#Book Indigenous Musicians

[whats-in-a-sentence]

Men and women carried initiation scars across their chests and painted their bodies with ochre. The men plucked their beards and stuck feathers in their hair. They were renowned fighters and musicians.

"Killing for Country: A Family History" - David Marr

[uwmspeccoll]

Cannupa Hanska Luger, New Myth, Future Technologies, 2021

Dana Claxton, Headdress-Jeneen, 2018

Teresa Baker, Hidatsa Red, 2022

Raven Chacon, For Zitkala Sa Series, 2019

Caroline Monnet, Echoes from a near future, 2022

Marie Watt, Skywalker/Skyscraper (Calling Sky World), 2021

Anna Tsouhlarakis, The Native Guide Project, 2019

Meryl McMaster, Harbourage for a Song, 2019

Marie Watt, Companion Species (Calling Back, Calling Forward), 2021

Staff Pick of the Week

An Indigenous Present proposes that a book can be a space for community engagement through the transcultural gathering of more than sixty contemporary Indigenous and Native artists. Published by BIG NDN Press and Delmonico Books in 2023, An Indigenous Present was conceived of and edited by Mississippi Choctaw and Cherokee artist Jeffrey Gibson (b. 1972) over the course of nearly two decades. 

In Gibson’s own words, “An Indigenous Present celebrates the work of visual artists, musicians, poets, choreographers, designers, filmmakers, performance artists, architects, collectives, and writers whose work offers fresh starting lines for Native and Indigenous art. But the book does not attempt comprehensiveness. Rather, those included here are makers I admire, have collaborated with or been inspired by, and who’ve challenged my thinking. . . . These artists and what they make will guide us to Indigenous futurities authored by us in unabashedly Indigenous ways.”  

An Indigenous Present features over 400 pages of color photographs, poetry, essays, and interviews resulting in a stunning visual experience for readers and a shift towards more inclusive art systems. The front cover art shown here is by Canadian artist Caroline Monnet entitled Indigenous Represent. 

View other posts from our Native American Literature Collection.

View more posts featuring Decorative Plates.

View other Staff Picks.

– Jenna, Special Collections Graduate Intern 

[allthecanadianpolitics]

A Juno-nominated musician from Attawapiskat, Ont., is leaning into his Cree culture and language in some new music and an upcoming book.

Adrian Sutherland, an Omushkegowuk Cree singer-songwriter, released a new song on Aug 11, called Notawe, meaning, "father." The term is also often used to describe "Creator."

Sutherland wants in his work to focus on what makes him unique.

"This was actually the first time I wrote a full song in Cree," said Sutherland in an interview with Dorothy Stewart on CBC North's Cree-language radio.

"Being Cree, being Indigenous, being from the far north and coming from the bush makes me different," said Sutherland. [...]

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

[aurora-daily]

A Creative Flight: AURORA Interviewed

An interview with AURORA by Susan Hansen for the Clash Magazine (June 24th, 2024)

An emotional meeting with the Norwegian star...

Alternative pop singer AURORA is a creative and political lead, an artist who shines a bright, much needed light on the world. 

A tour de force, Aurora Aksnes’ ambitious new LP is cause to celebrate, even if the state of the world fails to match. The distinguished musician is unafraid to share understanding and insights gained in the past few years, where much time was spent reading, studying and acquiring knowledge.  

The Norwegian singer-songwriter is on a composite journey that involves, but is not limited to, absorbing information, examining creativity and political activism. There is a strong conviction and the commitment shown is unwavering. 

Creativity first, however. A meeting with the singer is arranged, the location is central London, and Clash meets her on a cloudy afternoon in May. “I bought a notebook in the airport,” she tells us. What initially is at risk of seeming like a mundane snippet of information gains in significance, fairly rapidly. 

Her way of observing the clouds is anything but casual, it seems. A painter too, looking at them inspires something else; “I understand why we painted these clouds in the ancient days,” the singer considers. “They were so gorgeous. I was flying through them, looking at them, it was magical. I wrote down what I was seeing, it became a creative flight. It was spiritual.”

One of several core themes, spirituality is a recurring thread in AURORA’s body of work. Then there is a need to make a difference, to help instigate change, have an impact on the outside world, this might explain why she has more to offer than a hit-upon-hit chart artist, which is just how she likes it. Not feeling right about topics such as love, heart aches and revenge is one thing, her agenda is substantial.

“I rant about something that I feel is needed for the world,” she reflects. “It’s hard work to tune in on other things in our daily lives, when there’s so much going wrong outside of us, outside of our families. We’re all brought up to care about our inner circle. All the politics, all these things that we are so scared of outside our inner circle, I write about the outer circles, far away from people in our circles.”

Continuing to discuss, essentially arguing that things in the outer circle are a lot less distant than we think, saying that they actually have a profound effect on us. “I believe that those things far away really affect the things in here, without us being aware of it. I keep that in mind when I write.” 

Unsurprisingly, writing is the backbone, and so much has been achieved, racking up billions of streams, world tours, her book, The Gods We Can Touch published in 2022, selling 14,000 copies, the recent vocal contribution on ‘liMOusIne’ with alt icons Bring Me the Horizon, the list goes on. 

She is the first to admit that things can become too personal and overwhelming, simply be too open to cope with. A decade can go quickly, she knew it was time to do things differently. “It’s very heart on sleeve,” she admits. “It can seem very personal. This album is the first time in my career, where it’s more personal. I was going through something for a long time, something that pulled me so far down that I actually needed music for myself.”

