Microlecture 1 Part B Thoughts

         There were a lot of things I found interesting from the second part, Part B, of the first microlecture –  however, there was one concept that I found particularly interesting and that I thought was very important to consider when looking at Native literature and culture. When we think of literature, we assume that it is in written or printed form. We use this limited perspective to look at and evaluate 'literature' from all around the globe and across different cultures. I found it very interesting how in order to understand different kinds of literature such as that which was written and created by the indigenous peoples of the Americas, we must be ready to redefine what we call 'literature'. This was well illustrated by the video on the Inca Quipus, how they used strings to communicate. This example of how native peoples had their own unique ways of 'writing' for communication, whether it be in form of pictures on a robe of strings with beads. I found it a little hard to wrap my head around, the lack of 'written literature' in today's definition of 'written', but slowly I realized that this is exactly why it is all the more important to read novels such as There There, to better understand the cultures of the people that have lived in the Americas for hundreds of years – they completely redefine how we look at many aspects of our own lives.