Poverty In America: Native American Tribes Essay -- Essays on Poverty

         As a White American, I have been virtually unaware of the harsh living conditions that Native Americans have been enduring. This past summer I was fishing and camping at a resort in northwestern Minnesota with my family. I realized that this resort was located on the White Earth Indian Reservation. As I drove around the towns that the resort was near, I saw that the Native Americans were terribly poverty-stricken. Besides the resort that my family and I were staying at and a small casino that was nearby, most of the buildings and houses were in poor condition. The majority of the houses were trailers and not something that I would call â€Å"livable.† This raised a few questions in my mind: Why are people on Indian reservations living this way and what other things besides housing are Native Americans lacking? As I began research on these questions, I found three major issues. Poverty, health, and education are three tribulations that, at this point, remain broken on American Indian reservations.   Although poverty rates on some reservations are getting better because of gambling enterprises and natural resources, most reservations have unusually high poverty rates. In 2000, the poverty rate of the entire United States was about 11.3%. Compare that to a 25.9% poverty rate for Native Americans living on reservations. The poverty rate of Native Americans in 2000 was higher than the peak of the poverty rate of the Great Depression, which was 21.7% (Native American Statistics†).  Ã‚  This statistic alone shows that Native Americans are not doing well financially. Location is a significant factor that determines how economically well certain reservations are doing. Reservations that are located in places with abundant natural resources and near metropolitan  areas,  tend to do better than reservations in remote areas. This is because with more resources available and more people to support businesses, the economy is more likely to thrive. For reservations that are located in places with few resources and in remote areas, there is a lack of opportunity. Jobs are less available and the unemployment rate is high.  Ã‚  This pertains to most reservations in the United States (Alvarez). In the United States, the unemployment rate in 2010 was 9.6%. The unemployment rate for Native Americans in the same year was 21.3% (â€Å"Labor Force Statistics†). Not only is there a dramati... ...eb.  20 Sept. 2012. . "American Indian & Alaska Native Populations."  Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,  n.d.  Web.  19 Sept. 2012. . Bouchard, Jen. "Native American Education and Employment."  Suite101.com.  N.p.,  n.d.  Web.  18 Sept. 2012. . "Labor Force Statistics."  Bureau of Labor Statistics Data.  N.p.,  n.d.  Web.  21 Sept. 2012. . "Living Conditions | American Indian Relief Council."  Living Conditions | American Indian Relief Council.  N.p.,  n.d.  Web.  20 Sept. 2012. . "Native American Statistics."  N.p.,  n.d.  Web.  21 Sept. 2012. . "Status and Trends in the Education of American Indians and Alaska Natives."  National Center for Educational Statistics.  N.p.,  n.d.  Web.  18 Sept. 2012. .

