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Early Samurai

During the Heian Period (794-1185), the samurai were the armed supporters of wealthy landowners-many of whom left the imperial court to seek their own fortunes after being shut out of power by the powerful Fujiwara clan. The word "samurai" roughly translates to "those who serve." (Another, more general word for a warrior is "bushi," from which bushido is derived; this word lacks the connotations of service to a master.)

Did you know? The wealth of a samurai in feudal Japan was measured in terms of koku; one koku, supposed to be the amount of rice it took to feed one man for a year, was equivalent to around 180 liters.

Beginning in the mid-12th century, real political power in Japan shifted gradually away from the emperor and his nobles in Kyoto to the heads of the clans on their large estates in the country. The Gempei War (1180-1185) pitted two of these great clans-the dominant Taira and the Minamoto-against each other in a struggle for control of the Japanese state. The war ended when one of the most famous samurai heroes in Japanese history, Minamoto Yoshitsune, led his clan to victory against the Taira near the village of Dan-no-ura.

Rise of the Samurai & Kamakura Period

The triumphant leader Minamoto Yoritomo-half-brother of Yoshitsune, whom he drove into exile-established the center of government at Kamakura. The establishment of the Kamakura Shogunate, a hereditary military dictatorship, shifted all real political power in Japan to the samurai. As Yoritomo's authority depended on their strength, he went to great lengths to establish and define the samurai's privileged status; no one could call himself a samurai without Yoritomo's permission.

Zen Buddhism, introduced into Japan from China around this time, held a great appeal for many samurai. Its austere and simple rituals, as well as the belief that salvation would come from within, provided an ideal philosophical background for the samurai's own code of behavior. Also during the Kamakura period, the sword came to have a great significance in samurai culture. A man's honor was said to reside in his sword, and the craftsmanship of swords-including carefully hammered blades, gold and silver inlay and sharkskin handgrips-became an art in itself.

Japan in Chaos: the Ashikaga Shogunate

The strain of defeating two Mongol invasions at the end of the 13th century weakened the Kamakura Shogunate, which fell to a rebellion led by Ashikaga Takauji. The Ashikaga Shogunate, centered in Kyoto, began around 1336. For the next two centuries, Japan was in a near-constant state of conflict between its feuding territorial clans. After the particularly divisive Onin War of 1467-77, the Ashikaga shoguns ceased to be effective, and feudal Japan lacked a strong central authority; local lords and their samurai stepped in to a greater extent to maintain law and order.

Despite the political unrest, this period-known as the Muromachi after the district of that name in Kyoto-saw considerable economic expansion in Japan. It was also a golden age for Japanese art, as the samurai culture came under the growing influence of Zen Buddhism. In addition to such now-famous Japanese art forms as the tea ceremony, rock gardens and flower arranging, theater and painting also flourished during the Muromachi period.

Samurai under the Tokugawa Shogunate

The Sengoku-Jidai, or Period of the Country at War finally ended in 1615 with the unification of Japan under Tokugawa Ieyasu. This period ushered in a 250-year-long stretch of peace and prosperity in Japan, and for the first time the samurai took on the responsibility of governing through civil means rather than through military force. Ieyasu issued the "ordinances for the Military Houses," by which samurai were told to train equally in arms and "polite" learning according to the principles of Confucianism. This relatively conservative faith, with its emphasis on loyalty and duty, eclipsed Buddhism during the Tokugawa period as the dominant religion of the samurai. It was during this period that the principles of bushido emerged as a general code of conduct for Japanese people in general. Though bushido varied under the influences of Buddhist and Confucian thought, its warrior spirit remained constant, including an emphasis on military skills and fearlessness in the face of an enemy. Bushido also emphasized frugality, kindness, honesty and care for one's family members, particularly one's elders.

In a peaceful Japan, many samurai were forced to become bureaucrats or take up some type of trade, even as they preserved their conception of themselves as fighting men. In 1588, the right to carry swords was restricted only to samurai, which created an even greater separation between them and the farmer-peasant class. The samurai during this period became the "two-sword man," wearing both a short and a long sword as a mark of his privilege. The material well-being of many samurai actually declined during the Tokugawa Shogunate, however. Samurai had traditionally made their living on a fixed stipend from landowners; as these stipends declined, many lower-level samurai were frustrated by their inability to improve their situation.

Meiji Restoration & the End of Feudalism

In the mid-19th century, the stability of the Tokugawa regime was undermined by a combination of factors, including peasant unrest due to famine and poverty. The incursion of Western powers into Japan-and especially the arrival in 1853 of Commodore Matthew C. Perry of the U.S. Navy, on a mission to get Japan to open its doors to international trade-proved to be the final straw. In 1858, Japan signed a commercial treaty with the United States, followed by similar ones with Russia, Britain, France and Holland. The controversial decision to open the country to Western commerce and investment helped encourage resistance to the shogunate among conservative forces in Japan, including many samurai, who began calling for a restoration of the power of the emperor.

The powerful clans of Choshu and Satsuma combined efforts to topple the Tokugawa Shogunate and announce an "imperial restoration" named for Emperor Meiji in early 1868. Feudalism was officially abolished in 1871; five years later, the wearing of swords was forbidden to anyone except members of the national armed forces, and all samurai stipends were converted into government bonds, often at significant financial loss. The new Japanese national army quashed several samurai rebellions during the 1870s, while some disgruntled samurai joined secret, ultra-nationalist societies, among them the notorious Black Dragon Society, whose object was to incite trouble in China so that the Japanese army would have an excuse to invade and preserve order.

Ironically-given the loss of their privileged status-the Meiji Restoration was actually engineered by members of the samurai class itself. Three of the most influential leaders of the new Japan-Inoue Kaoru, Ito Hirobumi and Yamagata Aritomo-had studied with the famous samurai Yoshida Shouin, who was executed after a failed attempt to kill a Tokugawa official in 1859. It was former samurai who put Japan on the road to what it would become, and many would become leaders in all areas of modern Japanese society.

Bushido in Modern Japan

In the wake of the Meiji Restoration, Shinto was made the state religion of Japan (unlike Confucianism, Buddhism and Christianity, it was wholly Japanese) and bushido was adopted as its ruling moral code. By 1912, Japan had succeeded in building up its military strength-it signed an alliance with Britain in 1902 and defeated the Russians in Manchuria two years later-as well as its economy. By the end of World War I, the country was recognized as one of the "Big Five" powers alongside Britain, the U.S., France and Italy at the Versailles peace conference.

The liberal, cosmopolitan 1920s gave way to a revival of Japan's military traditions in the 1930s, leading directly to imperial aggression and Japan's entrance into World War II. During that conflict, Japanese soldiers brought antique samurai swords into battle and made suicidal "banzai" attacks according to the bushido principle of death before dishonor or defeat. At war's end, Japan again drew on its strong sense of honor, discipline and devotion to a common cause-not the daimyos or shoguns of the past, but the emperor and the country-in order to rebuild itself and reemerge as one of the world's greatest economic and industrial powers in the latter 20th century.

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Samurai and Bushido - Code, Japan & Meaning | HISTORY

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The samurai, who abided by a code of honor and discipline known as bushido, were provincial warriors in feudal Japan before rising to power in the 12th century.

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Have you ever wanted to stay up past your bedtime? As a child, it was a nightly game to stay up late. Although, I lost most if not all of those battles, regular sleep was good for me. As I grew older, sleep became my friend, and is still an important part of my health. This lesson will show you som…

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Following the stock market crash of 1929, unemployment shot up from 3% to about 25%, leaving nearly 15 million U.S. citizens jobless at its highest point in 1933. The average family income dropped 40%, and the economy didn't recover for an entire decade, leaving little to no spare cash for anything outside of the necessities, especially home decor.

Glassmakers couldn't sustain through the Great Depression by providing the popular labor-intensive cut crystal glass of the 1920s to the upper class. Much like we've seen distilleries pivot to hand sanitizer and designers pivot to mask production during the COVID-19 pandemic, glass companies that once made luxury crystal were forced to reconsider their products. In an attempt to keep people employed, glass factories in the Ohio River Valley pivoted to mass-producing significantly cheaper molded, patterned glassware thanks to an innovative machine that could produce upwards of 1,000 pieces a day.

Depression glass, as it came to be known, was produced in a wide range of bright colors-pink, pale blue, green, amber, and less common colors like canary, ultramarine, jadeite, delphite (opaque pale blue), cobalt blue, red, black, amethyst, monax, white (milk glass), and even fluorescent uranium glass that glows under UV light. In addition to kitchenware, items like ashtrays, decorative serving plates, cigarette boxes, and candlesticks were produced.

"There was so much drabness when everything went away and they had no money. This was free. And, it brought a little color into their lives," president of the National Depression Glass Association, Pam Meyer said. "Everyone selling clear crystal glass pooh-poohed it and said it would never last, but it did."

The colorful patterned dishware was sold by the case to businesses in other industries like movie houses, grocery stores, and gas stations to use as rewards or free gifts for loyal customers or to be given out in oatmeal boxes. "They would continue to go back to that grocery store, because every week, or however often they changed it out, they would have something new to get when you bought so much. And every time you went in, you would get another box that had something else in it to go with your pattern," Pam shared.

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A Short History Of Depression Glass, an Unlikely Collector's Item

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The brightly colored, inexpensively produced glassware is still sought after nearly a century later

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A condition called Charles Bonnet Syndrome can cause blind patients to hallucinate scenes in vivid color. fMRI studies show that these hallucinations activate the same brain areas as sight — areas that are not activated by imagination. Other hallucinations also involve the same brain areas as real sensory experiences. What’s going on? Elizabeth Cox details the science of hallucinations. [TED-Ed Animation by Nerdo].

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Kim Preshoff: What's a smartphone made of?

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As of 2018, there are around 2.5 billion smartphone users in the world. If we broke open all the newest phones and split them into their component parts, that would produce around 85,000 kg of gold, 875,000 of silver, and 40,000,000 of copper. How did this precious cache get into our phones--and can we reclaim it?

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The last chief of the Comanches and the fall of an empire - Dustin Tahmahkera

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Late one night in 1871, a group of riders descended on a sleeping army camp, stole about 70 horses, and disappeared. Led by a young chief named Quanah Parker, the raid was the latest in a long series of altercations along the Texas frontier between Indigenous people and United States forces. Who was this brave warrior? Dustin Tahmahkera details the life of the last chief of the Comanches.

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Kids learn about the history of knights from the Middle Ages and Medieval times including military orders, the first knights, and the end of the fighting knight.

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Douglas L. Oliver: The science of hearing

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The ability to recognize sounds and identify their location is possible thanks to the auditory system. That's comprised of two main parts: the ear, and the brain. The ear's task is to convert sound energy into neural signals; the brain's is to receive and process the information those signals contain.

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Historica Graphica Collection/Heritage Images/Getty Images

The Great Depression was a revolutionary spark for all kinds of things - health insurance, social safety nets, big government - all of which were in response to a national crisis. Through the personal accounts of four people who lived during the Great Depression, we look back at what life was like back then and what those stories can teach us about the last time the U.S. went through a national economic cataclysm.
We love to hear from our listeners! Tweet at us @throughlineNPR, send us an , or leave us a voicemail at (872) 588-8805.

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Lives Of The Great Depression : Throughline

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The Great Depression was a revolutionary spark for all kinds of things - health insurance, social safety nets, big government - all of which were in response to a national crisis. Through the personal accounts of four people who lived during the Great Depression, we look back at what life was like back then and what those stories can teach us about the last time the U.S.

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Hugo Mercier: How can you change someone's mind?

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Why do arguments change people's minds in some cases and backfire in others? Hugo Mercier explains how arguments are more convincing when they rest on a good knowledge of the audience, taking into account what the audience believes, who they trust, and what they value. [TED-Ed Animation by TED-Ed]

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If one thing's for sure, it's that the second-wave feminists are at war with the third-wave feminists.

No, wait, the second-wavers are at war with the fourth-wave feminists.

No, it's not the second-wavers, it's the Gen X-ers.

Are we still cool with the first-wavers? Are they all racists now?

Is there actually intergenerational fighting about feminist waves? Is that a real thing?

Do we even use the wave metaphor anymore?

As the #MeToo movement barrels forward, as record numbers of women seek office, and as the Women's March drives the resistance against the Trump administration, feminism is reaching a level of cultural relevance it hasn't enjoyed in years. It's now a major object of cultural discourse - which has led to some very confusing conversations because not everyone is familiar with or agrees on the basic terminology of feminism. And one of the most basic and most confusing terms has to do with waves of feminism.

People began talking about feminism as a series of waves in 1968 when a New York Times article by Martha Weinman Lear ran under the headline " The Second Feminist Wave." "Feminism, which one might have supposed as dead as a Polish question, is again an issue," Lear wrote. "Proponents call it the Second Feminist Wave, the first having ebbed after the glorious victory of suffrage and disappeared, finally, into the sandbar of Togetherness."

The wave metaphor caught on: It became a useful way of linking the women's movement of the '60s and '70s to the women's movement of the suffragettes, and to suggest that the women's libbers weren't a bizarre historical aberration, as their detractors sneered, but a new chapter in a grand history of women fighting together for their rights. Over time, the wave metaphor became a way to describe and distinguish between different eras and generations of feminism.

It's not a perfect metaphor. "The wave metaphor tends to have built into it an important metaphorical implication that is historically misleading and not helpful politically," argued feminist historian Linda Nicholson in 2010. "That implication is that underlying certain historical differences, there is one phenomenon, feminism, that unites gender activism in the history of the United States, and that like a wave, peaks at certain times and recedes at others. In sum, the wave metaphor suggests the idea that gender activism in the history of the United States has been for the most part unified around one set of ideas, and that set of ideas can be called feminism."

