#and destroy their culture by imposing their language their music their traditions

[maia-radfemdu]

it's sooo funny how Russian ethnics in Moldova started wanting to learn Romanian and had become pro unification as soon as they realized Russia is going to shit and they need Romanian if they wanna integrate into the workforce...while calling Romanians slurs and claiming they are discriminated against because govt officials don't speak to them in Russian 🤨

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The zombie economy and digital arm-breakers

It's a zombie economy. For 40 years, we've eroded the wages of workers and transfered their share of profit and productivity to owners of capital. This is a problem, because people need money to buy things, and if they run out of money, they stop buying and profits vanish.

Time and again, capitalism has kicked any reckoning over this down the road. First came the great liquidation: pension cashouts, raided savings, reverse mortgages. Then came consumer borrowing, a tidal wave of unrepayable debt.

That's the zombie part: all the unpayable debt, which has been turned into bonds that enrich debt-holders. As Michael Hudson has told us again and again, debt that can't be paid, won't be paid. Our debt-based economy is the walking dead, a zombie.

We can either stabilize the economy (by forgiving debts, so that producers can pay for necessities and go on producing); or we can stabilize finance (by coercing debtors into destroying their lives in order to keep up on payments):

https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/24/grandparents-optional-party/#jubilee

Think of the loan-shark's arm-breaker: he wants to collect on debt, so he threatens to break your arm. You steal your kid's college fund. You secretly mortgage the house. You sell your wedding-ring. You end up divorced and homeless. You still owe. So he breaks your arm.

Now you're divorced, homeless, and you've lost your ability to earn, and you've got medical bills. He threatens to break your other arm. You start breaking into cars to steal the toll money in the ashtrays. You go to jail. Finally the arm-breaker and his boss are out of luck.

Debts that can't be paid, won't be paid. But as loan-sharks know, fortunes can be collected by applying the right incentives.

Give debtors the choice of immediate ruin from nonpayment, and making a payment today and ruining their lives tomorrow, and they're pay.

They'll pay...until they can't. Because debts that can't be paid, won't be paid.

The zombie economy is the subprime economy. "Subprime" came into collective consciousness thanks to the great financial crisis, where banks tricked poor homebuyers into predatory loans.

The banks knew that the loans couldn't be repaid - they had "balloon" clauses that jacked up payments beyond the borrowers' ability to repay a few years into the mortgage - but they also knew that threats of homelessness are powerful motivators.

The inscrutable equations used to "guarantee" subprime bonds all shared an unspoken assumption: people who face homelessness will go to extraordinary lengths to pay their mortgages. Behind every subprime loan is an arm-breaker.

The zombie economy shambles on. Obama's loan-shark bailout and the eviction crisis let the architects of subprime buy up whole towns' worth of homes and turn them into hugely profitable slums: high-rent, low-quality deathtraps.

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-housing-invitation/

Wall St landlords package rents from subprime rentals into bonds, backed by the loan-shark's guarantee: arm-breakers will evict the shit out of anyone who stops paying.

America-a land where eviction was once a rarity-now faces an eviction epidemic.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/02/08/forced-out

The foreclosure crisis was only possible because Wall St and the courts collaborated to streamline the historically complicated and time-consuming process of taking away someone's home. Same goes for the eviction epidemic.

It's a simple equation: the more loan-sharks spend on arm-breakers, the lower the expected profits.

Improvements to arm-breaking processes - cost-savings on traditional coercion or innovative new forms of terror - are powerful engines for unlocking new debt markets.

When innovation calls, tech answers. Our devices are increasingly "smart," and inside every smart device is a potential arm-breaker. Digital arm-breakers have been around since the first DRM systems, but they really took off in 2008.

That's when subprime car loans boomed. People who lost everything in the GFC still needed to get to work, and thanks to chronic US underinvestment in transit, that means owning a car. So loan-sharks and tech teamed up to deliver a new lost-cost, high-efficiency arm-breaker.

They leveraged the nation's mature wireless network to install cellular killswitches in cars. You could extend an unrepayable loan to a desperate person, and use an unmutable second stereo system to bombard them with earsplitting overdue notices.

https://edition.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/wayoflife/04/17/aa.bills.shut.engine.down/index.html

If they didn't pay, you could remotely cut off the ignition and send a precise location to your repo man.

