Certified Library Post

[Image description: Twitter thread by 🦢 Randi Jo (@ RandiJoDalton). The first tweet reads: As a Mohawk librarian, when I defend audiobooks, it's personal. My people were telling stories orally long before stories came packaged in book form. There are many ways to "read" something. There are a thousand ways to tell a story.

The second tweet reads: When I assist a patron, I'm not helping them find the right book, I'm helping them find the right story. Whether it's a book or a movie or a comic or a video game—there is a reason that specific medium calls to you. There is no shame in the way your brain receives information.

The third tweet reads: The settler-colonial belief that stories in book form are superior is classist, racist, and simply untrue. It is virtue-signalling at its cringiest. Anyone who has a favorite voice actor will back me up. Alternative story telling methods make for rich sensory experiences.

The fourth tweet reads: A good story is all in how it unfolds. And how it unfolds is different for different folks. You have a unique perspective. Lean into it.

A reply from @ lcspoering reads: It's absolutely ableist as well. My patrons are blind, visually impaired, have physical and learning differences that make traditional print all but impossible to read, and, to a person, audiobooks are an incredibly vital part of their lives.

A second reply from @ lcspoering reads: Also! Audiobooks are not a new thing. As early as 1931, the American Foundation for the Blind began creating "talking books" for veterans of World War I and other visually-impaired people. Commercially, audiobooks began being produced and sold in the 50s. /End ID]

I cannot believe there are people who genuinely believe that ethnic groups living in deserts walk around half naked to “deal with the heat” and that we actually wear typical bellydancing garb casually…orientalism truly has rotted your brain

Native Americans have similar traditional dress in the Southwest, here are some Diné (Navajo) traditional styles:

Traditional clothing of people of Gujarat and Rajasthan

Bedouins in the United Arab Emirates (previously known as the Trucial States)

Learning this was an intentional genocide changed me.

I know most of those following me know this, but just to make it super clear. An Gorta Mór (The Great Hunger/the Great Famine) was a deliberate genocide of the Irish people. There was enough food grown in Ireland to make sure everyone was alive and healthy and survived. Instead it was exported, sent to England and elsewhere for profit while men, women, and children starved in the streets. While the English landlords fucked off and evicted starving families who couldn’t afford rent. While babies were too weak to cry and died at the side of the road.

They tried to kill us, but they did not succeed. And we owe so much thanks to the other oppressed peoples, in particular the Choctaw Nation and the Masai, who sent money and grain to us.

Let me repeat that. The Choctaw Nation who had just gone through the Trail of Tears sent us money to try save Irish lives. It’s led to an understanding between Irish people and Native American tribes, most recently when we donated to the Navajo and Hopi fundraisers for COVID-19 relief, because while it may be a different tribe, Irish people will never forget those who helped us and we’ll help back.

The entire population of the island is less than seven million people. We’re still a million less on this island than pre famine. And it’s not that long ago. My grandmother’s grandparents lived through it. We’ve told the stories, it literally changed the DNA of the country. We have a national fear of renting, because so many people were evicted. People joke about Irish people always offering loads of food, but it’s because there’s that cultural memory of not being able to.

They tried to kill us, but they did not succeed. We will not let them take our lives, we will not let them take our language. We lost so much, but we will not lose it all.

This is why I get so angry when people say “it was the potato famine, it was because of monoculture/microbes.”

Nope. The potatoes were the only thing Irish people were allowed to fucking eat, because as pointed out, the rest of the crops they were growing were for their landlords to ship to England. So when the one “worthless” crop they were allowed to eat rotted in the field, the English crown, empire, landlords, all shrugged and carried on. People starved to death lying next to productive fields.

[Image: a tweet by BBC News (World) "Irish population tops 5m for first time since 1851 census" with a link to their article. And a reply by The Blindboy Podcast "Come on BRITISH broadcasting corporation 😂 tell us why the population was 8 million in 1840? What happened to 3 million people in 11 years? Surely that should be in the article, no?" End description.]

Oh man. TTRPG gamers need to check this out. 

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/connoralexander/coyote-and-crow

It’s a Native-written, Native-designed RPG, and it looks fan-fucking-tastic. 

