David Cleary!
i'm in Ireland and the search for that bastards name is still blocked and hidden... the legnths the british go to defend and protect their instruments of colonialism and violence is beyond belief. no justice for the victims and yet every measure taken to protect David James Cleary and his fellow murderers.
Never a better time for the Streisand Effect than when it's a government covering up acts of brutality and evil.
remember .io games? that was 8 years ago
nowadays the only people that use the .io domain are technology sites
ok so .io is a "fun" lesson in colonialism and technology, like all two letter top level domains (yes all of them) it's a country domain belonging to a country, io being the british indian oceans territory, an archipelago in the indian ocean. .io domains became so trendy because they're easily marketable to tech people (io can stand for input/output), it looks kinda cool and at the time domains with .io were highly available with not many websites being created on the islands.
however .io is not like other small islands with highly wanted tlds such as .ai or .to, where the islands make millions off of domain sales and can rely on them as a big pillar of their economy. all profits from .io sales go to the UK, and despite a fight to get control over their tld the islands get nothing, not only did the native population get displaced in land deals and colonialism but their colonizer also heavily profits off of the territories sudden (indirect) trendyness with tech startups.
don't buy .io domains, don't support the british empire.
“Perhaps you have forgotten. That’s one of the great problems of our modern world, you know. Forgetting. The victim never forgets. Ask an Irishman what the English did to him in 1920 and he’ll tell you the day of the month and the time and the name of every man they killed. Ask an Iranian what the English did to him in 1953 and he’ll tell you. His child will tell you. His grandchild will tell you. And when he has one, his great-grandchild will tell you too. But ask an Englishman—” He flung up his hands in mock ignorance. “If he ever knew, he has forgotten. ‘Move on!’ you tell us. ‘Move on! Forget what we’ve done to you. Tomorrow’s another day!’ But it isn’t, Mr. Brue.” He still had Brue’s hand. “Tomorrow was created yesterday, you see. That is the point I was making to you. And by the day before yesterday, too. To ignore history is to ignore the wolf at the door.” - A Most Wanted Man by John le Carré
if your support of decolonization (anywhere) is predicated on your view of the colonized people as exceptionally peaceable, equitable, environmentally conscious/“in touch” with nature, or otherwise morally superior by your own personal standards, it’s not support. the only moral high ground colonized people need to justify decolonization is …. not being the colonizer
thank you pdf fairy <3
[ ID: Meme template from the Simpsons cartoon of an annoyed bus driver saying "Don't make me tap the sign". When he taps the sign, it shows two books: The colonizer and the colonized by Albert Memmi and The wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon. /End ID ]
"My message to the colonizers who left their home countries to occupy our lands is simply to go back home. As for those who were born here, my message is: You are secondary victims of this colonial project. You are being used to occupy other people’s lands, and your Jewishness is being politicized for colonial means. Meditate carefully on the examples of South Africa, Angola, Algeria—they may not apply wholesale to the settler colonization of Palestine, but they hold lessons for you. Today you must make a choice: Either support this deadly colonial project, or side against it by supporting the liberation of Palestine and the establishment of a democratic state that liberates Palestinians, as well as Jews, from Zionism. A state that will honor the right of Palestinian refugees to return and compensation and that will welcome and protect its Jews as citizens of Palestine. This transition from Zionism to democracy will not cost anyone’s life; it will cost you your colonial privileges, and will free you—and us, its primary victims—from colonialism."
—Mohammed Zraiy, Gaza coordinator for the One Democratic State Initiative in an interview with Jewish Currents
During the Indonesian revolution to free itself from being a colony of the Netherlands, freedom fighters would rip the blue cloth from the Dutch flag to create the Indonesian flag. [video]
Real talk time.
Colonialism still exists. The effects of original colonization still exist.
Native Hawaiians cannot afford to live on our own land. Everyday tourism kills us.
We are fined for using our water. We are screamed at by tourists. We are stacked in concrete apartments the size of shoe boxes. Waiting lists for apartments are decades long. The government never provides aid. The money that belongs to us is wasted on half finished monorails and hotels. Tourist take pictures of us like we’re an attraction.
In 2018, the UN acknowledged the present day occupation of Hawai’i. And they did nothing.