Smart killswitches let you impose fine-grained control over debtors - say, enforcing a rule against driving over the county line.

https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/09/24/miss-a-payment-good-luck-moving-that-car/

Within a decade, the bond-market for payments from subprime car drivers was edging up on $1T; not because borrowers didn't default, but because they defaulted later, and the car could be easily re-leased to another desperate person.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4U2eDJnwz_s

The zombie economy shambled on. Tech built undeletable, always-on kill-switches, lo-jacks, and spyware into an ever-expanding constellation of devices, like laptops.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/04/rental-company-control/478365/

Rent-to-own subprime laptops were tepicenter of innovation in digital arm-breaking. Laptops shipped with spyware for covert operation of cameras and mic and access ot files.

That went beyond repoing a laptop! Lenders could make and share covert sex-tapes of their customers!

They spied on children, plundered MP3 collections, stole passwords, read email. It was beyond the wildest dreams of analog loan-sharks.

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2012/09/ftc-halts-computer-spying

To make a good digital arm-breaker, you need always-on network connectivity, a device that people really depend on, and a strong presumption that the device has core software that its owner is never allowed to remove.

Basically, a smartphone.

Mobile carriers were early to this party. They collaborated with device manufacturers to create a "subsidized phone" market. They would "give" you a phone in exchange for a long-term, abusive contract, and then repo it by terminating service if you missed payments.

This was only possible because the manufacturers helped, creating phones that could be locked to a single network, so you couldn't un-repo your phone by sliding in someone else's phone.

They relied on the "anti-circumvention" laws that the music industry lobbied for in the late 90s (like Section 1201 of the DMCA) to make it a felony to unlock these phones. Arm-breaking is a lot easier if it's a felony to evade the arm-breaker.

The smarter the phones got, the more subprime opportunities there were. Remember, there's a new market in every arm-breaking innovation and in every arm-breaking efficiency.

Which brings me to India.

India has a huge subprime market. As one of the world's inequality capitals, whose national government runs on performative culture war bullshit and giveaways to the super-rich, it's a land ripe for subprime innovation.

Phone manufacturers like Samsung are key to India's vast collateralized subprime smartphone market: first-time buyers get their phones on the installment plans at predatory interest rates so high that most will default

https://restofworld.org/2021/loans-that-hijack-your-phone-are-coming-to-india/

Remember: subprime isn't about debts being repaid in full. It's about making borrowers so desperate that they ruin their lives to make payments before they default.

Samsung's uninstallable arm-breaker app allows lenders to brick a smartphone without help from a carrier.

Writing for Rest of World, Nilesh Christopher describes an "escalating series of annoyances" culminating with a full lockout for failure to repay:

*  audiovisual prompts in regional languages as reminders

* changing the wallpaper on their cellphones

That escalates to coercion based on analysis of the users' device activity:

* For "a prolific selfie-taker," notifications every time the camera is invoked

* frequently used messaging and social apps like Facebook or Instagram are progressively blocked

One step at a time, the phone is made progressively less usable, until it is fully bricked.

It's a fully automated, self-configuring arm-breaker, one that substitutes a thug's unscientific ladder of mounting terror with bloodless, statistical science.

This is probably a good point to mention the Shitty Technology Adoption Curve: any disciplinary technology is tried out on powerless people first, and gradually works its way up the privilege gradient to encompass the whole world.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/24/gwb-rumsfeld-monsters/#bossware

Debt, after all, is consuming all of us except for the lucky few at the very top of the wealth distribution who have not faced wage stagnation and forced liquidations.

The covid crisis pushed whole countries into subprime status. Pfizer has told poor countries that they can only get access to vaccines if they stake their sovereign assets as collateral to settle claims related to its products:

https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2021-02-23/held-to-ransom-pfizer-demands-governments-gamble-with-state-assets-to-secure-vaccine-deal

And the shitty-tech adoption curve is putting arm-breaking tech into every kind of device, spreading with alarming speed from the bottom of the social order to its apex.

Miss your Tesla payments and your car will lock itself, summon a repo man, back itself out of the parking lot, honk its horn, and unlock its doors for the repo man.

https://tiremeetsroad.com/2021/03/18/tesla-allegedly-remotely-unlocks-model-3-owners-car-uses-smart-summon-to-help-repo-agent/

As subprime climbs the shitty tech adoption curve, it gets a new name: "software as a service." In a SaaS world, you cannot own the tools of your profession. Adobe Photoshop becomes Adobe Creative Cloud, and any designer who stops monthly payments becomes economic roadkill.

