#Kanien'kéha:ka

[allthecanadianpolitics]

When Cody Diabo recently learned that the bay restoration project on Kateri Tekakwitha Island was near complete, he took his family for a walk there to see its transformation from a dry, rocky shore into a marsh teeming with life. 

The island off of Kahnawà:ke, a Kanien'kéha:ka community south of Montreal, was once a small archipelago of lush, natural islands — but it became a single piece of land after sludge from the river and blasted rock was dumped onto the archipelago by construction crews building the St. Lawrence Seaway about 70 years ago. 

"For the first time coming to the island since I was a little child, I saw corn growing," Diabo, council chief responsible for the environment portfolio at the Mohawk Council of Kahnawà:ke, said at a news conference Wednesday announcing the completion of the nearly decade-long project to restore water flow in the bay and naturalize its surroundings. 

"To be able to see a substance that's dear to Onkwehonwe people and Kanien'kéha people — corn — growing here, where it was essentially barren for a while … that was just a sign that we were doing something really good." [...]

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Tagging: @politicsofcanada

[peridot-tears]

Finally told my intellectual friend about Con*Hay*th, and our group just kind of sat there like, "That...is so...racist??????"

It's terrible but interesting how people love shipping the oppressed with the oppressor, especially when it's not their own culture and they don't have to see the oppressed as actual humans. That tapered into a conversation about how some of the earliest Chinese folktales about women who birthed animals were just metaphors for other ethnic groups. And of course, the history of how the way Black and Chinese people were treated in the US was justified by the racist notion that we can't feel pain.

The worst part is that the people who ship them don't care. They'll justify it a thousandfold before they see Ratohnhaké:ton, and Kanien'kéha:ka, as human.

Also talked about how Ube Softee, but the gaming industry at large too, caters to white males. And it sucks.

We also talked about calling out fandom racism when you're not part of that group. In danmei, a lot of us are Chinese, so if there's something off, we're like, Not in MY house. A lot of our "wank" is actually just racist gaslighting by disrespectful fans. When there were cases of anti-Semitism or racism against Indigenous people, our fandom is so fucking big that when we called it out, we were also able to follow the lead of people from those backgrounds.

In AC3...well, I have yet to meet a Haudenosaunee fan. So I still call things out, but I'm also hesitant just because...well, I've been on the end of white virtue signaling that's supposedly been on behalf of Asians. It's not fun. I don't want to make the same mistake.

(Con*Hay*th is definitely racist though, just to be clear. It's the smaller things like Ratohnhaké:ton's outfit in the DLC that get me -- yo, is the design racist? I can't tell. The DLC as a whole, with its actor choice, indigenous mysticism, and sudden switch to English, definitely is, though.)

So yeah, it's been a lot to think about.

[kaleidescopeghost]

List 5 things that make you happy, then put this in the askbox for the last ten people who reblogged something from you! Get to know your mutuals & followers!! <3

This is so sweet :) Okay!

1. Reconnecting with my culture! I'm Gullah and Kanien'kéha:ka (I'm pretty in touch with my Black heritage though bc I was never disconnected and I lived in SC all my life up until literally today) (but I'm learning Kanien'kehá (Kanien'kéha:ka language) and it's been really exciting for me!)

2. My loved ones! I keep my inner circle as well kept as I can, so I am surrounded by people who love and support me and I love and support them back <3 it's good!

3. Autumn, Halloween, all that stuff I'm obsessed-- it's all I think about all year and when it's happening!!! I am in my Element 😩🖐🏼 I am surviving and thriving and I'm carving my little pumpkins. Despite growing up in SC I hate the humid heat, and Adore cooler weather.

4. Alternative subculture! It's my biggest and longest persisting special interest for as long as I can remember at this point, Music, Fashion, Politics, History I love it all smm (My favorites/the ones I'm most involved with are Punk, Goth, and Emo) ((if you know me irl it's very obvious and makes a lot of sense))

5. Genuinely, interacting with my mutuals and such- it's really fun for me! Like, what are y'all doing? Who Are you? What's good? Did you know I play five instruments including the Kazoo? Chess too. Hmu if you want to play a round, I'm not an excellent player but I like to have fun!

[ndntighnari]

Something that's like... I don't know if I'd call it stressful or upsetting particularly, but that kinda sucks is knowing that for a lot of white people I'm gonna be their first proper introduction to native issues. Like, I know that I'll get asked the same stuff over and over, and give pretty bland and basic responses because most of the stuff asked won't be stuff that's applicable to my tribe, but I'll be expected to have some sort of answer to anyways.

Like, I don't really mind per se, because I take pride in being native and in being someone in a place where I can safely educate others, but it's kinda tiring, y'know?

Because maybe I don't want to have the bland cookie-cutter conversations with people I barely know. Maybe I want to be able to get into the actual meat of being native, get my hands dirty in messing with the reality of it and maybe even chuck some mud at others also there elbow-deep in it with me.