“The Living Wage Calculator from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) says that one adult in Honolulu needs to make $16.59 per hour for a living wage. If that is a couple with 2 children, each adult needs to make $17.70 per hour.”
-RealHawaii.Co
My culture, my people, are sexualized, ignored and stepped on.
We cannot live. And everyday more of us die.
And no one even notices. So notice. Notice. Notice.
not to get political but im begging you guys to stop coming to hawaii. in maui theyre asking to put a ‘pause’ on flights bc we literally do not have enough room or staff to service you. the roads are so full that its causing a major backup when ppl need to get to work.
on top of this, i heard that by September? theyre expecting to get rid of the mask rule (if 70% of ppl are vaccinated/all goes well) but ill be honest w/ you, i know many locals arent getting the vaccine and i know plenty of tourist arent gonna take the necessary precautions.
homeless hawaiians aren’t even allowed to sit or lay on sidewalks to keep up the “paradise” image for tourists
PLEASE stop vacationing in / moving to the occupied Kingdom of Hawaiʻi. You are actively participating in violent settler colonialism when you do, even if you aren’t white. Never in my whole life have I seen our airport THIS packed!!! Our islands cannot support this many people – especially during our dry season and in the middle of a PANDEMIC!
Tourism makes it impossible to keep up with the rising cost of living. It brings in revenue and with that, becomes the fake state’s priority. Tourism pushes native Hawaiians from their land and homes, puts locals at risk for covid19, directly harms the delicate environment and native species here, houseless folk (many whom are native Hawaiian) are being illegally swept to make room for tourists at beaches, and locals are being restricted and fined for using water on east Maui, all while hotels can use up all the resources no problem and our government approves a million dollar home construction for new part-time residents (when locals who have been here for generations are being thrown into poverty, barely staying afloat, losing businesses and even their homes). “Hawai’i has become the Blood Diamond of the Pacific. We are mined for our splendor, and our residents live the every day, complex consequences.”
It’s absolutely VILE what is happening here. I hope yall know that Hawaiʻi was overthrown and occupied by the US military, and isn’t even legally a state! Hawaiʻi is not your vacation spot, so you better tell your family and friends to stay at home.
This is a summarized post for those who want to be informed. Obviously it does not cover everything, but it is in a simple format and highlights important points and is easy to understand.
Everyone has to do their own research. Not everything will be handed to you. There are many websites and sources out there, you have to look for them. The issues between Israel and Palestine is not an easy cut deal, there are many different factors that play into everything that is happening right now.
Reminder that Israel is a settler colonial nation. When anti-colonial resistance became widespread, modern day Israel changed its language alongside the trends to call itself a nation for ‘self-determination’ which is the language of anti-colonial resistance. And today it markets itself as the only democracy in ME & safe space for LGBT.
But before it became embarassing to admit this, Zionist founders of Israel like Herzl, Jabotinsky, Ben-Gurion among others, were blatant about calling Israel a settler colonial project that needed to establish itself by ethnically cleansing the native Palestinians & by armed force - as is a mechanism inherent to all settler colonial nations.
i don’t know how to say these things in a nice way because my nerves have been fried for quite some time and i’m basically running on empty right now but i wanted to write about anti-asian sentiment, and more specifically, how people can address it.
there are a lot of posts with a lot of notes going around coming from very well-meaning people about how we can combat anti-asian sentiment by fighting cultural appropriation or stopping insults about food and whatnot, and i understand the impulse, but the fact is this: anti-asian sentiment is rooted in white supremacy, in colonialism, and in imperialism, and those things cannot be stopped by simply teaching people to say our names correctly.
if you want to end anti-asian sentiment, we must end white supremacy and imperialism. if you want to end white supremacy and imperialism, you must learn about the histories of white supremacy and imperialism— not only in asia, but across the world. it is crucial that we, as asians, unite ourselves with other colonized people to fight these systems. i invite others to move past the badge of allyship and truly learn what it means to commit yourself to the fight against white supremacy and imperialism, and then do it.
now, more specifically: when we think about the 8 people who were killed in atlanta this week, we understand that they were targeted because of their asianness, yes, even knowing that all who died were not asian— but they were targeted also because of their class, the line of work they were in, their migration status, their gender. the women who were murdered were at particular risk because they were working-class migrant women who worked in a massage parlor, and who may have been s*x w*rk*rs. this is absolutely crucial to understand! you cannot understand their deaths as being separate from war crimes committed by the united states in vietnam, or from the sex tourism industry in southeast asia.