The wave metaphor can be reductive. It can suggest that each wave of feminism is a monolith with a single unified agenda, when in fact the history of feminism is a history of different ideas in wild conflict.

It can reduce each wave to a stereotype and suggest that there's a sharp division between generations of feminism, when in fact there's a fairly strong continuity between each wave - and since no wave is a monolith, the theories that are fashionable in one wave are often grounded in the work that someone was doing on the sidelines of a previous wave. And the wave metaphor can suggest that mainstream feminism is the only kind of feminism there is, when feminism is full of splinter movements.

And as waves pile upon waves in feminist discourse, it's become unclear that the wave metaphor is useful for understanding where we are right now. "I don't think we are in a wave right now," gender studies scholar April Sizemore-Barber told Vox in January. "I think that now feminism is inherently intersectional feminism - we are in a place of multiple feminisms."

But the wave metaphor is also probably the best tool we have for understanding the history of feminism in the US, where it came from and how it developed. And it's become a fundamental part of how we talk about feminism - so even if we end up deciding to discard it, it's worth understanding exactly what we're discarding.

Here is an overview of the waves of feminism in the US, from the suffragettes to #MeToo. This is a broad overview, and it won't capture every nuance of the movement in each era. Think of it as a Feminism 101 explainer, here to give you a framework tounderstand the feminist conversation that's happening right now, how we got here, and where we go next.

The first wave: 1848 to 1920

People have been suggesting things along the line of "Hmmm, are women maybe human beings?" for all of history, so first-wave feminism doesn't refer to the first feminist thinkers in history. It refers to the West's first sustained political movement dedicated to achieving political equality for women: the suffragettes of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

For 70 years, the first-wavers would march, lecture, and protest, and face arrest, ridicule, and violence as they fought tooth and nail for the right to vote. As Susan B. Anthony's biographer Ida Husted Harper would put it, suffrage was the right that, once a woman had won it, "would secure to her all others."

The first wave basically begins with the Seneca Falls convention of 1848. There, almost 200 women met in a church in upstate New York to discuss "the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of women." Attendees discussed their grievances and passed a list of 12 resolutions calling for specific equal rights - including, after much debate, the right to vote.

The whole thing was organized by Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who were both active abolitionists. (They met when they were both barred from the floor of the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention in London; no women were allowed.)

At the time, the nascent women's movement was firmly integrated with the abolitionist movement: The leaders were all abolitionists, and Frederick Douglass spoke at the Seneca Falls Convention, arguing for women's suffrage. Women of color like Sojourner Truth, Maria Stewart, and Frances E.W. Harper were major forces in the movement, working not just for women's suffrage but for universal suffrage.

But despite the immense work of women of color for the women's movement, the movement of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony eventually established itself as a movement specifically for white women, one that used racial animus as fuel for its work.

The 15th Amendment's passage in 1870, granting black men the right to vote, became a spur that politicized white women and turned them into suffragettes. Were they truly not going to be granted the vote before former slaves were?

"If educated women are not as fit to decide who shall be the rulers of this country, as 'field hands,' then where's the use of culture, or any brain at all?" demanded one white woman who wrote in to Stanton and Anthony's newspaper, the Revolution. "One might as well have been 'born on the plantation.'" Black women were barred from some demonstrations or forced to walk behind white women in others.

Despite its racism, the women's movement developed radical goals for its members. First-wavers fought not only for white women's suffrage but also for equal opportunities to education and employment, and for the right to own property.

And as the movement developed, it began to turn to the question of reproductive rights. In 1916, Margaret Sanger opened the first birth control clinic in the US, in defiance of a New York state law that forbade the distribution of contraception. She would later go on to establish the clinic that became Planned Parenthood.

In 1920, Congress passed the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote. (In theory, it granted the right to women of all races, but in practice, it remained difficult for black women to vote, especially in the South.)

The 19th Amendment was the grand legislative achievement of the first wave. Although individual groups continued to work - for reproductive freedom, for equality in education and employment, for voting rights for black women - the movement as a whole began to splinter. It no longer had a unified goal with strong cultural momentum behind it, and it would not find another until the second wave began to take off in the 1960s.

The second wave: 1963 to the 1980s

The second wave of feminism begins with Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, which came out in 1963. There were prominent feminist thinkers before Friedan who would come to be associated with the second wave - most importantly Simone de Beauvoir, whose Second Sex came out in France in 1949 and in the US in 1953 - but The Feminine Mystique was a phenomenon. It sold 3 million copies in three years.

The Feminine Mystique rails against "the problem that has no name": the systemic sexism that taught women that their place was in the home and that if they were unhappy as housewives, it was only because they were broken and perverse. "I thought there was something wrong with me because I didn't have an orgasm waxing the kitchen floor," Friedan later quipped.

But, she argued, the fault didn't truly lie with women, but rather with the world that refused to allow them to exercise their creative and intellectual faculties. Women were right to be unhappy; they were being ripped off.

The Feminine Mystique was not revolutionary in its thinking, as many of Friedan's ideas were already being discussed by academics and feminist intellectuals. Instead, it was revolutionary in its reach. It made its way into the hands of housewives, who gave it to their friends, who passed it along through a whole chain of well-educated middle-class white women with beautiful homes and families. And it gave them permission to be angry.

And once those 3 million readers realized that they were angry, feminism once again had cultural momentum behind it. It had a unifying goal, too: not just political equality, which the first-wavers had fought for, but social equality.

"The personal is political," said the second-wavers. (The phrase cannot be traced back to any individual woman but was popularized by Carol Hanisch.) They would go on to argue that problems that seemed to be individual and petty - about sex, and relationships, and access to abortions, and domestic labor - were in fact systemic and political, and fundamental to the fight for women's equality.

So the movement won some major legislative and legal victories: The Equal Pay Act of 1963 theoretically outlawed the gender pay gap; a series of landmark Supreme Court cases through the '60s and '70s gave married and unmarried women the right to use birth control; Title IX gave women the right to educational equality; and in 1973, Roe v. Wade guaranteed women reproductive freedom.

The second wave worked on getting women the right to hold credit cards under their own names and to apply for mortgages. It worked to outlaw marital rape, to raise awareness about domestic violence and build shelters for women fleeing rape and domestic violence. It worked to name and legislate against sexual harassment in the workplace.

But perhaps just as central was the second wave's focus on changing the way society thought about women. The second wave cared deeply about the casual, systemic sexism ingrained into society - the belief that women's highest purposes were domestic and decorative, and the social standards that reinforced that belief - and in naming that sexism and ripping it apart.

The second wave cared about racism too, but it could be clumsy in working with people of color. As the women's movement developed, it was rooted in the anti-capitalist and anti-racist civil rights movements, but black women increasingly found themselves alienated from the central platforms of the mainstream women's movement.

The Feminine Mystique and its "problem that has no name" was specifically for white middle-class women: Women who had to work to support themselves experienced their oppression very differently from women who were socially discouraged from working.

Earning the right to work outside the home was not a major concern for black women, many of whom had to work outside the home anyway. And while black women and white women both advocated for reproductive freedom, black women wanted to fight not just for the right to contraception and abortions but also to stop the forced sterilization of people of color and people with disabilities, which was not a priority for the mainstream women's movement. In response, some black feminists decamped from feminism to create womanism. ("Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender," Alice Walker wrote in 1983.)

Even with its limited scope, second-wave feminism at its height was plenty radical enough to scare people - hence the myth of the bra burners. Despite the popular story, there was no mass burning of bras among second-wave feminists.

But women did gather together in 1968 to protest the Miss America pageant and its demeaning, patriarchal treatment of women. And as part of the protest, participants ceremoniously threw away objects that they considered to be symbols of women's objectification, including bras and copies of Playboy.

That the Miss America protest has long lingered in the popular imagination as a bra-burning, and that bra-burning has become a metonym for postwar American feminism, says a lot about the backlash to the second wave that would soon ensue.

In the 1980s, the comfortable conservatism of the Reagan era managed to successfully position second-wave feminists as humorless, hairy-legged shrews who cared only about petty bullshit like bras instead of real problems, probably to distract themselves from the loneliness of their lives, since no man would ever want a ( shudder) feminist.

"I don't think of myself as a feminist," a young woman told Susan Bolotin in 1982 for the New York Times Magazine. "Not for me, but for the guy next door that would mean that I'm a lesbian and I hate men."

Another young woman chimed in, agreeing. "Look around and you'll see some happy women, and then you'll see all these bitter, bitter women," she said. "The unhappy women are all feminists. You'll find very few happy, enthusiastic, relaxed people who are ardent supporters of feminism."

That image of feminists as angry and man-hating and lonely would become canonical as the second wave began to lose its momentum, and it continues to haunt the way we talk about feminism today. It would alsobecome foundational to the way the third wave would position itself as it emerged.

The third wave: 1991(?) to ????

It is almost impossible to talk with any clarity about the third wave because few people agree on exactly what the third wave is, when it started, or if it's still going on. "The confusion surrounding what constitutes third wave feminism," writes feminist scholar Elizabeth Evans, "is in some respects its defining feature."

But generally, the beginning of the third wave is pegged to two things: the Anita Hill case in 1991, and the emergence of the riot grrrl groups in the music scene of the early 1990s.

In 1991, Anita Hill testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas had sexually harassed her at work. Thomas made his way to the Supreme Court anyway, but Hill's testimony sparked an avalanche of sexual harassment complaints, in much the same way that last fall's Harvey Weinstein accusations were followed by a litany of sexual misconduct accusations against other powerful men.

And Congress's decision to send Thomas to the Supreme Court despite Hill's testimony led to a national conversation about the overrepresentation of men in national leadership roles. The following year, 1992, would be dubbed " the Year of the Woman " after 24 women won seats in the House of Representatives and three more won seats in the Senate.

And for the young women watching the Anita Hill case in real time, it would become an awakening. "I am not a postfeminism feminist," declared Rebecca Walker (Alice Walker's daughter) for Ms. after watching Thomas get sworn into the Supreme Court. "I am the Third Wave."

Early third-wave activism tended to involve fighting against workplace sexual harassment and working to increase the number of women in positions of power. Intellectually, it was rooted in the work of theorists of the '80s: Kimberlé Crenshaw, a scholar of gender and critical race theory who coined the term intersectionality to describe the ways in which different forms of oppression intersect; and Judith Butler, who argued that gender and sex are separate and that gender is performative. Crenshaw and Butler's combined influence would become foundational to the third wave's embrace of the fight for trans rights as a fundamental part of intersectional feminism.

Aesthetically, the third wave is deeply influenced by the rise of the riot grrrls, the girl groups who stomped their Doc Martens onto the music scene in the 1990s.

"BECAUSE doing/reading/seeing/hearing cool things that validate and challenge us can help us gain the strength and sense of community that we need in order to figure out how bullshit like racism, able-bodieism, ageism, speciesism, classism, thinism, sexism, anti-semitism and heterosexism figures in our own lives," wrote Bikini Kill lead singer Kathleen Hanna in the Riot Grrrl Manifesto in 1991. "BECAUSE we are angry at a society that tells us Girl = Dumb, Girl = Bad, Girl = Weak."

The word girl here points to one of the major differences between second- and third-wave feminism. Second-wavers fought to be called women rather than girls: They weren't children, they were fully grown adults, and they demanded to be treated with according dignity. There should be no more college girls or coeds: only college women, learning alongside college men.

But third-wavers liked being girls. They embraced the word; they wanted to make it empowering, even threatening - hence grrrl. And as it developed, that trend would continue: The third wave would go on to embrace all kinds of ideas and language and aesthetics that the second wave had worked to reject: makeup and high heels and high-femme girliness.

In part, the third-wave embrace of girliness was a response to the anti-feminist backlash of the 1980s, the one that said the second-wavers were shrill, hairy, and unfeminine and that no man would ever want them. And in part, it was born out of a belief that the rejection of girliness was in itself misogynistic: girliness, third-wavers argued, was not inherently less valuable than masculinity or androgyny.

And it was rooted in a growing belief that effective feminism had to recognize both the dangers and the pleasures of the patriarchal structures that create the beauty standard and that it was pointless to punish and censure individual women for doing things that brought them pleasure.

Third-wave feminism had an entirely different way of talking and thinking than the second wave did - but it also lacked the strong cultural momentum that was behind the grand achievements of the second wave. (Even the Year of Women turned out to be a blip, as the number of women entering national politics plateaued rapidly after 1992.)

The third wave was a diffuse movement without a central goal, and as such, there's no single piece of legislation or major social change that belongs to the third wave the way the 19th Amendment belongs to the first wave or Roe v. Wade belongs to the second.

Depending on how you count the waves, that might be changing now, as the #MeToo moment develops with no signs of stopping - or we might be kicking off an entirely new wave.

The present day: a fourth wave?

Feminists have been anticipating the arrival of a fourth wave since at least 1986, when a letter writer to the Wilson Quarterly opined that the fourth wave was already building. Internet trolls actually tried to launch their own fourth wave in 2014, planning to create a "pro-sexualization, pro-skinny, anti-fat" feminist movement that the third wave would revile, ultimately miring the entire feminist community in bloody civil war. (It didn't work out.)

But over the past few years, as #MeToo and Time's Up pick up momentum, the Women's March floods Washington with pussy hats every year, and a record number of women prepare to run for office, it's beginning to seem that the long-heralded fourth wave might actually be here.