Source Analysis Us History

Assignment: 1. ) Read the following document, â€Å"Another Race of White Men Come Amongst Us†: Native American Views as British Replace the French in the Lower Mississippi Valley, 1765 2. ) Answer the following questions based on a reading of the above document and material from your textbook. ——————————————– 1. ) TYPE OF DOCUMENT: Is this a primary or a secondary source? -Primary 2. ) DATE(S) OF DOCUMENT: When was this document created? -It was created shortly after the British replaced the French in the Lower Mississippi Valley in 1765 3. ) AUTHOR (OR CREATOR) OF THE DOCUMENT: Who created this document? Alibamon Mingo, elderly leader of the Choctaw nation 4. ) DOCUMENT INFORMATION (There are many possible ways to answer A-E. ) A. List three things the author said that you think are important: 1. I think it’s important to know that the French gave them guns and oth er things to make hunting bountifully better for them as they embarked on their lands trying to make peace with the â€Å"red man† buying their trust and loyalty in relationships between the two races and culture. Mingo was grateful for this as it provided many ways of life for his tribe to survive. This is important because it marked a great peace trade between French and Indians. . With respect to the Land I was not Consulted in it, if I was to deliver my Sentiments evil disposed People might impute it to Motives very different from those which actuate me, it is true the Land belonged chiefly to those who have given it away; that the Words which were Spoken have been written with a Lasting Mark, the Superintendant marks every word after word as one would count Bullets so that no variation can happen, & therefore the words have been Spoken and the eternal marks traced I will not Say anything to contradict, but, on the Contrary Confirm the Cession which has been made.What I h ave now to Say on that head is, to wish that all the Land may be Settled in four years that I may See it myself before I die. 3. â€Å"There was one thing I would mention tho' it cannot concern myself, & that is the Behaviour of the traders towards our Women† â€Å"often when the Traders sent for a Basket of Bread & the Generous Indian sent his own wife to Supply their wants instead of taking the Bread out of the Basket they put their hand upon the Breast of their Wives which was not to be admitted, for the first maxim in our Language is that Death is preferable to disgrace. Men who did not honor the authority usually treated Indian women with dirspect and used them for their own sexual expectations. It was normal for British men to take Indian women and marry them. I supposed this is how is started. 5. ) FRANCE/ENGLAND/NATIVE AMERICANS Your textbook discusses how Native Americans developed different relations with the French and the English (Chapter 6, pp. 162-167). Read ov er that section of your book to answer the following questions. A. Although Native Americans were not mentioned in the 1763 Treaty of Paris that ended the Seven Years’ War (French and Indian War), how did this treaty affect indigenous peoples who lived in Canada and areas east of the Mississippi River? -Britain gained control of Canada, eliminating the French threat from the North. France transferred all its territory west of the Mississippi River, including New Orleans to Spain as compensation for help during the war. B. ) What type of political/economic relationship did the French establish with Native Americans prior to 1763? The French had cemented respectful alliances with many Indian tribes. To Indians, gifts cemented social relationships, symbolizing honor and establishing obligation. The French had mastered the subtleties of gift exchange, distributing textiles and hats and receiving calumets (ceremonial pipes) in return. Generous givers expressed dominance and protec tion, not subordination, in the ceremonial practices of giving. C. ) According to your textbook (pp. 162-167), why didn’t the British believe in exchanging gifts with Native Americans (as the French had done)? From the British view, a generous gift might signify tribute (thus demeaning the giver), or it might be positioned as a bribe. They never indented to gain the friendship of Indians by presents. D. ) What caused Pontiac’s Rebellion of 1763? – The renewal of commitment to Indian ways and the formation of tribal alliances led to open warfare. Pontiac's Rebellion was a war waged by Indians of the Great Lakes region against British rule after the French and Indian War. The Indians, who had formed alliances with the defeated French, were dissatisfied with treatment from British officials.Unlike the Indian's French allies, British officials entrusted with Indian relations refused to offer gifts to tribal leaders such as guns, gunpowder, and ammunition. Furthermor e, English settlers began displacing Indians from their land. While French settlers and Indians seemed to live in relative harmony, the sheer number of English settlers that descended on the region prompted many Indians to support war. 6. ) Did Alibamon Mingo, the leader of the Choctaw nation, appear to look forward to future relations with the British (in the year 1765)? 7. ) LAND OWNERSHIP A. Did Alibamon Mingo think that once land treaties were signed with the British that Native Americans would no longer have access to those lands? -No he did not think that B. ) Did Native Americans view land ownership differently than Europeans? If so, in what way? – Yes. They viewed it as a place of abundance for food, clothing, and housing options for their way of living. He thought that the land, whether it forcefully taken or negotiated to share, that no matter what it still solely belonged to those who were there first. â€Å"it is true the Land belonged chiefly to those who have g iven it away†

Mycenaean Civilization

The first great civilization on mainland Greece actually bloomed in the demise of the Minoan Civilisation. The Mycenaean Civilisation (1900 – 1100 BC) is also known as the Achaean Civilisation. This is due to the Indo-European migrants, who not only settled on mainland Greece but also adapted to the Minoan way of living. Independent city-states such as Pylos, Corinth and of course Mycenae which was the most powerful of them all, was a characteristic of the Mycenaean Civilisation. Mycenae was also the city of the legendary figure Agamemnon, who was one of the leaders who defeated Troy. These city-states were ruled by kings, whose palaces were on hilltops, enclosed within huge walls, which were very easy to defend. Mycenae with its impressive Gate of Lions became the dominating power in the Peloponese. These palaces soon appeared all over Greece, but unlike those on Crete, these were all huge fortifications and much more difficult to penetrate. As with the Cycladic Civilisation, an impressive legacy was also left by the Mycenaean Civilisation in the form of gold jewellery and ornaments. A collection of these treasures can be seen at the National Archaeological Musuem in Athens. The Mycenaean were also literate and wrote in a script known as Linear B. This script is an early form of Greek which is unrelated from Linear A from the Minoan Civilisation of Crete. It has however been deciphered. Other examples of the script Linear B have also been found on Crete, which has led to the possibility that the island may have been invaded by the Mycenaean people at around 1500 BC. At around 1400 BC the palace of Knossos was destroyed on Crete, as well as destruction all over the island. This wide spread destruction has led many to believe that Crete was not attacked by a foreign force, but that a revolt against the Mycanaean rulers had probably taken place. Mycenaean artifacts have also been discovered in Italy, Eygpt, Asia Minor and North Syria. It is likely that they had permanent strongholds in some of these places as their influence seems so strong. The defeat of Troy was accomplished with the Mycenaean city-states joining together to protect their Black Sea trade routes. During 1200 BC the decline of the civilization had began, with many Mycenaean structures being destroyed. The situation now in Greece was very similar to the one that had happened on Crete following the destruction of Knossos. It is difficult to grasp at how all of the city-states actually declined. Some have put forward that due to trade with the east stopping, many overseas settlements were lost. Others believe that along with factors such as famine and epidemics, internal battles and overpopulation, the reason was when the civilization was overtaken by the Dorians.