What's more, software is the ghost in the shell, the animating spirit within physical devices. Remove software from a smart device and you don't have a dumb device, you have a brick.

This lets the arm-breakers exert pressure over larger, more powerful entities...like Hoboken, NJ. Hoboken had a payment dispute with the software vendor for its robotic parking garage, so the vendor bricked the garage and took all the cars hostage.

https://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,71554-0.html

The strange mutations of arm-breaker tech bodes ill, especially in light of Chekhov's Law: "A phaser on the bulkhead in Act One will go off by Act Three."

The universal spread of devices *designed* to be remotely repoed - bricked, downgraded, turned into surveillance tools - means that oppressive governments that coerce manufacturers will have the power to reach into our homes, cars and pockets to attack us.

Same goes for unscrupulous insiders - like the subprime laptop jokers making nonconsensual sex-tapes with their customers' webcams - and criminals who can pressure insiders into acting on their behalf.

Nevertheless, subprime arm-breaking is bound to spread, and spread, and spread. Covid forced millions to liquidate everything, left them in precarious, sub-minimum-wage gig work, and there's the millions of evictions waiting for the moratorium to end.

Debts that can't be paid, won't be paid. And yet, people must participate in the zombie economy: they're not going to dig a hole, climb in, and pull the dirt in on top of themselves. There is strong demand for credit on any terms. Any.

Arm-breaker tech unlocks new markets by delaying defaults on unpayable debts. The zombie economy shambles on.

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

Sachab (modified): https://www.flickr.com/photos/sachab/1422847855/

CC BY: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

Kat Northern Lights Man (modified): https://www.flickr.com/photos/orangegreenblue/11375767914/

CC BY-NC: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/

[ladyhistorypod]

Episode 11: [Insert Political Joke Here]

Sources:

Patsy Mink

National Women’s History Museum

University of Hawaii

United States House of Representatives

Patsy Takemoto Mink

KHON2 News (YouTube)

Further Viewing: Internet Archive, Patsy Mink: Ahead of the Majority (Trailer)

Alice Roosevelt Longworth

The White House Historical Association

Theodore Roosevelt Center at Dickinson State University

Find A Grave

The New York Times

Smithsonian Institute

Wilma Mankiller

National Women’s History Museum

Oklahoma History

Time Magazine

National Women’s Hall of Fame

Smithsonian Magazine

Attributions: Cherokee Nation's Chief Wilma Mankiller, Marching Drum, Power Of People: Sea-Tac Airport Travel Ban/Immigration Protest

Click below for a transcript of this episode!

Archival Audio: I'm really very excited by, and my process says our difficulty has been that not enough have run. We can’t expect that every woman, because she's a woman, the minute she runs she's going to be successful. That's not possible. So we do need to have the numbers in there competing, and given the numbers I think we're going to be more and more successful over the years.

Alana: So this is the first episode that's going to come out after the election is over. Like, by the time this comes out we're gonna know.

Haley: I was thinking of that when I was looking at the schedule and I don't know… I'm real nervous. I have class that night. It's going to my first class being like on the east coast, so I'm gonna be real tired. I’m gonna be with my cat though it's gonna be fine.

Alana: No this podcast is gonna be so nice.

Lexi: To be fair, we might not know who actually won by that Thursday.

Haley and Alana, somehow at exactly the same time: That’s true.

Lexi: Because there's going to be a lot of contention about mail-in ballots. So, dear Lexi listening to this on Thursday or even on Tuesday while editing it of election week; how's it going? What’s up?

Alana: Are you okay?

Lexi: Are you doing okay? Do we know yet? When will we know?

Alana: When will we know? We probably won't know on Tuesday when you're editing it, but… 

Lexi: And we probably won't know on Thursday.

Alana: On Thursday when it comes out.

Lexi: We might get a result and then we might get told it's not the result. There might be a lawsuit.

Alana: This podcast is gonna be really nice for the two of you to have to remember my voice by when I die in the coup.

Lexi: Yes the coup that will occur in DC. That might be more like January.

Alana: That's true, the coup will be in January.

Lexi: When someone refuses to leave… the area… to evacuate the premises.

Alana: Maybe he’ll be dead by then.

[INTRO MUSIC]

Alana: Hello and welcome to Lady History; the good, the bad, and the ugly ladies you missed in history class. Here I am, still on Zoom, with Lexi. Lexi, have you ever run a political campaign?

Lexi: Oh my god. I have.

Alana: Did I set you up for this?

