HIDDEN NARRATIVES
Here is a resource list/website of hidden narratives that can be shared across your Lake County campus or grade level.
Here are some short bios and images of the diverse humans as well as some ideas for how educators could incorporate this into their classroom.
NI'KA - AKA LUCY MOORE - THE POMO GIRL THAT LIVED
"As many as 200 Pomo were killed on the island and in the surrounding area. Many women and children were stabbed with bayonets. One of the few survivors was a 6-year-old girl named Ni'ka, later known as Lucy Moore, who hid in the bloodied waters and survived by breathing air through a reed."
She lived to be 110. Her family says she prayed every day until she died to forgive America.
The Lucy Moore Foundation - https://www.bloodyisland.org/
Bloody Island Massacre - https://www.aclunc.org/sites/goldchains/explore/bloody-island.html
Native Heritage Project - https://nativeheritageproject.com/2012/12/08/pomo-indians/
SF Gate Article on Blood Island Massacre - https://www.sfgate.com/sfhistory/article/Bloody-Island-massacre-Pomo-history-Clear-Lake-15325476.php
RACHEL CARLSON - AUTHOR OF SILENT SPRING, FOUNDER OF A MOVEMENT
Rachel Carson (born May 27, 1907, Springdale, Pennsylvania, U.S.—died April 14, 1964, Silver Spring, Maryland) was an American biologist well known for her writings on environmental pollution and the natural history of the sea.
DDD was involved in one of the most widely recognized incidents in Silent Spring. The case originated at Clear Lake, California. Rachel Carson described the process of biological magnification/bioaccumulation where there is an increase in the concentration of a chemically stable, persistent, fat soluble (hazardous) substance along a food chain.
The chronicle of DDD’s adverse impact on California’s Clear Lake started when fishermen became annoyed by large numbers of gnats (not the biting kind). Since the gnats’ life cycle included an aquatic phase, the persistent, chlorinated hydrocarbon insecticide, DDD (related to DDT) was added to the lake water at very low concentrations to kill off the gnat’s larval forms developing there. Dr. Robert Rudd and Rachel Carson reported, that the DDD moved up the entire Clear Lake food chain from the initial low level in the water through the plankton (microscopic plant-like organisms), through the aquatic insects, through the small fish, feeding on the insects, through the predator fish that picked it up from smaller fish and concentrated it. Finally, DDD accumulated to dangerous levels in the fat tissues of the Western grebe, waterfowl residing and breeding at the lake. The Grebes’ diet consisted of predator fish at the higher levels of the Clear Lake food chain. No plausible findings for the deaths or for the failure to reproduce other than DDD were discovered by scientists who investigated the fatalities and reproductive failure of Western Grebes at Clear Lake. The concentration of DDD in the Grebe bodies was present at up to 80,000 times greater than the intended concentration in the lake water as a result of the 2nd and 3rd DDD treatments. Three lake water treatments with low levels of DDD took place over a span of nine years.
Addressing the Clear Lake findings, Rachel Carson wrote in Silent Spring:
“The nesting colonies of the grebes dwindled – from more than 1000 pairs before the first [DDD] insecticide treatment to about 30 pairs in 1960…No young grebes have been observed on the lake since the last DDD application [in 1957].”
“No trace of DDD could be found in the [Clear Lake] water shortly after the last application of the chemical. But the poison had not really left the lake; it had merely gone into the fabric of life the lake supports.”
“The fact that the insecticide was applied in very low concentrations is meaningless, as its explosive progress through the natural food chain… demonstrates.”
“What could a heavy dose of DDD, or perhaps repeated doses, do to…the human being who, caught a string of fish from the waters of Clear Lake?”
“The [Clear Lake] problem was resolved in favor of those annoyed by gnats, and at the expense of an unstated, and probably not even clearly understood, risk to all who took food or water from the lake.”
“DDD does strongly suppress the function of the human adrenal cortex…Its cell-destroying capacity is utilized in treatment of… a cancer… in the adrenal gland.”
Links
Rachel Carson Landmark Alliance (RCLA) - https://rachelcarsonlandmarkalliance.org/four-self-testing-questions-from-silent-springs-chapter-4/
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Rachel-Carson