Fair point. But there is AURORA, the activist and environmental campaigner. A Greta Thunberg of music and art, where a dedicated, compassionate approach is demonstrated, an engagement of long-term commitment. What can seem fairly abstract about her work becomes more and more tangible as our conversation progresses. “It’s easier to call it activism. I just always loved nature, I want people to love her too. We need her and indigenous people are connected to that. To me everything comes back to nature, I’ve been very aware of it for years.” 

Honest, direct engagement is priority. Through The Rainforest Alliance contact with some groups was established, including conversations with three female tribe leaders in Colombia, Brazil and Argentina. “They remember a lot of things that we need to remember,” she states with a hint of frustration in her voice. “I cannot believe that we are attacking the very groups, who are protecting what’s left of the world and actually have so much to teach us. That’s a big thing for me.”

She maintains that it makes little sense to “attack the people who are connected to something, it’s like we want the world to forget. Taking the women who are the source of life, taking the children out who are the source of the future, those who are the connection to the past. We are killing everything.”

Viewing herself as a person whose role it is to influence and spread such words, makes arguing the opposite impossible and irrelevant. To her, listening goes beyond anything else, it’s about great listening skills, as is the quality to talk as a friend, as opposed to someone who lectures or patronises. The ability to talk as a friend combined with an urge to learn, educate and let oneself be educated along the way. 

The discovery of a passion for speaking about the environment started early on, even if she didn’t associate it with activism or identify it as such back then, she has been active since the age of sixteen. Her statement “art without politics is boring” is a huge part of who she is. The early realisation that she could use her voice, be someone who expresses ideas, opinions and perspectives was a conscious choice, it made her seek out the political path, which makes more sense now than ever before.   

There are situations where only a friend can help express the most uncomfortable facts, when things have gone too far. So often a friend can help provide what’s needed, and this is the type of voice AURORA aims to be and the voice she shares with others. It’s how she likes to communicate about important topics. 

The connection to nature and earth feeds right into album title ‘What Happened To the Heart?’ If the earth is the basis of everything the world should hold on to, then why is so little care shown, how did we become so far removed from it? “The situation in Palestine shows how willing we are to let unfair things happen, if it’s far away from us. It makes me ask the question now more than ever, what happened to the heart of human kind?” 

The prospect of seeing a colourful world, earth and nature turn into “grey nothingness” is less than favourable. The singer insists that “Mother Earth is the same, she doesn’t scream to us with words that we understand. She speaks to us in her own language, and many of us have forgotten that language completely.” 

What remains immensely positive is seeing how the urgency of this topic is dealt with so skilfully on the record. A concoction of style, a lofty effort, it doesn’t fail to thrill or educate. With its cathartic core it offers a spectrum of emotion, thought and sound palette. From electro-pop song ‘Some Type of Skin’, there are pulsating techno vibes as heard on ‘Starvation’, the more synth led ‘My Body Is Not Mine’ stands out, as does the more instinctive ‘My Name’. It’s an album of unlimited scope and invention. 

It has been an rewarding experience, which according to the singer offered numerous standalone moments. She worked closely with collaborators she knows well (Ane Brun and Matias Tellez), the record also captures fresh openings, new adventures that continue to invigorate. A meeting with a Chinese Pipa player (a string instrument similar to a lute) became the source of an enthralling collaboration. Impressing when she played one of the tracks, the singer just knew the player had to be involved. “I sent her the song. She came back to me the day after, it was amazing. What a woman, I loved the work and kept everything.”

It’s a busy year that continues to get even busier. With festival appearances in the diary, splendid events are in store this summer and include a return to Glastonbury and Roskilde. These are more than just cultural events, they involve engagement with different crowds, they are opportunities to engage with individuals. Each affair is different, people need different things every year, because the world keeps changing. 

“I’m excited to see how the youth inspires me, it makes me hopeful for the future. I want to see them be very much alive and well, which I hope and believe will happen. I’m excited to see the energies amongst people now, you get to see crowds and you realise what the audiences are like right now.”

The prospect of a world tour scheduled to begin later this year is massive, one of unmitigated excitement. “I’m very happy that I’m going out there. It’s beautiful that people accept me all over the place.” 

It’s hard to imagine a place or a country where AURORA isn’t accepted, given the amount of thought and consideration she puts into everything. It’s such a beautiful thing…

[trans-axolotl]

tagged by @librarycards to share my nine favorite books I've read this fall!

The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance by Rashid Khalidi

Disability Politics and Theory by AJ. Withers.

Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire edited by Jehad Abusalim, Jennifer Bing, and Mike Merryman-Lotze

What Can a Body Do? How We Meet the Built World by Sara Hendren.

Freedom is a Constant Struggle by Angela Davis

Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl's Confabulous Memoir by Kai Cheng Thom

Nobody Needs to Know: A Memoir by Pidgeon Pagonis

Black Madness :: Mad Blackness by Therí Alyce Pickens (Technically read this before the fall as well but reread it again and it's so good I wanted to put it on the list!)

The Future is Disabled by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

I also feel like I read a lot of really meaningful articles + interviews + poems this fall, so I'm also going to add my top nine short form pieces that I read as well.

Out of My Hands: A musician in prison pines for his bass. by David Annarelli.

Diaries of Blood: The secret artists within Israeli detention facilities. by Eman Al-Astal.