From their kickstarter:

“Coyote and Crow is a tabletop role playing game set in an alternate future of the Americas where colonization never occurred. Instead, advanced civilizations arose over hundreds of years after a massive climate disaster changed the history of the planet. You’ll play as adventurers starting out in the city of Cahokia, a bustling, diverse metropolis along the Mississippi River. It’s a world of science and spirituality where the future of technology and legends of the past will collide.” 

It’s already fully backed – was fully funded in 45 minutes – and it looks amazing. I am so stoked. (I’m getting the hardcopy. Of course. So pretty!)

#DecolonizeYourGame

The legend can be dated to 1552: Francisco López de Gómara was the first person to say that the Spaniards conquered Mexico because the conquistadors had been seen as gods by the indigenous people. López de Gómara had never been to Mexico, but he was chaplain and secretary to the retired Hernando Cortés, who had led the conquistadors.

Cortés own letters during the conquest make no mention of being mistaken for or interpreted as a god. Nonetheless, López de Gómara’s version quickly became the accepted story, writes the historian Camila Townsend, even among the post-conquest indigenous peoples. The fleshed-out version of the story had it that “a god named Quetzalcoatl, who long ago had disappeared in the east,” had promised to return on a certain date. By extraordinary coincidence, Cortés appeared out of the east in that very year. Seduced by their religious credulity, the Mexica—“Aztec” was a post-conquest term—were ripe for conquest by their “white gods.” As Townsend writes:

Today, most educated people in the United States, Europe, and Latin America are fully versed in this account[…]. In fact, however, these is little evidence that indigenous people ever seriously believed the newcomers were gods, and there is no meaningful evidence that any story about Quetzalcoatl’s returning from the east ever existed before the conquest.

Historians of early Mexico have buried the myth of the “white gods,” but this news hasn’t filtered into general knowledge. The story is clearly potent. After all, how else could just a few hundred Spaniards bring down a state with a capital city larger than any in Europe at the time?

“It’s not just about cooking a meal and having the meal for lunch or dinner, but it’s about connection with our ancestors and how they have been so resilient and strong,” said Jennifer Wheeler.

Jennifer Wheeler, a Navajo language teacher, posted a series of videos on her Facebook page showing her making traditional foods like blue corn much and kneel down bread. Her videos have been shared across the platform tens of thousands of times.

“I didn’t even imagine the response that I’m getting now,” she said.

Wheeler said she hopes the videos, which are recorded solely in Navajo, will help her people learn the complicated language.

“When you act and speak and do all at the same time, the listener will start recognizing that and understanding the action to the verb,” Wheeler said,

Wheeler said she has enough food videos planned to take her through the next couple of months. All of her videos are posted to her Facebook page, but she said she has plans to start a YouTube channel soon.

To view Wheeler’s videos, click here.

For those of us who don’t use facebook, looks like there’s some stuff on YouTube with her…

AHA! And I found her YouTube channel! And I must say, I’ve got some kitchen envy!

Subscribe to her channel! There are already 20 videos up! So cool to see traditional food being made in ways I’ve only read about in books!

You know what the most frustrating thing about the vegans throwing a fit over my “Humans aren’t Parasites” post is?  I really wasn’t trying to make a point about animal agriculture. Honestly, the example about subsistence hunting isn’t the main point. That post was actually inspired by thoughts I’ve been having about the National Park system and environmentalist groups.

See, I LOVE the National Parks. I always have a pass. I got to multiple parks a year. I LOVE them, and always viewed them as this unambiguously GOOD thing. Like, the best thing America has done. 

BUT, I just finished reading this book called “I am the Grand Canyon” all about the native Havasupai people and their fight to gain back their rights to the lands above the canyon rim. Historically, they spent the summer months farming in the canyon, and then the winter months hunter-gathering up above the rim. When their reservation was made though, they lost basically all rights to the rim land (They had limited grazing rights to some of it, but it was renewed year to year and always threatened, and it was a whole thing), leading to a century long fight to get it back. 