Lexi: Yes. My dog is running for daycare class president. Please vote for him. His name is Captain, he's a Portuguese water dog, he's two and a half years old, and he's really cute. His platform is that he'll give you a snuggle.

Alana: I love him.

Lexi: Me too.

Alana: And someday will be reunited in person, Haley. Haley, what's your political platform?

Haley: I know. My skeleton is allowed to be in my passenger seat so I can ride in the carpool lane.

Lexi: Skeletons is people.

Haley: My plastic Napoleon Bone-aparte should be my second in command. Thus, me going in the carpool lane.

Lexi: Vote for Haley, skeletons is people.

Alana: And I'm Alana and my single issue vote is not ushering in the apocalypse.

Lexi: I have experience as a campaign manager, feel free to hire me.

Haley: A lot of people are gonna hate that.

Alana: No I love that.

Haley: I’ve never met–

Lexi: Listen, the people who support NAGPRA, they will love that.

Haley: He’s fake. My mom really had to grill me and I–

Lexi: He’s not real. Her skeleton is not real.

Haley: My mom was terrified that I got a real skeleton. And like honestly, of all people, I could go on the deep dark black webs, sure, but she even like texted my roommate like when we were all like in a group chat and we were calling or something and she was like “Caroline it's plastic, right.” And then also, y'all were involved in this– when Robert and I started dating, for like months he thought that was real and wouldn’t go near it and was like, heavily creeped out that like he was sleeping in the same room as a real skeleton. And it wasn’t until like I pitied him and–

Alana: First of all, he’s sleeping in the same room as two real skeletons.

Haley: That's true.

Lexi: He's sharing a body with one.

Archival Audio: Because the women have not until recently reached retirement age after having worked a full lifetime, only now are beginning to realize that there is inequity in the law.

Lexi: Congresswoman Patsy Takemoto Mink was born on December 6, 1927, near a sugar plantation. She was born on the Hawaiian island of Maui, and I just have to say, Maui is one of my favorite places on Earth. It was the first place I took scuba diving lessons and it is seriously an amazing and beautiful place. I have trouble thinking of any place I've ever been that's as beautiful. Patsy was a third generation American and her grandparents were immigrants from Japan. The term among Japanese Americans for a third generation child is sansei, not to be confused with sensei which means teacher. And sansei are the first to be raised by parents who are themselves raised in America, so they are very American and that is why they get a special name. Patsy was close with her brother Eugene and the two spent most of their childhood exploring the island together, foraging for edible mushrooms and bamboo shoots which is really cute. The family mainly spoke English at home, but Patsy learned Japanese in order to communicate with her mother's parents. Her father, Suematsu Takemoto, had been orphaned at a young age and served in the military before attending the University of Hawaii and becoming a civil engineer. He served during World War I. Suematsu was the first Japanese American to earn a degree in civil engineering from the University of Hawaii and he set a precedent for his children who would go on to break barriers themselves. Patsy witnessed racial discrimination faced by her family at a young age and this may have served as inspiration for her work in later life. Patsy also grew up in a community where many families did not have the privileges and comforts that her family had, and she realized this when she started to attend school; this also likely shaped her future work. Patsy's parents treated Eugene and Patsy equally, breaking Japanese tradition in which strict gender roles were imposed. This likely contributed to the strong bond that she and Eugene shared, valuing each other as equals. Patsy, who always kept up with her brother, decided to attend school a year early to be with him in class. She started primary school at the age of just four. In the fourth grade, her and her brother were transferred to a new school. This new school, which focused on English language learning, only admitted students with fluent English skills, effectively segregating white students from non white students and indigenous people on the Hawaiian islands. Every teacher they had in class was white. Patsy and Eugene were admitted because they had great English skills, but of course, English was their first language and it was also language their parents spoke to them at home. And Patsy and Eugene were part of only five percent of the student body that was non white, so ninety five percent of the school was white. Though Patsy flourished academically, she had trouble fitting in at the new school and made very few friends. Patsy's hobbies included listening to the radio and reading books which connected her to the world beyond Maui. Eventually, Patsy entered a new school to begin high school. There she was elected class president. She claims the support of the football team helped her secure the position. This was the start of her career in politics. While Patsy was in high school, the attack on Pearl Harbor occurred.

Archival Audio (FDR): Yesterday, December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamy.

