Just a quick reminder this Native American Heritage Month:

Native Hawaiians are not American.

Geographically speaking, we’re part of Oceania. We’re not native to North or South America. Which means we’re not Native American.

We are also NOT American poltically. Hawai’i is a sovereign nation and has been recognized as a sovereign nation under American occupation by members of the UN.

Use this month to honor those Native to the Americas. Honor their strength, their history, and support their fight for #LandBack

There is time to honor my people. But right now, please use this month to highlight and honor actual Native Americans.

[ID:

We Were All Wounded at Wounded Knee by Redbone plays in the background of the Tik Tok.

White text starts at the top of the screen, displaying information. “The song you are hearing was not allowed to be played on U.S radio stations in 1970’s”.

The dancer makes hoops go from Eagle to Earth form.

“It created by a popular Native American band called Redbone and it hit number 1 charts all over Europe.”

“The song raised awareness about what happened at Wounded Knee”

They finish the Earth form, centering themself. “Let’s get it trending”.

Screen switches to the Tik Toker’s name and username, James Jones / @notoriouscree

END]

No one's reblogged this video with versions of the whole song yet, so here's a spotify link and the youtube video.

US Native land loss from 1776 to 1930.

When white nationalists claim immigrants are taking over the land…yes, you already did that!

Link for full article below.

*pretends to be shocked but also maybe this will make people realize that Indigenous People Know What The Hell They’re Doing and Deserve Respect*

3 other fun/cool facts about the Inuit:

1. They also invented kayaks and dog booties.

Dog booties are actually really important for working sled dogs in winter to protect their paw pads from iceburn and keep ice from getting in between their toes and burning them that way.

2. The traditional Inuit diet is one of the healthiest in the world, and the most balanced for the ratio of Omega 3 to Omega 6 consumption

Most modern diets consume way too much Omega 6 and not enough Omega 3.

3. Inuit is a plural noun. When speaking about a single person the correct word is Inuk (always capitalized)

For example, “This Inuk woman is wearing traditional Inuit tattoos”.

I was legitimately thrilled with the overall reception of my costume. I never could’ve imagined that it would make so many people so happy! But I exchanged so many hugs and daps and high fives, it was unreal. I had a lot of really great conversations with people that were just super excited to see some Native representation at the convention. So that part was really special for me, because that was a big part of my own personal inspiration to begin with.

I originally brainstormed this costume in late 2015, but I really started rolling on production this last year, once I committed to this years SDCC… My main goal was to make a Native American variant of a fan-favorite character. I was immediately drawn to Captain America because of everything he symbolizes as basically the poster boy of a nation. To me it was the perfect parallel. And once I visualized the red and white bone breastplate on my abdomen, I knew this was something I had to see through.

A lot of old school leather work with the awl! The majority of the armor was made from a base of 6mm EVA foam with 3 oz deer hide glued over it. The pieces were then stitched together with sinew or leather lace. Using this technique allowed me to form curves and build the necessary bulk of the armor pieces while also getting the suede textures I was looking for. And a whole lot of beading!

—- https://www.instagram.com/hot.glue.burns/

PHOTO: https://www.instagram.com/p/B0FQd_1AKhk/

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.

Time Lapse of the Land Taken From Native Americans

via reddit

A list of pretendians.

Everyone wants to be Native until it’s time to be Native. I decided to go ahead and make a list of actors, singers, etc. who claimed to have Native heritage but aren’t really Native. I’m doing this because people don’t understand the nuances of our identities and how complicated and complex it is. Sure, you may have Native ancestry, but our identity goes beyond that. Does your tribe claim you? Do you support your people? Are you connected to your culture?

Another reason why I’m making this is because some people do actually believe these actors, singers, etc. are Native. They’re not aware of the long history of white people and non-native peple of color pretending to be Native. The most famous example is Iron Eyes Cody. He claimed his father was Cherokee and his mother was Cree. It turned out he wasn’t Native after all, he was Italian. He made a whole career out of pretending to be Indian. Most people know him from playing the ‘Crying Indian’ in the PSA commercials about the environment. A mess. 

So, below are the pretendians: 

Johnny Depp — In the past he’s claimed to be Cherokee due to his grandmother side. He played a Native American man in ‘The Brave’ and Tonto in the tragic and racist reboot of ‘The Lone Ranger’. I’d generally avoid him because he’s a piece of sh*t.

Hailey Baldwin — Instamodel. Nepotism. Devoid of any personality. In 2011, she claimed to be Cherokee in this tweet. If you’re Native, a white person claiming to be Cherokee is nothing new and I generally wouldn’t count them as Native unless proven otherwise. She also allegedly said the n-word so yikes. 