Notes on Craft: Writing in the Hour of Genocide by Fargo Nissim Tbakhi

Ableism Enables All Forms of Inequity and Hampers All Liberation Efforts by George Yancy interviewing Talila A. Lewis

Occupied Land is an Access Issue: Interventions in Feminist Disability Studies and Narratives of Indigenous Activism by Jess L. Cowing

Perfect Storm: A time to refrain from embracing by Richard Hunsinger.

Sick4Sick by torrin a. greathouse

Fuck Your Lecture on Craft, My People are Dying by Noor Hindi

Languaging Memory by leena aboutaleb

tagging anybody else who wants to! too tired to tag individual people, sorry.

[saddayfordemocracy]

Klee Benally (October 6, 1975 - December 31, 2023)

Indigenous activist, musician and artist Klee Benally has died.

The announcement of his death on Sunday was made on social media by members of his family and the group Indigenous Action.

A cause was not specified though in a recent social media post, Benally said he’d experienced health problems and had been in the hospital.

He was a member of the Navajo Nation and known for his work to protect sacred sites in the region, including the San Francisco Peaks, and fought against the use of reclaimed wastewater for snowmaking at Arizona Snowbowl and uranium mining near the Grand Canyon.

He recently published a book about his activism called "No Spiritual Surrender" and released a boardgame called "Burn the Fort."

Benally was a co-founder of the rock band Blackfire with his sister Jeneda and brother Clayson, and was the son of Berta Benally and Jones Benally.

He was 48.

Rest in Power !

[niaking]

My books are on sale for pride season. Usually $20 each, you can get all three volumes of Queer & Trans Artists of Color for only $50 (and free shipping) until the end of June. These books include interviews with Janet Mock, Julio Salgado, Vivek Shraya and more! Get the discount here. Full listing of interviewees below the break.

VOLUME ONE (2014) ​CO-EDITED BY TERRA MIKALSON & JESSICA GLENNON-ZUKOFF

Mixed-race queer art activist Nia King left a full-time job in an effort to center her life around making art. Grappling with questions of purpose, survival, and compromise, she started a podcast called We Want the Airwaves in order to pick the brains of fellow queer and trans artists of color about their work, their lives, and “making it” - both in terms of success and in terms of survival.

In this collection of interviews, Nia discusses fat burlesque with MAGNOLIAH BLACK, queer fashion with KIAM MARCELO JUNIO, interning at Playboy with JANET MOCK, dating gay Latino Republicans with JULIO SALGADO, intellectual hazing with KORTNEY RYAN ZIEGLER, gay gentrification with VAN BINFA, getting a book deal with VIRGIE TOVAR, the politics of black drag with MICIA MOSELY, evading deportation with YOSIMAR REYES, weird science with RYKA AOKI, gay public sex in Africa with NICK MWALUKO, thin privilege with FABIAN ROMERO, the tyranny of “self-care” with LOVEMME CORAZÓN, “selling out” with MISS PERSIA and DADDIE$ PLA$TIK, the self-employed art-activist hustle with LEAH LAKSHMI PIEPZNA-SAMARASINHA, and much, much more. Buy book one here.

VOLUME TWO (2016) ​CO-EDITED BY ELENA ROSE

Building on the groundbreaking first volume, Queer and Trans Artists of Color: Stories of Some of Our Lives, Nia King is back with a second archive of interviews from her podcast We Want the Airwaves. She maintains her signature frankness as an interviewer while seeking advice on surviving capitalism from creative folks who often find their labor devalued.

In this collection of interviews, Nia discusses biphobia in gay men’s communities with JUBA KALAMKA, helping border-crossers find water in the desert with MICHA CÁRDENAS, trying to preserve Indigenous languages through painting with GRACE ROSARIO PERKINS, revolutionary monster stories with ELENA ROSE, using textiles to protest police violence with INDIRA ALLEGRA, trying to respectfully reclaim one’s own culture with AMIR RABIYAH, taking on punk racism with MIMI THI NGUYEN, the imminent trans women of color world takeover with LEXI ADSIT, queer life in WWII Japanese American incarceration camps with TINA TAKEMOTO, hip-hop and Black Nationalism with AJUAN MANCE, making music in exile with MARTÍN SORRONDEGUY, issue-based versus identity-based organizing with TRISH SALAH, ten years of curating and touring with the QTPOC arts organization Mangos With Chili with CHERRY GALETTE, raising awareness about gentrification through games with MATTIE BRICE, self-publishing versus working with a small press with VIVEK SHREYA, and the colonial nature of journalism school with KILEY MAY. The conversation continues. Buy book two here.

VOLUME THREE (2019) ​CO-EDITED BY MALIHA AHMED

Is it possible to make art and make rent without compromising your values? Nia King set out to answer this question when she started We Want the Airwaves podcast in 2013. In her Queer & Trans Artists of Color book series, Nia collects podcast interviews — with Black, Latinx, Asian, Middle Eastern and Indigenous LGBTQ writers, musicians and visual artists — which feature both incredible storytelling and practical advice.

In the latest installment of the Queer & Trans Artists of Color series, Nia discusses performing at the White House with VENUS SELENITE, the global nature of colorism with KAMAL AL-SOLAYLEE, writing for Marvel Comics with GABBY RIVERA, using lies to tell unspeakable truths with KAI CHENG THOM, Black mental health with ANTHONY J. WILLIAMS, curating diverse anthologies with JOAMETTE GIL, growing up trans in rural Idaho with MEY RUDE, covering crime as a baby-faced reporter with SAM LEVIN, feminist approaches to journalism with SARAH LUBY BURKE, documenting Black punk history with OSA ATOE, crossing color lines with QWO-LI DRISKILL, fat hairy brown goddesses with PARADISE KHANMALEK, the usefulness of anger with JIA QING WILSON-YANG, transitioning as death and rebirth with ARIELLE TWIST, surviving homelessness and touring the world with STAR AMERASU and much, much more. Buy book three here.