Also, while I do have native friends now, I'm still the only one from my tribe in the group afaik. Which like, yeah, they all still get it y'know, we're all native we all get the bullshit the others deal with. But also it'd be nice, I think, to just... have either someone who can help guide me through reconnecting since they've been through where I'm at before, or someone who could reconnect alongside me. Learn the language with me, connect like that y'know? It just... I don't know.

Sometimes being native can be pretty lonely if you ask me.

[thearch1ve]

Shé:kon!

I figure it's about time I make a comprehensive about/intro post/small DNI list so, here we are.

I'm Jon-michael, I use it/its, 📼/📼s, and 👁/👁s pronouns, and I'm two-spirit, arospec, ace, bi, and gay. I'm from of the kanien'kéha:ka (mohawk) tribe, and I project way too hard onto tma characters.

I draw and write, and I post my art and writing on my blog @cipheraldraws, if anyone is interested in that.

If you want to support me you can on kofi or paypal!

Please do NOT spam my blog with reblogs or likes!

I ask people who fit the below list not interact:

Racist/white supremacist/nazi

Exclusionist/aphobe

Terf/radfem/truscum

"Anti-anti"/"proshipper" or someone who believes fiction does not affect reality

Pedo/incest/abuse apologists

I won't answer questions about my DNI, but anything else is fair game! My personal blog is @arondn, and feel free to message me on any of my blogs if you wanna be friends or mutuals!

[peridot-tears]

I think a lot about how US-centrism is a really big thing, and something we USians commit whether we are conscious of it or not -- because, quite frankly, no matter how much we proclaim to dislike our country or want it to change, or straight up just want to leave it behind, it's already been deeply intertwined into our personalities.

But there's also that other factor where when it comes to fandom, we end up writing AUs set in the USA, because, well...that's still our home? That's what we're familiar with? So of course I want to play around and reimagine WangXian as diaspora Chinese growing up in New York, just like me. I think it'd be really funny to reimagine Arno as an exchange student who has to deal with NYU kids out here (I pity the man, NYU is an elitist nightmare). And if Tumblr is a US-based site, where most of us end up gathering, that's just math, right? There are going to be a lot of USians here writing about our experiences in this country, because they're the things that immediately affect us the most.

I don't think it's inherently bad to want to reimagine characters in the world we personally live in, but we do have to ask ourselves some hard questions about why we want to take these characters and put them in a setting that we are comfortable with. Would we appreciate them all the same if they were in a setting unfamiliar to us?

And if we were on a non-American site doing the same thing, and the people on that site got mad at us, how would we react? We have to be honest with ourselves.

Also, HUGE disclaimer:

This is not permission to whitewash characters.

If you're writing an AU with characters of non-American origin, do your research on their cultural norms.

Also, the USA is the "melting pot" or whatever the fuck you wanna call it, right. So is this character going to be an immigrant, a tourist, a tenth-generation American, or a second-generation American from another country's diaspora?

*Or are they Indigenous? In which case, what nation are they from, did they grow up on the rez, elsewhere, and what relationship do they have with their family and identity?

We should still think outside of our country. Realizing and acknowledging that we are raised to be ignorant of the world, and that our country holds a cultural Monopoly (i.e. our fucking media and entertainment are EVERYWHERE, and my roommate from Vietnam knows iCarly as well as I do, and I know someone from Nigeria who grew up on Johnny Bravo, just to name a few examples) are only the first step. We need to deprogram and see the rest of the world as a place that exists outside of us while still being affected by just how sprawling our influence is.

My personal experience:

I'm an immigrants' kid who grew up among other immigrants' kids in New York (note, I say "immigrants' kid," meaning I am explicitly not saying we immigrated, only that our parents did. People assume I came here just because I'm not white, which is some racist bullshit).

I have lived on other continents.

MDZS is easy for me because it's my culture. I've written them as diaspora Gen Z kids, Chinese people who grew up in mainland cities I'm familiar with, and in the canon Ye Olde China (Tang-dynasty-ish, but also a Ming-dynasty AU) setting.

I write French Frye in modern-day Paris and London very easily because as a USian, we're taught that "world history" is just "Western and Central European history." We're a Eurocentric society. Also, I've been in those cities and know people from there.

I struggle with writing Ratohnhaké:ton even though he is literally Indigenous to the land I grew up on (Kanien'kéha:ka were from upstate New York, just a day's drive from me, before colonization forced them to move further north). As a USian, that means I was taught the colonizers' attitude towards Indigenous folks, and despite all my research and talks with Indigenous folks to learn to be better, I will eventually trip up and accidentally say something racist or culturally offensive.

This isn't going to stop me from writing fanfic about him, but I'm gonna do my due diligence and consider the circumstances he would be in in a modern AU.

Yes, I want to write a modern-day AU where he goes to China and trains with Shao Jun, because I'm Chinese and I think that would be neat.