And in that book there are a couple of really poignant anecdotes- one man talks about how park rangers would come harass them if they tried to collect pinon nuts too close to park land- worried that they would take too many pinon nuts that the squirrels wanted. Despite the fact that the Havasupai had harvested pinon nuts for thousands and thousands of years without ever…like…starving the squirrels. 

There’s another anecdote of them seeing the park rangers hauling away the bodies of dozens of deer- killed in the park because of overpopulation- while the Havasupai had been banned from hunting. (Making them more and more reliant on government aid just to survive the winter months.) 

They talk about how they would traditionally carve out these natural cisterns above the rim to catch rainwater, and how all the animals benefitted from this, but it was difficult to maintain those cisterns when their “ownership” of the land was so disputed. 

So here you have examples of when people are forcibly separated from their ecosystem and how it hurts both those people and the ecosystem. 

And then when the Havasupai finally got legislation before Congress to give them ownership of the rim land back- their biggest opponent was the Parks system and the Sierra Club. The Sierra Club (a big conservation group here in the US) ran a huge smear campaign against these people on the belief that any humans owning this land other than the park system (which aims at conservation, even while developing for recreation) was unacceptable. 

And it all got me thinking about how, as much as I love the National Parks, there are times when its insistence that nature be left “untouched” (except, ya know, for recreation) can actually harm both the native people who have traditionally been part of those ecosystems AND potentially the ecosystems themselves. And I just think there’s a lot of nuance there about recognizing that there are ways for us to be in balance with nature, and that our environmentalism should respect that and push for sustainability over preserving “pristine” human-less landscapes. Removing ourselves from nature isn’t the answer. 

But apparently the idea that subsistence hunting might actually not be a moral catastrophe really set the vegans off.  Woopie. 

This singer, dancer, and artist uses TikTok to share different aspects of her Indigenous culture

follow @nowthisnews for daily news videos & more

What Native people say about the use of sage: you can use sage, but you cannot smudge as nothing you are doing (waving sage around) is actually smudging. Smudging is a ceremony and you are, we promise, not smudging. Please buy sage from either us, or someone who sources the sage from us. White sage may not be considered endangered by the US government but corperate sourcing is making it difficult for us to source sage for our own religious purposes. Let alone to sell it.

What white people hear: never use sage ever, don’t ever buy it, don’t own it, don’t even look at it.

Look, y’all. There’s a couple of facets to my talk today.

1) Yes! You can buy sage! You really, truly can! Buy it from either native sellers (go to a powwow! Eat our food, buy our stuff, watch some dancing!) Or buy it from a seller who sources the sage from native people. Pick one. And no, buying it from 5 Below doesn’t count.

2) you CANNOT smudge. This isn’t just you “shouldn’t”— this is a YOU ARE INCAPABLE OF SMUDGING. Waving a sage stick around your doorways IS NOT SMUDGING. It is smoke clensing. Smudging, depending on the tradition and tribe, could easily have dancing and drums involved. You, as a white person, do not have the cultural BACKGROUND to even know how it works. At all. Period.

3) please, for FUCKS SAKE, stop making posts here on tumblr where you tell other white people about cultural appropriation and what they can and cannot do. Please stop, your license has been revoked because none of you bother to get the facts right. We native people are FULLY CAPABLE OF DOING IT OURSELVES. Consider instead: a) reblogging our posts where we talk about it! We’re here! We have made posts!! b) Making a post that states what we said and then LINKS BACK TO US. Screenshot with a link if you must. Stop centering your own voices in these conversations. You are already centered in everything, stop centering yourselves in a native space.

I’m tired of this nonsense, y’all.

Thanks for coming to my TedTalk ™

——

Help Support a Native artist?

Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/jnwampler

Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/khanji

This is insane

holy fuck, this is A LOT

Also that figure is way too low, modern population estimates might be as much as twice that. There were between 25 and 40 million in central Mexico alone, almost as many people in the North Amazon, almost as many in the Andes, and almost as many in the American South. All saw 80 to 99 percent population loss in the period of 2 to 3 generations.

The Greater Mississippi River Basin had a population somewhere between 5 and 12 million, the Eastern Woodlands had about as many, about as many in the Central Amazon, and almost as many on the American West Coast and North West Coast respectively. All of which saw 85 to 99 percent population losses in 2 or three generations after the others.