[diarythebookwyrm]

Insane Shit I was Taught as a Mormon (in no particular order)

That all indigenous people in North America were actually Jews who sailed from somewhere in the Middle East all the way to somewhere in either South, Central, or North America in 600 BC.

That somehow these Jews started out white (which...is like Jesus being white, but sure Jan) and then as they became more "sinful" they became darker skinned.

Oh, and by 300 AD all the Nephites (the "white and delightsome" and "holy" people) were killed in a battle with the Lamanites (the sinful and darkskinned people) with only one Nephite left named Moroni who buried an abridged history carved on gold plates, a special translation stone called the Urim and Thumim in a hill in New York State for Joseph Smith, Jr. to find in 1823

That Joseph Smith, Jr. translated the Book of Mormon by "wearing" the Urim and Thumim, which were supposedly a breastplate with lenses set into the shoulders like some weird goggles that you could adjust. (This was official Church History until the last like...twenty years or so, when they finally started admitting how he really "translated" the gold plates. I'll go into that later)

More under the cut, because there's a Lot of Weird Shit

That Joseph Smith, Jr. and Oliver Cowdery received the Aaronic (or "lesser") priesthood by a river in Philadelphia from the spirit of John the Baptist, and then the Melchizedek (or "higher") priesthood by that same river from Peter, James and John (yes, Jesus' companions/disciples).

That Quetzalcoatl was actually how the Aztecs explained Jesus Christ coming to the New World during the three days before he appeared to his apostles in Jerusalem. I wish I was making this one up.

That there were three Nephites who were basically the New World Peter, James and John who told Jesus they wanted to "tarry" on earth until the second coming. This is such a Thing (TM) among Mormons that ppl claim to this day to have had interactions with the Three Nephites. like it's wild how much they buy into this, along with the idea that John the Beloved is still walking around. There's a whole ass Christmas book (with included musical accompaniment CD--yes, really--because everyone has A Song) about a woman discovering the True Meaning of Christmas (TM) by being a caretaker nurse to a guy who claims to be John the Beloved that's written by a popular Mormon musician.

That Joseph Smith, Jr. only ever had three "extra" wives, because he didn't really want to practice polygamy, but God made him do it.

That Joseph Smith, Jr. was killed for being the True Voice of God, and not because he was a lying, narcissistic sack of shit. (more on that later)

That God is an alien (they don't say that but come on) who lives on a Star/Planet (they use the term star, but there's no way anything lives on a star) called Kolob. There's a whole ass hymn that they just straight up only sing in church on rare occasions that's all about how God lives on Kolob. The reason they don't sing it? because they KNOW how insane it sounds, and they don't want people to know just how fucking weird they are.

That if you are a Truly Good Mormon in life and get all your appropriate ordinances done (like being married in the Temple. you legit cannot enter Super Heaven without that), then you go to Super Heaven The Celestial Kingdom. And if you are the Specialist Boi (it's almost certainly gonna be all men lbr) then you go to the Highest Level of Super Heaven the Celestial Kingdom and get your own planet to be God for.

That there are three tiers of Heaven. Terrestrial (for those who did okay for being not Mormon Godless Heathens), Telestial (for those who Did Accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, but weren't quite Special Enough for Super Heaven), and Celestial aka Super Heaven.

That Adam (as in Adam and Eve) was actually the Archangel Michael given a human body because he was a Super Special Boi who helped God and Jesus create the world.

Lies I Learned the Truth of Once I Put in Minimal Effort:

That the Urim and Thumim weren't real. The way Joseph Smith actually "translated" the Book of Mormon was by putting a "seer stone" in a hat, putting his face in the hat to seal out all the light, and "seeing" the words printed on the stone. This was also a scam he used several years before he started "translating" to find hidden treasure. He was arrested for fraud for doing this in Philadelphia, which was why his future father-in-law didn't want Emma Hale (later Emma Smith) to marry Joseph in the first place.

The seer stone looked like this:

That Joseph Smith didn't just have three "bonus wives" who were poor women with no man to financially support them, but actually closer to 35. At least eleven of these wives were teenagers when he coerced them into marrying him. At least two were polyandrous, where Joseph coerced both the woman and her legal husband into letting him marry the woman in question. The youngest and most scandalous of these girls was Helen Mar Kimball, who was fourteen. Several of these women then went on to marry Brigham Young, who had a total of fifty-six wives.

Joseph claimed that he was "encouraged" to practice polygamy by an angel with a "drawn sword" and used this to coerce the young women and girls into accepting his proposal.

That Joseph wasn't killed for being The One True Prophet, but for the rumors of him being a polygamist who married children. He was arrested for destroying a federally owned printing press where a former Mormon was printing pamphlets about the girls Joseph Smith was forcing to marry him. The mob that came to Carthage Jail were there because they heard the rumors and wanted to get rid of a pervert, basically.

The Mormon Church lies about a lot of their history. And even when they do finally admit the truth about it, they hide it so you have to really go hunting for the proof in their "approved" sites.

[uwmspeccoll]

It’s Feral Friday! 