While a lot of media coverage of #MeToo describes it as a movement dominated by third-wave feminism, it actually seems to be centered in a movement that lacks the characteristic diffusion of the third wave. It feels different.

"Maybe the fourth wave is online," said feminist Jessica Valenti in 2009, and that's come to be one of the major ideas of fourth-wave feminism. Online is where activists meet and plan their activism, and it's where feminist discourse and debate takes place. Sometimes fourth-wave activism can even take place on the internet (the "#MeToo" tweets), and sometimes it takes place on the streets (the Women's March), but it's conceived and propagated online.

As such, the fourth wave's beginnings are often loosely pegged to around 2008, when Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube were firmly entrenched in the cultural fabric and feminist blogs like Jezebel and Feministing were spreading across the web. By 2013, the idea that we had entered a fourth wave was widespread enough that it was getting written up in the Guardian. "What's happening now feels like something new again," wrote Kira Cochrane.

Currently, the fourth-wavers are driving the movement behind #MeToo and Time's Up, but in previous years they were responsible for the cultural impact of projects like Emma Sulkowicz's Mattress Performance (Carry That Weight), in which a rape victim at Columbia University committed to carrying their mattress around campus until the university expelled their rapist.

The trending hashtag #YesAllWomen after the UC Santa Barbara shooting was a fourth-wave campaign, and so was the trending hashtag #StandWithWendy when Wendy Davis filibustered a Texas abortion law. Arguably, the SlutWalks that began in 2011 - in protest of the idea that the way to prevent rape is for women to "stop dressing like sluts" - are fourth-wave campaigns.

Like all of feminism, the fourth wave is not a monolith. It means different things to different people. But these tentpole positions that Bustle identified as belonging to fourth-wave feminism in 2015 do tend to hold true for a lot of fourth-wavers; namely, that fourth-wave feminism is queer, sex-positive, trans-inclusive, body-positive, and digitally driven. (Bustle also claims that fourth-wave feminism is anti-misandry, but given the glee with which fourth-wavers across the internet riff on ironic misandry, that may be more prescriptivist than descriptivist on their part.)

And now the fourth wave has begun to hold our culture's most powerful men accountable for their behavior. It has begun a radical critique of the systems of power that allow predators to target women with impunity.

So is there a generational war between feminists?

As the fourth wave begins to establish itself, and as #MeToo goes on, we've begun to develop a narrative that says the fourth wave's biggest obstacles are its predecessors - the feminists of the second wave.

"The backlash to #MeToo is indeed here," wrote Jezebel's Stassa Edwards in January, "and it's liberal second-wave feminism."

Writing with a lot less nuance, Katie Way, the reporter who broke the Aziz Ansari story, smeared one of her critics as a "burgundy-lipstick, bad-highlights, second-wave-feminist has-been."

And there certainly are second-wave feminists pushing a #MeToo backlash. "If you spread your legs because he said 'be nice to me and I'll give you a job in a movie' then I'm afraid that's tantamount to consent," second-wave feminist icon Germaine Greer remarked as the accusations about Weinstein mounted, "and it's too late now to start whingeing about that." (Greer, who has also said on the record that she doesn't believe trans women are "real women," has become something of a poster child for the worst impulses of the second wave. Die a hero or live long enough to become a villain, etc.)

But some of the most prominent voices speaking out against #MeToo, like Katie Roiphe and Bari Weiss, are too young to have been part of the second wave. Roiphe is a Gen X-er who was pushing back against both the second and the third waves in the 1990s and has managed to stick around long enough to push back against the fourth wave today. Weiss, 33, is a millennial. Other prominent #MeToo critics, like Caitlin Flanagan and Daphne Merkin, are old enough to have been around for the second wave but have always been on the conservative end of the spectrum.

"In the 1990s and 2000s, second-wavers were cast as the shrill, militant, man-hating mothers and grandmothers who got in the way of their daughters' sexual liberation. Now they're the dull, hidebound relics who are too timid to push for the real revolution," writes Sady Doyle at Elle. "And of course, while young women have been telling their forebears to shut up and fade into the sunset, older women have been stereotyping and slamming younger activists as feather-headed, boy-crazy pseudo-feminists who squander their mothers' feminist gains by taking them for granted."

It is not particularly useful to think of the #MeToo debates as a war between generations of feminists - or, more creepily, as some sort of Freudian Electra complex in action. And the data from our polling shows that these supposed generational gaps largely don't exist. It is perhaps more useful to think of it as part of what has always been the history of feminism: passionate disagreement between different schools of thought, which history will later smooth out into a single overarching "wave" of discourse (if the wave metaphor holds on that long).

The history of feminism is filled with radicals and progressives and liberals and centrists. It's filled with splinter movements and reactionary counter-movements. That's part of what it means to be both an intellectual tradition and a social movement, and right now feminism is functioning as both with a gorgeous and monumental vitality. Rather than devouring their own, feminists should recognize the enormous work that each wave has done for the movement, and get ready to keep doing more work.

After all, the past is past. We're in the middle of the third wave now.

Or is it the fourth?

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The waves of feminism, and why people keep fighting over them, explained

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If you have no idea which wave of feminism we're in right now, read this.

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The surprising link between stress and memory

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The surprising link between stress and memory

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Elizabeth Cox: The surprising link between stress and memory

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You spend weeks studying for an important test. On the big day, you wait nervously as your teacher hands it out. You're working your way through, when you're asked to define "ataraxia." You know you've seen the word before, but your mind goes blank. What just happened?

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Haiti teen invents hands-free bucket faucet

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Haiti teen invents hands-free bucket faucet

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In the underprivileged Delmas 75 neighborhood of Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince, residents are keeping their hands clean and preventing the spread of the novel coronavirus thanks to a brand-new contraption, courtesy of teen inventor and recycler Wens Dimanche.

The 18-year old, who received acclaim in Haiti in 2019 for his ingenious remote-control loaders and trucks made of scrap metal, saw a need to help his neighbors wash their hands without contaminating the faucet with the coronavirus.

"I made this electric bucket because I feared that if a person has the virus on their hands and they touch the faucet to turn it on, they could contaminate not only the faucet but also their neighbors. So, I wanted to find a way to solve that problem," Dimanche told VOA Creole.

The teenager, who has no formal training in electronics, took a white plastic bucket, filled it with water, attached a mechanical faucet to dispense the water, and linked it to a blue plastic pedal, which powers it on and off. When people need to wash their hands, they simply step on the pedal to release water.

"This is an electric pedal," Dimanche explained as he held up his invention for us to see. "It turns on by attaching this chord. When you lift your foot off the pedal, the water stops flowing."

To power his invention, the teen used a cell phone battery, which is rechargeable. And to keep things safe and easy, the pedal can be detached from the bucket when it needs to be recharged. His invention is currently located on a metal table in his back yard, where neighbors are free to stop by to wash their hands at any time.

VOA found children and adults alike washing their hands with the invention.

Dimanche says he's not satisfied yet - this is just a start. He is still refining his invention and plans to introduce a new and improved prototype soon.

Haiti had 72 confirmed cases of the coronavirus as of April 23. Five people have died and two have recovered.

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Haiti Teen Invents Hands-free Bucket Faucet

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Hands-free bucket faucet takes aim at community transmission of the coronavirus in Haiti's capital

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Nicole Avena: How sugar affects the brain

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When you eat something loaded with sugar, your taste buds, your gut and your brain all take notice. This activation of your reward system is not unlike how bodies process addictive substances such as alcohol or nicotine -- an overload of sugar spikes dopamine levels and leaves you craving more.

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In the 21st century, the word chivalry evokes a kind of old-fashioned male respect for women. But during the Middle Ages, the code was established for much grittier reasons.

At a time of routine military violence with massive civilian casualties, chivalry was an effort to set ground rules for knightly behavior. While these rules sometimes dictated generous treatment of the less-fortunate and less-powerful, they were focused mainly on protecting the interests of elites.

The development of chivalry went hand-in-hand with the rise of knights-heavily armored, mounted warriors from elite backgrounds-starting around the time of the Norman conquest of England in 1066. The word chivalry itself comes from the Medieval Latin caballarius, meaning horseman.

In the middle of the 11th century, the knight was not a particularly honorable figure.

"He's a hired thug," says Jennifer Goodman Wollock, a professor of medieval studies at Texas A&M University who has written two books about chivalry. "He's got horses. He's got armor. He's like a heavy tank."

Knights Were Heavily Armed and Prone to Violence

These warriors were commanded by warlords and rewarded with land, or with license to plunder the villages where they did battle, looting, raping and burning as they went.

"In the early Middle Ages, church councils were praying to be delivered from knights," Wollock says. "What develops as you get into the late 11th, 12th century is a sense that knights have to have a professional code if they're going to be respected and respectable."

There was never a firm consensus on what it meant to be a good knight. The most common values found in rules that commanders created for knights revolved around the practical needs of a military force: bravery in battle and loyalty to one's lord and companions.

"You've got all these people who are very prone to violence, heavily armed," says Kelly Gibson, a medieval historian at the University of Dallas and editor of Vengeance in Medieval Europe. "You've got to find some way to get them to get along."

The Chivalrous Knight Appears in Romantic Fiction

Still, Wollock argues that chivalry did go well beyond the simple need for a disciplined military. Particularly in romantic literature of the time-some of it written expressly for young noblemen who were being trained for knighthood. Knights were presented as pious, generous and merciful.

"To be a great knight, you ought to have consideration of civilians, for women," Wollock says. "The greatest knights are inspired by the love of some lady out there and want to impress her and win her love by doing great deeds."

Of course, it's hard to know how much of an impression these stories-generally written not by knights themselves but by clergymen or poets-made on young warriors. Richard Kaeuper, a historian at the university of Rochester and author of several books on medieval chivalry, argues that, while knights generally considered themselves honorable and pious, they didn't necessarily follow religious leaders' rules.

Kaeuper points to the example of the Fourth Crusade, called by Pope Innocent III in 1202 to seize Jerusalem from its Muslim rulers. Instead, the holy knights ended up sacking the great Christian city of Constantinople.

"The pope said, 'Don't do that.' But what's he going to do, excommunicate the whole crusade army?" Kaeuper says.

A Code for the Noble Class Only

On the flip side, Wollock says, chivalric culture encouraged knights to develop their own sense of morality rather than simply relying on church authorities. That led some of them to question the slaughter of Muslims during the crusades.

Yet even when knights did follow a code of chivalry as they understood it, these ideas about honor and good behavior focused mostly on concern for the noble class that knights were part of, often at the expense of the poor.

"There's a lot of courtesy-you want to be able to speak well to ladies, defend ladies," Wollock says. "Ordinary women, shepherdesses, are just rather like for sport."

Kaeuper says few medieval texts describing chivalry warned against burning or looting towns or raping common women. That style of warfare was still endemic during the Hundred Years' War of the 14th and 15th centuries, when England and France fought each other, laying waste to the countryside.

"In a way it's like mafia tactics: 'You think the king of France can protect you? He can't. Our king would protect you,'" Kaeuper says.

Kaeuper argues that our current understanding of chivalry as a code of proper masculine behavior, particularly in relation to women, has little to do with real knights in the Middle Ages. Rather, he argues, European neo-romantics in the late 19th century adapted the word to define ideal male behavior.

As for the actual effects of chivalry in the Middle Ages, Gibson says it's just hard to tell how much a strong focus on honor truly reined in knights' aggression.

"I think they were pretty destructive," she says, "even with this code.

Fact Check

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Chivalry Was Established to Keep Thuggish, Medieval Knights in Check | HISTORY

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Knights in the Middle Ages were heavily-armed and prone to violence.

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In my work in the media, as a therapist and coach, a former corporate Vice President, and one who regularly covers issues about gender equality, leadership, social change, etc., I've received thousands of comments from people around the world. They openly share their vast array of beliefs and opinions about gender equality, women and men in life and business, and feminism.

In honor of International Women's Day today and its theme #BeBoldForChange, I'd like to share my personal take on what feminism signifies at its core, and why so many men and women in our world still hate and resist it fiercely.

For more on this issue, check out my Facebook Live video that shares my candid views:

In exploring the latest data from around the world on gender equality, and if we read any news at all or engage in social media activity, the following is abundantly clear - there is tremendous dissent and vehement disagreement today among people around the world about the status and importance of equality.

I've seen this:

* There are millions of people who both inwardly and outwardly do not support the idea that there should be equal rights and equal opportunities for men and women

* There are thousands of people who feel we've already arrived at equality for men and women.

* There are also thousands of people who believe we're not at all there yet, and support continuing efforts to pave the way for equal rights for men and women.

* There are thousands who believe in equal rights but find "feminism" a word and a movement that doesn't align with their personal beliefs or values

* It's abundantly clear that our specific views on these issues are rooted deeply in our own personal and direct experiences, rather than on any data, research or science surrounding the issues. (In other words, if we've personally faced discrimination, we know beyond doubt that it exists. But if we haven't faced it ourselves, we often doubt that it happens.)

* Finally, both conscious and unconscious gender bias is rampant within us, but most us aren't aware of it

So, what would be helpful in this dialogue, or in this situation we find ourselves in today where there is a great divide among men and women, and among the people of our country who see things dramatically differently from each other?
First, let's understand what feminism is meant to be.
If you look up the definition of "Feminism" in the dictionary, you'll see these statements:

Feminism is:

1. The advocacy of women's rights on the basis of the equality of the sexes

2. The theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes

3. The belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities

4. The doctrine advocating social, political, and all other rights of women equal to those of men

Feminism at its core is about equality of men and women, not "sameness." So many people offer up the argument that women are not the "same" as men so there can't be equality. In other words, because their bodies are different (many say "weaker" and smaller), and because men and women have different physical capabilities, these physical differences mean equality is not possible.