Lexi: Local non-Japanese citizens became wary of the Japanese locals, despite no Japanese Hawaiians being involved in the attacks. Japanese families destroyed culturally significant family heirlooms such as katanas and kimonos. They shut down Japanese language schools and they disbanded their cultural clubs. At the same time, Japanese Americans in mainland America were being rounded up and sent to internment camps. Many of them had been born and raised in America and had never even visited Japan. Some of them were sansei, just like Patsy. But racism and fear led non-Japanese individuals to oust even their closest Japanese friends. In Hawaii, far less Japanese were sent to internment camps and Patsy narrowly escaped participating in a tragic part of her generation and culture’s upbringing. Despite this, Patsy later in life claimed that President FDR was her political inspiration. Patsy graduated from her high school as valedictorian in the middle of a global war. In the fall, Patsy was admitted to the University of Hawaii, her father's alma mater, and she began her studies. She participated on the debate team and became president of the pre-med club because at the time she was considering pursuing a career in medicine. As the war continued, many of Patsy's college friends decided to transfer to schools on the mainland for security reasons. One of her professors suggested she apply to a women's college on the mainland. She was admitted to Wilson College in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania which happens to be my home state. She met with the president of the college upon her arrival at the school; he told her she would probably struggle with her course work because the classes are all taught in English and she would be granted a private room. Patsy later recalled that he was so shocked when she replied in perfect English for multiple sentences, and she was then put in a shared room because if you can speak English, you can share a room. This was Patsy’s first taste of the ignorance many mainland Americans had about the Hawaiian territory, which was not yet a state. Patsy found the course work at Wilson to be below her, stifling her for real learning. She also faced discrimination from classmates and faculty. Because of this, she transferred to the University of Nebraska. It was at her third college that Patsy became engaged with policy making. The university's policy segregated white students and students of color in student housing. The international house, where she assumed she had been placed purely because Hawaii was not a state at the time, actually was home to both international students of color and American students were Black, Latinx, or Asian. The school’s other dormitories and the on-campus Greek housing only admitted white students. Patsy decided to take action and began a campaign to end the discriminatory policy. She led letter writing efforts, worked with the school newspaper, and spoke with local newspapers about the issue. Students she did not even know began supporting her in her campaign. She became president of the Unaffiliated Students, a group of individuals were not associated with Greek life at the University of Nebraska. Patsy was within just one semester a campus leader. The same year she starred at the University of Nebraska, the housing discrimination policy was lifted by the board. Unfortunately, Patsy suffered a medical emergency and had to return to Hawaii to be with her family, where she finished her last semester of college just where she started, at the University of Hawaii. She earned a dual major degree in chemistry and zoology. After graduation, she applied to medical school. Every school she applied to reject her. At the time, women were not admitted to medical school at a fair rate and women made up only about three percent of the student body of most American medical schools. And, because it was 1948, many colleges were focusing on admitting returned veterans. The odds had been stacked against Patsy, and unfortunately she would not be able to fulfill her goal and dream of becoming a doctor. Then Patsy started her first job in a museum at the Honolulu Academy of Arts. Museums always seem to be a factor in our shows… huh… Well anyway–

Alana: I wonder why… 

Lexi: I wonder why… I mean I didn't even know this about her when I picked her so this is super fascinating.

Alana: You were just– you are drawn to her.

Lexi: Yes.

Alana: The museum called out to you.

