April 12, 2007
MISSOULA – “Howdy; what neck of the woods are you from?” Colloquial greetings were some of the first parts of American culture that Palestinian-born Samir Bitar picked up when he moved to Havre, from Jerusalem in September, 1974.
He noticed the friendly nature of Montanans and appreciated the cultural similarities he found to exist in his new and old homes.
“I’m from a culture that greets,” Bitar said.
Bitar is the adjunct professor of Arabic at the University of Montana. He teaches first year Arabic with distance lecturer Dr. Nabil Abdelfattah and second year Arabic by himself.
Bitar uses his loves of language and culture to teach each one more effectively. Through his teaching he tries to make his students understand what it means to be Palestinian.
“I always say I teach language and culture,” Bitar said “Language is culture.”
Bitar sets aside time in his language classes to teach purely about Arabic culture. In some classes Birtar shows newscasts or clips of popular Middle Eastern TV shows such as “Star Academy”, the Middle East’s version of “American Idol.”
Bitar said that these shows show students something they won’t see on their local TV stations, or American television at all. He said they allow students to see a variety of Arabs and hear a variety of Arabic dialects.
“A Lebanese is nothing like a Saudi; Arabs are diverse,” Bitar said.
Teaching students Arabic culture gives them context for learning the language and lets them relate to the language. Bitar said that culture makes learning language more than just a process of memorizing. He said that students can recall the cultural context of the language and this helps them learn.
Jacob Childers, a 22-year-old UM junior is in first year Arabic. He has applied to study at the Rothberg International School in Jerusalem. He said that learning about culture helps him better understand Arabic, especially words that don’t have a direct translation to English.
“A lot of words that are used every day in Arabic make a lot more sense now,” Childers said.
One of the ways Bitar gives context to his students it to share stories about growing up Palestinian in Jerusalem such as being in the Boy Scouts and having meals with his family.
Bitar said that he feels the American media is not concerned with Palestinian culture. What they do show, they get wrong. Bitar wants to provide a real life experience that his students can relate to. “Not just sound bites,” he said.
One of Bitar’s concerns is that the media don’t show real Palestinian people. When he poses the question, many people say that have seen Palestinian refugees and terrorists in movies and on TV, but few to none recall seeing a Palestinian father with his wife and children.
“That would be too human,” Bitar said.
Bitar tells stories about being a kid growing up with the reminders of war and occupation all around him. One day he told his class about how his childhood house was bombed in the Six Day War.
Bitar described how his family and neighbors crowded in to the safest room in the house and covered the windows with sandbags. He believes that the sandbags his neighbor brought saved their lives.
Although those sandbags lessened the force of the blasts, shrapnel from an explosion hit Bitar.
He was taken to a nearby hospital and stayed overnight, but had to be moved the next day. “They burned the hospital,” Bitar said.
“I love listening to his personal stories,” said Emma Young, 23, a first year Arabic student.
Young said that learning about Palestinian culture has reinforced her belief that “certain aspects of culture are universal.”
Students often ask Bitar why there is so much conflict in the Middle East and about the Palestine-Israel conflict.
“Most Arabs feel that they’re living under governments that were put in place by colonial powers,” he said.
Bitar said that he believes one of the main problems is that Palestinians, along with many other Arabs don’t feel like their governments are a part of a progression of their own history, but rather that government is imposed on them.
This past December and January Bitar spent UM’s winter break in Jerusalem visiting his family. He dedicated several class periods to telling stories, reading from his diary, and showing pictures from the trip.
Bitar told the class about visiting two of his aunts who live in Jerusalem.
“I used to run from one house to the other when I was a little kid,” he said. Now this is impossible because of the wall Israel is building to separate its self from the Palestinian territories.
Bitar said his sister told him it would take about an hour to get to the aunt’s house inside the wall, but several hours to get back because of security checkpoints.
“It changed all aspects of life,” Bitar said. “Now all the shop keeper’s customers live on the other side of the wall.”
More than anything Bitar wants people to actively seek more knowledge about Palestine and to make up their own minds about the Palestine-Israel conflict rather than listen to the media.
