Indigenous People’s Day Photo Project 2013

"Dear Columbus…"

Photo Credit: Andrew Burlingham

South Puget Sound Community College’s Diversity & Equity Center

Olympia, WA 

Yes. YES. Fuck Columbus forever. I’ll always distinctly remember being a -child-, maybe 7? and even then being so horribly angry about Columbus. I was originally vocal about it. The real kicker? I quickly learned to shut up about how I felt. I tried to talk about how infuriating it was to learn how Columbus invaded and destroyed an entire native people. And every adult I talked to tried to convince me everything Columbus did was totally okay. Apparently children aren’t supposed to learn about Columbus and find him to be anything but ~brave~ and ~adventurous~ or some shit. I’m still, even now, fucking appalled anyone, ANYONE, could so easily and thoughtlessly try to indoctrinate a small child into accepting genocide of native people. It’s …disgusting, and so extremely telling of how far our culture will go in its dehumanization and erasure of the violence native people endured and continue to endure at our hands.

So. Yes. Fuck Columbus. I hope someday we all celebrate Indigenous People Day and only remember Columbus for his crimes against humanity.

It's like you've never even picked up a history book, my god. 

During World War II, Josephine Baker served with the French Red Cross and was an active member of the French resistance movement. Using her career as a cover Baker became an intelligence agent, carrying secret messages written in invisible ink on her sheet music. She was awarded the Croix de Guerre, and received a Medal of the Resistance in 1946. In 1961 she received the highest French honor, the Legion d’Honneur awarded by then President Charles de Gaulle.

Our loss, U.S.A….

If you don’t admire the shit out of J. Baker, who was also pretty openly bisexual and adopted NINETEEN children in addition to the badassery mentioned above, I want you to go sit in the corner and think about your life choices.

um she was also a huge civil rights activist and her refusal to perform for segregated audiences at major clubs that were fallin over themselves to book her helped de-segregate vegas performance venues

aaaand she had a pet cheetah

The best thing she ever did was leave the US

Girls pose by a jail that recalls the witch trials of 1692 in Salem, Massachusetts. Photo taken in 1945.

I recently learned that the water in Salem was contaminated with the fungus from which LSD is derived and a legitimate theory for the whole thing is that everyone in the town was tripping balls 

This might be the greatest thing ive ever seen on the internet

We did a whole massive thing on this in history. I believe the fungus in question is called Ergot and it’s terrifying. It makes your muscles spasm so when they had seizures that was the reason, not because they were possessed. One woman had to be strapped to her bed, she was seizing so bad. And, like ‘theybuildbuildings’ said, it had the same effects as LSD; as soon as you touch it, let alone consume it, it messes with your entire system. The worst thing is, you practically always had a bad trip. Many complained about bugs crawling under their skin or monsters emerging from the shadows to scratch and bite at them until they were screaming. It was a horrendous thing and the worst part is, Ergot is still around. It grows on crops and, if your wheat isn’t properly treated, it can be eaten and you’ll most likely experience the same as the women of Salem. 

god i love history

This is hella cool and almost correct… 

The effects on the people of Salem were probably from consuming bread with the fungus in it, not from contaminated water. And apparently rye is way more commonly affected than wheat. In fact, often the members of the clergy were able to afford nicer bread made from wheat and thus were not as commonly affected.

You don’t go on a spasm-y trip just by touching it. You have to consume it for weeks, which results in chronic poisoning. ( If you stop eating it early enough, you may recover. So when people suffering from these “demonic possessions” took refuge in churches and stopped eating low-grade rye bread they were sometimes miraculously healed. 

More interesting facts:

Ergot poisoning can result in convulsions & hallucinations, or it can cause gangrene, depending on which group of active alkaloids are present. (Horrifying, either way.) It killed a lot of people in Europe in the Middle Ages. 

In Europe, often there was a strong correlation between wet summers (which provide ideal conditions for ergot) and reports of witchcraft/ possession. And in Norway and Scotland, records of witch persecution are only found in areas where rye was grown and used to make bread.

And I just learned right now that one author dude translated the word “Beowulf” as “barley-wolf” which could indicate a connection to ergot. The LSD-like effects could be a valid explanation for stories of Old Norse warriors going into the a sort of trancelike battle rage.

(this is exactly the kind of stuff my herbology medicinal plants class is about, it’s so cool omfg. we had a lecture on ergot last week.)

