Daily Archives: October 1, 2012

Turtle Island

Hello everyone!

I had an awesome time meeting you on Monday afternoon, and can’t wait to see the progress of this project and to hear and see all of your input! So, let’s get started!

I wanted to bring up some of the main points that we talked about from Luis’ introductory lecture. 

First off, we started talking about the word “wall”. What does the word wall mean to you? Maybe it is something impenetrable, a barrier of some sort, keeping the outside world out, the inside world in. Maybe the “wall” makes you feel restrained, imprisoned, or maybe it makes you feel safe. Also, important to think about are the different forms a wall can take on. A wall can be physical, like the ‘fence’ between the US and Mexico, literally keeping one space from another. But there can also be different types of “walls” or barriers. Think culturally: how does language create a cultural barrier? What else contributes to the creation of cultural boundaries? Inversely, how do we make these boundaries disappear? Do we need the boundaries, or would we be better off without them?

Second, we talked about the “World of the Play” and immigration. Where and when is this play taking place? There are a couple different answers to this question. Well, it is taking place now, in the year 2012, and the setting is the Arizona desert. But, it is also taking place in the past, and in the future. This is because humans have been migrating across the earth for as long as we have existed. First originating in Africa/Asia, we trekked our way through current day Russia, over the frozen Bering Strait, into Alaska, thus commencing to spread about until reaching South America’s most southern tip. Add a few years to the timeline, and humans have begun to separate themselves into countries and are now flooding Turtle Island. Russia rushing to claim the West, the Brits the East, and the Spanish the south, meanwhile wiping out the native populations. 

The mention of Turtle Island reminds me I need to post a link to a Native American creation myth:

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