This week we’re highlighting Petroglyphs, a chapbook of poems by Shawnee/Cayuga poet and indigenous activist Barney Bush (1944–2021). This 96-page edition was published in Greenfield Center, New York by Greenfield Review Press in 1982 and features drawings by Meenjit Tatsii (b. 1954). 

Greenfield Review Press was founded in 1970 by Abenaki writer (and current poet laureate of Saratoga Springs, NY) Joseph Bruchac (b. 1942) and his wife Carol Bruchac (1942-2011). While the Greenfield Review, a cross-cultural magazine featuring poetry and storytelling, ended its run in 1987, the press grew into a non-profit multicultural publisher with the mission of “giving voice to marginalized peoples by amplifying their wisdom, stories, and experiences”. Since its inception, the press has released over 150 books and anthologies of contemporary poetry and fiction (25 of which are in our collection).  

In addition to his work as a writer, Barney Bush was a musician and spoken word performer. He was also an educator who was instrumental in the establishment of the Institute of the Southern Plains (a Cheyenne Indian school located in Oklahoma) as well as the development of numerous university-level Native American studies programs. 

Meenjit Tatsii (also known as Christy Vezolles) is an artist, writer, educator, art appraiser & collector, and a member of the Shawnee Nation United Remnant Band. She began her professional work as the illustrator and traditional crafts columnist for her tribal newspaper (TOSAN) in 1976. Her work (which includes drawing, printmaking, beadwork, leatherwork, and pottery) has been exhibited nationally.   

--Ana, Special Collections Graduate Intern 

View more Feral Friday posts.

View more Native American literature posts.

View more Greenfield Review Press posts.

View more Joseph Bruchac posts. 

[maleswillbemale]

Are there any Lakota feminists you admire?

It's a little hard to compile a list of Lakota feminists specifically. While there are some, there aren't enough, and I'd like to broaden my answer to cover more than just Lakota women fighting for feminism for Indigenous women all over the world. I hope that's okay.

These are women I encourage anyone to look up and check out their work, we all come from different backgrounds so I might not agree with/have experienced everything shared by them but I think every Indigenous woman's voice is important!

Jihan Gearon - Navajo, feminist and artist

Tarcila Rivera Zea - Quechuan, feminist activist, founder of multiple organizations for Indigenous women

Debora Barros Fince - Waayu, activist and human rights defender and lawyer in Colombia

Rauna Kuokkanen - Sami, professor and Indigenous feminist activist

Aileen Moreton-Robinson - Goenpul, Indigenous feminist and author, Australia's first Indigenous Distinguished Professor

Sarah Eagle Heart - Lakota, author and co-founder of Return to the Heart Foundation

Madonna Thunder Hawk - Lakota, civil rights activist and co-founder of Women of All Red Nations

Mandeí Juma - Chief of the Juma

Ávelin Kambiwá - Kambiwá, specialist in public policies on gender/race, feminist in Brazil

Jodi Voice Yellowfish - Creek, Lakota, and Cherokee, founder and chair of the MMIW Texas Rematriate organization

Wilma Mankiller - Cherokee, first female principal chief of her nation

Annie Mae Aquash - Mi'kmaq, member of AIM, deserves justice for her murder

Jolie Varela - Paiute, led a hike with indigenous women across their cultural land as an expression of sovereignty, founder of Indigenous Women Hike

Lee Maracle - Stó꞉lō, feminist author

Tillie Black Bear - Lakota, activist for domestic violence towards Indigenous women

Other Indigenous women I look up to/admire, not necessarily feminist specific:

The Bearhead Sisters - Sister trio singing group, Wilhnemme

Acosia Red Elk - Umatilla, jingle dancer

Deb Haaland - Laguna Pueblo, Interior Secretary for the USA

Amelia Marchand - Colville, warrior against climate change

Lydia Jennings - Pascua Yaqui and Huichol, warrior against climate change

Roberta Tuurraq Glenn-Borade - Iñupiaq, warrior against climate change

Robin Wall Kimmerer - Potwatomi, fantastic author, please read her book Braiding Sweetgrass if you haven't already

Fawn Wood - Cree and Salish musician

Moving Robe Woman - Lakota warrior, fought against Custer in the Battle of Little Big Horn to avenge her murdered brother

Buffalo Calf Road Woman - Cheyenne warrior who was the one to knock General Custer off his horse during the Battle of Little Big Horn

Bernie LaSarte - Coeur d'Alene, program manager for the STOP Violence Program

Mary Jane Miles - Nez Perce, tribal vice chairman

Crystalyne Curley - Navajo, first woman to become Speaker of the Navajo Nation Council

Article about multiple Indigenous women in Mexico who run Indigenous women's centers

Lily Gladstone - Blackfeet and Nez Perce actress

Rebecca Thomas - Mi'kmaw poet and activist

Sacheen Littlefeather - Apache and Yaquim actress. Keeler is a horrible person and not worthy of listening to whatsoever, Sacheen Littlefeather did more activism for Indian Country than Keeler will ever accomplish in her miserable life

Brianna Theobald - Not Indigenous to my knowledge (I could definitely be wrong), but researched and wrote a wonderful book about the treatment of Indigenous women in regards to reproduction and sterilization

The brave woman at Standing Rock photographed by Ryan Vizzions. She has since passed away due to a car accident I believe, but I'm struggling to find her name. Once I find it, I'll update this post.

Honor the Grandmothers is a good book to hear Lakota and Dakota women elders share their experiences.