It's critical to understand that "same" does not mean "equal." The issue here is about equal rights and equal access to opportunities. Men and women don't have to be the "same" in physicality to have the right to equality. I'd love to see that argument (that women and men aren't the "same" so they can't be equal) disappear forever. From my view, it's a misguided one.

Here's an example of why: If there were two young boys in a classroom, and one was physically weaker and smaller than the other, would we believe it's right to keep the weaker, smaller boy from having the same access - to the teacher, to learning, to the computers, to the books and class resources, to other children in the class -- because he didn't have the same physical strength as the other boy?
So how can we gain a deeper understanding of where we personally stand on the issue of equality?
Asking yourself these questions and answering them candidly will get you closer to recognizing what you truly, honestly believe:

1. Do you believe that women and men deserve equal rights and equal opportunities? If not, why not, specifically?

2. Do you oppose the idea that every human being on the planet deserves equal rights and equal access to all opportunities? If you oppose it, what are you concerned will happen if equality is achieved? What are the downsides, in your way of thinking?

3. Do you believe that only certain groups of people should be allowed to have access to certain opportunities and rights? If so, which groups should be favored and granted this access, and who should decide that?

4. Do you believe that it would be inherently fair to grant women access to only partial rights while men have full array of other rights and opportunities?

5. Think back on what has shaped all your beliefs about these issues. Where did they come from specifically? Childhood, early adulthood? Your personal experiences with men and women, or what you read and watch in the media? Who in your "tribe," family or peers influences your beliefs today?

6. What makes you mad and agitated to read in the media, about men, women and equality?

7. Do you believe that a world that prevents certain people from accessing full rights and opportunities would lead to a fair, healthy, prosperous world for all?

8. In the end, do your beliefs actually feel right for you? Do they feel aligned with who you really are -- healthy, whole, integrity-filled, compassionate, and fair?

The vast majority of people I speak to do believe in equal rights for men and women, but the conflict is about how that equality should be achieved. Many resist calling themselves a "feminist" or supporting the feminist "movement." In fact, just today, a woman commented on my YouTube channel that "feminism is a cancer."
Why do so many hate the term feminism and the feminist movement?
I believe there are five critical reasons behind this:

1. Feminism has been associated with strong, forceful and angry women, and our society continues to punishes forceful women. (So much recent data and research has proved this.)

2. Many people fear that feminism will mean that men will eventually lose out - of power, influence, impact, authority, and control, and economic opportunities.

3. Many people believe that feminists want to control the world and put men down.

4. Many people fear that feminism will overturn time-honored traditions, religious beliefs and established gender roles, and that feels scary and wrong.

5. Many people fear that feminism will bring about negative shifts in relationships, marriage, society, culture, power and authority dynamics, and in business, job and economic opportunities if and when women are on an equal footing with men.
What about sexuality - what does that have to do with feminism?
In reading about the media uproar over Emma Watson's baring a bit of her breasts in Vanity Fair this month, we see that women are fighting among themselves about what feminism is and how women should behave if they're true feminists. Emma (and Gloria Steinem) make a powerful point - feminism at its core is about choice. Feminists can wear whatever they want. If we cannot choose freely how to behave, speak, act and present ourselves, then we're moving backwards.
Unconscious gender bias.
In my friend Kristen Pressner's powerful TEDx talk " Are You Biased? I Am" she shares how her own unconscious bias against working women (in fact, against women who were just like her) was affecting her ability to treat men and women equally. Her brave revelation paves the way for all of us to think more deeply about our unconscious biases, and work tirelessly to bring these biases to light. Her suggested strategy of "flip it to test it" is an effective tool to help us do just that.

In the end, we all must honor the beliefs, values, and ideals that feel right and good to us. To help us do that, I'd ask you to think about these final questions:

* Do your beliefs and behaviors support equality for all, or just for some?

* Could there be hidden biases that color how you experience people of different genders, race, color, religion, etc? Could your personal experiences be tainting how you're looking at the whole world?

* If you believe in equality for women, but not in feminism, can you articulate why?

* If you believe in equality for all, are you able to take a brave stand for it, in a way that feels right to you, in your own life and in your own sphere of influence?
For more from Kathy Caprino, visit her Personal Growth programs, her TEDx talk "Time to Brave Up," and her new video What Is Feminism and Why So Many Men and Women Hate It.

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What Is Feminism, And Why Do So Many Women And Men Hate It?

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A look at what feminism represents at its core and why so many still hate it.

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Krishna Sudhir: How do cigarettes affect the body? | TED Talk

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Cigarettes aren’t good for us. That’s hardly news -- we’ve known about the dangers of smoking for decades. But how exactly do cigarettes harm us, and can our bodies recover if we stop? Krishna Sudhir details what happens when we smoke -- and when we quit. [TED-Ed Animation by TED-Ed].

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CommonLit | Excerpt from "On Drought Conditions"

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how playing an instrument benefits your brain 

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how playing an instrument benefits your brain 

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Anita Collins: How playing an instrument benefits your brain

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When you listen to music, multiple areas of your brain become engaged and active. But when you actually play an instrument, that activity becomes more like a full-body brain workout. What's going on? Educator Anita Collins explains the fireworks that go off in musicians' brains when they play and examines some of the long-term positive effects of this mental workout.

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For teens, big research may lead to meaningful research 

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For teens, big research may lead to meaningful research 

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algorithm: A group of rules or procedures for solving a problem in a series of steps. Algorithms are used in mathematics and in computer programs for figuring out solutions.

chemical: A substance formed from two or more atoms that unite (bond) in a fixed proportion and structure. For example, water is a chemical made when two hydrogen atoms bond to one oxygen atom. Its chemical formula is H ₂ O. Chemical also can be an adjective to describe properties of materials that are the result of various reactions between different compounds.

computer model: A program that runs on a computer that creates a model, or simulation, of a real-world feature, phenomenon or event.

computer program: A set of instructions that a computer uses to perform some analysis or computation. The writing of these instructions is known as computer programming.

computer science: The scientific study of the principles and use of computers. Scientists who work in this field are known as computer scientists.

crop: (in agriculture) A type of plant grown intentionally grown and nurtured by farmers, such as corn, coffee or tomatoes. Or the term could apply to the part of the plant harvested and sold by farmers.

data: Facts and/or statistics collected together for analysis but not necessarily organized in a way that gives them meaning. For digital information (the type stored by computers), those data typically are numbers stored in a binary code, portrayed as strings of zeros and ones.

degrade: To break down into smaller, simpler materials - as when wood rots or as a flag that's left outdoors in the weather will fray, fade and fall apart. (in chemistry) To break down a compound into smaller components.

development: (in engineering) The growth or change of something from an idea to a prototype.

ecosystem: A group of interacting living organisms - including microorganisms, plants and animals - and their physical environment within a particular climate. Examples include tropical reefs, rainforests, alpine meadows and polar tundra. The term can also be applied to elements that make up some an artificial environment, such as a company, classroom or the internet.

engineering: The field of research that uses math and science to solve practical problems.

factor: Something that plays a role in a particular condition or event; a contributor.

footage: (in movies and videos) A term for the uncut or unprocessed motion pictures or video imagery taken by a camera. It takes its name from the fact that it took several feet of film to capture a few seconds of motion-picture photography.

gel: A gooey or viscous material that can flow like a thick liquid.

grid: (in mathematics or mapping) A network of lines that cross each other at regular intervals, forming boxes or rectangles, or an orderly field of dots that mark where each pair of lines intersect, or cross one another.

high school: A designation for grades nine through 12 in the U.S. system of compulsory public education. High-school graduates may apply to colleges for further, advanced education.

hurricane: A tropical cyclone that occurs in the Atlantic Ocean and has winds of 119 kilometers (74 miles) per hour or greater. When such a storm occurs in the Pacific Ocean, people refer to it as a typhoon.

hybrid: An organism produced by interbreeding of two animals or plants of different species or of genetically distinct populations within a species. Such offspring often possess genes passed on by each parent, yielding a combination of traits not known in previous generations. The term is also used in reference to any object that is a mix of two or more things.

machine learning: A technique in computer science that allows computers to learn from examples or experience. Machine learning is the basis of some forms of artificial intelligence (AI). For instance, a machine-learning system might compare X-rays of lung tissue in people with cancer and then compare these to whether and how long a patient survived after being given a particular treatment. In future, that AI system might be able to look at a new patient's lung scans and predict how well they will respond to a treatment.

malnutrition: (adj. malnourished) A condition that develops when an individual gets too little energy (calories) and/or not enough of the proper nutrients to support growth and health. Malnutrition can lead to stunted growth and susceptibility to disease.

manufacturing: The making of things, usually on a large scale.

marsh: A low-lying wetland usually covered with grasses and shrubs, not trees. It's a prime feeding and nesting ground for waterfowl.

mentor: An individual who lends his or her experience to advise someone starting out in a field. In science, teachers or researchers often mentor students or younger scientists by helping them to refine their research questions. Mentors also can offer feedback on how young investigators prepare to conduct research or interpret their data.

mite: An invertebrate belonging to the broad group of animals known as arachnids, which also include spiders and ticks. None of these are insects, although like insects they belong to the larger umbrella group, called arthropods (named for their members' segmented legs).

mollusks: Soft-bodied invertebrate animals that usually live in water and develop a hard protective shell. Examples include snails, shellfish (like clams and oysters), slugs, octopuses and squids.

pandemic: An epidemic that affects a large proportion of the population across a country or the world.

parasite: An organism that gets benefits from another species, called a host, but doesn't provide that host any benefits. Classic examples of parasites include ticks, fleas and tapeworms.

peer: (noun) Someone who is an equal, based on age, education, status, training or some other features. (verb) To look into something, searching for details.

remote sensing: Collecting data about an object or area from a distance, such as by using satellite cameras to take images of Earth.

robot: A machine that can sense its environment, process information and respond with specific actions. Some robots can act without any human input, while others are guided by a human.

satellite: A moon orbiting a planet or a vehicle or other manufactured object that orbits some celestial body in space.

Science Talent Search: An annual competition created and run by Society for Science & the Public. Begun in 1942, this event brings 40 research-oriented high school seniors to Washington, D.C. each year to showcase their research to the public and to compete for awards. Since spring 2016, this competition has been sponsored by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals.

sibling: An offspring that shares the same parents (with its brother or sister).

social media: Internet-based media, such as Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr, that allow people to connect with each other (often anonymously) and to share information.

storm surge: A storm-generated rise in water above normal tidal level. In most cases, the largest cause of storm surge is strong onshore winds in a hurricane or tropical storm.

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For teens, big problems may lead to meaningful research

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Several teens who competed at the Regeneron Science Talent Search applied their STEM know-how to solve problems they or their communities faced.

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National Indigenous Peoples Day 21+ Important Indigenous People to Celebrate

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Here’s a compilation of 21+ important Indigenous people to celebrate for National Indigenous Peoples Day on June 21st

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Aztec Warriors and military(Quick overview)

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CommonLit | Fear Prompts Teens to Act Impulsively by Laura Sanders | CommonLit

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CommonLit | The Economic Bill of Rights by President Franklin D. Roosevelt

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how risk taking changes a teenagers brain

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how risk taking changes a teenagers brain

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How risk-taking changes a teenager’s brain

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Why do teenagers sometimes make outrageous, risky choices? Do they suddenly become reckless, or are they just going through a natural phase? To find out, Kashfia Rahman -- winner of the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (and a Harvard freshman) -- designed and conducted an experiment to test how high school students respond to and get used to risk, and how it changes their still-developing brains. What she discovered about risk and decision-making could change how we think about why teens do what they do.

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Watch that stops you from touching your face

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Watch that stops you from touching your face

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Experts have said to avoid touching your face to prevent the spread of COVID-19. This 15-year-old invented a watch that would help do just that.

NOEL KING, HOST:

Good morning. I'm Noel King. A teenager got clever with tech to help people follow health guidelines. Fifteen-year-old Max Melia invented a watch that warns users when they're about to touch their faces with this sound.

(SOUNDBITE OF DEVICE BEEPING)

KING: Keeping people healthy is personal for the young, British inventor. Both of his parents tested positive for COVID. Max is crowdfunding his invention and wants to get the watches into production ASAP.

Copyright © 2020 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio record.

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Teen Invents Watch To Stop You From Touching Your Face

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Experts have said to avoid touching your face to prevent the spread of COVID-19. This 15-year-old invented a watch that would help do just that.

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To celebrate its 30th anniversary, The Canadian Encyclopedia created 30 lists of 30 things that make us proud to be Canadian, from famous people and historic events, to iconic foods and influential artists.

Many Aboriginal leaders have influenced Canadian history, both before and since Confederation. From activists to politicians to artists and more, Aboriginal peoples have protected and promoted their heritage, asserted Aboriginal rights and inspired change. Below is a list of 30 Indigenous leaders that the Encyclopedia has generated to help celebrate its 30th anniversary.

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To celebrate its 30th anniversary, The Canadian Encyclopedia created 30 lists of 30 things that make us proud to be Canadian, from famous people and historic ev...

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HISTORY CRUNCH - History Articles, Biographies, Infographics, Resources and More

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The Aztec Empire was a civilization in central Mexico that thrived in the time before the arrival of European explorers during the Age of Exploration. Throughout its history as a civilization the Aztec Empire expanded across much of central Mexico and other surrounding areas, to become the most dominant and powerful people in the region. Tenochtitlan, the main Aztec city (or altepetl), was the center of this vast empire.