Lexi: The little museum bit. And this is actually where she met her mentor who encouraged her to pursue law, so it was through the museum that she found her true calling. And she was accepted to the University of Chicago under their international student quota, and though she desperately, desperately wanted to correct their error and remind her that being born in the Hawaii territory made her an American, she did not want to mess up the chance to get into law school, so she just rolled with it. So, she went to Chicago and she started law school. Patsy found law school intellectually a good match for her and it kept her engaged in her learning which was something she really cared about. She made many friends, some of whom were also Japanese American students studying law. It was at law school where she met her future husband, John Francis Mink. John was from a Pennsylvania mining town and his grandparents were Czechoslovakian immigrants. He had received his undergraduate degree from Penn State and was pursuing a Masters in geophysics at the University of Chicago. Patsy and John married while still in grad school. Patsy's parents disapproved, saying they wished that she would wait until the two graduated, though it is speculated they may have had qualms about her marrying a white man. Patsy graduated in 1951 as the first Hawaiian woman to graduate from the University of Chicago with a law degree. John and Patsy remained in Chicago and had a daughter named Gwendolyn who goes by Wendy for short. And after she was born, they decided it was time to move back to Hawaii. A really shitty, dumb law at the time made women citizens of their husbands’ home states. Who decided that, what for, I do not know. This meant Patsy, despite spending less than a semester for life in Pennsylvania, was a Pennsylvania resident. She fought this law, arguing that the couple had never resided there together and she was granted Hawaiian residency and she was able to take the bar exam in Hawaii. Though she passed, she could not find work as a lawyer. The dual reality of her gender and race was working against her. Potential employers found that it would not be appropriate for a married woman to work long hours as a lawyer and they also feared she would decide to have another child. Go figure, they just assume these things about women, blahblah blahblah blah, people suck. So with the assistance of her father, she opened her own firm, advertising herself as the first Japanese woman lawyer in Hawaii. She had few clients, so she worked as a part time professor and took court appointed cases to supplement her income. When Hawaii was granted statehood, Patsy knew she wanted to run for government positions. She helped start a club in Oahu for young Democrats and expanded her interest in politics. In 1959, she ran for a position in Congress, but was not elected. In 1962, she won a seat in Hawaii’s State Senate. She had run an intense door to door community campaign, and it had worked. Patsy became the chair of the Education Committee and served in the State Senate until 1964. Patsy was determined to make change on a national scale and continue to campaign for selection as a candidate for the Democratic Party of Hawaii. In 1964, Hawaii was granted a second seat in the US House and Patsy ran to be the representative; she became the first Asian American woman to serve in Congress and the first woman to represent Hawaii. During the eighty ninth Congress, from 1965 to 1967, only thirteen of the five hundred thirty five combined senators and representatives were women. Patsy was the only woman of color. There's actually an awesome picture of the thirteen women and Patsy’s just right there in the middle with a big smile, but I think it's so crazy when you think about percentages and scale and how that doesn't accurately represent America, and, hm, anyway. Patsy fought for gender and racial equality. She promoted bilingual education, co-wrote Title IX, and promoted affordable child care. As a working mother, she knew she needed to support other working parents. Even though she moved to DC to take her new role she often traveled home to Hawaii to visit her constituents and hear their concerns. In 1970, she was the first Democratic woman to deliver a State of the Union response. She also passed an act in 1974 protecting women's access to equal education. She also spoke openly against America's participation in the Vietnam War, fearing the effects on civilians of the weapons that were being used. In 1976, she attempted to run for the U. S. Senate but lost. Then the Democratic Party of Oregon asked Patsy to run for president. Because they had an anti-war focus, Patsy felt they shared values and agreed to run for them. Patsy only got two percent of the Democratic primary vote, but she broke barriers as an Asian American and woman running for president; she was the first. East Asian American woman to seek the democratic nomination for president. Patsy also served as the Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs in the Carter administration. In 1990, Patsy returned to Congress as a representative for Hawaii. She founded the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus and served six more terms in the House. In the summer of 2002, Patsy fell ill with pneumonia. She was hospitalized in her home state. She died in September 2002. Because ballots had already been printed for the 2002 election, her name still appeared as the candidate. Despite passing before the election, she won by a vast majority. Her replacement, Ed Case, still serves as a representative for their district of Hawaii today. After Patsy passed away, the Title IX Act was officially renamed the Patsy Mink Act. Patsy was actually one of the women I covered in my personal Instagram campaign to combat the lack of Asian American women in U. S. history core education standards, and as of 2020, no state public school history standard mentions an Asian American woman by name. I've said it on the pod before, I'll probably say it again; let's make sure students learn about people like Patsy, especially young girls in the Asian American community who can see themselves in politics because someone like Patsy broke barriers for them. Patsy continues to be the subject of documentaries and podcasts. In fact, of all the women that I've covered so far, she was featured on the most podcasts according to my quick Google. Obama awarded Patsy a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom, commemorating her work for the people of Hawaii and the nation, and remembered her as the embodiment of the Aloha spirit. Of Patsy, Obama said “Every girl playing little league, every woman playing college sports, and every parent, including Michelle and myself, who watches their daughter on a field or in a classroom, is forever grateful to the late Patsy Mink.” Patsy left her mark on US politics, paving the way for iconic Asian American politicians today like Mazie Hirono, Tammy Duckworth, Andrew Yang, and even Kamala Harris. Mahalo and arigato, Patsy. Lastly, I would like to thank the National Women's History Museum for the awesome page if they put together on her which I used as one of my main sources and I interned there this summer and the content is really well researched and totally worth checking out if you need resources on other women like Patsy.