When I read modern AU MDZS fanfiction, I can tell who's not Chinese when I read about WangXian living in a house in China. I cannot emphasize how different the apartment-to-house ratio in most major Chinese cities is from the USA. I don't find it offensive, it's just a really strong tell.

If you're writing an AU set in NYC and there isn't a single "yerrrr" in it, you've already outed yourself (this is a joke).

[ndntighnari]

There's been a lot of talk about the two-spirit identity within the community lately and I'm kinda having a... weird realization.

You see, I'm Kanien'kéha:ka (mohawk). In the past, we have never had something like two-spirit. It just wasn't a thing. So watching people say you need to know the cultural roots of what that term means in your tribe, the history of it, and then and only then can you claim it, or even that you have to be given this title by an elder...

Where does that leave those of us who still are two-spirit, but... who don't have that history? What about our tribes? Are we barred from this term that was meant to be for any aboriginal on turtle island to use?

I've been asking myself this for a while, honestly. I've been holding fragments of my language, looking for things that can help me create a word that holds the significance that it should have. I have nothing. We have no word, and never have. And even though I am more connected than I've ever been to my own culture and history, I feel more cut off than ever. Myself, and those like me, have not had a word. Have no history in my tribe. Yet we still exist. So what do we do, when told we need to learn a history that doesn't exist, get chiefs and elders to appoint us a title they've never given?

White people cannot call themselves two-spirit, no. You need to be connected, reconnecting, learning about your tribe and culture to call yourself such. But do not tell me and those like me we cannot, if we have no history of it. If we cannot ask an elder about it.

Or maybe do. I don't know anymore. I simply don't know. I'm simply mourning something I may never have had in the first place. Let me do so.

[ndntighnari]

More than HALF OF THE STATE OF OKLAHOMA is officially declared reservation land in a 5-4 supreme court ruling.

SO. I'D BE LYING IF I SAID I WASN'T SOBBING VIOLENTLY IN JOY AT THIS.

I'm so overwhelmed this is SUCH a big win! From the Kanien'kéha:ka tribe to my siblings down in Oklahoma: Congratulations on this MASSIVE win! Konorónkhwa (i love you) and stay safe!

[ndntighnari]

For a long time I wasn't sure if I was allowed to call myself native. I've known my tribe (the general tribe, though we weren't sure which area/rez our roots were based around for a long time) since I was a little kid. I was a very obnoxious 6 year old who did NOT let people forget that I was Mohawk, even if I didn't fully grasp what that actually meant on a... I guess more traditional level.

I was very proud as a child when it came to my heritage. So as I got older and subsequently learned what identity was, and the ins and outs of some of the things that came with being native, I was... well I got really confused. And I just kinda let myself forget about stuff. I let myself act and be treated as a white person just to avoid the fears that I didn't recognize.

I was raised very white Christian, went to Catholic school up until grade 9 and all. The last 4 years or so I've been deprogramming the Catholic Guilt from me, and trying to gently rekindle the connection I'd been so proud of as a child.

I came out as a trans man (not entirely accurate), bi, queer, went through a lot of gender and sexuality confusion as I struggled with my native identity as well, distracting myself in a way. I didn't want to face why I felt so scared, so other, so I found the other things that I figured could have been part of it.

The last year or so, though, I took a deep breath and decided I'd start reconnecting. I'd decided I'd face that fear. So I looked into history, some of our traditions, our crafts and arts, dances, all of it. I learned where the nearest rez for my tribe is and have plans, that were put on hold due to covid, to visit and talk to the people there who could help me learn more in depth. I'm planning on making my own regalia, learning how to bead, trying as best as I can to learn Kanien'kéha:ka with the limited resources I have, and have been trying as best as I can to learn at least one style of fancy shawl dancing.

I still don't know if I'm allowed to call myself native. I try to connect with my culture, but have a hard time finding others who are part of my tribe to talk about this with. I'm still scared that there's people who are going to say I'm not doing enough to reconnect with my tribe, that I don't count as native. That no matter how strongly I speak of my reconnection, how strongly I stand for other native people, I won't be considered native enough because I'm not part of a rez, because I've only been to one powwow in person. That I'm not allowed to reclaim the things I'm reclaiming despite them being part of my tribe's culture. That I'm somehow appropriating it even though I know that isn't how that works.

But it's less scary these days. It's easier, because I know other native people who have fought tooth and nail to reconnect, who are doing the things I do with pride. So I trust I'll get there some day, where I'm no longer as afraid. I'm able to proudly announce that I'm two-spirit these days without fear. I wear my braid (only one as I'm still learning how to do two lmao I'm not very coordinated with braiding) very happily and with pride. I do what little I can in my daily life to be proud of my heritage. And I hope others in the same place as I am can do the same.

[ndntighnari]

I'd be lying if i said i didnt have a fave word in kanien'kéha:ka tbfh. I'm having. A lot of fun learning the basics.