BETTY BOOP - Origin Ms. ESTHER JONES, known by her stage name, “Baby Esther,” was an ” African-American singer and entertainer of the late 1920s. She performed regularly at the (The Cotton Club) in Harlem.  Singer Helen Kane saw her act in 1928 and (COPIED or stole ). Ms Jones’ ‘baby’ Singing Style! > for a recording of “I Wanna Be Loved By You.”  Ms. Jones’ singing style went on to become the inspiration for (( Max Fleischer )) cartoon character’s Voice and SINGING style of BETTY BOOP, was YES a Black Woman.  Her singing trademark Was.. “boop oop a doop “.. In a baby voice at the cotton club in Harlem. -  Esther Jones who’s stage name was “Baby Esther” was a popular entertainer at Harlem’s Cotton Club in the late 1920s. Baby Esther interpolated words such as ‘Boo-Boo-Boo’ & ‘Doo-Doo-Doo’ in songs at a cabaret.  Helen Kane SAW Baby’s act in 1928 and (stole) Used it in her hit song I Wanna Be Loved By You. An early test sound film was also discovered, which featured Baby Esther performing in this style, disproving Kane’s claims. Baby Esther’s manager also testified that Helen Kane had saw Baby Esther’s cabaret act in 1928.  Supreme Court Judge Edward J. McGoldrick ruled: “The plaintiff has failed to sustain either cause of action by proof of sufficient probative force”. In his opinion, the “baby” technique of singing did not originate with Kane. $250,000 infringement lawsuit Esther’s manager also testified that , Helen Kane & her manager , saw Baby’s act somewhere between 1928-1929. Scholar Robert G.O’ Meally said, Betty Boop The WHITE CARTOON herself had, as it were, a BLACK grandmother in her backround. Baby Esther was presumed dead by 1934, just when the lawsuit had ended. @Learn your History or they will Hide it from you. @BLACK-American MUSIC and DANCE Styles. - Influential WorldWide “

don’t forget that Betty Boop was a major influence in Osamu Tezuka’s work. Tezuka is considered one of the fathers of modern anime with the “big doe eyes” style so to some extent all anime girls nowadays owe part of their legacy to this lady!

White privilege

Forty-six million white adults today can trace the origins of their family wealth to the Homestead Act of 1862. This bill gave away valuable acres of land for free to white families, but expressly precluded participation by Blacks.

"how do I have privilege?"

Fun facts about lipstick!!!

Hey! I love talking about the history of cosmetics. You should totally check that out.

the first female chinese immigrant to america was a sixteen-year-old girl who was part of a cultural exhibit where she sat in a life-size diorama and people watched her eat with chopsticks while wearing silk clothes and that’s really all you need to know about the commodification of chinese women

Afong Moy.  Her name was Afong Moy.  Say the names of people who should be remembered.

This is a hairstyle timeline that is meant to cover the Taishō era (1912-1926). However the dates for many reference photographs were rather vague, so some might actually fall into Shōwa era (1926-1989). Regrettably I couldn’t cover EVERY single hairstyle from this period so please consider this to be a brief overview. There are no Geisha, Maiko, etc featured here; they will be covered in another fashion timeline someday.

Some interesting notes about Meiji-Taisho era from Liza Crihfield Dalby’s Kimono: Fashioning Culture (1993)

·         “Men and women of Meiji had gulped up Western culture with all the indiscriminate enthusiasm of new converts. By Taishō, Japanese sensibilities vis-à-vis the West were much smoother. This was Japan’s political equivalent of the … social scene of the American Roaring Twenties. Japanese born during Taishō would enter adolescence as modern boys and girls. Significantly, women opened their closets to Western clothing during this decade. Kimono has lost space ever since.” (pg. 124)

·         “By 1915 Japan was beginning to feel itself a world-class nation, more confident of its military strength and social development. Ordinary Japanese were inclined to look at their society in light of how life might be bettered by adapting foreign ideas, or made more interesting by acquiring foreign fashions. Borrowing from the West was of course not new, but it had now become a more reciprocal and respectable process.” (pg. 124)

WOMEN’s HAIR:

·         In the Meiji era “a few women cropped their hair, but these courageous souls were simply regarded as weird” and indecent (pg. 75)

·         “If cutting the hair short was too radical [in Meiji Japan], as public reaction attests, women’s hair did gain a new option in the sokugami style, a pompadour resembling the chignons worn by Charles Dana Gibson’s popular Gibson girls. The further the front section, or ‘eaves,’ of the hair protruded, the more daring the style. The sokugami style bunched the hair, coiling it in a bun at the crown of the head. Unlike traditional coiffures, sokugami did not require the heavy use of pomade, pins, bars, strings, and false hair to hold its shape. Its appeal was promoted as healthier and more rational – hence, more enlightened- than the old ways.” (pg. 75)

Flappers shaming Miley Cyrus.

Oddly enough we could say that Miley Cyrus is following solidly in the appropriative footsteps of white flappers, who in the 1920s grabbed national attention and stirred alarmism concerning the end of civilization because they partied to Black music, wore their hair short like Josephine Baker (who fled US racism to become a superstar in Europe), and imitated dance moves from Baker and other Black dancers. The famously flapperesque Charleston was lifted from the African American dance called the Juba, which had West African roots and was danced in secret in the South and the Caribbean. The dance sped up when it reached Harlem, giving birth to both tap dancing and the Broadway hit called The Charleston, which spread like wildfire from there. White people didn’t sway their hips this scandalously prior to that era, making flappers roughly equivalent to white twerkers of the Jazz Age.

