One Million Bones at USF

... gets covered in the USF Foghorn:

"The USF community and visiting second grade students from the Saint Anthony-Immaculate Conception School created 86 bones when the project came to campus last Tuesday, raising $86 for the art project. For every bone created, $1 is donated by the Bezos Family Foundation to CARE, a charity that fights global poverty. The Foundation supports learning environments for students from elementary through high school, and works in partnership with One Million Bones.
Shawn Doubiago, professor of comparative literature and culture, brought the project to USF  after hearing about it at the Museum of the African Diaspora (MOAD) earlier this year. The significance of bones resonated with Doubagio. 'We all have bones. They are the physical elements that all humans have that link us as a humanity,' she said."


Read more here.

One Million Bones

On April 16th an event was held in Gleeson Plaza. It was called "One Million Bones".

Although I consider myself an artistically challenged individual, and although at first I was worried that my resulting masterpiece would not be considered a "bone" and therefore be disqualified, as I began to mold my clay and be encouraged by those around me, my mind unconsciously pushed my worries aside and instead filled me with thinking thoughts. I began to wonder: whose bones? Kids, included? From what genocide? What about war? Who would it benefit? How many bones would be created? Will the money truly reach the cause? Whose foot am I molding? How much did it hurt? Will I ever understand? Why are people so selfish? Why are people so incomprehensible? Who gets to determine who lives, who doesn't, what type of revolution or attack, who gets to be killed? Why don't more students come to this event? They can't be too busy. Some probably don't know. Others simply don't care.

Hey, you, passerby, stop. Come! Build a bone. It won't take long. But it might consume your emotions. I promise you will be more aware. I don't promise you might not feel a little sad. Or even depressed. Just come. Be a little self-less. Be a little less ego-centric. No; your life isn't that hard. What you have to do right now isn't as important. It can wait. Just stop. Stop. Come back. Stop!! COME BACK!!!! 

But they didn't stop. They were too busy. They weren't curious enough. It didn't matter. They didn't care. Their lives are just too important. They were just too busy. 

Everyone is.

I uploaded my picture on Instagram. I hash tagged #onemillionbones #stopgenocide #stoptheviolence. I clicked on the #onemillionbones and was surprised to find so many pictures; so many shots; so many bones in different locations throughout the world. I felt special that my little child-sized foot might be able to unite along them. To add to that something bigger. 

I do hope there were more than one million bones. And I hope that more than 1 million people on this planet could have, for those few minutes, spent them recreating and imagining: one bone. Who did it belong to? Why did they lose it? Where are they now? Why?

- Valeria Vera

One Million Bones

As I sat at the table, molding a humerus for the One Million Bones project, I was struck by an incredulous feeling of positionality. To begin, an overview of the event: As part of the One Million Bones project and Students Rebuild, the USF class "Literature of the Child: Trauma and Healing," hosted a clay bone moulding activity. The intention was to send these bones to D.C. to raise awareness about genocide. Each bone was to generate a $1 donation.

While creating my contribution, I thought about which causes manage to gain media attention. Genocide, for one, sometimes manages to capture the collective consciousness. However, I wondered why some genocides we gain widespread noteriety and why some go largely unnoticed. I certainly knew about the Holocaust within my first few years of education but I didn't hear anything about Rwanda until middle school or the former Yugoslavia or Sudan until high school. I'm still a little hazy on the details over Burma/Myanmar and wonder why we still tend to refer to the actions' of early white Americans against Native Americans "wars" rather than genocide. I think this relates in large part to our discussions of intersectionality. I also believe it is an incredible example of the ability of those in power to shape the discussion. Just like we discussed who gets to call domestic violence "domestic violence," rather than "terrorism," we could untangle who gets to call genocide "genocide" or "war" "ethnic cleansing" or "collateral damage."

Finally, I dwelled on the Bezos Family Foundation, which was receiving the donations that the bones generated. Relating it to our past reading on the Iraq War, I wondered who was directing this organization, who was setting up the priorities, who was running it, etc.

Overall, I don't know whether this activity will have a cumulative positive effect or not. I do know that genocide is an issue I care about, and that there is nothing to justify it, but  don't actually know the effectiveness of "generating awareness," or raising funds for an organization that I am unfamiliar with. Those are certainly questions to consider...

-Laur