Alana: I think I remember Obama– like I remember him giving the Presidential Medal of Freedom to her. And I think I remember him also being like she was a political icon of his, outside of what she did for like Asian Americans and women and Asian American women. Like he was just like this is someone else from Hawaii who was doing cool political things. Like role models don't need to be gendered.

Lexi: Yeah I was just gonna say like Hawaii is his home. It might be that being born there and her being born there really built a connection for him between them.

Archival Audio: My mother and I were put behind a screen door in the drawing room. We were allowed to listen, but we couldn’t be seen.

Haley: This is gonna be a wild ride because I have a lot of anecdotes about my life and to this woman, and this woman is Alice Roosevelt Longworth known as the president's daughter or the American celebrity of her time, and she was even referred to as Princess Alice. Like I said, I have a lot of anecdotes about my life and the Roosevelts. Can I interest anyone with a fun fact?

Lexi: Yes I love fun facts.

Haley: Thank you for your enthusiasm Lexi. Her father–

Lexi: Yes! I love fun facts!

Alana: Always! I always want the fun facts!

Haley: I love these two people. President Theodore Roosevelt is technically my fraternity brother. It's like a technical, like they– we say it, we claim as like the boast Roosevelt is like our fraternity brother but there's no– I think, I don't think there's like actual documentation that they were Alpha Delta Phi fraternity members, so– and also if you're listening to me like “that's a fraternity, no women allowed” I am part of the Alpha Delta Phi Society, we still claim post-split to be like gender neutral and be like “hey, women should be involved not just as our secretaries.” That's a whole other tangent I could go on. Google it, if you will. I think there's even a Wikipedia about it. But yeah he's my fraternity brother. I say that a lot when I like, see pictures or like statues of any of the Roosevelts, it’s a great time. I'm gonna start us off with like an inkling of a Teddy quote since we've been talking about him, and a lot of you may know that this quote whisper it while you listen to it if you're in the car, taking a shower, just chilling on your bed hugging a dog, anyway Teddy once said “I can do one of two things, I can be President of the United States or I can control Alice. I cannot possibly do both.” That's just giving you a taste of what a ride we’re going to go on. So what did Alice do to be worthy of such a quote, and the honor of being one of our political ladies for this episode? Honestly I could go on hours– I know I say this all the time, I can go on an hour long tangent on Alice, and I'm going to keep it just to like her pol– main political topics. Again, cracking this history book wide open to the birth of Alice on February 12 1884. Unfortunately, two days later, both her mother and her paternal grandmother died, and she was raised by her aunt Anna Roosevelt, and grew up with her five other half siblings between New York and Washington. This leads into another fun fact, if you will. You can visit their house at Sagamore Hill, and my friend was a ranger there once last year, and I got to go visit her during our Friendsgiving and slept in one of the barns on their site and there's like, I think Teddy's buried there, Alice is not but we'll get to that. But they have a whole like Roosevelt cemetery, it's a whole historic site in Long Island. The barn is haunted by something because I could not sleep at all, I just felt like something kept waking me up and I kept looking at this like one creaky door. Because we were in like her guest rooms, which was like two, two other twin beds in case they were like more Rangers on duty. And mine looked straight at this old door that kind of like lead into a mudroom and the outdoors. I swear there was no light outside. Like I went around, like the next time, I twisted my ankle trying to get around to that area, and I couldn't find like where this porch light would be giving such a green mist of color around this door at night because like all the lights were like those museum fluorescent like white bright lights or like– nothing green light and it freaked me out. Anyhoo that's end of like my tangent with that fun fact. Go visit Sagamore Hill for more Teddy content. And as a child– back to Alice– it was clear that she was a brilliant woman. Many sources noted that she was quote self taught in many of her areas of studies and was an avid reader. Along with her brilliance, she was considered to be a stubborn, strong-willed, risk taker, headline-maker, rabble-rouser, and trendsetter. Just all the things and you want in a lady. Alice's political side didn't shine through her skin cells until her father was sworn into office after President McKinley was assassinated in 1901. She was also, if not like the first, the first of any of the president's daughters to take like on a political role, kind of like with Lexi you were saying like there are a lot of firsts going on, and I believe this was like a first, for whatever reason, but she was the first of like president's daughter having some sort of political action that she like was like “hey let's fix this. I'm gonna do this, I'm a lady, I'm brilliant, I can do this, I have a voice.” And for example, in 1905 she accompanied Congressmen to Asia as like a quote goodwill ambassador for the administration, for like one of those let's go