“One thing I try to stress when I speak to the young is to encourage them to use critical thinking,” Bitar said, “As Americans they can. My job is to share my experience and they need to make up their own mind. The old should know that. Democracy is an activity and if we aren’t all involved it won’t work. That’s why we have what we have now.”
Bitar said that many Americans today don’t have time to be informed because, “they’re too busy trying to keep up with the Joneses, trying to make a living.”
If Americans could know one thing about Palestinians Bitar said, “They need to understand what Palestine means to the Palestinians. They know what Israel means to the Jews.”
Only this will help lead to the long-term solution of peace and coexistence, Bitar said.
26 April 2007
Dr. Robert Bullard's Presidential Lecture on Environmental Justice
March 6, 2007
Environmental issues are human rights issues, and everyone has a right to clean air and water, said Dr. Robert Bullard, who spoke at the University Theater Monday night as a part of the Presidential Lecture Series at the University of Montana.
Bullard is the Ware Distinguished Professor of Sociology and the director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University, in Atlanta, Ga.
Environmental justice focuses on many places that are often overlooked in the world of environmentalism: places like ghettos, slums, reservations and the U.S.-Mexican boarder. It is the idea that minorities and the poor are disproportionately affected by environmental degradation.
Bullard spoke about the environment beyond what many Montanans are used to – beyond the Rocky Mountains and wildlife preserves.
“The environment is everything,” Bullard said, where people work, play, worship, and live. It is both the countryside and urban areas.
Bullard said that all communities are entitled to equal protection of environmental laws.
“There’re some communities that don’t have the luxury of clean air,” Bullard said.
When a company wants to put a toxic waste dump in a place where they say no one lives, Bullard and his groups find the people that live there are help give them a voice. Bullard gave the example of the nuclear repository in Yucca Mountain, Nev. He said the developers said no one lived there. “What about the Shoshone tribe who has been there for thousands of years,” Bullard said.
“Many of these communities live in terror,” Bullard said. The terror of waking up “at three in the morning, your kids wake up choking, you can’t breathe. That is terror,” Bullard said.
“We deal with lots of issues that environmental groups don’t want to face,” Bullard said.
Bullard used the environmental history of New Orleans to illustrate his point, using the examples of the aftermaths of Hurricanes Betsy and Katrina.
Bullard said the majority of people who are left behind when a natural disaster strikes are people of color, the poor, the elderly, the disabled and sick, and those who can’t drive or don’t have cars.
“Who gets left behind? It’s not rocket science,” Bullard said.
In 1965 Hurricane Betsy devastated the New Orleans in many of the same ways Hurricane Katrina did in 2005. Bullard showed pictures of a house thrown on top of a car by each hurricane. The damage from the each hurricane was the same; only the type of car had changed.
“We’ve gone from Buick to Toyota,” Bullard said.
“God didn’t do it,” Bullard said, “The levees broke: Faulty maintenance, shoddy construction. It was no accident.”
Bullard said the road home for many Katrina victims is more of a roadblock. Their predicament is similar to many victims of environmental injustice, according to Bullard.
“People want to go back home but they can’t go back home because their paradise has been destroyed,” Bullard said.
Bullard’s mission started after his wife, a lawyer sued the state of Texas and needed a sociologist to help her.
She talked Bullard, who has a degree in sociology, into helping her.
“I got pushed into it kicking and screaming,” Bullard said, “I got drafted.”
Since then he has written 13 books on the subject of environmental justice and has taken delegations to UN summits, The Global Summit in Brazil, The Hague, and to communities all over the U.S.
Bullard said today’s college students seem to understand the need for change. He said that students from all over the country, including Montana, are forgoing spring break flings in Cancun for a week of service in New Orleans.
Environmental issues are human rights issues, and everyone has a right to clean air and water, said Dr. Robert Bullard, who spoke at the University Theater Monday night as a part of the Presidential Lecture Series at the University of Montana.
Bullard is the Ware Distinguished Professor of Sociology and the director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University, in Atlanta, Ga.
