The video Outpost of Opportunity, told of a lot of history from when Immokalee first started off. The are used to be heavily swamped. Which the native Seminoles used for their advantage. They used the swamp waters to travel and trade with other groups of people. They used the land as shelter. They also used the animals for food and as a type of trading good. They would sell the hides of alligators as a main source income, or at least traded it for tools or clothing. To the Seminoles, the swamp was their way of life.
Then the government began to drain the swamps, which in turn drove many of the local wild life to die, and eliminated the Seminoles main form of transportation. With all the water drained out, there was a lot of barren land. This started a new business, agriculture and livestock.
I do not think that the government should have drained so much of the swamp lands. They made it harder for the Seminoles to live and forced them to adapt to a new life style. To see what Immokalee used to be is very interesting to me. I never really thought of it as such a historic area. I always just imagined acres upon acres of orange groves.
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I agree with you, the government should not have drained most of the natural swampland. The Seminole indians should not have been froced onto reservations, but if this did not happen Immokalee would not be like how it is today. There would not have been enough land for farming and housing. The farming industry is a big part of Immokalee's past and future. I also did not think Immokalee had so much history behind it, I have never been there so I did not know anything about it until this video. Alhough from watching the news i knew it was a big farming community but i thought it was just all citrus crops too.
ReplyDeleteI found the Immokalee videos to be very interesting. Especially the first video, where it spoke mainly of the Seminoles and how Immokalee used to be back in the old days. I never had really known the history of Immokalee until now. I always just thought of it as a very agricultural place where several hispanics and seminoles worked on the farms. But now I see what it really used to be like. When they drained the swamps a rare beauty evaporated. This video reminded me of how thankful we are to still have the Everglades. I find seeing miles and miles of untouched land a very amazing sight and I hope we do not follow the same path as Immokalee did with the Everglades, although Immokalee has turned into an area of hard workers with a large opportunity for their futures in their towns.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Erica, the videos gave me a lot of perspective on how the area USED to be which interested me. And I agree that the government shouldn't have drained the water, but if it hadn't happened we wouldn't have the rich agricultural life we have now. But yes, at the time it was a horrible thing to do. Think of all of the wildlife dying of thirst, and in turn the Seminoles had nothing to hunt.
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