Multiple factions if European interests killed all the natives they could and destroyed all the culture and history they could. They were not limited by gender, language, religion, culture, ethnic group, nationality, geography, or time period; just every single person they could.

That’s not even genocide, it’s apocalypse.

Why are you all omitting the well known fact that it was not purposeful genocide but simply new microbes introduced that no one knew about at that time.

Cuz that’s not true.

Tw genocide, tw violence

When Columbus realized the pigs they brought were getting the Islanders sick he arranged to loose as many as possible ahead of them primarily into the Benne region, I believe. Cortez loaded sickened corpses into Tenochtitlan’s aqueducts, Spain deliberately targeted the priests of Mexican society first because they knew it would severely undermine the public ability to treat disease. When the post Incan city states developed a treatment for malaria, the Spanish deliberately targeted the cities producing the quinine treatment and made it illegal to sell it to non-christians. The Spanish took all the sick and forced them at sword-point to go back to their homes instead of to the sick houses or the temples throughout the new world, and forced anyone who wasn’t sick to work in the mines or the coin factories melting and pressing their cultural treasures down into Spanish coins. The English were just as bad, they started the smallpox blankets. A lot of the loss was not deliberate infections like this but it was preventable at a million different crossroads and every European culture took the opportunity to weaponize the plagues when they could.

They knew what they were doing, just cuz they didn’t know what germs were doesn’t mean they have some accidental relationship with it. Alexander the great used biological warfare after all, so it’s not like you can pretend the concept was alien to them, they wrote about it.

Besides they did plenty of old fashioned killing too, there were Spanish conquistadors that estimated their own personal, individual killings might have numbered over the ten thousands. They were sure they’d killed more than ten million in “New Spain” alone. They crucified people they smashed babies on the rocks, they set fire to buildings they forced women and children into and cooked their meals over the burning corpses, they loosed war dogs on people. They sold children into sex slavery to be raped by disease riddled pedos back in Europe and if taking their virginity didn’t cure the sick creeps the native children would be killed or sometimes sent back.

The English were just as bad, shooting children in front of their mothers and forcing them to mop their blood with their hair. Turning human scalps into currency. Feeding babies to dogs in front of their mothers and fathers. Killing whole villages and erasing them from their maps so that historians would think God had made it empty just for the English.

The Americans after them burned crops and drove several species of bison to extinction just to starve the plains tribes. They pushed the blankets too. On top of the wars of extermination and scalp hunting and concentration and laws defining natives as non-persons so that we’d never be protected by the Constitution.

And even if you wanna live in some dreamy fairytale where God just made a whoopsie and then there were no natives left, nobody forced them to erase our history. The Spanish burned every document they found to erase the literacy and literary tradition of the Central and South Americans. There are essentially three Aztec documents left and some excavated pottery, and some archeological inscriptions and that’s it. The single most advanced culture in math and anatomical medicine erased probably forever. Same to the Inca, the most advanced fiber and alloy engineers and economists gone forever. Nobody made them do that. Nobody forced the American colonizers to steal political technology and act like they invented democracy or sovereignty. Nobody forced them to build their cities on top of native ones and erase them from history forever. Baltimore was built on Chesapeake, which translates roughly to “city at the top of the great water” in most Algonquin tongues. My favorite example is Cumberland in Western MD, they didn’t even reshape the roads or anything, they paved the steps and walking paths natives had used for hundreds of years and now it’s almost impossible to drive cuz the streets are too narrow or steep. The culture that built them didn’t have horses. Phoenix AZ, called Phoenix cuz the settlers literally found an old city and “brought it back to life.” Did they save any history or cultural artifacts? No. Most cities on the east coast are like this. Nobody forced them to erase that history.

Colonizers are not innocent just cuz the germs did a lot of the work of the apocalypse.

(tlaxcallān had a democratic form of government)

Btw America BARELY acknowledges this, there’s no memorials or educational trips like Germany does the Holocaust, most schools don’t even mention that Native Americans existed

But tHeY dID iT ACciDeNtaLlY … Lol

That’s all of North America and South America not just the USA

Holy fuck. Europeans said let the world burn

Europeans were literally the horsemen of the apocalypse for all Native Americans.

