John T. Williams

John T. Williams

Williams was a member of the Ditidaht First Nation, also a member nation of the Nuu-Chah-Nulth. The Ditidaht First Nation is a small, remote community on the west coast of Vancouver Island. Fifty year-old, master carver was crossing the street with his carving tool and a piece of wood. make note that he was hard of hearing and he struggled with many health concerns also, and that he had already crossed the cross walk in front of the policeman’s patrol car. Birk, 27, The police officer, after noticing this man cross the street at Boren Avenue and Howell Street in Seattle. got out of his patrol car and followed the man yelling at him to drop his knife three times about four seconds at the most. From nine-ten feet officer Birk shot him continuously four times from behind, autopsy reports have been shown that the victim had his back towards the officer. “Initial reports were that the man advanced on the officer with the knife; however, the department on Tuesday said it could no longer be sure that occurred” – Seattle Times. The feelings i felt is that this officer was a rookie and didn’t know any other ways to deal with this situation. I believe the victim did not have to die. It was a poor choice that this officer chose maybe with more training and better practice or even if he had a partner in the car with him that this brutality would not have happened and it is very unfortunate that he had to die. August 30^th, 2011 will be the one year anniversary of the incident of john T. Williams. After the police shooting/brutality, there has been a lump some money of 1.5 million dollars from the city of Seattle that has been handed out to the family after all the proper procedures have been ran through, The city of Seattle, Washington . by the Police Department's Firearms Review Board. Birk, resigned Feb. 16 after King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg announced charges would not be filed in the incident.  Also, In February, Mayor Mike McGinn declared Feb. 27 John T. Williams Day in Seattle. There has been so many different view points on this case that people have been wondering why  this case has got so much attention and he wasn’t worthy of this kind of attention, but the truth of the story is that he was worth this attention  because the police officer shouldn’t have went to the extreme of killing an innocent human being public needs to know what has been happening and not to keep it behind closed doors. The officer, birk, has been on the force for two years and during his interview with his lawyer he was saying that he was defending himself and that through his training he observed the behavior of when someone is about to attack you and that’s what he saw in Williams eyes, he thought he was going to attack him. But, when the other investigators looked at the scene they found his knife closed and not even open the other officer ford, an investigator had said that it looked like he was trying to put the knife down, and was trying to comply with the officers orders but was not given enough time to put the knife down fast enough. The other officers also found another knife in his pocket while they searched him for identification and that too was also closed. But, there is more than enough evidence that proves that birk, was not under attack and that this was clearly police brutality

american passages

in this film that we watched today in class, wednesday july 13th, 2011 the one thing that really caught my attention was how all of our cultural native american stories were told over many generations orally and how as the time went on more and more Native Americans from all over the united states started to publish and become well known writers.. telling our traditional stories so that the stories will never be forgotten...

Daydreamer..

At first glance, i just laughed at this portrait. i honestly found it pretty hilarious.
i imagined myself daydreaming or spacing off. often times throughout my day i "space off"
or "daydream" a lot and i pictured myself seeing this really elderly lady looking so serious
with not even a hint of a friendly smile on her face. it made me wonder "who would think
of something this clever?"  i know i have a great sense of humor so when im "in the zone"
i would love for this to happen to me, it would give me a good reason to laugh.

this picture just has all the right elements with its colors to the calm and collectedness.
i felt the sense of calmness with how content she looks with her umbrella, the way she is
relaxing on her rug, the clouds in the background with maybe a slight breeze. i just imagine
when your thinking your mind is constantly running a thousand times a minute, when you picture this lady floating by it just completely stops your train of thought and takes your mind off whatever it was you was
thinking and puts a smile on your face.                      

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