As stated above, warfare was a central component of Aztec culture and Aztec warriors played an important role in Aztec society.​

Aztec boys were first identified as warriors with a birth ritual. The ritual involved a shield and an arrow. The shield was placed in the boy's left hand, while the arrow was placed in his right hand. This was meant to symbolize the boy's life as a warrior for his people. As well, the birth ritual highlighted the importance of warriors to Aztec society.

​As stated above, the Aztec military was made up on several different warrior societies. The first of these was the 'tlamanih'. Tlamanih translates to 'captive' and refers to commoners in the Aztec military which taken a prisoner in battle. The next was 'cuextecatl' which was for warriors that had captured two prisoners in battle. They were known to wear red and black tlahuiztli in battle. Third was 'papalotl' which translates to 'butterfly' and was for warriors who had taken three prisoners. These warriors wore a butterfly design on their back. Another warrior society was the 'otomies'. They were an elite mercenary force that was allied with the Aztec Empire and fought alongside them in battle. The most honored of the warrior societies was the 'cuachicqueh' or 'Shorn Ones'. They were named for their hair, which was shaved expect for a long braid by their left ear. As well, they were known to wear yellow tlahuiztli and paint their faces in blue, red and yellow. To achieve this rank, warriors had to capture more than six prisoners on the battlefield. As such, they were some of the most feared Aztec warriors.

Beyond the warrior societies listed above, some of the most prestigious warriors in Aztec culture were the Eagle warriors and the Jaguar warriors. Both the Eagle and Jaguar warriors were referred to as 'cuāuhocēlōtl' and were the two most elite types of warriors in the Aztec military. The warriors that earned these designations were regarded as the best for their ability to capture prisoners in battle, which was one of the main objectives of the Aztec military. Both sets of these types of warriors wore very distinctive types of outfits that were separate from the rest of the Aztec warriors. For instance, the Eagle warriors were known to wear helmets and suits decorated with eagle feathers. As well, they would usually have an eagle head on their head, with their face showing out of the open beak. Whereas, the Jaguar warriors wore the hide or skin of a jaguar which usually covered their entire bodies. They had their faces showing out of the open jaguar mouth. Jaguar warriors wore this in belief that they gained the strength of the animal in battle. Both Eagle warriors and Jaguar warriors went into battle with a weapon called a macuahuitl, which was a type of wooden club that had very sharp obsidian blades attached to its edges. Obsidian is a volcanic glass that when cut can produce extremely sharp blades. Both types of warriors also fought using spears, clubs and shields. Supposedly, a warrior had to capture at least four prisoners in battle to achieve the rank of Eagle or Jaguar warrior.

Weapons were an important part of the Aztec military. In general, the Aztec military made use of several different types of weapons, including: projectiles and melee. The first projectile weapon was the ahtlatl which was a weapon that launched darts called tlacochtli. The darts were usually tipped with obsidian, fish bones or copper. Next was the tlahhuītōlli which was an Aztec version of a bow, and was used to launch arrows referred to as yāōmītl. They also used slings, called tēmātlatl, to launch rocks or obsidian flakes. As for melee weapons (hand-to-hand combat) the Aztec had several options. First and foremost was a weapon called a macuahuitl, which was a type of wooden club that had very sharp obsidian blades attached to its edges. Obsidian is a volcanic glass that when cut can produce extremely sharp blades. The macuahuitl was the standard weapon among the Aztec warriors. Another weapon of choice was the tepoztopilli which was a type of long spear that had a sharp obsidian blade on the end. Other melee-type weapons included different varieties of clubs, daggers and axes.

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Aztec Warriors - In terms of ranking within the Aztec military, the warriors were generally placed based on the class in society, age and skill as a warrior. For example, the commoners (or lowest classes) made up most of the Aztec military, but the highe

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Talks, people, playlists, topics, and events about "feminism" on TED.com

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Thai Cave Boys, the psychology of surviving underground

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Thai Cave Boys, the psychology of surviving underground

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CommonLit | Thai cave boys: the psychology of surviving underground

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President Roosevelt's First Fireside Chat

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President Roosevelt's First Fireside Chat

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CommonLit | President Roosevelt's First Fireside Chat

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CommonLit | Why Dolphins Make Us Nervous by Robert Krulwich | CommonLit

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The Super Mario Effect - Tricking Your Brain into Learning More | Mark Rober | TEDxPenn

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Every people has a way of knowing, seeing, explaining, and living in the world. They have distinct values and different ideas about what is important in life.

This interactive module will explore cultural, spiritual and philosophical themes in Indigenous worldviews.

Learning Outcomes
Upon successful completion of this module, learners should be able to:

Recognize your own worldview;

Appreciate why Canadians should understand Indigenous worldviews;

Discern Indigenous ways from western worldviews;

Identify commonalities in worldviews shared among indigenous peoples

Module Topics

1. Understanding worldviews

2. Indigenous worldviews

3. Creation stories

4. Indigenous languages

5. Indigenous ways and western worldviews

6. Why Indigenous worldviews matter?

7. Holding space for Indigenous worldviews

8. Indigenous worldviews and education

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Indigenous Worldviews - Indigenous Education

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Overview Every people has a way of knowing, seeing, explaining, and living in the world. They have distinct values and different ideas about what is important in life. This interactive module will explore cultural, spiritual and philosophical themes in Indigenous worldviews.

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They're known for their mood swings, social media addiction and dubious fashion choices. But some teenagers break the mould. A new generation of precocious youths is solving the problems of today with ambitious, ground-breaking tech.

So in case you didn't already feel like an underachiever, here's our shortlist of four incredible teenagers already reshaping the world we live in.

Keiana Cavé, 18, New Orleans

Cavé's journey of invention began with the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, which unfolded in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. It led to the largest maritime slick in human history, consisting of 4.9 million barrels (210 million gallons, or 780,000 cubic metres) of oil in one of the most ecologically important bodies of water on the planet.

In the immediate aftermath, baby dolphins began dying at six times the usual rate, while fishermen and scientists reported "disturbing numbers" of deformed sea creatures including shrimp with missing eyes and eye sockets, and fish with oozing sores and lesions.

Watching the news reports on TV, Cavé instantly felt that there must be some hidden environmental damage. She decided to focus her attention on discovering what was really going on.

The Deepwater Horizon accident caused horrendous damage to the ecosystem in the Gulf of Mexico (Credit: Getty Images)

At 15, the teenager began studying what happens to oil when it's left on the ocean's surface and discovered that when it's hit by UV rays from the Sun, it reacts to form chemicals that are carcinogenic.

Today she's turned her work into two scientific papers and two patents, for chemical methods of detecting the carcinogens. She's also launched a startup, Mare, which is working towards a way to disperse them so that they aren't as damaging. Oh, and her research has just received $1.2m (£860,000) in funding.

Rifath Shaarook, 18, India

When Shaarook was a child, he'd spend hours staring through the lens of a telescope with his dad. Sadly Mohamed Farook, a local professor and scientist, passed away when his son was in primary school.

But Shaarook's passion for space lived on. As a young teenager he joined Space Kidz India, an organisation dedicated to nurturing young people with a passion for technology. He formed a six-person team and dedicated the next four years to making a satellite, under the guidance of the organisation's founder and director.

Every night, the teenagers would discuss their plans on video calls, often until 4:30 in the morning. Eventually they invented KalamSat: the lightest satellite in the world.

At just 64g, it weighs about as much as a large battery. It's essentially a 3.8cm-wide cube made from 3D-printed plastic, reinforced with carbon fibres. It contains several different kinds of sensor, including those to measure temperature, magnetism, altitude and any strains on the structure as it hurtles through space. It also has its own power source and a small computer, to turn on all the sensors at the right moment and store their data.

The plan was to get KalamSat into sub-orbit, to test the performance of reinforced plastic in micro gravity. Lightweight materials that can withstand the stresses of space travel are extremely useful, since it costs around $10,000 (£7,191) to launch a pound (450g) of any substance into space. After reaching its destination, it would spend just 12 minutes collecting data, before falling back down to Earth and landing in the sea.

On 22 June 2017, the device was successfully launched at Nasa's Wallops Island facility in Virginia - the very same spot that its namesake, famous rocket scientist and former president APJ Abdul Kalam, once visited over half a century earlier.

Hannah Herbst, 17, Florida

Herbst was inspired to invent at the age of 15 by her then-nine-year-old pen pal, who lives in Ethiopia and did not have access to lights. This is surprisingly common: there are 1.3 billion people alive today without electricity. So this student came up with the Beacon (Bringing Electricity Access to Countries through Ocean Energy), which captures energy directly from ocean waves.

Herbst's thinking was that populations tend to settle around bodies of water; about 40% of the world's population lives within 100km (62 miles) of the coast and only 10% lives further than 10km (6.2 miles) away from a source of freshwater that you don't have to dig for, such as a river or lake.

The technology consists of a hollow plastic tube, with a propeller at one end and a hydroelectric generator at the other. As tidal energy drives the propeller, it's converted into useable energy by the generator. After designing a prototype turbine as a computer model, Herbst 3D-printed a prototype which she tested in an intercoastal waterway.

The Beacon can create electricity from almost any water source (Credit: Beacon)

If the design were to be scaled up, Herbst has calculated that Beacon could charge three car batteries simultaneously in an hour. She suggests that the energy generated could be used to power water purification technologies, or blood centrifuges at hospitals in the developing world.

The invention won the Discovery Education 3M Young Scientist Challenge in 2015, among numerous other awards, and Herbst is currently studying for a degree in computer engineering while she completes high school.

Julian Rios Cantu, 18, Mexico

This inventor was just 13 years old when his mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. He watched in horror as the tumour swelled from the size of a grain of rice to a golf ball-sized lump in less than six months. She ended up losing both her breasts, though eventually she was cancer free.

Just a few years later, Cantu set out to protect others from the disease. Together with three friends, he formed the company Higia Technologies, which is developing a wearable device that may be able to detect the early signs.

The prototype EVA bra consists of sensors that can be attached to a normal bra, and may need to be worn for just one hour every week to work. The idea is to look for changes in skin temperature and elasticity, which are among many known signs of the disease. After each use, data is sent to the company's app, and artificial intelligence algorithms use it to calculate the person's risk.

The EVA bra may need to be worn for only an hour a week (Credit: EVA)

The device has already raised $20,000 (£14,300) of funding by winning the Global Student Entrepreneur Awards, but it still looks to be a long way off production. It hasn't yet gone through clinical trials and similar technologies have proved unreliable in the past.

However, if the project succeeds, it could help save millions of lives. Nearly 1.7 million new cases of breast cancer were diagnosed in 2012 and the same year, it led to over half a million deaths. For treatment to be successful, early detection is crucial.

Today's teenage inventors are part of a long tradition. In fact, many of the world's most prolific brains started young - coming up with television, telephones and trampolines, as well as braille, calculators, popsicles and ear muffs before they reached their 20th birthdays.

So while it's true that all four students are considerably more wide-eyed and fresh-faced than their adult colleagues, make no mistake - any one of them could be the next Thomas Edison or Elon Musk.

If you liked this story, sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter, called "If You Only Read 6 Things This Week". A handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Earth, Culture, Capital, and Travel, delivered to your inbox every Friday.

Copyright 2024 BBC. All rights reserved. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read about our approach to external linking.

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Four teenage inventors changing our world

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Many are too young to drink, drive, or even catch an Uber - but they're already filing patents.

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We teach girls that they can have ambition, but not too much ... to be successful, but not too successful, or they’ll threaten men, says author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. In this classic talk that started a worldwide conversation about feminism, Adichie asks that we begin to dream about and plan for a different, fairer world -- of happier men and women who are truer to themselves.

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CommonLit | Explainer: What is dopamine? by Bethany Brookshire | CommonLit

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CommonLit | An Overview of the Great Depression: Cause and Effect Activity

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In this informational text, students can take notes on the causes and effects of the Great Depression. Access this 7th grade-level activity and assignment here.

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CommonLit | How Autism Freed Me to be Myself by Rosie King | CommonLit

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Ocean Cleanup Launched A Plastic Catcher

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Samurai, member of the Japanese warrior caste. The term samurai was originally used to denote the aristocratic warriors, but it came to apply to all the members of the warrior class that rose to power in the 12th century and dominated the Japanese government until the Meiji Restoration in 1868.

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CommonLit | What is a vaccine? by Lindsey Konkel | CommonLit

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[1]The immune system is the body’s natural defense against germs. When a germ invades, the immune system sends special cells to fight it off. Sometimes, though, the immune system is not naturally strong enough to prevent a disease from seriously harming someone or even killing them. But there’s a wa…

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CommonLit | FDR and the New Deal by Mike Kubic | CommonLit

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CommonLit | Coping Mechanisms by CommonLit Staff | CommonLit

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Newsela | Instructional Content Platform

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Huron Beliefs of the afterlife.

Definition

There is no definitive and overarching "Indigenous religion." Spiritual beliefs vary widely, as do the cultural practices of contemporary Indigenous peoples in Canada. However, there are commonalities among Indigenous spiritual traditions, including the presence of creation stories, the role of tricksters or of supernatural beings in folklore and the importance of sacred organizations. Additionally, traditional ways of life are often intermingled with religion and spirituality. Activities such as hunting, clan membership and other aspects of daily life may often be imbued with spiritual meaning. This article attempts to discuss broadly similar themes and practices, but is by no means exhaustive or authoritative. More specific information may be found through further reading, or the guidance of community elders.