even when we think about the spate of attacks on asians on the street, or at the train station, or on public transit, who is being targeted? the majority of these attacks are on working-class, low-income migrant elders. there are other attacks, still, that i have heard that have targeted asian women specifically. these, too, are acts of violence tied to white supremacy and imperialism. so understanding this– if a white man approaches me, or my sister, or my migrant neighbors with intent to harm us, what good does it do if he is educated about how to pronounce my name, or if he knows how to use chopsticks respectfully?
these are just some thoughts i am having that i think are missing from the conversation, at least on this website. thank you for reading if you have gotten this far. i hope this makes sense. i truly pray for the downfall of imperialism every single day.
if you are looking for places to learn more, or to donate, please check out the following organizations. i am in new york, so some of these orgs will be local to me, but i have tried to include national orgs i know of that are doing good work. thank you.
Illustration about Native American boys who have to cut off their braids to follow school dress codes.
And black people have the same issue when it comes to finding jobs/careers.
^^^^ yes but it ain’t about us right now
this is actually really important and pardon me for doing the cliche reblogging with a caption thing but i want to talk about braids and just how significant they are
to native people (and of course i can’t talk about every native tribe as there are very specific sects and i only really am coming from the perspective of seneca) hair is extremely important as it represents the walking of the Sacred Path as the physical extension of thought and self, and holy men, women and two-spirits are identified through specific styles of dress and even if not holy, the hair shows what a person has participated in, their feelings, their age, whether they are married or not, whether they are in mourning and their tribe
my grandfather is seneca and he had to remove his braids at a very young age and it was an act of assimilation because his mother knew they had to try to be white in order to proceed and it’s a tool of oppression and humiliation to cut (or force to cut) a native american person’s hair for both religious and cultural preservationist reasons
my mom is half-seneca and her choice for me to not cut my hair until i was 13 and for it to be worn in traditional manner was because of this and when i cut my hair then, i cut it off at the base of my head for also this reason; i was diagnosed with depression and was going through therapy, i wanted my hair and my treatment to signify that i was becoming a new, better person– eventually i started dying my hair but that is for separate reasons of colour symbolism and it’s still an important thing to me
please do not invalidate the struggles of other POC, i understand that this happens and it’s horrific to not be able to wear your natural hair, these are also children whose culture and religion is being stripped away from them and they can’t even participate in something so important within their culture simply because of white patriarchal ideas of masculinity
^^THIS
American Indian children (especially plains ndns) were forced to attend boarding schools where they were forbidden to speak their own language and had to cut off their hair and choose a “white” name from the bible. If you refused, the teacher would often ridicule you by ignoring you anytime you attempted to speak or participate in class, to the point of saying offensive, false things about your people to rile you up enough that you gave in and picked a white name so the teacher would let you speak and tell the truth. (This is shown in bury my heart at wounded knee). In fact, it is hard to trace records before the turn of the 19th to 20th centuries bc the govt considered the way native peoples often have several different names that they go by in different context and by different people to be too annoying to record them in a census, another reason they were forced to choose white names.
Being oppressed for your natural hair and the names you choose is a real thing other poc face and it’s wrong and it’s racist, but this specific post is about what it means to American Indians, and for them it was not only racist stereotyping, but forced assimilation and genocide of their cultures.
dude holy shit being ridiculed for not assimilating was the least of your worries in a residential school. i know people who were forced to kneel on sharp rocks in a corner for speaking a single word in their native language
some fun facts abt residential schools:
• people who went to residential schools were abused physically, sexually, verbally, and emotionally. my mushum went through all of these until he turned 18 and was allowed to leave
• boys were not allowed to wear their braids. period. the point of the residential schools was to ‘kill the indian in the child’ and you can google literal before-and-after images of students that the schools would distribute as a source of PRIDE
• the government would experiment on the students, starving them to see how long they could go without food before it seriously affected them. officially, over 6,000 native children died in residential schools. our government admits the number was likely much higher
• residential schools were literally hitler’s source of inspiration for concentration camps during world war II
• where im working right now, there are people in their 30s who were forced to attend residential schools
• the last residential school closed in 1996, one year after i was born, two hours away from where i live, twenty minutes from my family’s reserve
native assimilation has been the goal from the very start
idk what shit-eating truscum needs to hear this, but your rhetoric directly harms people with culturally-specific genders. i’m native and two-spirit, that label describes my gender and my attraction. i use they/them pronouns and your “nonbinaries and cringey stargender trenders aren’t valid” bullshit is getting old. our languages were demonized and erased, our gender and attraction labels along with them. my experiences with dysphoria exist because of colonialist ideas of gender. we have been forced into arbitrary ‘male’ and ‘female’ categories by colonizers for centuries and truscum rhetoric perpetuates racist colonialist violence against natives.