The Monopoly Essays - Imperfect Competition, Market Structure

The Monopoly Essays - Imperfect Competition, Market Structure The Monopoly a) Using Australian examples describe the characteristics of the two of the following forms: Monopoly Oligopoly The main characteristics of an oligopoly are: ? The market is dominated by only a few companies, which are relatively large. ? The production of identical products which are similar. ? There are significant barriers to entry. ? The interdependence of production decisions within the market. An Oligopoly market exists in which a small number of firms dominate the supply to an entire market. Each firm producers a very similar product. In Australia the oligopoly is the major market form. It is because Australia is so small market located far from overseas markets and this thus requires producers to be larger, so they are more competitive. There are hundreds of examples of oligopolistic industries, e.g. cars (Holden), breakfast cereals (Kellogs) This market form does not only depend on the larger producers, but the recognition of their interdependence, the action of one producer will affect the actions of others and each oligopoly firm watches their rivals closely. Oligopolies compete fiercely for market share, therefore the competition for existing or new consumes is intense, as each producers products are very similar. As a result oligopolists have little influence over price. For example Shells petrol is very similar to Mobil petrol, therefore these two companies watch each other closely. Oligopoly firms attempt to make their products different in the eyes of consumers. This can be achieved in many different ways. Firstly by providing quality improvements in goods or services such as electrical sound equipment, secondly by different packaging or wrapping, thirdly by bonus offers or prizes on purchase, for example Just Jeans offering free sunglasses. The more product differentiation among oligopoly firms, there is a more chance of each firm has being independent from its rivals when setting price or output. It is hard for new firms with a small market share to enter the oligopoly market and produce enough to make the product cheap for consumers to buy. The small amount of large firms can often produce large amounts of quantity to provide for all consumers to purchase. It is difficult for new firms to win market shares form existing producers, particularly if those firms have large advertising budgets, licenses, design patents or restrict access to raw materials on one way or another. Oligopoly is a market structure, which is especially vulnerable to restrictive trade practices. The main characteristics of a pure monopoly are: ? Only one seller within the market. ? The goods produced have no close substitutes. ? There are extreme barriers to entry. ? Complete control over price. A monopoly is an industry in which there is one supplier of a good or service that has no close substitute and in which there is a barrier preventing new firms to enter. The supply of water and gas are local monopolies, while Australia Post, B.H.P and C.S.R. are examples of national monopolies. As there is only on supplier, the firms can chose where on the demand curve the industry will operate. They can either determine the price or the quantity traded. Either they can sell less at a higher price or sell more at a lower price; therefore their decision is based on maximizing their total profits. The key feature of a monopoly is the existence of barriers preventing the entry of new firms. It is once the firm has entry the market system that is losses the advantage of monopoly control. Some barriers to entry may include; control over vital raw materials, tariff protection from importers, protective government legislation, temporarily low price to force out competition and large research and development budgets to help monopolists maintain their technological advantages over potential rivals. As there is no existence of competition, advertising is mainly focused on public relations or sponsorship of major sports events. b) How effectively do the two markets forms that you described in part a meet the criteria for a successful market? A market system exists when producers and consumers interact with one another. For a successful market system to exist the following criteria needs to be meet: does the market? Deliver lower prices, provide greater choice, encourage improvements in the quality of the goods and services traded, encourage the implementation of new