Creation Stories

Creation stories describe the origins of the cosmos and the interrelations of its elements. Among these tales is what scholars often refer to as the "Earth Diver myth." This is a story where a Great Spirit or cultural hero dives, or orders animals to dive, into the primeval water to bring back mud, out of which the Earth is fashioned. In some versions of the story, Earth is formed on the back of a turtle; Turtle Island is a popular name used by certain Indigenous peoples for the land of North America.

Creation stories also tell about the origin of the moon, the sun, the stars and human beings. These tales can act as histories and/or lessons about the environment, the heavens and human's relationship to the world and to one another. In many of these stories, tricksters and transformers - beings with superhuman powers - often play an active role, as they help to create the world as we know it and to guide humanity.

Tricksters, Transformers and Culture Heroes

Tricksters take on a variety of forms in Indigenous cultures. They can be male or female, foolish or helpful, hero or troublemaker, half-human-half-spirit, old or young, a spirit, a human or an animal, depending on the area and the specific nation. Some examples of tricksters include Coyote ( Mohawk), Nanabush or Nanabozo ( Ojibwe) and Raven ( Haida, Tsimshian, Tlingit, Inuit and Nisga'a).

Transformers or shape-shifters are beings that can change shape, from human to animal to inanimate object. One example of a transformer is Glooscap of the Mi'kmaq, Wolastoqiyik, Abenaki and Algonquian peoples. Glooscap formed the sun, moon, fish, animals and humans, whereas his brother Malsum (another transformer) created snakes, mountains, valleys and anything else he thought would make life difficult for humans.

Some Indigenous folklore also includes culture heroes, prominent figures in a particular nation's spiritual beliefs. In some tales, these beings make a perilous journey to the realm of the dead to bring back a deceased loved one. These stories contain detailed characterizations of the land of the dead, and are important to an understanding of diverse phenomena, such as concepts of the soul and many aspects of shamanism. ( See also Shaman.)

Religious Institutions and Practices

Different Indigenous nations have their own religious institutions and sacred practices. Many Plains Indigenous peoples participate in the Sun Dance, while Coast Salish peoples typically engage in sacred winter ceremonies. The Haudenosaunee celebrate the Green Corn Ceremony, and some follow the False Face Society. Among the Ojibwe, the Midewiwin is a spiritual society and essential part of the Anishinaabe world view. Medicine bundles - objects of ritual that are specific to the person carrying them - are common among the spiritual traditions of various Indigenous peoples, including the Siksika, Cree and Ojibwe.

Institution stories tell about the origins of these cultural practices. Ritual tales, on the other hand, serve as detailed texts for the performance of institutions, ceremonies and rituals. Fertility, birth, initiation and death rites are often clearly stipulated in spiritual traditions. Shamanic performances may also be described. Such ceremonies are often preceded by stringent purification rites, such as sweat lodges or baths (common for Salish, Siksika and Eastern Woodlands peoples), fasting and sexual abstinence. Feasting is also a common feature of these ceremonies.

Great Spirit and Worldviews

Many Indigenous peoples subscribe to the idea of a Creator, Great Spirit or Great Mystery - a power or being that has created the world and everything in it. These beings are often described as good or well-intentioned, though dangerous if treated carelessly or with disrespect.

Great spiritual power is also found in the spirits of all living things, natural phenomena and ritually significant places. In general, supernatural mystery or power is called Orenda by the Haudenosaunee, Wakan by the Dakota and Manitou by the Algonquian peoples. This power is a property of the spirits, but also belongs to transformers, tricksters, culture heroes, or other spirit figures, as well as shamans, prophets and ceremonial performers. Ritual objects such as the calumet, rattles, drums, masks, medicine wheels, medicine bundles and ritual sanctuaries are filled with spiritual power.

Various Indigenous oral histories tell of contacts made between humans and the world beyond. Ceremonially, columns of smoke, central house posts or the central pole of the Sun Dance lodge represent such connections. Many nations tell of a primeval sea or great flood. Northwest Coast peoples, such as the Kwakwaka'wakw, divide the year into two major seasons: the summer time and the winter time, in which most religious ceremonies take place. Historically agricultural societies such as the Haudenosaunee have ceremonial calendars organized around the harvest times of various food plants, with a life-renewal ceremony usually held in midwinter.

A key concept among many societies is the notion of guardians. Among the Abenaki, for instance, Bear is considered one of six directional guardians (west), representing courage, physical strength and bravery. Among the Inuit, the sea goddess Sedna is the guardian of sea mammals and controls when stocks are available to be hunted. Shamans may visit Sedna and coax her into releasing the animals by righting previous wrongs or presenting offerings.

Shamans

Shamans are the most notable of the multiple religious figures present in traditional Indigenous religion. They function as healers, prophets, diviners and custodians of religious mythology, and are often the officiants at religious ceremonies. In some societies, all these functions are performed by the same person; in others, shamans are specialists. Healing practitioners may belong to various orders, such as the Midewiwin or Great Medicine Society of the Ojibwe, while other groups had secret societies, such as the Kwakwaka'wakw and Siksika. Members of such societies were not necessarily shamans but did practice religious ceremonies and rituals.

Shamans were associated with powers generally thought to be beneficial to the community but were believed in some cases to use their powers for sorcery. Shaman-prophets and diviners were concerned with predicting the outcome of the hunt, relocating lost objects and determining the root causes of communal discontent and ill will. Siksika, Cree, Ojibwe and other societies had diviners who made their prophecies (perhaps in trance states) in the dramatic Shaking Tent ceremony. Shamans in these societies were custodians of the sacred medicine bundles containing objects and materials endowed with great mystery and power. Innu shamans divined game trails by burning a caribou shoulder blade, then reading the cracks and fissures created by the fire.

As healers, shamans typically recognized natural causes for many diseases, especially physically curable ones; other illnesses were commonly believed to be the result of intrusion into the body of objects placed there by sorcerers. The shaman-healer's treatment of such diseases was dictated by his guardian spirit, but usually consisted of the shaman ritually sucking the disease agent out of the body, brushing it off with a bird 's wing, or drawing it out with dramatic gestures. Illness could also result from "spirit loss" - the loss of the soul and/or guardian spirit power. The shaman-healer's action was then directed to recovering the patient's spirit and reintroducing it to the body.

Guardian Spirit and Vision Quests

Vision quests (sometimes referred to as guardian spirit quests) once occurred throughout most Indigenous cultures in Canada; it has undergone a revival in many communities. Males, especially at puberty but also at other times of life, make extended stays in remote areas while fasting, praying and purifying themselves by washing in streams and pools. The goal is to seek a vision of, or an actual encounter with, a guardian spirit - very frequently an animal, but possibly a mythological figure. Contact with a guardian spirit is believed to make an individual healthy, prosperous and successful, particularly in hunting and fishing.

The individual focus of the quest is also present in common celebration of life events. Among these rituals are ceremonies at birth or the giving of a name, at puberty, marriage and death, all of which are normally accompanied by some solemnity. Life-event ceremonies, though individual, had some level of communal integration. For example, the 17th-century Huron-Wendat Feast of the Dead may have incorporated features of both seasonal and life-crisis rituals.

European and Christian Influence

Contact with European religious systems - through settlers, missionaries, church- and government-sponsored residential schools, and direct and indirect government policy - brought change to all Indigenous religious forms.

In areas where sustained contact occurred relatively early - in the 16th and 17th centuries - many Indigenous peoples were baptized into Catholicism by French missionaries. The Mi'kmaq, for instance, began their conversion to subjects of the Vatican after the conversion of Grand Chief Membertou in 1610. Mi'kmaq religion incorporates many traditional aspects in fusion with Christianity, even the flag for the Mi'kmaq Grand Council features a large cross.

The adaptability of Christianity to Indigenous spirituality is evident in the Huron Carol - a Christmas carol purportedly written for the Huron-Wendat by Jesuit missionary Jean de Brébeuf in the 17th century. The song fuses Indigenous imagery and mythology - including Kitchi Manitou - onto the Christian Nativity story. Wise men bearing gifts become grand chiefs bearing pelts, and the manger becomes a lodge of birch bark. The stories of saints, and of Jesus, closely resembled familiar culture heroes, and were readily adapted in many Indigenous communities.

Intermarriage was a more literal merging of religious and spiritual traditions, and Métis religious practices typically combine traditional spirituality with either Protestant or Catholic customs. Some unique belief systems combine traditional Indigenous forms with European observances, such as the Shaker Religion of the Coast Salish area.

Adaptation to European religion and ways of life was not smooth or without consequence. While some Indigenous peoples rejected early conversion attempts, generations suffered under destructive government policies such as residential schools and the outlawing of the potlatch and Sun Dance under the in 1885.

Some First Nations rejected European forms and turned to traditional spirituality to revive previous religious practices and beliefs (e.g., the Haudenosaunee Handsome Lake Religion). Other religious movements radically opposed European forms, such as the 19th-century Ghost Dance of the Dakota and other Plains communities.

The divide between Christian and non-Christian peoples remains an issue of tension. In 2011, the Cree First Nation of Oujé-Bougoumou, headed by an all-Christian council, outlawed all expressions of Indigenous spirituality, including sweat lodges, which prompted backlash and division within the community. In 2015, it was reported that Ouje-Bougoumou held its first powwow event, a type of gathering not typically encouraged in the past.

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Religion and Spirituality of Indigenous Peoples in Canada

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First Nation, Métis and Inuit religions in Canada vary widely and consist of complex social and cultural customs for addressing the sacred and the supernatural...

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Warfare is generally understood to be the controlled and systematic waging of armed conflict between sovereign nations or states, using military might and strategy, until one opponent is defeated on the field or sues for peace in the face of inevitable destruction and greater loss of human life. The first recorded war in history is that between Sumer and Elam in Mesopotamia in 2700 BCE in which Sumer was victorious, and the first peace treaty ever signed ending hostilities between nations was between Rameses II (the Great) of the Empire of Egypt and Hattusili III of the Hittite Empire in 1258 BCE.

In both of these cases, war was waged, and a treaty signed, to resolve political and cultural conflicts. Warfare has been a part of the human condition throughout recorded history and invariably results from the tribe mentality inherent in human communities and their fear or mistrust of another, different, `tribe' as manifested in the people of another region, culture, or religion.

Warfare & the Unification of China

One example of the tribe mentality resulting in warfare can be seen in China during the Warring States Period (476-221 BCE) where seven tribal states fought for supreme control of the land. The Zhou Dynasty (1046-226 BCE) which had served as the seat of political authority in China (though not of a unified China) was in decline and each of the independent states recognized the opportunity to gain supremacy.

As every state employed the same tactics and observed the same policies of war, none could gain a significant advantage over the others. The Chinese historian Sima Qian wrote that the people of China during this period knew no other life than that of warfare generation after generation.

The Chinese historian Sima Qian wrote that the people of China during this period knew no other life than that of warfare generation after generation.

The first military conflicts in China are recorded with the rise of the Xia Dynasty (c.2070-1600 BCE) but, once political contentions were settled, peace prevailed. During the Warring States Period, however, the country was in constant turmoil. This situation was resolved by the King of Qin, Ying Zheng, who implemented the concept of Total War in his campaigns so effectively that, between 230-221 BCE, he had conquered the other states completely.

Ying Zheng unified China under the Qin Dynasty and claimed for himself the title of First Emperor or, Qin Shi Huangti, the title by which he is best known. His use of warfare to resolve long-standing political disputes serves as a paradigm for the use of war generally, whether on a larger or a smaller scale.

The Victors & the Vanquished

Warfare in ancient times was conducted differently than what would be considered acceptable by today's standards; the vanquished could be certain that slavery or summary execution awaited them. When Alexander the Great took the Phoenician city of Tyre in July of 332 BCE, he had most of the population killed and sold the rest into slavery. In September of 52 BCE, when Julius Caesar defeated Vercingetorix and his Gallic tribes at Alesia, the garrison was sold into slavery and each man in Caesar's legions received, as a gift, one Gaul as a personal slave. Over 40,000 Gauls were taken as slaves by the legionnaires alone, not counting those others sold to tribes who made peace with Caesar and formed alliances after Alesia.

When Octavian defeated Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31 BCE a similar fate awaited the conquered who were not fortunate enough to die in battle. This same model of warfare obtains as far back as Sargon the Great of Akkad (2334-2279 BCE) who united Mesopotamia under the Akkadian Empire and was perfected by the Assyrian Empire during the Iron Age (1000-500 BCE). The Assyrians were the first political force to employ large-scale deportations of the conquered populace to other regions and a re-settlement of the region by their own people. The citizens of the defeated city or state were either sold into slavery or forced to re-locate to an area or region dictated by their conquerors.

Tactics & Formations

The armies who waged war on the field were initially made up of infantry units who engaged an enemy force and closed with them using spears, shields, and some form of body armor and helmet. In time, armies developed to include shock troops (infantry who engaged the opposing lines in tight formation) and peltasts (infantry in looser formations who fired long range missles at the enemy and were more mobile). The formation known as the phalanx was the standard in virtually every army from its origin in Sumer in 3000 BCE through the time of the Roman Empire. The phalanx was modified many times through initiatives by men such as Philip II of Macedon or his son Alexander the Great but the basic formation, and its effectiveness, remained constant.

With the introduction of the horse to combat, cavalry units arose and the war chariot was frequently employed in battle. As armies grew in size, and as history established the precedent of empires, more and more resources were brought to bear in battle including the use of animals such as camels (which Cyrus the Great employed brilliantly at the Battle of Thymbra in 546 BCE) or elephants (famously used by Hannibal in the Second Punic War 218-201 BCE) or even cats, which were used by Cambyses II of Persia to defeat Egypt at the Battle of Pelusium in 525 BCE.

