We need to thank the Navajo a nation! They all got out and voted with no cars and few polling places- their population was enough to swing BOTH Arizona and New Mexico
This is Navajo organiser Allie Young and her "voting squad" on the way to the polls. They rode 10 miles to vote early!
[Image: is a photograph of a group of eight Navajo people on horseback. End]
SOME GOOD NEWS FOR A DARK TIME
[Transcription Start:
Hey you let me teach you a little something about braids! To indigenous people our hair is everything. When braiding our hair we’re supposed to have good thoughts because we’re connecting with out body, mind, and spirit; that’s what the three strands are for.
Braids are a simbol of strenght and wisdom and they reflect our identity as indigenous people. I wear my braid to show that I’m proud of who i am, and also to honor my ancestors.
I was teased and bullied because I had long hair, and i was also called a girl sometimes. But I wanna show boys and men that we should never be ashamed of our long hair. Our power is in our braids so let’s show them proudly.
That’s why I want all boys and men to show off their braids proudly. Duet this video and if you’re watching this like it and show your support to our boys with braids. hoka.
End Transcription]
- Stop saying “off the reservation”. It’s a reference to the pass system that was in place restricting Native people from leaving without permission.
- Stop making “1/16th”, “great-great grandmother”, etc. jokes. All of these reference blood quantum, a system designed to “breed out the Natives”. Indigeneity isn’t defined by a percentage, fraction, etc. Quit policing Indigenous identities and quit joking about genocidal tactics.
- Stop calling things your “spirit animal”. You don’t have one. Only Indigenous people from specific nations have spirit animals.
- Stop making dreamcatchers. They are sacred Anishinaabe culture and are not cute trinkets, crafts, etc. Buy them from Anishinaabe artists.
- Stop buying those little cloth “teepees” for your kids/pets/whatever. Also stuff with tipi prints
- Quit referring to your “tribe”. Enough with the “bride tribe” nonsense and all the rest. Stop trivializing tribal affiliations.
- Don’t wear “war paint”. Don’t put a feather in your hair. Don’t dress up as Native people or characters.
- Stop referring to your meetings/side discussions/parties as a “pow wow”.
- Stop supporting sports teams that use racist terms and logos and caricatures of Indigenous people.
- Stop using white sage. It is sacred and overharvested. There are lots of types of sage you can use instead.
- Stop “smudging”. Smoke cleansing exists in many forms in many cultures, use that. Non-Natives can’t smudge.
- Stop tokenizing your Native friends, classmates, in-laws, half siblings, etc.
Please add more!
- Stop treating Native spirits as generic monsters or cryptids, especially w*ndigoag and sk*nwalkers.
- Stop using imagery of skulls in Plains headdresses, especially as tattoos. This shouldn’t need to be explained.
“The United States Government is offering you a piece of land of your own.”
“We have our own land.”
“No, it’s not yours. It’s the US Government’s.”
S1E6 - “Pride, Pomp and Circumstance”
Nonnatives were reblogging this without the caption. Keep it. Read it. Acknowledge it.
apparently native american tribes were in contact with the donner party and offered them food when they saw the colonists were starving and the donner party turned them down and decided to go the whole “cannibalism” route instead.
Until now the Native American perspective has been left out of the telling of the Donner tragedy, not because the wel mel ti did not remember the pioneers, but because they were never asked, or perhaps were not ready to share. Their oral tradition recalls the starving strangers who camped in an area that was unsuitable for that time of year. Taking pity on the pioneers, the northern Washoe attempted to feed them, leaving rabbit meat and wild potatoes near the camps. Another account states that they tried to bring the Donner Party a deer carcass, but were shot at as they approached. Later, some wel mel ti observed the migrants eating human remains. Fearing for their lives, the area’s native inhabitants continued to watch the strangers but avoided further contact. These stories, and the archaeological evidence that appears to support them, certainly complicated my interpretation of the Donner Party event. The migrants at Alder Creek were not surviving in the mountains alone—the northern Washoe were there, and they had tried to help. (source)
tfw a group of unprepared strangers show up, refuse the food you offer them, start fucking cannibalizing each other, and then call you the savages
non-natives(and white people in particular yall are especially bad about this) have got to stop debating about whether or not two spirit should be included within the lgbt community. if you arent native american, you have 0 place in the discussion and need to back off and let us talk about it ourselves
yes theres many 2S people that feel we shouldnt be included just for being 2S, but theres also a lot of us that would like to be included
i dont care what side youre trying to debate for, just stay out of it
not to be a history fucker on main but the whole mystery of the lost colony of roanoke is so fucking funny
governor of the colony: hey I’m gonna go back to england to get more supplies
115 colonists: okay
governor: ends up spending 3 years in england bc of a naval war with spain or some shit
governor: gets back to the colony to find everyone gone
governer: sees the word “croatoan”, the name of a native american tribe, carved into a post
croatoan tribe: has members and children with blonde hair/blue eyes, pale skin
everyone: what could have happened to the colonists of roanoke
racism is a hell of a drug
governor: I can’t believe my colony died
roanoke folks: actually these really nice people took us in? we left you a note about that? so please stop telling everyone we’re dead?
governor: Sometimes I Can Still Hear Their Voices
and THAT is what you do with a nazi
ACTUAL NATIVE ACTORS PLAYING ACTUAL NATIVE CHARACTERS?
WHO KNEW YOU COULD DO THAT
Like, holy FUCK I love Letterkenny.
First, we have Kaniehtiio Horn, who is just awesome (also the character is named Tanis, so bonus points there); then there’s actual Natives playing Natives; and then there’s the local hicks who’ve fucking rallied… and Jay Baruchel! This season was so. good. Letterkenny has no chill and gives no fucks anymore.