[devotioncrater]

it's annoying when people who compile music playlists & movie/book recommendations about Women's Rage have their lists be predominately white. white musicians/films centering on white women/novels that do both of these/etc. it's just like. a massive red flag to me because how the fuck are you going to sit there and claim you love to see unhinged women, yet you won't/don't listen to enraged music made by black women or indigenous women or asian women or latina women or arab women??? or watch movies about this topic made by them???? or even read their books????? get out and shut up because your rec lists are boring & your quiet racism is screaming

[mybeingthere]

The skirt belongs to an old good friend of mine, Victoria Vorreiter, who used it on the invitation card for her recent exhibition "Hmong Songs of Memory" (see in comments). Victoria has an astonishing tribal art collection (mainly from the Golden Triangle). She is a musician and writes books about  music as an important part of lives of indigenous people. http://www.tribalmusicasia.com/victoria-vorreiter...

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

I just posted a tweet from a writer who had only two people show up to their reading. Tons of writers, some of them very well known, responded with similar stories. I've had my own experience of that as the writer with the tiny audience, but it reminded me of the time in 1990 when I was an audience of one and the amazing person gave the workshop anyway and it changed my life and generated books and a friendship that still flourishes, and thank you Bob Fulkerson, who was the giver that day. Here's an essay/chapter of Hope in the Dark about the impact of that first meeting with Bob, the faith of writers, the mystery of how it all unfolds, and other related things. Happily this chapter begins with another dear friend who I had no idea was going to become the great writer he is now recognized as.... ON THE INDIRECTNESS OF DIRECT ACTION A friend, Jaime Cortez, tells me I should consider the difference between hope and faith. Hope, he says, can be based on the evidence, on the track record of what might be possible—and in this book I’ve been trying to shift what the track record might be. But faith endures even when there’s no way to imagine winning in the foreseeable future; faith is more mystical. Jaime sees the American left as pretty devoid of faith and connects faith to what it takes to change things in the long term, beyond what you might live to see or benefit from. I argue that what was once the left is now so full of anomalies—of indigenous intellectuals and Catholic pacifists and the like—that maybe we have faith, some of us. Activism isn’t reliable. It isn’t fast. It isn’t direct either, most of the time, even though the term direct action is used for that confrontation in the streets, those encounters involving lawbreaking and civil disobedience. It may be because activists move like armies through the streets that people imagine effects as direct as armies, but an army assaults the physical world and takes physical possession of it; activists reclaim the streets and occasionally seize a Bastille or topple a Berlin Wall, but the terrain of their action is usually immaterial, the realm of the symbolic, political discourse, collective imagination. They enter the conversation forcefully, but it remains a conversation. Every act is an act of faith, because you don’t know what will happen. You just hope and employ whatever wisdom and experience seems most likely to get you there. I believe all this because I’ve lived it, and I’ve lived it because I’m a writer. For twenty years I have sat alone at a desk tinkering with sentences and then sending them out, and for most of my literary life the difference between throwing something in the trash and publishing it was imperceptible, but in the past several years the work has started coming back to me, or the readers have. Musicians and dancers face their audience and visual artists can spy on them, but reading is mostly as private as writing. Writing is lonely, it’s an intimate talk with the dead, with the unborn, with the absent, with strangers, with the readers who may never come to be and who even if they read you will do so weeks, years, decades later. An essay, a book, is one statement in a long conversation you could call culture or history; you are answering something or questioning something that may have fallen silent long ago, and the response to your words may come long after you’re gone and never reach your ears, if anyone hears you in the first place. After all, this is how it’s been for so many books that count, books that didn’t shake the world when they first appeared but blossomed later. This is a model for how indirect effect can be, how delayed, how invisible; no one is more hopeful than a writer, no one is a bigger gambler. Thoreau’s 1849 essay “Civil Disobedience” finally found its readers in the twentieth century when it was put into practice as part of the movements that changed the world (Thoreau’s voice was little heard in his time, but it echoed across the continent in the 1960s and has not left us since. Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Walter Benjamin, and Arthur Rimbaud, like Thoreau, achieved their greatest impact long after their deaths, long after weeds had grown over the graves of most of the bestsellers of their lifetimes.) You write your books. You scatter your seeds. Rats might eat them, or they might rot. In California, some seeds lie dormant for decades because they only germinate after fire, and sometimes the burned landscape blooms most lavishly. Thought becomes action becomes the order of things, but no straight road takes you there. Nobody can know the full consequences of their actions, and history is full of small acts that changed the world in surprising ways. I was one of thousands of activists at the Nevada Test Site in the late 1980s, an important, forgotten history still unfolding out there where the United States and Great Britain have exploded more than a thousand nuclear bombs with disastrous effects on the environment and human health (and where the Bush administration would like to resume testing, thereby tearing up the last shreds of the unratified Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty). Some of the largest acts of civil disobedience in American history were committed when we would walk into the place to be arrested as trespassers, thousands in a day. There too, as in peace marches, just walking became a form of political speech, one whose directness was a delight after all the usual avenues of politicking: sitting in front of computers, going to meetings, making phone calls, dealing with money. Among the throng arrested were Quakers, Buddhists, Shoshone, Mormons, pagans, anarchists, veterans, and physicists. We would barely make the news in the United States. But we were visible on the other side of the world. Our acts inspired the Kazakh poet Olzhas Suleimenov on February 27, 1989, to read a manifesto instead of poetry on live Kazakh TV, a manifesto demanding a shutdown of the Soviet test site in Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan, and to call a meeting. Five thousand Kazakhs gathered at the writers’ union the next day and formed a movement that shut down the nuclear test site. They named themselves the Nevada-Semipalatinsk Antinuclear Movement, and they acted in concert with us. Us by that time included the Western Shoshone who had come to endorse our actions and point out that we and the United States government were on their land; the Kazakhs identified with these indigenous people. Anyway, the Soviet test site was shut down. The catalyst was Suleimenov, and though we in Nevada were his inspiration, what gave him his platform was his poetry in a country that loves poets. There’s a wonderful parable by Jorge Luis Borges. In the last years of the thirteenth century, God tells a leopard in a cage, “You live and will die in this prison so that a man I know of may see you a certain number of times and not forget you and place your figure and symbol in a poem which has its precise place in the scheme of the universe. You suffer captivity, but you will have given a word to the poem.” The poem is the Divine Comedy; the man who sees the leopard is Dante. Perhaps Suleimenov wrote all his poems so that one day he could stand up in front of a TV camera and deliver not a poem but a manifesto. And Arundhati Roy wrote a ravishing novel, The God of Small Things, that catapulted her to international stardom, perhaps so that when she stood up to oppose dams and corporations and corruption and the destruction of the local, people would notice. Or perhaps they opposed the ravaging of the earth so that poetry too would survive in the world. A couple of years ago, a friend wrote me to urge me to focus on the lyrical end of my writing rather than activism and I wrote back, “What is the purpose of resisting corporate globalization if not to protect the obscure, the ineffable, the unmarketable, the unmanageable, the local, the poetic, and the eccentric? So they need to be practiced, celebrated, and studied too, right now.” I could have added that these acts themselves become forms of resistance; the two are not necessarily separate practices. All those years that I went to the Nevada Test Site to oppose nuclear testing, the experience was also about camping in the desert, about the beauty of the light and the grandeur of the space, about friendship and discovery. The place gave me far more than I could ever give it. Resistance is usually portrayed as a duty, but it can be a pleasure, an education, a revelation. The year after the birth of the Nevada-Semipalatinsk Antinuclear Movement, when some of its members were already with us at the peace camp next to the Nevada Test Site, I was the only one who attended a workshop there on Nevada and the military. The man giving it was visibly disappointed but gave it splendidly for me alone. As we sat in the rocks and dust and creosote bush of the deep desert on a sunny day, the great Nevada organizer Bob Fulkerson taught me that the atrocities of nuclear testing were not unique in that state with a fifth of all the military land in the country and invited me to travel into its remote reaches. He is still a cherished friend of mine and still the executive director of a coalition he founded a few years later, the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada (PLAN), the most potent statewide group of its kind, bringing together environmental, labor, and human rights groups. What came of Bob’s invitation changed my life and had much to do with my book Savage Dreams, the first half of which is about the Test Site and the strands of its history wrapped around the world, and before there was the book there was an essay version of what the Test Site and Bob taught me that appeared in a magazine with circulation of about half a million. A few years ago I went back to the Test Site for another spring action, and there I met several students from Evergreen College in Washington who had decided to come down because they had been reading Savage Dreams in class. If you’re lucky, you carry a torch into that dark of Virginia Woolf’s, and if you’re really lucky you’ll sometimes see to whom you’ve passed it, as I did on that day (and if you’re polite, you’ll remember who handed it to you). I don’t know if the Evergreen kids have become great activists or died in a car crash on the way home, but I know that for them I was a leopard prompting a word or two of the poem of their own lives, as Bob was for me. Borges’s parable continues. On his deathbed, Dante is told by God what the secret purpose of his life and work was. “Dante, in wonderment, knew at last who and what he was and blessed the bitterness of his life.” One day in Auschwitz, the writer Primo Levi recited a canto of Dante’s Inferno to a companion, and the poem about hell reached out from six hundred years before to roll back Levi’s despair and his dehumanization. It was the canto about Ulysses, and though it ends tragically, it contains the lines “You were not made to live like animals But to pursue virtue and know the world,” which he recited and translated to the man walking with him. Levi lived, and wrote marvelous books of his own, poetry after Auschwitz in the most literal sense. In 1940, in his last letter to a friend before his death, the incomparable, uncategorizable German-Jewish essayist and theorist Walter Benjamin wrote, “Every line we succeed in publishing today—no matter how uncertain the future to which we entrust it—is a victory wrenched from the powers of darkness.”