The Persian king was aware of the Egyptian veneration of cats and so had his army paint the image of the cat on their shields and, further, drove cats and other animals sacred to the Eyptians before the front lines. The Egyptians, unwilling to risk the wrath of their gods should they injure any of the animals, surrendered to the Persian army.

The first naval battle in recorded history was fought between the ships of the Hittite King Suppiluliuma II and an invading fleet from the island of Cyprus in c. 1210 BCE. Ships were no doubt used in battle before this date, however, and records indicate that Sargon of Akkad made use of boats in warfare which could be dismantled and carried over land.

The peltast units with their ability to inflict severe damage on an enemy long-range eventually inspired the artillery unit who used large weapons for the same purpose. Examples of artillery from the Roman Army are the Scorpio (a large crossbow), the Ballista (similar to a catapult), the Onager (a small Ballista), and the Catapult. By the time the Roman army was conquering the world, all tactics and every resource available in the service of warfare was made use of by the legions.

Ancient Armies & Weaponry

Battle strategies and and methods of warfare differed by country, by ruler and by era. In ancient Egypt the army was equipped with a simple spear and a leather shield but, by c. 1570 BCE, when the Egyptians defeated the foreign Hyksos who had taken Lower Egypt, they artfully employed the horse and chariot, body armor, and the composite bow as well as the bronze Khepesh sword.

Ironically, it was the Hyksos themselves who had given the Egyptians the technology (especially the composite bow, the tin bronze sword, and chariot) to defeat them. Prior to the arrival of the Hyksos in Egypt, the army was largely equipped with the same kinds of weapons they had used in the Old Kingdom (c. 2613-2181 BCE). Advances in weaponry, due at first to the Hyksos and then to the Hittites, led to the development of the professional fighting force of the New Kingdom (c. 1570k-1069 BCE) which created and maintained the Egyptian Empire.

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The Persian Empire favored armored cavalry, heavy infantry (of whom the elite were known as the 10,000 Immortals) and archers who would rain down arrows on an opposing force to create 'awe and wonder' in the ranks. The ancient Greeks relied on armored infantry (the Hoplites) and the phalanx formation, a dense grouping of soldiers with long spears and interlocking shields. In Greece the infantry did most of the fighting, no matter what city-states were involved, the notable exception being the naval battle of Salamis in 480 BCE.

Philip II of Macedon introduced the sarissa (a long spear) to the phalanx which greatly enhanced the formation's effectiveness on the field, and Philip's son, Alexander the Great, made use of the sarissa in his infantry phalanxes in his own campaigns but also employed light and heavy cavalry and chariots to effect. The three-line legion of the Roman Empire, equipped with body armor, spear, shield and short sword replaced the phalanx formation and, supported by cavalry, proved itself the greatest fighting force in antiquity after Alexander the Great.

Every ancient culture, more or less, followed the same basic pattern of developing rudimentary weapons (usually based on tools they had used in hunting) which then were improved upon as members of different tribes came in contact - and conflict - with each other. As tribes became cultures and civilizations with differing interests, conflict became more common and weaponry, and warfare, more sophisticated in an effort to achieve greater results with less effort. No matter the culture or the time period, governments have routinely shown more interest, and exerted more effort, in warfare than in almost any other aspect of a nation's life.

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The Métis, like other Indigenous peoples, pass their histories, legends and family remembrances down through the Oral Tradition. Throughout the Métis Nation Homeland, the intergenerational transmission of culture occurred through the Oral Tradition, usually through Elders or the "Old People" as they are traditionally known.

Probably the best known aspect of the Oral Tradition is the telling of stories.

All traditional Indigenous stories, including Métis ones, generally have non-linear narratives and, unlike European stories, many of them have no real beginning, middle or end. Métis stories are often ongoing and can be carried over through time. The stories are layered and have multiple meanings, so people of varying ages will be left with different interpretations. Valuable life lessons are taught in the Métis Oral Tradition. For instance, a story about gluttony may be told through a humorous Wiisakaychak (trickster) story.

The Métis Oral Tradition is rooted in spirituality. Creation stories of how things came to be are usually told as trickster stories. Roogaroo (werewolf) or li Jiyaab (the Devil) stories are told so children do not forget their spiritual obligations to the Creator.

Traditional Indigenous cosmologies are kept alive through the telling of these stories. The Métis Oral Tradition has retained a spiritual aspect from its Algonquian ancestral cultures - Cree and Ojibwa - through these stories. In addition, traditional prayers and the giving of thanks in Métis heritage languages are handed down to families and are told only on very specific occasions. Some narratives in the Oral Tradition are considered sacred and are told only at certain times, and only to specific people.

The stories are layered and have multiple meanings...

The Métis Oral Tradition has been important in delineating kinship networks and genealogies. Before printed genealogies, this body of family knowledge and kinship connections prevented close relatives from marrying. Keeping an oral record of all the families and community relations was usually a task given to older women. This information was also useful because it outlined the trapping, fishing, hunting and plant harvesting grounds for medicine of various families.

Over the generations, the Oral Tradition has been vitally important in ensuring the survival of families. For instance, narratives in the Oral Tradition taught where food was located, how to harvest it, and how to prepare and eat it. This knowledge could be as diverse as where to dig for wild turnips ("navoos" in Michif) or the best time to hunt game animals. The Oral Tradition was also integral in maintaining Métis identity and group cohesion. In particular, stories relating to bison hunting, the Battle of Seven Oaks (1816), and the Battle of Grand Coteau (1851) connected listeners to their ancestors' efforts to maintain their status as a self-sufficient, independent Indigenous nation.

The Métis Oral Tradition continues today in our print-based society, with stories being adapted into novels, poetry, art and film. Of course, Métis people still tell stories and pass along teachings through the Oral Tradition. Traditional knowledge within the Métis community has never been fully catalogued and continues its intergenerational transmission through oral expression, although this process has been greatly disrupted by societal pressures and forced assimilation policies such as residential schools and the Sixties Scoop.

The story of the trickster illustrated by Carrie Saganace, from her graphic novel Stories of Our People

Métis Stories

Métis stories - lii koont and lii atayoohkaywin (legends and fairy tales) and lii zistwayr (stories) - seamlessly blend Cree, Ojibwa and French-Canadian traditions. These two different spheres - a rural French/Catholic one and a Woodlands/Plains Algonquian one - have been fused into one Métis storytelling tradition. However, while Métis stories clearly derive from these traditions, they have different meanings, they have evolved to meet Métis needs, and they express a distinct Métis worldview.

Traditional Métis stories include narratives about malevolent spirits that transgress against the Creator and society, as well as trickster-based creation or morality stories. Trickster stories are often humorous. These are generally creation stories and closely follow the oral narratives in the Cree and Ojibwa languages. The Métis tricksters - Wiisakaychak, Nanabush, and Chi-Jean - are essentially good characters who have very human foibles, including gluttony and selfishness. They serve as the Creator's intermediaries to humans, and their adventures explain the workings of the natural environment. There are also stories about magical little people (li p'tchi mound or ma-ma-kwa-se-sak), lake monsters, the boogeyman or boogeywoman (Kookoush and La Veille de la Carême), the northern lights (lii chiraan), tall tales and fairy tales.

Métis stories grow darker with li Jiyaab (the Devil), li Roogaroo, Whiitigo, and Paakuk. The Métis werewolf, the Roogaroo, emerged from two traditions: the French-Canadian werewolf (loup-garou) and the Cree shape-shifter. Roogaroos can turn into black dogs, pigs, horses and bears, and are usually bad people who turn their backs on God. Roogaroo stories were told to ensure that youth behaved themselves, particularly during Lent. Whiitigos and Paakuks, Pakahk or Pakakosh are malevolent beings. Whiitigos, also known as Wehitigos, Whitakos or Windigos, are giant cannibalistic monsters with skeleton bodies and monstrous white heads. Also known in Michif as "Kaamoowachik" (cannibal spirit), they represent the omnipresent danger of starvation in hunting and gathering cultures. There can also be human Whiitigos - people who do bad things and are possessed by a malevolent spirit. Paakuks/Pakahks/Pakakoshs are emaciated flying skeletons that represent disease. During lonely evenings, they delight in spooking unsuspecting people with their demonic laughter.

Ed and Harrie St. Pierre at Batoche, Sask.

In many traditional Métis stories there is a Catholic component, as shown with the characters li Jiyaab (the Devil) and li Roogaroo. Li Jiyaab can manifest himself upon unsuspecting people as a tall handsome stranger who visits country dances and mesmerizes all the young women with his mysteriousness, impeccable dress and good looks. The black dog is also considered a Roogaroo by many Métis storytellers. Li Jiyaab can trick people to steal souls or he can play simple tricks such as spoiling milk. This interpretation of the Devil is a mix of Catholic doctrine and folk Catholicism that sees the Devil as a bad-mannered trickster.

Métis stories are not "make-believe." They are an integral component of the Métis worldview. The Elders or Old People, moreover, believe them to be true. Stories also have an undercurrent of truth and shouldn't be easily dismissed as myth or superstition. Finally, stories are important to the Métis storytellers because they connect the storyteller to their Elders, ancestors and language. A word of caution should be noted to all those interested in Métis stories: they should be treated with respect. The Elder or storyteller who is sharing the story is doing so for a specific reason and not just for entertainment purposes. If you retell a Métis story, you must obtain the permission from the storyteller who told it to you. Not obtaining permission is a grave offence.

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The Métis, like other Indigenous peoples, pass their histories, legends and family remembrances down through the Oral Tradition. Throughout the Métis Nation Homeland, the intergenerational transmission of culture occurred through the Oral Tradition, usually through Elders or the "Old People" as they are traditionally known.

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Truth and Reconciliation

Contents

1. History of Residential Schools

2. Still Standing

3. A Fight for Truth

4. Redress and Healing

5. Litigation and Courts

6. The Road to Reconciliation

7. Frequently Asked Questions

Other Sections

Ry Moran is the director of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation. On behalf of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, he helped gather nearly 7,000 statements of former residential school students and others affected by the residential school system. He is a proud member of the Métis Nation and is deeply honoured and thankful to have served Survivors, intergenerational Survivors and all Indigenous Peoples.

Ry Moran

There are two primary perspectives on the
country we call Canada - the perspectives of Indigenous Peoples and the perspectives of the tens of millions of people from different backgrounds who have come to this country to find a new home. While there is great diversity among Indigenous perspectives, one fact remains central - the traditional lands, practices, values, cultures, languages, systems and understandings of Indigenous Peoples have been systematically attacked, dismantled and destroyed at the hands of the Canadian state.

In 2008, following mass litigation and the outcry of Survivors of the residential schools for justice and healing, Canada launched the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. This Commission was intended not only to bring the voices of Survivors forward, but to fundamentally shift the national narrative away from a culture of domination and oppression and towards a culture of respect, reciprocity and understanding.

To be certain, Indigenous Peoples expected this relationship of equal partnership from the earliest days of encounter with newcomers. Treaties were signed in a spirit and intent of mutual respect and reciprocity. Ceremonies were held affirming this relationship. In areas where treaties were not signed, the expectation was for the self-determination and autonomy that had existed for millennia to continue.

It is through this resistance and the enhancement and rekindling of traditional practices, knowledges and Indigenous rights frameworks that Canada has the opportunity to become the nation that it has always been...

As the state encroached further and further into all aspects of Indigenous people's lives, resistance to the aggressive assimilation policies of Canada was a constant across Indigenous communities, nations and peoples. Elders took ceremonies underground, families fought desperately to retain their languages, and communities created formal political, social, and economic structures aimed at resisting ongoing attempts to eradicate Indigenous Peoples and perspectives from Canada.

As a nation, the opportunity for Canada now is to celebrate and acknowledge the critical role of ongoing resistance. It is through this resistance and the enhancement and rekindling of traditional practices, knowledges and Indigenous rights frameworks that Canada has the opportunity to become the nation that it has always been - a nation of many rich traditions, identities and systems coming together to find solutions to many of the deep-seated social tensions and challenges we face as a collective society.

Reconciliation in this regard means arresting the attacks on Indigenous ways of knowing and being, and working from this day forward in a spirit of mutual respect and understanding.

The section of this atlas focused on residential schools covers some of the most devastating elements of Canada's aggressive assimilation policies. Through these residential schools, Inuit, First Nations and Métis children were forcibly removed from their families and forced to adopt identities and practices not their own. When children resisted, they were punished and abused. All manner of physical, spiritual, emotional and sexual violence was rampant.

Similarly, through racist doctrines such as the Indian Act, parents were prevented from seeing their children, prevented from keeping their children at home with them, and barred from assembling and retaining legal counsel. The umbrella of oppression was expansive, complete and all-encompassing.

But this atlas is more than just a story of the residential schools; it also documents Canada's current state of reconciliation. Across this country, untold numbers of children wait in unmarked cemeteries to be remembered and honoured. As some former residential school sites crumble, the vast majority have already been destroyed or lost to the erosion of history.

Canada's journey towards equality, respect and justice is measured by the wide gaps that exist between the health and well-being of Indigenous Peoples and the protection of Indigenous rights, places, spaces and cultural memory.

The other volumes in this atlas series point us collectively in a new direction - a direction that portrays a much more honest and accurate telling of history, and an unfolding of the land, cultures, and identities that existed before western powers drew lines on maps and divided families and communities from one another.