This is 100% true. The period from the jazz age to the beat generation, comparatively speaking was the height of cultural appropriation of black art. The beat generation used lingo popularized by Lester Young. They then appropriated the style, dress, and lingo of bebop musicians like Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, down to the beret, glasses, and soul patch. Bebop musicians, Parker and Gillespie in particular, were the blueprint of their image. Norman Mailer wrote an essay titled “The White Negro" that tackles this phenomenon. I’m no fan of Norman Mailer, but at least he admitted that white people were stealing from blacks. He wrote it in 1957.

With regards to the flappers, apart from Josephine Baker, they also liberally borrowed from black vaudeville performers. They would copy dance moves from black performers, and then introduce it as their own. Many dances attributed to whites are from black vaudeville performers who were forced to perform on the chitlin’ circuit because of segregation and Jim Crow laws.

It really is astonishing how nothing has changed in this regard. For example, people to this day still call Benny Goodman “the king of swing”, when what he did was procure charts for arrangements from Fletcher Henderson, a black man. Goodman’s biggest hits were from Henderson. It’s amazing how much credit Goodman gets for another man’s work. Of course Goodman became “the king of swing”, while Fletcher Henderson remains a footnote in history. How a white man becomes the king of something innovated by blacks is astounding. Benny Goodman is called “the king of swing”. Paul Whiteman is called “the king of jazz”. Elvis Presley is called “the king of rock n roll”. Is Eminem the king of rap? What about Justin Timberlake and Robin Thicke with r&b? Miley is soon on her way to become “the queen of twerking”.

Anyway, apart from getting his charts from Fletcher Henderson, Benny Goodman got his ass handed to him by Chick Webb at the Savoy Ballroom when they had a battle of the bands. Goodman is often noted as being one of the few white men in the segregation era to have black men in his band, and the narrative is typically presented as if he did it out of benevolence. He did it because there was no way to get around the fact that swing music was the domain of black folks, and he poached the best black players he could find to bolster his band, and black musicians went with him because as a white man, he was able to pay them more than black bandleaders, and they wouldn’t have to deal with indignity while traveling. Many hotels refused black bands, so they often had to sleep in cars, bus terminals, or crash at the homes of hospitable blacks. A big portion of Duke Ellington’s money went towards renting out train cars and making sure his orchestra had a place to sleep while on the road because hotels often turned them down because they were black. These were issues Goodman wasn’t going to face. Black musicians certainly didn’t go with him because he was the best. Goodman even later hired Henderson to arrange and play in his band. He wasn’t doing it because he loved black people. Black people were the ones creating and innovating. Where else would he get the best charts and arrangements? Now that the smoke has cleared and the dust has settled, Goodman gets all the credit. Funny how that works.

This stuff has been going on for a long time. Miley is the 2013 version. Twerking has been around for a long time, but Miley convulses on national tv and all of a sudden, dictionary definitions of twerking are made. Definitions complete with no mention of black people, like all this happened in a vacuum. It’s history repeating itself over and over again. I see the same thing happening with afrobeat music.

sources: [1] [2] [3] [4]

also an addendum to the hunger games slide, when they put out a casting call for the role of Katniss, they specifically asked for only caucasian actors to audition, which left out any possibility for any amazing PoC actors to have been discovered.

i hope this was informational and i didnt leave anything major out. if anything is wrong or needs to be updated, message me and i’l fix any fallacies!

A lot of white people who do black face think they are being “respectful”. That’s a result of ignorance. It’s not okay, obviously, but please don’t post their personal information such as their phone number and address in order to “teach them a lesson”. They’re just dumb, ignorant, white people who won’t do it anymore if they’re told why it’s racist.

Oh look, historical reasoning for some fucked up shit. It fits on my blog, yes it does.

~why is this book telling me george washington is a hero when he raped, murdered, and tortured people like me to get paid?

~why is this book telling me abraham lincoln graciously freed the slaves when he just wanted to save the union and thought people like me were inferior?

Why is this book telling me Egypt is in the Middle East and not apart of Africa ?

Stonehenge secrets revealed by underground map

Archaeologists have unveiled the most detailed map ever produced of the earth beneath Stonehenge and its surrounds.

They combined different instruments to scan the area to a depth of three metres, with unprecedented resolution.

Early results suggest that the iconic monument did not stand alone, but was accompanied by 17 neighbouring shrines.

Future, detailed analysis of this vast collection of data will produce a brand new account of how Stonehenge’s landscape evolved over time.

Among the surprises yielded by the research are traces of up to 60 huge stones or pillars which formed part of the 1.5km-wide “super henge” previously identified at nearby Durrington Walls. Read more.

My favorite source was Roman Warfare (Smithsonian History of Warfare) by Adrian Goldsworthy.  I would do another one of my PowerPoints on Roman tactics, but I doubt that’s in high demand.  

The last image came from ‘education.blurtit.com’, which, altogether, isn’t a half-bad website.

Ohhh, glorious!