went back to college for a night
In a culture where personal freedom and individuality is heralded as both advantageous and virtuous, establishing school uniforms is a welcomed form of adolescent discipline that not only promotes school unity and spirit, but also helps to close the gap of economic disparity among social classes. This is the common mantra that is propagated in our modern society, and has been considered an infallible truth. Those in our society and collegiate educational system have taught us that they pioneering advantageous and virtuous were never patterned into any formalism. The personal freedom of the great ones we have learned from, were found outside of the dotted patterned line of any fashion. The establishment of school uniforms however welcomed only a quick band-aid to the grand cavenous welt of sociological problems. To examine weak assumptions such as the magical cure of beige/grey uniforms to fix our economic disparity, is as strong as the promise of Dorothy clicking her red heels to go back to Kansas.
Clothing has been a part of our lives since the day Adam and Eve sewed their first fig leaf. Somewhere in our genetic make up there was a knowledge to cover up for protection while we toiled the land and managed creation. There was a need to protect our epidermis for the day’s events. However what that protection was made up from has been an ongoing discussion. Fast forward to the new millennia and we now have a plethora of clothing options. We now have not only natural and synthetic fibers, but an array of colors to choose from. We now not only use clothing as a skin protectant, but we now have options, more options that we know what to do with. We also identify our spiritual and cultural heritage in a cornucopia of ensembles. What was considered cultural or gender appropriate has hula hooped and double back flipped through out society both modern and ancient.
This by no means implies that our age, race, creed, religion, identity or orientation should unify itself by one fabric, pattern, or material. We as humans can by no means be clustered into any uniform, since our global society is not a bowl of milk and wheaties. Since the great lady liberty opened up her arms and gave us the grand invitation: "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" there wasn’t an addendum that said ‘but you have to come in a white Ralph Lauren polo and khakis.’ No, that part of our US history has shown us a sun bleached branding to our eyes that all are welcomed to freely live and learn within our borders. Why should we then begin to question our lady liberties first welcome? Are we so bold to refute the original host?
Among the several hundred Native American groups that settled across North America,there existed, and still exists, many different ways of life and world views. Each group had distinctive social and political systems, clothing styles, shelters, foods, art forms, musical styles, languages, educational practices, and spiritual and philosophical beliefs. Nevertheless, Native American cultures share certain traits that are common to many indigenous peoples around the world, including strong ties to the land on which they live.
Please give me permission to take you to another point in our land’s history. Let’s remove ourselves from Ellis Island and Lady Liberty and travel to a time of Columbus and Vespucci. As our European forefathers encountered the original inhabitants of our continent, I could only imagine what trepidations they experienced. In their time, Europe was conquering the world. Their general uniform required trousers, cotton lace shirts, courdorys and thick itchy wools. There was no one in Europe wearing leathers, beads, feathers, and the particular north American animal skins. Each continents form of appropriate dress must have been quite a shock to both parties upon the first decades of exploration through out our North American continent. And it wasn’t soon there after that the Europeans tried to change the questionable attire of the Native Americans that almost lead to the lost of entire Native American tribes.
When European explorers and settlers began to arrive in the Americas in the 15th century, Native Americans found themselves faced with a new set of challenges. Some Native Americans learned to coexist with Europeans, setting up trade networks and adopting European technologies. Many more faced generations of upheaval and disruption as Europeans, and later Americans and Canadians, took Native American lands and tried to destroy their ways of life. During the 20th century, however, Native American populations and cultures experienced a resurgence. Today, Native Americans are working to reassert more control over their governments, economies, and cultures.
(when I looked up it was a quarter to 2am at Denny’s. The brain pretty much turned off then)
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