The surfacing of these long-standing understandings of this land is an essential part of creating a new national narrative. It pulls us away from the narrow definition of what it means to be Canadian and points us towards a new framework of understanding - one that acknowledges territory and the long and rich histories of Indigenous Peoples. It pushes us towards a concept of a nation with multiple forms of sovereignty existing within its borders - a place of respect wherein the unique political and social aspirations of Indigenous and non-Indigenous Peoples come together with a sense of common vision and destiny for a healthier, just, and sustainable society.

These volumes will help educate young Canadians for generations to come on what it means to be Canadian - what it means to be accountable to the original promises of treaty and what it means to honour the concept of unceded land. Moreover, they will give all
Canadians an opportunity to reflect further on what it means to take responsibility for successive governments' persistent and omnipresent attempts to eradicate the meaning and context contained within Indigenous places and spaces from this country.

Canada's journey towards equality, respect and justice is measured by the wide gaps that exist between the health and well-being of Indigenous Peoples...

The harm inflicted upon Indigenous Peoples is not only a problem for Indigenous Peoples. It is a Canadian problem that requires all Canadians to take responsibility and action to repair the damage done. Former TRC commissioner Wilton Littlechild recently talked about the opportunity presented to us as a whole, stating: "If two people are trying to walk down a railroad track, each balancing on a rail independently, they will not get very far. But if they join hands and walk together they will make it much further down the road."

This is our opportunity - to walk side by side - Indigenous Peoples and non-Indigenous Peoples walking together towards the destination of a fair, equitable and just country. Gone must be the days where Indigenous Peoples are led down the track by those who know "what's best for them." These atlases equip all Canadians with an important set of tools to realize this goal. I hope you learn much from the materials contained within. Together, if we are willing, we can transform this country into something that we are all proud to call home.

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Truth and Reconciliation History of Residential Schools Still Standing A Fight for Truth Redress and Healing Litigation and Courts The Road to Reconciliation Frequently Asked Questions Other Sections Ry Moran is the director of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation.

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The Great Depression - 5 Minute History Lesson

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CommonLit | Stress for Success by Alison Pearce Stevens | CommonLit

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Anushka Naiknaware: A teen scientist's invention to help wounds heal

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Working out of her garage, Anushka Naiknaware designed a sensor that tracks wound healing, becoming the youngest winner (at age 13) of the Google Science Fair. Her clever invention addresses the global challenge of chronic wounds, which don't heal properly due to preexisting conditions like diabetes and account for billions in medical costs worldwide.

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History of Residential Schools

Residential schools operated in Canada for more than 160 years, with upwards of 150,000 children passing through their doors. Every province and territory, with the exception of Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland and New Brunswick, was home to the federally funded, church-run schools. The last school closed in Saskatchewan in 1996. First Nations, Métis and Inuit children were removed, often against their will, from their families and communities and put into schools, where they were forced to abandon their traditions, cultural practices and languages. The residential school system was just one tool in a broader plan of "aggressive assimilation" and colonization of Indigenous Peoples and territories in Canada.

The Canadian government pursued this policy of cultural genocide because it wished to divest itself of its legal and financial obligations to Aboriginal people and gain control over their land and resources. If every Aboriginal person had been 'absorbed into the body politic,' there would be no reserves, no Treaties, and no Aboriginal rights.

- Truth and Reconciliation Commission Canada, Honouring the Truth, Reconciling the Future: Summary of the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, p. 3

While the federal residential school system began around 1883, the origins of the residential school system can be traced to as early as the 1830s - long before Confederation in 1867 - when the Anglican Church established a residential school in Brantford, Ont. Prior to this point, churches had built schools specifically for Indigenous children since the mid-1600s. Through this early period, these mission schools were primarily located in Eastern Canada, but as missions and colonial efforts moved west of the Great Lakes, so did the schools.

The Canadian government and Canada's churches built the residential school system as a means to solve the "Indian question" in Canada - the perceived threat and barrier posed by Indigenous Peoples to the ongoing construction of the newly forming nation of Canada. They developed a system that mimicked schools in the United States and in British colonies, where governments and colonial powers used large, boarding-style industrial schools to convert masses of Indigenous and poor children into Catholics and Protestants, and turn them into "good industrious workers." These schools were used in Ireland, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand, as well as in Sweden for Indigenous Sami children, as a way for new settlers to claim land traditionally occupied by Indigenous people. Canada adopted this model in order to enforce the adoption of European traditions, languages and lifestyles by First Nations, Métis and Inuit children.

Map depicting residential school locations across Canada

...[I]f anything is to be done with the Indian, we must catch him very young. The children must be kept constantly within the circle of civilized conditions."

- Nicholas Flood Davin, Report on Industrial Schools for Indians and Half-Breeds, 1879.

I want to get rid of the Indian problem. I do not think as a matter of fact, that the country ought to continuously protect a class of people who are able to stand alone... Our objective is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic and there is no Indian question, and no Indian Department, that is the whole object of this Bill.

- Duncan Campbell Scott, Department of Indian Affairs, 1920

Originally, the residential school system focused on industrial labour schools and farm schools. By 1900, there were 22 industrial schools and 39 residential schools in Canada. In 1931, at its peak, there were 80 schools in operation, and while most of them would be called residential schools, they often maintained industrial work through large gardens, barns, workshops and sewing rooms.

Catholic and Protestant churches provided much of the original direction on where schools would be placed and how the school system would grow. Government Indian agents and officials from a wide variety of different departments played a central role in the development and maintenance of the residential school system. Many of the first schools were built close to existing school missions.

The quality of education inside the schools and the buildings themselves was substandard through much of the history of the system. Early schools were notoriously insufficient, underfunded and mismanaged. Accounts from Survivors and staff showed that the buildings were often in a poor state and, in some cases, were even dangerous. Fires frequently ripped through the schools and several of the buildings burned down completely, only to be rebuilt later. Some northern schools ran out of tents and temporary shelters. Later schools were constructed from heavy bricks-and-mortar-style architecture in an effort to show the permanence of the government's education policies towards Indigenous Peoples. These newer schools, while an improvement over the early schools, continued to be plagued by low-quality food, accommodation and living conditions for students.

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Residential schools operated in Canada for more than 160 years, with upwards of 150,000 children passing through their doors. Every province and territory, with the exception of Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland and New Brunswick, was home to the federally funded, church-run schools. The last school closed in Saskatchewan in 1996.

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Anushka Naiknaware: A teen scientist's invention to help wounds heal

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Working out of her garage, Anushka Naiknaware designed a sensor that tracks wound healing, becoming the youngest winner (at age 13) of the Google Science Fair. Her clever invention addresses the global challenge of chronic wounds, which don't heal properly due to preexisting conditions like diabetes and account for billions in medical costs worldwide.

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a teen and a trolley reveal society's bad side

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a teen and a trolley reveal society's bad side

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CommonLit | A Teen and A Trolley Reveal Society's Dark Side by Bethany Brookshire

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newsela.com-Kids invent device to prevent flash floods.pdf

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What non-Indigenous Canadians need to know

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Things get more complicated when you're older

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Things get more complicated when you're older

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CommonLit | Things Get More Complicated When You're Older by BirdBrain Science

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CommonLit | When Good People Do Bad Things [PDF]: Answers & Central Idea

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When Good People Do Bad Things' was an MIT experiment which explored the central idea of how people behave in groups. Download the PDF with questions & answers.

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Tara Houska: The Standing Rock resistance and our fight for Indigenous rights | TED Talk

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Still invisible and often an afterthought, Indigenous peoples are uniting to protect the world’s water, lands and history -- while trying to heal from genocide and ongoing inequality. Tribal attorney and Couchiching First Nation citizen Tara Houska chronicles the history of attempts by government an…

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CommonLit | Biometrics: New IDs that are uniquely you by Sharon Oosthoek

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CommonLit | Why Do People Follow The Crowd? by ABC News | CommonLit

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Sharon Horesh Bergquist: How stress affects your body

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Our hard-wired stress response is designed to give us the quick burst of heightened alertness and energy needed to perform our best. But stress isn't all good. When activated too long or too often, stress can damage virtually every part of our body.

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CommonLit | The Stanford Prison Experiment by Saul McLeod | CommonLit

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Phillip Zimbardo conducted The Stanford Prison Experiment in 1971 to discover how quickly people conform to the roles of guard and prisoner. Read for more.

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Stress triggers the body's fight-or-flight response. Chronic stress can cause negative health effects on your mood, immune and digestive systems, and cardiovascular health.

You're sitting in traffic, late for an important meeting, watching the minutes tick away. Your hypothalamus, a tiny control tower in your brain, decides to send out the order: Send in the stress hormones! These stress hormones are the same ones that trigger your body's "fight or flight" response. Your heart races, your breath quickens, and your muscles ready for action. This response was designed to protect your body in an emergency by preparing you to react quickly. But when the stress response keeps firing, day after day, it could put your health at serious risk.

Stress is a natural physical and mental reaction to life experiences. Everyone expresses stress from time to time. Anything from everyday responsibilities like work and family to serious life events such as a new diagnosis, war, or the death of a loved one can trigger stress. For immediate, short-term situations, stress can be beneficial to your health. It can help you cope with potentially serious situations. Your body responds to stress by releasing hormones that increase your heart and breathing rates and ready your muscles to respond.

Yet if your stress response doesn't stop firing, and these stress levels stay elevated far longer than is necessary for survival, it can take a toll on your health. Chronic stress can cause a variety of symptoms and affect your overall well-being. Symptoms of chronic stress include:

Your central nervous system (CNS) is in charge of your "fight or flight" response. In your brain, the hypothalamus gets the ball rolling, telling your adrenal glands to release the stress hormones adrenaline and cortisol. These hormones rev up your heartbeat and send blood rushing to the areas that need it most in an emergency, such as your muscles, heart, and other important organs.

When the perceived fear is gone, the hypothalamus should tell all systems to go back to normal. If the CNS fails to return to normal, or if the stressor doesn't go away, the response will continue.

Chronic stress is also a factor in behaviors such as overeating or not eating enough, alcohol or drug abuse, and social withdrawal.

Stress hormones affect your respiratory and cardiovascular systems. During the stress response, you breathe faster in an effort to quickly distribute oxygen-rich blood to your body. If you already have a breathing problem like asthma or emphysema, stress can make it even harder to breathe.

Under stress, your heart also pumps faster. Stress hormones cause your blood vessels to constrict and divert more oxygen to your muscles so you'll have more strength to take action. But this also raises your blood pressure.

As a result, frequent or chronic stress will make your heart work too hard for too long. When your blood pressure rises, so do your risks for having a stroke or heart attack.

Under stress, your liver produces extra blood sugar ( glucose) to give you a boost of energy. If you're under chronic stress, your body may not be able to keep up with this extra glucose surge. Chronic stress may increase your risk of developing type 2 diabetes.

The rush of hormones, rapid breathing, and increased heart rate can also upset your digestive system. You're more likely to have heartburn or acid reflux thanks to an increase in stomach acid. Stress doesn't cause ulcers (a bacterium called H. pylori often does), but it can increase your risk for them and cause existing ulcers to act up.

Stress can also affect the way food moves through your body, leading to diarrhea or constipation. You might also experience nausea, vomiting, or a stomachache.

Your muscles tense up to protect themselves from injury when you're stressed. They tend to release again once you relax, but if you're constantly under stress, your muscles may not get the chance to relax. Tight muscles cause headaches, back and shoulder pain, and body aches. Over time, this can set off an unhealthy cycle as you stop exercising and turn to pain medication for relief.

Stress is exhausting for both the body and mind. It's not unusual to lose your desire when you're under constant stress. While short-term stress may cause men to produce more of the male hormone testosterone, this effect doesn't last.

If stress continues for a long time, a man's testosterone levels can begin to drop. This can interfere with sperm production and cause erectile dysfunction or impotence. Chronic stress may also increase risk of infection for male reproductive organs like the prostate and testes.

For women, stress can affect the menstrual cycle. It can lead to irregular, heavier, or more painful periods. Chronic stress can also magnify the physical symptoms of menopause.
What are the causes of inhibited sexual desire? "
Stress stimulates the immune system, which can be a plus for immediate situations. This stimulation can help you avoid infections and heal wounds. But over time, stress hormones will weaken your immune system and reduce your body's response to foreign invaders. People under chronic stress are more susceptible to viral illnesses like the flu and the common cold, as well as other infections. Stress can also increase the time it takes you to recover from an illness or injury.
Keep reading: Learn tips on managing your stress "

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Constant stress can increase your risk for long-term health issues like heart attack and diabetes. Learn the toll stress can take on the body.

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CommonLit | Classical Conditioning by Saul McLeod | CommonLit

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CommonLit | Stress for Success by Alison Pearce Stevens | CommonLit

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CommonLit | The Role Reverser: Growing Up Too Soon by Gregory L. Jantz, Ph.D.

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CommonLit | The Nature vs. Nurture Debate by CommonLit Staff | CommonLit

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CommonLit | The Third Wave by CommonLit Staff | CommonLit

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Our hard-wired stress response is designed to give us the quick burst of heightened alertness and energy needed to perform our best. But stress isn’t all good. When activated too long or too often, stress can damage virtually every part of our body. Sharon Horesh Bergquist gives us a look at what goes on inside our body when we are chronically stressed. [Directed by Adriatic Animation, narrated by Addison Anderson, music by Jure Buljević].

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CommonLit | Herd Behavior: Herd Mentality Lesson and PDF | CommonLit

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This 7th-grade level text on herd behavoir explores examples of how herd mentality can influence people's decision-making. Assign and download the PDF here.