Coast Salish Cultural Survival Synthesis

The United States and Canadian border has caused some serious issues for particular Native American people called Coast Salish. These people inhabit the borderland region of South Canada and the North United States. Therefore, they are one type of people but technically in two different countries. Different countries each have their own sets of policies, rules, beliefs, cultures, customs and etc. Thus there were dissimilar approaches in each place regarding the Coast Salish, especially in schools. A form of racism even developed toward the Coast Salish people in schools because of the native’s standpoint on certain issues being debated. Boarding schools also tried to force change on the Coast Salish’s and transform them to be more like conventional society and to ditch their Native American ways. However, the Coast Salish people resisted this assimilation and did things to preserve their culture and way of life. They did this by reclaiming government boarding schools to escape the public integrated schools. This meant that they would no longer be oppressive and they could send their children there to learn together about their particular people.

I am happy that the Coast Salish people stood up for themselves and preserved their culture. There is similar discrimination in the world today, though not always to the extent of different borders. Therefore, the Coast Salish people are a perfect example of what to do when put in a situation where someone or something is trying to change who they are.

Food and Sustainability Issues

I was totally unaware of the harsh conditions the animals were put in before I viewed The Meatrix. Our world has extreme food and sustainability issues as shown in The Meatrix. Animals placed in these factory farms in such tight spaces that they can’t even move is just horrible. Moving is actually vital to one’s health, whether it is realized by everyone or not. Therefore, this is the start of the negative effects on the animals. Also, in these factory farms the animals aren’t cared for as much as they need to be or would be cared for on a traditional factory farm. Thus, their living environment is unsanitary and on top of these things the animals are being injected with antibiotics. I imagine that most of the food bought in the Raleigh area by myself, friends and others has endured the same atrocious conditions. The food processed by factory farms need to be replaced by the original traditional family farms because they are more humane and would provide us with safer food to eat.

Environmental Ethics

Hydrofracturing is an obvious environmental ethics concern. This process is proving to be harmful to the human species via water. The increasing rate of natural gas development is endangering the clean water needed for drinking as well as wildlife habitats and recreation. The current situation is that we already have had an abundant amount of natural gas collected so much that there is a huge surplus. However, these natural gas industries insist on hacking continuously. They are fracking near aquifers which will definitely lead to water contamination. This shows that they don’t have much of any concern for the human population yet along the environment as a whole. From this the conclusion can be made that this industry's main priority is to make a profit, which is sad. A balance needs to be established with adequate environmental protections for clean water. This is a solution to comply with environmental ethics.