Unfortunately, attacks and aggressions against indigenous communities continue today.

indigenous terminology in north america

it's indigenous peoples' day in the usa! to celebrate i am here to help non-indigenous folks in north america to think about the terminology they use because i know not all of y'all know how the nuances of the many things we're called. in general, when talking about an indigenous person or character and referring to their indigeneity, referring to their specific culture is the best option. i am indigenous, but more specifically i am cree. that said, let's talk about terminology while recognizing that the following list is super simplified to give you a brief overview.

indigenous is an umbrella term that refers to the original inhabitants of a land. it is used to talk about indigenous people worldwide. we use it as a collective term because we share many interests, but we are all different peoples and nations. people who are māori or sámi or ainu are all indigenous, but they're all from very different places and cultures. indigenous as a term unites us, but shouldn't be used to erase our differences.

aboriginal is, like indigenous, an umbrella term that refers to the original inhabitants of a land. aboriginal was a favoured term in canada for many years and is still used by some multi-nation organizations. canada's indigenous peoples' day (‪june 21‬) is also sometimes called aboriginal peoples' day.

native american is a term that refers specifically to indigenous people living in what is currently the contiguous united states of america. people living in alaska or hawaii may prefer the term native hawaiian or native alaskan. if you call someone in canada native american they'll know what you mean, but it's not the preferred term. like indigenous, it is an umbrella term and covers many different tribes/nations. it is a term assigned to indigenous people and adopted by us, but not one we came up with ourselves.

native alaskan is an umbrella term that refers to indigenous people living in what is currently alaska. they are culturally distinct peoples from native american cultures. you may be used to calling native alaskans "esk*mos" and if you are you should stop that right fucking now because esk*mo is a derrogatory term that comes from cree slang. some native alaskan people are inuit (see below), but not all are.

native hawaiian is a term for indigenous hawaiians. this is another umbrella term. native hawaiians were not included in federal programs for native americans until the 70s and some programs still exclude them, as do many discussions about native american issues even though they are also an indigenous group colonized by the usa.

native is an umbrella term used by indigenous people to refer to themselves. in north america, it may be socially acceptable to refer to indigenous people as being native, but ymmv and elsewhere in the world, it carries more racist, colonial baggage than it does here, where it is generally understood as a shortened form of native american.

american indian is a dated term that is still used in some official spaces in the united states. older indigenous people may use this (or the term indian) because they're used to saying it. if you're not indigenous, you should probably say native american or indigenous. amerindian is a portmanteau of this term and similarly isn't really favoured anymore.

indian is a dated term for indigenous people in canada and the united states. it stems from the time of christopher columbus when columbus decided to call us "indian". if you are non-indigenous, do not refer to indigenous people as indian. in canada, it is also a legal designation tied to the indian act that means some indigenous people hold "indian status," which grants them certain rights. some indigenous people in north america have reclaimed the term indian to refer to themselves.

ndn is a slang term we use to refer to ourselves online. if you're non-indigenous then bro. do not. it just stands for indian, you can't!

first nations is a term analogous to native american. it is used in canada to refer to the many indigenous nations south of the arctic circle. as someone who is cree, i'm first nations. it is an umbrella term, but not every indigenous person in canada is first nations. unlike "indian", it is not a legal term.

inuit is the term for indigenous peoples that live in what is currently canada's north. some indigenous people in alaska (and elsewhere) may also identify as inuit because the american/canadian border is a new addition in the grand scope of their histories. inuit are culturally distinct from first nations/native americans. also inuit means "the people" and y'all my inuk friend is so fucking amused every time someone says "the inuit people" because y'all are out here saying "the the people people." not all indigenous people in the north are inuit.

métis is a term for people who are descended from specific communities where indigenous people and non-indigenous settlers intermarried and created their own culture. they are specific, cultural communities within canada with their own culture and language. not everyone with mixed indigenous and settler ancestry is métis. for example, my dad is white and my mom is cree. i am not métis because i don't have any connection to a historic métis community. again, this is not a legal term the way indian is.