Lucas Carlson Think bigger for your books Reedsy

Lucas Carlson Think bigger for your books Reedsy â€Å"Think Bigger For Your Books†: An Interview with Lucas Carlson As you know, we are big believers in authors looking outside the publishing world for marketing inspiration, and what better world than the startup one to find â€Å"growth-hacking† ideas? After interviewing startup mentor and venture capitalist Sean Wise last week on what he and Brad Feld are doing to promote their new book, we thought we would sit down and chat with an actual startup founder and author. So today, we’re interviewing Lucas Carlson, hybrid author of Finding Success In Failure, the Ruby Cookbook and Programming for PaaS. Also CIO of CenturyLinkLabs and founder and CEO of AppFog.We discuss how non-fiction books can bring the author much more through their unexpected upsides than through the sales themselves. We also touch on Facebook, Twitter, Google ads and how to calculate your ROI (Return On Investment) for those. As usual, the lovers of the written word will find a transcript of the key takeaways just below! The value of your book goes beyond its salesâ€Å"One of the things that I didn’t realize about writing non-fiction is how you can take advantage of the books themselves in ways that you never expected. I’ve published three books so far, two traditionally and one was indie published, and the main thing that I got out of each one of them - even if they sold pretty well - wasn’t the book sales, but it was the optional things that happened outside of the book sales themselves.For example, after being a programmer for a long time I became an entrepreneur, and I started a company to help other programmers get their software on the cloud a lot easier. One of the things I didn’t expect when writing my programming book a few years before that, was how much the reputation that writing a book gives you helps you when you’re trying to raise $10 million from venture capitalists.Also, my second book, Programming for PaaS, didn’t sell as well as my firs t one. However, it’s brought me speaking opportunities that have much more return in terms of absolute dollar figures than the book sales ever had.So as an indie author, what really means the most to me is just getting my words in front of as many people as possible. Not necessarily in order to monetize the book itself, but because I have personally experienced multiple times in my life how much the optionality - the unexpected upside - can change your life. You can’t plan for these things: I didn’t know I was going to start a company when I wrote my first book. But you can cultivate this upside optionality by making sure your book gets in front of as many people as possible.†Indie authors have more flexibility and a bigger financial cushion to acquire readersâ€Å"The onus is on you whether you are traditionally published or indie published. The difference, though, is that if you’re self-published, you are getting 8 times more money every time you sell a book. So you are much more incentivized and, more importantly, it gives you much more flexibility.You are the decision-maker behind your marketing choices, which means you don’t have to ask anyone for permission if you want to run a giveaway or promotion. Moreover, indie publishing gives you more of a cushion to do certain things. When your margins are 70% of sales instead of 10%-15% of 70%, you can actually afford yourself to go and try doing Twitter ads, Facebook ads, Google ads. The cost per click (CPC) can usually be between $0.15 and $1, and if you’re selling a book for $4 and getting 70% of that, you can definitely afford to give away a third or a fourth of your revenue on the sale in order to attract a new reader.That’s not possible if you’re traditionally published: you don’t have enough of a cushion, so you depend on the publisher to do a lot of the advertising for you; but they’re not going to, because they don’t thi nk that way.†How to use social ads to target the right set of ‘customers’â€Å"Before Facebook and Twitter, when you had only Google, people were searching for search terms but you didn’t know what kind of person was searching.If you haven’t tried advertising with Twitter and Facebook, I highly suggest you give it a try. My book is Finding Success in Failure and it’s directed at people who want to start, or have started businesses, so I try to get into the mind of those people: usually, they like to watch Shark Tank. It doesn’t matter if you’re on Twitter or Facebook, you can actually target the people who watch Shark Tank via those social networks.You can be very, very specific about the kinds of people you’re after, to make sure you target an audience that is already predisposed to your books and products. This works better, of course, for non-fiction than fiction, and I’m actually finishing my first novel, so Ià ¢â‚¬â„¢m not going to do Facebook ads and Twitter ads for my novel, because to me it doesn’t make sense. I might play with it, just to see, targeting Dan Brown readers for example, but I don’t think it’s going to work.Amazon themselves have an advertising program where you can pay for your book to show up on other books’ pages. All of these are things that are much easier for me to play with as an indie author because of the cushions I mentioned.†Think bigger: include upside optionalities in your ROI calculationsâ€Å"It’s important to understand how you want to measure your return. If you measure it just in book sales, if you’re lucky you might just break even†¦ But if you think about the bigger picture, every reader you acquire is a potential reader of your future books. So the question becomes: what is the lifetime cost and the lifetime revenue of that reader? This is a very â€Å"startupy† way of thinking about recurri ng revenue software businesses, but it can totally be applied to an author who publishes regularly. You can almost think of it as a subscription model for your true fans.Even bigger than that, if you think that you can get speaking opportunities or further your career - if you can monetize your book in ways completely outside your readership itself - then the â€Å"Return† part of your â€Å"Return On Investment† (ROI) gets much bigger, thus giving you a bigger cushion to play around with marketing strategies.You’re not necessarily advertising to sell your book, you might be advertising to raise awareness around yourself and your brand across the world, to attract new opportunities.If you have that faith, then you do everything possible to spread the word about your book.†Capture the readers you get to turn them into lifetime customersâ€Å"Find people who have built fantastic platforms, who have captured their audiences and successfully turned a reader ship into an actively engaged audience, and read their work. If you need a starting point, read Secrets of the Millionaire Mind  and see what he does and how he does it. Ramit Sethi is another: take a look at his work, start reading it and see what it does to you.Study other people’s platforms and see not only what has worked, but what resonates with you. A lot of the time some things are not going to work for every author. Not everyone wants to do a podcast or prepare online courses.†Follow Lucas and Reedsy on Twitter: @cardmagic  and  @ReedsyHQWhat do you think about Lucas’ mindset for non-fiction books? Is it to risky to invest in the books, or to heavily discount them, in the hope they will bring more than sales? Have you tried social ads (Facebook, Twitter)? Leave us your thoughts, or any question for Lucas, in the comments below!

