When people meet new cultures, conflicts often happen. In this activity, I watched Disney movie “Pocahontas” (1995). This movie illustrates the conflict between British colonists and American Indians.
~Story~
Pocahontas was an Indian woman and a daughter of a chief of the village. She believed in beautiful spirits of nature and was very curious. One day, her father recommended her to marry a strong warrior Kocum. Pocahontas hesitated what to do, and at that time, British colonists came from over the sea. The colonists came to this “New World” to get gold, prosperity, and freedom. The colonists cut down trees and dug around to mine gold. John Smith, one of the British colonists, went to scout the New World and met Pocahontas. They were interested in each other and spend a time together. John learned Native Americans’ ideas of the world from Pocahontas and found out there were no gold in the New World. John told the other colonists that there were no gold and good things about Indians. However, the other colonists thought Indians were savage and violent and trying to kill the colonists. While one of the Indian scouts was shot by a colonist and Indians thought colonists were barbarous invaders. Both colonists and Indians stared preparing for a war. Pocahontas met John secretly to stop the war, but she was detected by Kocum. When Kocum sew Pocahontas and John were getting together, he was very upset and he pounced at John to protect Pocahontas from John. At that time, one of the colonists who followed John shot and killed Kocum. The colonist was just tried to protect John. Unfortunately, however, John was caught by the Indians and the tension between the colonists and the Indians climaxed. The next morning, the colonists and the Indians readied for the war and John was almost executed. Pocahontas hazarded her life in saving John, and her father, the chief of the village, was impressed his daughter’s courage and declared that the Indians should have not fought with the colonists. The Indians released John and colonists threw guns away. However, a boss of the colonists did not like this result and tried to shoot the chief of the village. John guarded the chief by using his body and the bullet hit John. The boss was caught by the other colonists and fortunately, John escaped death. When the colonists went back to England, Indians brought many foods for the colonists and showed their feelings.
The major conflict between the colonists and the Indians was regarding others as a bad. When John met Pocahontas, he said the Indians were uncivilized and made her angry. For her, the Indians had their own rules and they lived in peace. However, the British colonists called the Indians savage people without knowing anything about the Indian life and ideas. Also, the Indians called colonists white devil without knowing anything about the colonists. Both colonists and Indians were afraid of each other because they did not know who they were. In addition, they both tended to assume the other by their own values. Now in America, similar conflicts exist. Some people assume particular groups of people by their own values and regard these groups of people as the bad without understanding their cultures. To solve this conflict, people have to aware different point of views and values and understand them.
Have you ever faced to a cultural conflict before? What was that and how did you think about that conflict?
Yes, many times. Living overseas provided me with a lot of exposure to almost all of the cultural conflict styles. I dealt with those issues by attempting to acclimate and understand more of the conflict, but let me tell you it was difficult. American "culture" clashes significantly with German culture. Values was a signifcant area of cultural conflict. Germans are very family oriented, very open to issues we American's are so conservative about. There were many things I really embraced and there were somethings I really struggled with.
返信削除I have also faced cultural conflict living abroad. I spent a few months living and working at an internship in Italy. Italians have a more traditional view of women than Americans have. I would get so mad when a man at work offered to do a task for me because he thought the task was too hard for a girl! I dealt with this by explaining my viewpoint to the people I worked with and by proving that I was capable of doing my own work.
返信削除Working at a gas station I was faced with may different cultural conflicts. I would have trouble understanding what people were saying and they would have trouble understanding what I was trying to say also. There would be times where i would have to actually have to write what i was saying on a piece of paper for them to understand.
返信削除When I traveled to Bequia and Belize, I was faced with many different culture conflicts. One of the most evident conflict was the language barrier. They claimed to be speaking English, and I could pick out some words every now and then, but it was a "Spanglish" type of English. They used spanish and english combined and then also spoke really fast, sometimes combinging the words together. That was difficult to catch onto for the short amount of time we were there.
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