redsk*n is a derogatory term for native american/first nations people. the term originates from the genocide of our peoples, tied with the practice of collecting bounties for the scalps (the "red skins" in question) or other body parts of indigenous people in the west. do not use the term. even if you're talking about the football team that recently changed its name, say "the washington team" or something similar. it's a slur. (source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/a-brief-history-of-the-word-redskin-and-how-it-became-a-source-of-controversy/2016/05/19/062cd618-187f-11e6-9e16-2e5a123aac62_story.html)

esk*mo is another slur. it's an anglicized version of askipiw, a cree word which is more or less saying that inuit eat raw meat (i.e. that is implying they're more akin to animals than people). again, even when you're referring to sports teams that use the term in their name, don't say it. it doesn't matter what some white dude on QI told you, it's not a "more acceptable" umbrella term for northern indigenous peoples. some people might use it to refer to themselves still, but, as with other terminology on this list, if you're not indigenous, don't say it!

An article I would recommend to both writers and fans of the horror genre

Seen in the window at Gulf of Maine Books in Brunswick, Maine. Photo: Bill Roorbach

Except America wasn’t an endless expanse of forest with no certain borders. At least not while human beings inhabited it. The idea that native peoples did not cultivate or shape our land and that we had no borders is white propaganda meant to dehumanize and de-legitimize native peoples.

This illustration here show Apalachee people using slash and burn methods for agriculture. Fires were set regularly to intention burn down forests and plains. Why would we do this? Well because an unregulated forest isn’t that great for people, actually. We set fires to destroy new forest growth and undergrowth, and to remove trees, allowing for easier game hunting, nutrient enriched soil, and better growth rates for crops and herbs we used in food and medicine.

Pre-Colonial New England, where my tribe the Abenaki are from, looked more like an extensive meadow or savannah with trees growing in pockets and groves. Enough woodland to support birds, deer, and moose, but not too much to make hunting difficult. We carefully shaped the land around us to suit our needs as a thriving and successful people. Slash and burn agriculture was practiced virtually everywhere in the new world, from the pacific coast to chesapeake bay, from panama to quebec. It was a highly successful way of revitalizing the land and promoting crop growth, as well as preventing massive forest fires that thrive in unregulated forests. Berries were the major source of fruit for my tribe, and we needed to burn the undergrowth so they could grow.

That changed when white people invaded, and brought with them disease. In my tribe, up to 9 in 10 people died. 90% of our people perished not from violence starvation, but from disease. Entire villages would be decimated, struck down by small pox. Suddenly, we couldn’t care for the land anymore. There weren’t enough of us to maintain a vast, carefully structured ecological system like we had for thousands of years. We didn’t have the numbers, or strength. So the trees grew back and unregulated. We couldn’t set fires anymore, and we couldn’t cultivate the land. And white people would make certain we never could again. Timber, after all, was the most important export from New England. 

Endless trees and untamed wilderness is a nice fantasy. But it’s a very white fantasy, one that erases the history of my people and of my land. One that paints native peoples are merely parasites leeching off the land, not masters of the earth who new the right balance of hunting and agriculture. It robs us of our agency as people, and takes our accomplishments from us. Moreover, it implies that only white people ever discovered the power to shape the world around them, and that mere brown people can’t possibly have had anything to do with changing our environment.

Don’t bring back untamed wilderness. Bring back my fire setters, my tree sappers, my farmers and my fishers. Bring back my people who were here first. 

Sources:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_use_of_fire#Role_of_fire_by_natives

https://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/fsbdev3_000385.pdf

http://www.sidalc.net/repdoc/A11604i/A11604i.pdf

For those curious I recommend reading Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists and the Ecology of New England. https://books.google.com/books/about/Changes_in_the_Land.html?id=AHclmuykdBQC&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button#v=onepage&q&f=false

O’ho. Our tribe used to do regular controlled burns in the brush in CA to prevent- guess what? Uncontrollable wildfires. (also it keeps the poison oak down and helps some plants propagate) And before yall panic these methods worked because they were sustainable. You can’t survive if you destroy your resources; tribes knew how to make sure they could come back to a harvest ground next year and harvest again. There was still plenty of wilderness and it was often healthier for a touch of human help here and there.  people used to be all over this continent. 