Information System Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words - 2

Information System - Essay Example Essentially, ICT ensures people are freed from restrictions of personification, leading to advanced solution. As a matter of fact, Information and Communications Technology levels the playing field. Nonetheless, the relationship between information technology and access is remarkable. As innovations become smaller, quicker and less expensive, technology becomes simpler to utilize and obtain. Nevertheless, the information and communications technology gap is not about accessing technology, but the deeper hidden implications of access. At the end of the day, the politics of IT is that access to IT is more than a divergence between of "haves" and the poor. For example, despite the fact that Information and Communication Technology is ordinarily associated with access and inclusion, modernization of technology can create isolation of individuals, making particular types of social segregation. Discrimination can happen in subtler ways. ICT, for example, benefits specific ways of living, which are founded in standardizing, societal, communal and monetary practices, further advanced in the structu re, production, showcasing and usage of technology. The internet, specifically, seems to offer the guarantee of free-streaming worlds where character, exemplification, and subjectivity can be designed and refashioned without restraint (Goggin and Newell, 2003). In online connections, the postmodern individual can decide to possess distinctive sexual orientations, racial foundations, and sexualities. Bodily properties, as well, can be deliberately made in online connections – permitting people to gain and, naturally, shed them. The postmodern Internet then gets to be all the more a decision than a fixed reality. Accordingly, information technology guarantees new realities where substantial confinements can be risen above, and new flexibilities discovered mostly for individuals with handicaps, who are viewed as exceptional recipients of technology (Goggin and

American Revolution Term Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

American Revolution - Term Paper Example The American Revolution, which took place from 1775 to 1783, can be considered as a remarkable event in the United States history (Fiske 2009, p. 26). The revolution played a significant role as it brought the United States into existence. As a result of the revolution, the United States gained independence from the oppressive British rule. During the political upheaval that accompanied the American Revolution in the second half of the 18th century, thirteen colonies from the North of America joined together. These colonies broke from the British Empire and combined to become the United States of America. First, the colonies turned down the authority of the Great Britain Parliament, which aimed at governing them overseas and denied them representation. This lack of representation made the states condemn the oppressive British rule, and they worked extremely hard to get rid of it (Wood 2002, p. 34). The introduction of new taxes can be regarded as a significant cause of the revolution. Since the British government wanted to come up with ways of generating income, it made a decision to levy new taxes on the colonies. These taxes could be used to offset the high costs of defense incurred by the Great Britain. For example, the Sugar Act of 1764 introduced a three pence tax for every gallon of molasses. The act also included a list of the goods that could be exported to the Great Britain. Contrary to other previous acts, this act had to be strictly enforced; this placed a heavy burden on the colonies and led to enormous economic downturns (McNeese 2003, p. 42). The â€Å"taxation without representation† triggered the onset of the revolution as colonial leaders complained of lacking members of Parliament to represent the interest of Americans. Further, the implementation of the currency act worsened the situation 2in the United States; the act prohibited the printing of paper money by the colonies. A number of