Blake Lively — She claims to be Cherokee in this L’Oréal commercial. Again, we know how the story goes. People did their research and turns out she has ZERO Native ancestry in her lineage. Shocking, right?

Justin Bieber — In 2012, Bieber claims to be part Indian in an interview with Rolling Stone: “I’m actually part Indian,” he says – “I think Inuit or something? I’m enough percent that in Canada I can get free gas”. *bangs head on desk* If Justin was actually Inuit, he’d know that they don’t get free gas. That’s a common misconception in Canada. 

Taylor Lautner — Taylor is known for playing Jacob Black in The Twilight Series. The character is Native, Quileute, to be more specific. Taylor Launter is not Native. When asked about it, Taylor said the following: “I have some Native American in my distant background.” Later in an interview with his fellow co-stars Chaske Spencer, Alex Meraz and Kiowa Gordon confirmed Taylor isn’t Native American. 

Tinsel Korey — Since 2009, there have been numerous reports about Tinsel being another pretendian.  Apparently her real name is Harsha Patel and she is of Asian Indian descent. There’s a post about that here and here. Comedian Ryan McMahon backed up the claims in this tweet. 

Kelsey Chow — In July, Adam Beach called out Taylor Sheridan for not casting a Native actress in his TV show ‘Yellowstone’. Kelsey has claimed to be Cherokee (notice a pattern here?) and played a Native American character in Taylor’s new movie Wind River (which is pretty awful). She’s white and Chinese. 

People I’m not sure if they’re Native or not: 

Blair Redford — This article from 2010 claims he’s Native American along with being French, German and Irish. Since then we have yet to learn which tribe he’s from. He’s set to play Native American superhero John Proudstar in the FOX X-Men show The Gifted. He’s also played another Native American character Ethan Whitehorse in the ABC Family drama The Lying Game. 

Blu Hunt — She’s set to play the Cheyenne superhero Danielle ‘Mirage’ Moonstar in the X-Men movie Mutants. The announcement this past summer stirred controversy because she was listed as Western European on her website and is only Native because of her paternal grandfather. Another reason why everyone was up in arms is because Danielle is portrayed as a brown-skinned Native in the comics and Blu is light-skinned. 

if y’all could reblog this, that will be cool. 

25,000 miles is more than the circumference of the entire Earth…

The Navajo Nation IS 27,413 square miles, but hey, you can derail something worth talking about with your dumbass semantic gripe if you really wanna look like a douchebag. Anyway, here’s those donation links again if you want to apologize.

Navajo Relief Fund: http://www.nativepartnership.org/site/PageServer?pagename=nrf_index

Navajo Water Project: https://www.navajowaterproject.org/

NavajoYES (youth organization): http://www.navajoyes.org/donate/

yes

Lmmmmaaaaooo

BUT HE DIED THE SAME DAY HURRICANE SANDY STARTED

OH SHIT

I should be over being disappointed by now. I’m 34. I’ve been let down by more of my childhood/young adult heroes than I can count.

And I already knew Rowling had issues with representation, but I just couldn’t get over telling myself that, hey, a single mother made it as a writer! She got famous and rich! She pushed through all the horrible shit! I can too!

But now… now I just… every time I look at the HP books and films, I’m going to remember that in Rowling’s world, “medicine men” were frauds. That in Rowling’s world, “wands” are somehow more powerful and potent than medicine bags or peace pipes or any of the other innumerable objects various tribes use. That in Rowling’s world, the dark and dangerous stories of indigenous people are them being misguided. I mean, I’m not going to talk about skinwalkers except to say I know just enough to know you don’t fucking mess with them. Making them out to be like the European girls killed at Salem?

Holy shit.

I mean, not even getting into the logic fails of “America doesn’t have the pervasive boarding-school culture Britain does” and “America is huge why would there only be one school.” Not even getting into “why would every tribe have the same wizard/Muggle divide Europe did, before the Europeans showed up.” Some might have, sure, but many likely wouldn’t and the most cursory examination of our history and living practices would show that.

Not even getting into “The Native American magical community” what the actual fuck. Yeah, because we’re all one tribe, right?

It’s shoddy writing, it’s shoddy research, and it hurts. It just hurts.

My life is not fantasy. My culture, my fellow NDNs’ cultures, are not fucking fantasy. There is very real shit out there that Rowling is messing with. There were all sorts of ideas and legends she could have chosen, could have built on, there are any number of people I’m sure would have been happy to talk to her about those things their nation is willing to share. But I’m guessing she just Googled “native american legends” and ran with the first thing she saw that she liked, because I know damn well if she’d talked to any actual Native people (and especially any actual Navajo!) she never would’ve used the fucking skinwalker.

