hot, but pleasant, filtering through the trees above me. The wind was cold in the shade, so half my body lied in the sun. The lake was the most beautiful thing I had seen in a while, and that it lay hidden to me in a way for so long added to the allure. I tried to take a picture of this whole scene with my laptop’s webcam, but the sunlight was too bright that the screen just showed a blinding white glow.

I got up, since I was not getting much work done, and walked down the path around the lake back towards my dorm. On the way, one of the garbage cans was tipped over, and garbage was spilled across the path. I remembered a picture of an overflowing garbage can from a seminar I attended that cited the problem of garbage at Lake Lag. I remember thinking back then that this was an exaggeration, as I had never seen overflowing garbage cans, or garbage for that matter, around the lake. Today was different. I wondered how the garbage can could have tipped over. Did someone bump into it? It would have been pretty hard to accidentally run into it since the can was off the path. So I guessed that an animal was likely responsible, most likely raccoon, since the raccoons here are huge and I had seen one perched on a garbage can before. I walked around the garbage and went back to my room.

Charles Amaya: personal beliefs and values

My main focus when choosing this picture was to find something that depicted the problem of consumption and waste. I wanted something that reflected my perception of how immense and apparently insurmountable this problem is. Waste, as I currently view it, is something that is intrinsic to the current human condition. Everything that we as a modern, industrialized world do produces waste. From construction, to food production, to the clothes we wear, every aspect of our lives contributes to this pile of waste. And many of these things we deem as necessary for survival. Thus it will require a dramatic shift in the way we view the process of producing things and a re-evaluation of our relationship to earth’s natural resources in order to reduce waste. At this current rate of consumption, it does not seem as if this lifestyle will be sustainable.

I feel that each generation has a responsibility to leave a sustainable world for the next generation. Thus the entities responsible for production that use up the earth’s finite resources have a responsibility to do so with an eye towards the future. And it boils down to the individual who consumes these products to make responsible choices that are not detrimental to the environment. How this can be done, I do not know. It is an ideal that I continuously fall short of in daily practice just by participating in the routines of daily life. I once heard a speaker say that one should not consider the earth’s resources to be running out because there are a multitude of sources that have yet to be tapped, such as solar, wind, water, and other renewable sources. It should be a goal of our generation to discover new ways of producing energy to sustain our way of living and reform the production process in order to eliminate the effects that are destroying our world.

Personal belief of Photo: by Jane Bill

My Image speaks to my ethical, spiritual, and moral beliefs. Ethically I believe that we as humans have a responsibility to our natural world. Humans should not be drilling into the earth and plundering it of its natural resources. In the picture a person can witness the oil spilling into the ocean and that person can only assume the amount of devastation that it caused to the marine habitat. Ethically as humans we should feel an obligation to protect all creatures on this earth and thus far we are ignoring the needs of other animals. Pollution needs to be stopped and since this step seems to be out of reach, pollution needs to be contained. Spiritually this picture captures the negativity that in habits our earth. The scene does so because of the destruction and feeling of death that is in the essence of this oil spill. The destruction that the picture holds comes from witnessing the oil expanding into the water and knowing that the oceanic environments is contaminated. The feeling of death spawns from the thought of knowing that innocent animals have been harmed or killed by the oil spill that mankind has allowed to happen. Morality streams through both of these concepts and therefore this oil spill picture captures the morals that mankind needs to adapt so that we can find a solution to our problem of pollution.

Global significance: By Janet Bill

The oil spill represents the battle between mankind and nature. It does so by displaying how the actions of humans can endanger the beauty and significance of nature. For example, the oil spill displays how the technologies that we as humans have created break down and have drastic consequences to our surrounding environment. The observer is able to assume that the oil spill has severely damaged the oceanic environment. One assumption is that the natural flow of the ocean has been disrupted because the oil is mixed into the salty water, which makes it heavy and less able to flow in its natural current. A second way that this incident endangers the environment is by harming or even killing the animals that live in the ocean. This disruption of the natural food chain has drastic consequences for the animals in the ocean but also for humans that rely on certain fish to survive or for business purposes. Furthermore, the idea of pollution and ethics are closely intertwined in this image. These two concepts are intertwined because an observer of this image begins to think about different ways that humans have endangered the environment and can possibly resolve the problem of pollution. Some people may observe this image and first think about how much money is being wasted instead of thinking about how much this oil spill is endangering the oceanic environment. Due to these ignorant and money obsessed views environmental concerns such as pollution are being pushed to the back end of some government and humanitarian agendas. Pollution being a lack of importance to some politicians has made it a global issue because we all have garbage and therefore it is our moral obligation to try and come up with a better and more ethical solution to our global pollution problem.