Environmental justice focuses on many places that are often overlooked in the world of environmentalism: places like ghettos, slums, reservations and the U.S.-Mexican boarder. It is the idea that minorities and the poor are disproportionately affected by environmental degradation.
Bullard spoke about the environment beyond what many Montanans are used to – beyond the Rocky Mountains and wildlife preserves.
“The environment is everything,” Bullard said, where people work, play, worship, and live. It is both the countryside and urban areas.
Bullard said that all communities are entitled to equal protection of environmental laws.
“There’re some communities that don’t have the luxury of clean air,” Bullard said.
When a company wants to put a toxic waste dump in a place where they say no one lives, Bullard and his groups find the people that live there are help give them a voice. Bullard gave the example of the nuclear repository in Yucca Mountain, Nev. He said the developers said no one lived there. “What about the Shoshone tribe who has been there for thousands of years,” Bullard said.
“Many of these communities live in terror,” Bullard said. The terror of waking up “at three in the morning, your kids wake up choking, you can’t breathe. That is terror,” Bullard said.
“We deal with lots of issues that environmental groups don’t want to face,” Bullard said.
Bullard used the environmental history of New Orleans to illustrate his point, using the examples of the aftermaths of Hurricanes Betsy and Katrina.
Bullard said the majority of people who are left behind when a natural disaster strikes are people of color, the poor, the elderly, the disabled and sick, and those who can’t drive or don’t have cars.
“Who gets left behind? It’s not rocket science,” Bullard said.
In 1965 Hurricane Betsy devastated the New Orleans in many of the same ways Hurricane Katrina did in 2005. Bullard showed pictures of a house thrown on top of a car by each hurricane. The damage from the each hurricane was the same; only the type of car had changed.
“We’ve gone from Buick to Toyota,” Bullard said.
“God didn’t do it,” Bullard said, “The levees broke: Faulty maintenance, shoddy construction. It was no accident.”
Bullard said the road home for many Katrina victims is more of a roadblock. Their predicament is similar to many victims of environmental injustice, according to Bullard.
“People want to go back home but they can’t go back home because their paradise has been destroyed,” Bullard said.
Bullard’s mission started after his wife, a lawyer sued the state of Texas and needed a sociologist to help her.
She talked Bullard, who has a degree in sociology, into helping her.
“I got pushed into it kicking and screaming,” Bullard said, “I got drafted.”
Since then he has written 13 books on the subject of environmental justice and has taken delegations to UN summits, The Global Summit in Brazil, The Hague, and to communities all over the U.S.
Bullard said today’s college students seem to understand the need for change. He said that students from all over the country, including Montana, are forgoing spring break flings in Cancun for a week of service in New Orleans.
Conservationist Speaks on Reconnecting With the Landscape
Feb. 28, 2007
MISSOULA – At a lecture Tuesday evening at the University of Montana, author and conservationist Gary Ferguson described the Rocky Mountain region as a haven for societies’ outcasts.
The west is a, “classic, archetypal landscape for those who don’t fit in,” Ferguson said.
In the past it has been an escape from dingy industrialist city life for factory workers, from social expectations for Victorian sons and daughters of privilege, from slavery for black slaves-turned trappers, and from the confines of a materialist society for the freaks of the hippie movement.
“But where do you go if you’re a freak,” Ferguson asked his audience. People now say, “we don’t want you here lowering our property rates.”
Ferguson concentrated on the concept that the landscape of an area shapes the perception of the people who live in it.
Although he gave brief examples of other landscapes, Ferguson’s main points were on the draw of the west and why the Rocky Mountain region is so significant in the United States’ past.
“I just love this landscape and have since I was nine years old,” said Ferguson, who is originally from Indiana but has lived in Redlodge for the past few decades.
As Ferguson explained though, this place he loves was once described as a hideout for heathens and devils by what he described as certain powerful people.
These powerful people rallied support for the westward movement by misunderstanding and mischaracterizing the people who made their homes in the Rocky Mountains, especially the native peoples.
Ferguson used period paintings to illustrate this. One of these paintings was, The Trapper’s Bride, by Alfred Jacob Miller, that depicted a white trapper marrying a Native American woman surrounded by her family.