She went with the easy way out. She went with the colonialist narrative.

I shouldn’t be surprised. And I’m not. I just hurt.

Agreed. It’s hard to speak up when the only “representation” you get in the media is just stereotypes and lazy writing. I’m not sure how natives who are speaking up about other issues are going to be taken seriously when stories like these don’t even allow natives the courtesy of being acknowledged and respected as people.

Natives like me who weren’t raised in their culture deserve to hear stories from their people, not from far away out of touch British authors. It would’ve been the right thing to do if she had Native writers/creators write with her. She’s influential and one of the most popular authors of our time. If she had spoken up for Natives, people would’ve listened. Instead she just peddled stereotypes and falsities.

They were MAD, CONFUSED AND PRESSED that Marlon Brando would betray White Supremacy in this way. To this very day, they are TWISTED over this. And when Littlefeather got up there and READ THEM FOR FILTH, they GAGGED. For eons.

So I imagine there are people like me out there who’ve never even heard of Marlon Brando and are extremely confused over why this is important.

Marlon Brando was the Don in The Godfather, and in 1973, he was nominated for and won an Academy Award for it. However, he was also a huge Natives rights activist, and boycotted the ceremony because he felt that Hollywood’s depictions of Native Americans in the media led to the Wounded Knee Incident (which I was always taught as “the second massacre at Wounded Knee” but apparently that’s not the real name). He sent Sacheen Littlefeather, an Apache Native rights activist, in his stead. Wikipedia’s article on her explains the rest:

That is what this gifset is about.

You have GOT to read up on this. The Wounded Knee Incident, Marlon Brando and Sacheen Littlefeather, Anna Mae Aquash. ALL OF IT. 

And the occupation of Alcatraz. And read Lakota Woman, by Mary Crow Dog. Read everything you can find about the American Indian Movement (AIM).

Reblogging this again now that Oscar buzz is in the air.

LOOK UP BRANDO AND THE FISHING WARS

This is from a documentary called Reel Injun:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1484114/

I watched it for research when I did an episode on Jim Jarmusch’s “Dead Man.” It’s full of some details that are pretty disgusting (indigenous languages were often faked by playing English audio backwards) and mildly hilarious (the reason so many white people think Native Americans wore headbands was because the white stuntmen who played Indians in the movies needed a way to keep their wigs on during fights) and at the end, kind of uplifting. It highlights the wave of indigenous cinema in the 90′s and 00′s in the Americas as well as Australia and New Zealand, while talking to some of the most prominent Native American actors of today about their experiences in Hollywood.

Highly recommended if you’re interested in Native American history. Or film history.

this is the abridged pop quiz i’m giving my students tomorrow, in intro to ethnic studies–i would really encourage my non-native followers to consider these questions as well, and to challenge themselves in trying to answer these without the help of the internet (of course look it up later, but i think it’s important to take a minute and recognize things we are ignorant on before blindly googling it).

i’m also doing a class-wide (image-based) quiz to see who can name famous Native people versus Indian mascots, and culturally appropriative fashion brands versus the cultures from which the trendy item in question originates. i have an hour and fifteen minutes to cover all Native experiences of racism post-1850–that in and of itself is a racist requirement of me. what i have learned to do with the time allotted to me is push students to recognize just how incredibly ignorant they are re: Native peoples, cultures, and political issues, rather than try to cram a bunch of stuff in their heads. It’s better for them to walk out stunned and humbled at how little they all know than with frantically scrawled notes they’re not gonna keep or remember.

I am ashamed to admit that I cannot answer ANY of these questions without the help of the internet. @nitanahkohe, thank you, sincerely, for your thoughtful and highly effective creativity in teaching, and thank you for sharing this in a place where I could see it. "Humbled" doesn't begin to describe it.

Support Native Americans

•support dark skinned natives •support light skinned natives •support white passing natives •support natives whose first languages are their tribal languages •support natives who cannot speak their tribal language •support native children who have to teach themselves about their tribal culture •support natives living on reservations •support native kids who get asked if their parents live on a reservation •support native kids who are taught to be embarrassed and ashamed of their heritage •support métis people who might not know their heritage •support métis people who aren’t native passing •support native people who stick to traditional hair and dress styles •support natives who practice their tribal religion •support natives who follow mainstream fashion •support natives who are told they’re “too Indian” •support natives who are told they’re “not Indian enough”

•but above all, listen to what we have to say about our cultures, our histories, our future, our issues and our people.

this is the first post i have EVER seen about native americans, i really appreciate this