your experiences are not universal, you’re not forwarding justice for trans people, and you’re definitely not an ally to natives or other people of color. you’re just a fucking colonizer.
non-natives, reblog this post
I’m reblogging this again because the comments are absolutely disgusting and a perfect example of how little transmeds value non-Western cultures, communities, and traditions.
Someone in the notes says “no one is like this in real life and if they are it’s just a confused phase.”
Bullshit! I know Two Spirit Nêhiyaw and Métis elders in their seventies. 2S activism has been around my city for decades. Do some fucking research. If you don’t come from a place with an indigenous 2S tradition, accept that you’re ignorant, not that it “isn’t a real thing”
I’m Jewish.
Our book of holy commentary, the Talmud, lists six genders.
The Talmud is older than Jesus.
And I assure you, as old as that might sound, Native communities in the Americas make that number sound minuscule. 2500 years is nothing compared to ten thousand.
(Yes, Native cultures and communities predate the so-called “cradle of civilization.” BY FAR.)
We have always been here. You reading a single high-school textbook and deciding that was all you needed to know is the problem. NOT US.
this is an england hate blog
HOW IS THIS EVEN REAL? WHAT DID MY COUNTRY EVER DO TO ANYONE?!
oh sorry sweetie, i didn’t realise you still lived in the 1800s…🙄🙄
I’ve been thinking about this for days. The 1800s??? The 1800s????
I don’t know how many of you guys know about it but this new movie, “Mad Max” just came out and has already reached critical acclaim. I haven’t seen it , but it’s supposed to be this groundbreaking masterpiece and a huge step for feminism. Which is all good and dandy In theory. But on tumblr there’s been a lot of criticism because the ALL white cast (with the minor exception of Zoe Kravitz). One of the most frustrating things about these types of movies and conversations is that there’s ALWAYS these white feminists that want to tell POC that we have to overlook lack of diversity and basically “take one for the team” (the team being feminism/woman). No. I’m not going to do it. It is fucking disrespectful and borderline racist for you, a white person, to tell minority women that we have to ignore not being represented. Since turning 18 and starting to really think about racism and the media, it is especially uncomfortable for me to watch movies and tv shows with NO people of color. This world is mostly non white and it simply doesn’t make sense for our media to not represent it. And as for feminism, this is not the first time this has happened. When Girls came out, minority women were expected to ignore the show having an all white cast because it was written and directed by Lena Dunham. And anyone who dared to not ignore this issue was considered “non progressive”. This is why I don’t identity as feminist. Because this is unacceptable. It’s unacceptable for these huge steps for feminism to not include people of color. And if you’re white and telling people to get over it, you’re a part of the fucking problem.
Okay, I don’t want to take away from some really great points you’re making about how white feminism often downplay or outright dismiss the representation of women of color, especially in discussions of mainstream media WOC are often silenced or ignored.
However, I need to point a few errors that are a common form of microaggression that I see pop up all the time in intersectional discussions of representation, specifically in regard to the recognition of indigenous women of color.
There are THREE women of color in Mad Max Fury Road. Zoe Kravitz (which you already listed), but also Courtney Eaton and Megan Gale. Eaton and Gale are biracial Maori women. The presence of Polynesian women in this film and a fictional future are incredibly important on multiple levels.
The Mad Max films are set in a post-apocalyptic Australia. In fact, the franchise began as Australian films, George Miller the writer/director/creator of this world is Australian. This is not merely a geographic location, but an important cultural context for the films.
