Day 1 & Little Of Day 2

In the days to come I’m most excited about learning as much as I can about the culture I want to observe everything. I’m very interested in the holistic care and how it’s provided at the hospital, I want to see what information I can soak up so that I can take it back home with me to use it in the way I care for my future patients. I want to see the people, how are they different, how are they the same, how do I relate to the people on this reservation, or do I relate at all. I can’t wait to observe and be on the floor at CIHA, Cherokee Indian Hospital Authority. Today we got to take a tour of the hospital, which didn’t have that sickly hospital feeling, it was such a nice environment. It took away that ill feeling of not wanting to go to the hospital, and it wasn’t over whelming huge like the hospitals I’m used to back home. It offered everything that you may need including, ER, pharmacy, vision, dental, wound care, and physical therapy and nontraditional medicine, it was a one stop shop. I think about getting my kids ready for school each year and how I have to go to so many different places to get everything they needed. The CIHA stops the run around, it makes life much easier. I’m unaware of what the reservation will be like so I’m excited to see all that there will be to see. Considering the social, cultural and the environmental influences on children I was unaware of how they might be. But today while visiting the Oconaluftee Indian Village our tour guide was a teenager he was a Jr in high school, and he was full of energy, and jokes, he was happy and vibrate and he was just like any other teenage kids from what I saw. He was well educated on his culture and was able to explain things in details where you got them, and you didn’t have a need to ask questions. I watched him as he danced and he had a little “swag” to his traditionally dances. (Swag is moving in a swaying motion, in urban dance styles) So when I thought I was looking too much into this he hit’s the “dab” which is a hip-hop dance move and then tells another one of the dancers he looks like he was doing the “floss” which is another urban dance move that’s lots of children and high schoolers do. So this gave me a little insight he’s a teenager, who’s into things just like the teenagers are where I’m from. It was just nice observing that trends, styles, and dances are everywhere, which is just something I possibly wasn’t expecting. I really didn’t know what to expect I was even talking with one of the dancers at the Oconaluftee Indian Village and we were talking about my pants and she was telling me she had the same ones in a burnt orange color, this just brought me back to reality. I didn’t know what to expect, I didn’t expect people to dress in traditional headwear or anything like that but I really didn’t know what it might be like. People are people is what I got out of my very first one on one interactions with a few native people from the area.

My thoughts about Native American people, are that they’ve been through so much, that they didn’t deserve at all. They were wrongly mistreated from the greed of men which lead there people to endure generational trauma to this very day. Honestly, I do think that I have cultural biases, pride, and possible stereotyping that I may need to set aside, because I feel as if my ancestors were abused, treated unjust and enslaved due to fear and the greed of men as well. Sometimes people fear things that are great, or have a vast knowledge of different things. Having the Cherokee Indians fight alongside of them, trading with them and learning their ways to only deceive them and take everything they owned away. They turned different Indian tribes against each other, destroyed families by separating them and secluding them on the trail of tears, all things I’ve seen done to people of my own culture, so yes, I do have to set aside some bias of my own. Suffering and forgiveness is one reason I wanted to come on this trip. Individuals and whole cultures accept apologizes they never received in their life, they forgive, learn, and move forward in life. This isn’t always an easy thing to do, some people never are able to move on, or forgive but in order to grow you must. I am here to learn, I am here to experience I am here because I needed this experience to become a more well-rounded nurse. We haven’t been here to long and considering that I know I have much to learn, but I feel as if I have already learned so much.