[many thanks to Rebecca Solnit]

[bonesandpoemsandflowers]

Anyway, I'm having a lot of Thoughts on the process and on writing lately because there's this horror author I like--

or, back up. you know that tweet that's like "all albums are surprise albums to me," because the OP doesn't follow any musician news that closely? same. okay. apply that same blissful lack of curiosity to an author's back catalogue.

if it's not a series, I have NO idea what was published when. I do not care! Either I don't like the writing (tbh most contemporary genre writing) and I'll read none of it, or I do like the writing and I will DEVOUR THE ENTIRE BACK CATALOGUE.

so there I am, knee deep in some good horror shit, when things start getting...blander. more White audience friendly. less horror. more girlboss, in the most shallow way.

less occult, in very many meanings of the word.

some books are very good, steeped in indigenous lore, highly personal, blue collar, brilliant, no class or gender of character is consistently the butt of the joke. and some books are: haha, aren't men stupid brutes? yes, even our men of color! our indigenous men! they're just so stupid! they deserve to die. GIRL POWER!

every protagonist is now a college educated girlboss.

and it eventually dawned on me: oh no, this author is writing to a prompt. check the dates.

and oh, the trend is so consistent. the more men are pathetic, the more flawless the female lead, the newer the book is.

the more gritty (and yes, authentic) the lore, the older it is.