What’s important about the location and the presence of Polyneisan women within this future world is how their very roles reflect the history of colonialism in the Pacific region. Polynesian people were forced to relocate, our cultures and even identities erased. Many of us are biracial and our own ethic identity are often erased due to a form of cultural genocide that was not unlike what was done to Indigenous people of the Americas.
Polynesian women have long been viewed as tokens of exotic beauty. Taken as trophies, and forced in to sex work. Not unlike Fragile. Some, like The Valkyrie who actively fought against colonial oppressors. While Zoe/Toast is biracial black and Ashkenzai jew, she two represents an aspect of WOC’s journey through white supremacy and colonialism which was the driving force behind the trans-atlantic slave trade.
Polynesians often are erased, or mistakenly seen as white passing often because White Western culture only teaches how to see black or white, ignoring or wholesale erasing all the many colors in between. One of the really ugly truths behind why so many indigenous people are “white passing” is because of the long legacy of us being raped by white oppressors. Many of us only being valued as “pretty” sexual objects for the enjoyment and consumption of white men.
There is a BIG difference between being white passing and having your ethnicity erase from mainstream awareness. People, even POC, default code Polynesian women as white because they only SEE the parts of our features that are stereotypically viewed to be “white.”
I immediately recognizing Fragile and The Valkyrie as women of color, and was deeply moved about how their presence and individual roles in this film reflects the struggles of many indigenous women throughout history and to see them empowered and fighting back against their oppressors made my heart soar.
Also there ARE other people of color in the film, though by virtue of the dominate culture in the film being literally white male supremacy, the only men of color we see are in the lowest cast of society. Not uncommon in colonialism either, given how white men see MOC as a threat to their power and masculinity.
My only real complaint about race in this film is the lack of Indigenous Australians in leading roles. There are a few of them crowd shots of the Citadel’s lower class, and at the end of the film we see a disabled Indigenous Australian man become the focus of a full two second shot, acting as the face of the oppressed class as he is quite literally is lifted up to salvation by women of color.
There are powerful visual moments in this film, that tell not just a story of punching down the patriarchy, but of the dismantling of colonial oppression where indigenous women play key roles in the fight and future of the world.
So please don’t steal this context from the these women. It is very important to many women of color.
THANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOU
I’m a Maori woman and it means so much to me to hear someone say FINALLY point this out. I wanna say this to ALL of tumblr so LISTEN UP!
The line between POC and White is very blurred in my culture. There are no ‘full’ Maori left, so everyone is biracial. I wanna point out that this is a very old way of thinking, as nowadays if you’re Maori then that’s it. YOU. ARE. MAORI.
No matter what you look like, you are Tangata Whenua (people of the land). But I’ll be using it to get my point across.
There are people with all sorts of different skin colours in my culture now and It makes me SEETHE whenever I see comments like the op. How DARE you dismiss ANYONE FROM A CULTURE THAT ISN’T EVEN YOUR OWN, just because you have been taught to only see in black and white and you can’t accept the fact that they’re from said culture JUST because they don’t ‘look like it’. For us, having people with dark skin, light skin and everything inbetween is NORMAL and we don’t question it.
So don’t you DARE say that those beautiful woman in that film ‘DON’T COUNT’ We aren’t just some three letter word that you can label us with at your convenience. ‘PoC’ is not some super secret club. You don’t get to decide who is Maori and who is not. So you take that racist BS and shove it because we’re not interested. Especially when it is coming from someone who knows nothing about our culture and the people in it.
Also, I know your intentions were good but PLEASE don’t refer to us as ‘white-passing’ as it’s just another way to isolate people within their own culture. We are Maori. End of story.
(emphasis mine)
Co-sign from this NZ-raised Polynesian woman.
We’re all mixed here. All of us. It’s so normal that we don’t put a freaking percentage on it and we realise that heritage and ethnicity is more than the colour of your skin, your particular shade of brown or how ‘ethnic’ your features are. It’s what you are.
One of my favourite parts of this movie was to see my people on a movie screen. It’s so rare for those of us of polynesian heritage to see ourselves reflected back in cinema and to see posts and articles that erase our culture or dismiss our heritage because we aren’t dark enough for someone of another culture is not only racist and ignorant, it’s also incredibly hurtful.
Reblogging because this is important stuff.