SKODEN. SDOODIS.
I love the Letterkenney style. 😊
Dear Canadian FN peeps: THIS IS FUCKING AWESOME!! #IndigenousResistance is always in season!
KEY QUOTE FROM THE ARTICLE:
If Congress does not pass legislation protecting the tribe and the legal challenge fails, the Mashpee would be stripped of their right to exercise sovereign jurisdiction over their land.
Jessie Little Doe Baird, the tribe’s vice-chairwoman, told Al Jazeera that loss of jurisdiction would prevent the tribe from running indigenous language schools, tribal courts, and housing projects, as well as its own police.
“We have our own police force, which is important because they’re tribal citizens and since we’ve had our own police force, none of our men have been beaten or shot, which we’ve had before with non-tribal police,” she said.
This is messed up
Instructions for how to get around this here. Shouldn’t have to be done, but make sure people know what to do.
This is messed up
Instructions for how to get around this here. Shouldn’t have to be done, but make sure people know what to do.
Researchers have used Easter Island Moai replicas to show how they might have been “walked” to where they are displayed.
Finally. People need to realize aliens aren’t the answer for everything (when they use it to erase poc civilizations and how smart they were)
(via TumbleOn)
What’s really wild is that the native people literally told the Europeans “they walked” when asked how the statues were moved. The Europeans were like “lol these backwards heathens and their fairy tales guess it’s gonna always be a mystery!”
Maori told Europeans that kiore were native rats and no one believed them until DNA tests proved it
And the Iroquois told Europeans that squirels showed them how to tap maple syrup and no one believed them until they caught it on video
Oral history from various First Nations tribes in the Pacific Northwest contained stories about a massive earthquake/tsunami hitting the coast, but no one listened to them until scientists discovered physical evidence of quakes from the Cascadia fault line.
Roopkund Lake AKA “Skeleton Lake” in the Himalayas in India is eerie because it was discovered with hundreds of skeletal remains and for the life of them researchers couldn’t figure out what it was that killed them. For decades the “mystery” went unsolved.
Until they finally payed closer attention to local songs and legend that all essentially said “Yah the Goddess Nanda Devi got mad and sent huge heave stones down to kill them”. That was consistent with huge contusions found all on their neck and shoulders and the weather patterns of the area, which are prone to huge & inevitably deadly goddamn hailstones. https://www.facebook.com/atlasobscura/videos/10154065247212728/
Literally these legends were past down for over a thousand years and it still took researched 50 to “figure out” the “mystery”. 🙄
Adding to this, the Inuit communities in Nunavut KNEW where both the wrecks of the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror were literally the entire time but Europeans/white people didn’t even bother consulting them about either ship until like…last year.
“Inuit traditional knowledge was critical to the discovery of both ships, she pointed out, offering the Canadian government a powerful demonstration of what can be achieved when Inuit voices are included in the process.
In contrast, the tragic fate of the 129 men on the Franklin expedition hints at the high cost of marginalising those who best know the area and its history.
“If Inuit had been consulted 200 years ago and asked for their traditional knowledge – this is our backyard – those two wrecks would have been found, lives would have been saved. I’m confident of that,” she said. “But they believed their civilization was superior and that was their undoing.”
“Oh yeah, I heard a lot of stories about Terror, the ships, but I guess Parks Canada don’t listen to people,” Kogvik said. “They just ignore Inuit stories about the Terror ship.”
Schimnowski said the crew had also heard stories about people on the land seeing the silhouette of a masted ship at sunset.
“The community knew about this for many, many years. It’s hard for people to stop and actually listen … especially people from the South.”
Indigenous Australians have had stories about giant kangaroos and wombats for thousands of years, and European settlers just kinda assumed they were myths. Cut to more recently when evidence of megafauna was discovered, giant versions of Australian animals that died out 41 000 years ago.
Similarly, scientists have been stumped about how native Palm trees got to a valley in the middle of Australia, and it wasn’t until a few years ago that someone did DNA testing and concluded that seeds had been carried there from the north around 30 000 years ago… aaand someone pointed out that Indigenous people have had stories about gods from the north carrying the seeds to a valley in the central desert.
oh man let me tell you about Indigenous Australian myths - the framework they use (with multi-generational checking that’s unique on the planet, meaning there’s no drifting or mutation of the story, seriously they are hardcore about maintaining integrity) means that we literally have multiple first-hand accounts of life and the ecosystem before the end of the last ice age
it’s literally the oldest accurate oral history of the world.
Now consider this: most people consider the start of recorded history to be with the Sumerians and the Early Dynastic period of the Egyptians. So around 3500 BCE, or five and a half thousand years ago These highly accurate Aboriginal oral histories originate from twenty thousand years ago at least
Ain’t it amazing what white people consider history and what they don’t?
I always said disservice is done to oral traditions and myth when you take them literally. Ancient people were not stupid.
Please reblog.
I don’t think its too cynical to think that Bear Ears was selected due to its significance for native peoples.
(also I’m a bit uncomfortable with that phrasing given the land of this entire country was stolen, but I understand what they mean)
I never thought I would see this day when a white man apologizes for the tyranny and oppression of Native American population. This is so powerful. This is the nation that I want - responsible, compassionate and that learns from its mistakes.
Bringing this back in honor of Indigenous People’s Day
this image fucked me up. it used to be strategy of US military to burn our lodges during the wintertime so our ancestors couldn’t survive. in 1864 they attacked peaceful camps of my ancestors in Colorado, and in one attack alone burned over 70 lodges, which is estimated to be about 10% of the Cheyenne Nation’s housing at the time. i’m the seventh generation born since that attack and now we are seeing lodges burned all over again.