Now, you might think that just means I'm old and my taste is dated. And I would argue that if by "dated," you mean, "men are allowed to be written as people," then yeah, make me a fuckin fossil, baby.

but it's not just the stupid gender politics. it's how everything else in the story has to suffer, because indigenous folklore and magic, in particular, do not care about your White Feminist cartoon logic. Men are shamans and brujos. Magic is not female nor feminine. Evil happens in all genders. So does power.

So in order to make the story fit Girl Bossdom, you have to kill all the details, all the flavor, all the morality. Because folklore and horror are full of morality tales, you can't crush the elements and grind them into Nutrient Paste: Girlboss Flavor. it's discordant. it feels wrong to anyone of the culture, anyone who knows.

you cannot meet a culture halfway by demanding it echo your own morality exactly.

so as an author, at least in tradpub, at least to get the big distribution and the PR push--

in the name of own voices, you must destroy the substance of the culture you're bringing to the table.

now, horror of a non-White flavor, with a literary bent, is the exact niche I'm trying to move into, so this is disheartening. do I think this author is selling out? yes. worse: is it working? absolutely.

that's the market I have to exist in? no nuance, no authenticity, just window dressing, you must throw the men of color into the sacrificial pile, make sure they're all clowns? scrub the magic off the magic, reduce it to MCU friendly sky beams? gross. also boring. but ugh.

[the-asexuality-blog]

So I've been thinking about the lack odmf representation of aspec people in media and how a lot of the community seem to project aspec-ness onto non-confirmed aspec characters.

I don't understand it. Like if the character isn't said to be this then why try and make them that way?

I do have a theory on my difference in opinion. I am black. When I look at a character who is decidedly not black me projecting ain't bringing the possibility of a magic race change. If I want to see people who look like me in my media I have to actively seek it out or accept my lack of representation.

It feels the overwhelming majority of the queer community online is white. White characters are everywhere. You would be hard pressed to find 3 shows with no white people. White characters have (what feels like) all the representation you could ask for. Want a gay romance show? Heartstopper. Want a strong female MC in a book? The entire YA genre. Hell it seems the few disabled characters are all white. So it seems to me that when white people see that weird lack of "this is not me" they bend media to fit them.

Let me be clear I don't find anything wrong with that. If you wanna headcannon a character to be aro or demi or whatever you do you. It's just not something I do or understand.

This sorta rant could probably be worded better so if anythings unclear you can tell me! I just want to share my thoughts on this because it's been bugging me and also interests me. The ways race and ethnicity affect how we interact with media and how a lack of representation impacts a common culture despite the diversity you could find if you look.

As I see it, headcanoning any given character as ace or aro is just as valid as headcanoning them as any other orientation regardless of how they're presented in canon. Look at Phil Coulson and Clint Barton, for example--Clint is canonically married with children and Coulson supposedly has a musician girlfriend, but that hasn't stopped people shipping them based on a single radio conversation in one movie ten years ago.

You're absolutely right that there is far too little representation of non-white minorities, and I agree that we need more. If you have any media recs that will help fill that gap, I'll be happy to boost them. I have shared posts about Black, Brown, Indigenous aces and aros, but as a (mostly) white person, I want to avoid speaking over voices like yours and amplify them instead. But, yeah, the "I am uncomfortable when we are not about me?" bird definitely comes into play in the white community, whether queer or straight.

[dreamlandsystem]

If you live in the US or Canada, you should definitely check out this video by Knowing Better on YouTube:

It’s about the systemic removal of Native Americans from North America by the US government. This stuff really doesn’t get taught in schools, so if you live in the US, it’s important to learn the real history of the land you’re living on, and how it became possible for you to live there at all (hint: it’s brutal colonialism and racism, which have been at work for hundreds of years and are still functioning today).

It’s a long video. Maybe watch it in chunks throughout the week. Maybe watch it instead of marathoning your favorite show one night. We watched this with our partner in one sitting. Regardless of your beliefs about the history of the US, it’s important to understand what actually happened, so we can uplift and support people who are continually mistreated by the US government and understand how these people got in these dire situations in the first place.

Educate yourself. Then learn how you can help.

Once you know the name of the Native American tribe whose land was stolen to become the white developed city where you live, you can see if that tribe still exists, and find out what you can do to best support them (hint: it’s money. Give them money and advocate for them in political and socioeconomic spaces!)

And you can also support any Indigenous population you’re aware of by donating to the tribe, volunteering with their organizations if you live close enough, educating yourself so you can in turn educate others about the rights of Indigenous people in the US, supporting shops and businesses owned by Native Americans, and telling other people you know about the LandBack movement, and how the history of Indigenous people in the US is often muddied, glossed over, or otherwise ignored by the state.

We are not indigenous!! So if any indigenous person you know says something that contradicts what we’ve said here, trust, support, and uplift THEM! Listen to their needs and help them however you can. It’s not easy unlearning bias that’s been fed to us our whole lives by our teachers, caregivers, and politicians. But just because unlearning bias is difficult doesn’t mean no one should have to do it. Please please, if you live in the US or Canada, learn more about the LandBack movement, the real history of the expulsion of Indigenous peoples from North America, and what you can do to help make changes towards a positive future where Indigenous people are supported and uplifted on their own land with their own sovereignty!

Under the cut we’ll include some Native American artists, businesses, and organizations you can support! Thank you very much!

And some Indigenous people we know of personally who we’d encourage you to check out!