Most common people and critics who saw the painting hailed it as an embodiment of the freedom and empowerment that the western United States symbolized.
From the time the country was founded wilderness as a symbol for democracy and freedom has been a popular notion.
Many people believed that the popular depictions of the west were, “Eden before the fall,” Ferguson said. They believed that, “we took the Eden that we were given and pissed it away,” he said.
Ferguson put forth questions to the audience about the wilderness today. Many of them expressed concern that most people don’t feel a connection with the wilderness, and are, in fact, scared of it.
“We want the illusion of risk, but we don’t want risk,” Ferguson said.
Ferguson made jokes about people in Yellow Stone National Park chasing bison and jumping out of their minivans with cameras but, “at least the hunger and the need for a relationship with nature is still there,” he said.
Whitney Gaskill, 19, a UM sophomore who is in the Wilderness Issues Lecture Series class said that she agreed with a lot of what Ferguson had to say.
“Its really important to see how the landscape connects to people, and to make a personal connection,” said Gaskill.
Others worried about the effect that media has on people’s perception of nature. One audience member described a popular view of wilderness as just another place we go to have a good time.
Ferguson expressed hope that people will once again feel the need to reconnect with nature and not continue the trend of watching nature through their RV windows as if it were a television show. We need to start seeing nature, “as a part of our daily lives,” Ferguson said.
MISSOULA – At a lecture Tuesday evening at the University of Montana, author and conservationist Gary Ferguson described the Rocky Mountain region as a haven for societies’ outcasts.
The west is a, “classic, archetypal landscape for those who don’t fit in,” Ferguson said.
In the past it has been an escape from dingy industrialist city life for factory workers, from social expectations for Victorian sons and daughters of privilege, from slavery for black slaves-turned trappers, and from the confines of a materialist society for the freaks of the hippie movement.
“But where do you go if you’re a freak,” Ferguson asked his audience. People now say, “we don’t want you here lowering our property rates.”
Ferguson concentrated on the concept that the landscape of an area shapes the perception of the people who live in it.
Although he gave brief examples of other landscapes, Ferguson’s main points were on the draw of the west and why the Rocky Mountain region is so significant in the United States’ past.
“I just love this landscape and have since I was nine years old,” said Ferguson, who is originally from Indiana but has lived in Redlodge for the past few decades.
As Ferguson explained though, this place he loves was once described as a hideout for heathens and devils by what he described as certain powerful people.
These powerful people rallied support for the westward movement by misunderstanding and mischaracterizing the people who made their homes in the Rocky Mountains, especially the native peoples.
Ferguson used period paintings to illustrate this. One of these paintings was, The Trapper’s Bride, by Alfred Jacob Miller, that depicted a white trapper marrying a Native American woman surrounded by her family.
Most common people and critics who saw the painting hailed it as an embodiment of the freedom and empowerment that the western United States symbolized.
From the time the country was founded wilderness as a symbol for democracy and freedom has been a popular notion.
Many people believed that the popular depictions of the west were, “Eden before the fall,” Ferguson said. They believed that, “we took the Eden that we were given and pissed it away,” he said.
Ferguson put forth questions to the audience about the wilderness today. Many of them expressed concern that most people don’t feel a connection with the wilderness, and are, in fact, scared of it.
“We want the illusion of risk, but we don’t want risk,” Ferguson said.
Ferguson made jokes about people in Yellow Stone National Park chasing bison and jumping out of their minivans with cameras but, “at least the hunger and the need for a relationship with nature is still there,” he said.
Whitney Gaskill, 19, a UM sophomore who is in the Wilderness Issues Lecture Series class said that she agreed with a lot of what Ferguson had to say.
“Its really important to see how the landscape connects to people, and to make a personal connection,” said Gaskill.
Others worried about the effect that media has on people’s perception of nature. One audience member described a popular view of wilderness as just another place we go to have a good time.
Ferguson expressed hope that people will once again feel the need to reconnect with nature and not continue the trend of watching nature through their RV windows as if it were a television show. We need to start seeing nature, “as a part of our daily lives,” Ferguson said.
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