This all kind of squashes the ecofascist idea that only white people are the saviours if the environment and everyone else is a polluter.

Sometimes I think the world would be a much better place if white people had just stayed the fuck in Europe

Just for clarification

We’re called Maya not Mayans. When you’re talking plural, it’s still Maya. Mayan is our language family/group.

I’m Maya. They’re Maya. The Maya calendar.

There’s roughly 30 or so different Maya ethnic groups with their own languages, traditions, clothing, culture, etc. just like the many different Pueblo Native groups in the southwest.

Oh thank you!

Thank you!

NATIVE AMERICANS ARE GOING MISSING

NATIVE AMERICANS ARE GOING MISSING

NATIVE AMERICANS ARE GOING MISSING

NATIVE AMERICANS ARE GOING MISSING

SIGNAL BOOST THE SHIT OUTTA THIS

SUBTITLES:

Person on camera: "calling on all gen-z to help boost the crap out of this again, they're arresting all the Native American protesters over Mount Rushmore, please we need to keep track of them"

I learned in a Latin Studies class (with a chill white dude professor) that when the Europeans first saw Aztec cities they were stunned by the grid. The Aztecs had city planning and that there was no rational lay out to European cities at the time. No organization.

When the Spanish first arrived in Tenochtitlan (now downtown mexico city) they thought they were dreaming. They had arrived from incredibly unsanitary medieval Europe to a city five times the size of that century’s london with a working sewage system, artificial “floating gardens” (chinampas), a grid system, and aqueducts providing fresh water. Which wasn’t even for drinking! Water from the aqueducts was used for washing and bathing- they preferred using nearby mountain springs for drinking. Hygiene was a huge part if their culture, most people bathed twice a day while the king bathed at least four times a day. Located on an island in the middle of a lake, they used advanced causeways to allow access to the mainland that could be cut off to let canoes through or to defend the city. The Spanish saw their buildings and towers and thought they were rising out of the water. The city was one of the most advanced societies at the time.

Anyone who thinks that Native Americans were the savages instead of the filthy, disease ridden colonizers who appeared on their land is a damn fool.

They’ve also recently discovered a lost Native American city in Kansas called Etzanoa It rivals the size of Cahokia, which was very large as well.

Makes me happy to see people learn about the culture of my country :D

Also, please remember that the idea of a nomadic or semi-nomadic culture being “less intelligent”, “less civilized” (and please unpack that word) was invented by people who wanted to make a graph where they were on the top.

Societies that functioned without 1) staying exclusively in one location or 2) having to make complicated, difficult-to-construct tools to go about their daily lives… were not somehow less valid than others.

This is why I fucking hate it when Europeans make jokes about how they have “more history” than the Americas. “This church is older than your country hahaha.” Actually, it’s older than the country you put there, massacring millions in the process, but go off, I guess. 

This is what Native American fashion looks like without the cultural appropriation

Follow @this-is-life-actually

Yooooo, that looks so cool!

Martin Sensmeier!

https://byellowtail.com/ a link to the products

What this means y’all is that this isn’t for you if you aren’t Native American :)

Mmmmm wrong.

Buying something that is commercially produced directly from the producers is the textbook example of not cultural appropriation.

[Text in gifs: “This is native american fashion without the cultural appropriation. The pieces were created by native american designer Bethany Yellowtail, whose own upbringing inspired the looks. Native american designers are scarce in mainstream fashion where cultural appropriation happens all the time. Yellowtail hopes her work and the work of other native designers will be seen and appreciated in the future. Fighting to put an end to a denigrating cycle of appropriation.”

Image: text from Yellowtail's official website. “Believe it or not we get asked about this nearly every day...

Am I allowed to wear B. Yellowtail if I'm non-native?

Yes. We thoughtfully design our products as a form of culture sharing & to amplify indigenous voices. We are happy to share carefully curated messages through our clothing design & accessories with people from all walks of life.”

End description.]