see the sights that we see a lot of political figures around the world do. There she was involved in a lot of peace discussions that were like post Russo-Japanese War. So there's a lot there. There's a lot on like the White House website that's in the sources, but it was more about the politics rather than Alice herself and I saw that a lot when I was reading things about Alice. Like when it started to get political it was heavily on the politics not much so what Alice did for those political actions or her political voice. I don't know if that's like author writing stuff…  I didn't write it, all I know is that she was married. I believe it was like around 1906 and it was to Nick Longworth– that's why we have the Roosevelt Longworth name– who was actually part of the Republican Party. So at this time it was the Progressive Party which was her father Teddy Roosevelt and herself and then the Republican Party. And Alice agreed with her father on political stances, thus the Progressive Party, thus making these different political ideals kind of like a wrench in their relationship. But there’s a lot of other stuff that made this marriage kind of like a very topsy turvy one. But also there was alcoholism and affairs and they didn't necessarily come from Nick. This is where I read many sources where like Alice had many different lovers. I didn't really dig into Nick’s because like… men… we're here for Alice. But it was noted that she had different affairs, lovers, and these were all other men in the government. More on her political leaning, I didn't see anywhere that they got divorced, but they did have a daughter, Paulina, and Nick died bef– like way before Alice's death and she would– like should write books and go on like traveling trips, even post Daddy being in office to support Paulina. So I said her father died– that was a great segue, good job Haley. Even after her father died, she continued to use her voice in politics. She was one of the people who led the charge to keep the US from joining the League of Nations, and this is we're gonna get into like right around World War II. She was also a tough critic on how FDR was handling the Great Depression, and she at this time had a syndicated newspaper column where she would just bash politics, essentially. She would use this column to speak her voice and say “Hey, I have this, I’m gonna use it, I'm going to speak my mind, not care if I'm gonna piss any other political figure heads off” which… snaps for her. She also used her voice when she was on different committees to help the US, especially throughout World War II. She was heavily on the side of being neutral. I believe she was like even the head of some of these committees, these US implemented committees, to stay neutral. And just like overall politics itself. I couldn't find any where she was on a specific women's rights, education, it was more glossed over. I could have missed something. Other than being on committees, writing in newspapers, going on different platforms to speak her mind, she also would campaign for others such as Taft’s campaign and it was noted that she was friends with the Kennedys, Nixons, and the Johnsons; all other political figurehead families and future presidents. I didn't know where to put this little story, but like I need to say it, it's great. She was known for like, being like, that wild child. But in her wild child youths, she was known for smoking on the White House rooftop, and I'm like trying to picture the White House in my head, and obviously it probably changed a little bit since like Teddy was president, but like… I want to know if like you could see her from like walking on the Mall just like chilling on the roof because her father said she couldn't smoke inside the house for like a whole laundry list of reasons, it's not ladylike, blah blah blah, and she would just go to the roof and be like “I want to smoke. I'm going to do it on the roof. You can't touch me when I'm on the roof.” And she would also carry around a snake in her purse, and the snake’s name is Emily Spinach, yes, Emily Spinach was her… her snake’s name. Like honestly I would just love to carry around like a snake in my purse or any animal in my purse.

Alana: That’s my aesthetic.

Haley: It's an iconic name, Emily Spinach. This also confused me because I saw many pictures of her with a small dog. Like, kind of like a chihuahua, kind of like a pomsky, like one of those small fluffy dog mixes, so I want to know if like the snake and the dog got along. I don't– I don't know. I couldn't see my small dog like, liking a snake much.

Alana: I think small dogs were bred to hunt snakes. I'm not good at like the history of dog breeds but a lot of those small breeds were bred to hunt like pests, so–

Lexi: Rats, snakes.

Haley: Yeah, very confused.

Lexi: I guess if you raised it from a puppy around your snake, it might– it might have a different view, but like I don't let my parrot and my dog hang out. Maybe she didn’t let them hang out. That’s chill. I don’t know.

Haley: Yeah, I couldn't find a picture of like the two of them together, and if anyone does, please send it our way. That is– that would be an incredible portrait. Because she also– a lot of her faces are kind of like a “I don't want to be here” face, the classic “please leave me alone” which is iconic. And like one of her wedding photos is between like her, her dad and like her husband, and her face is just like “I so don't want to be like here right now…” Chef's kiss, I can feel it. I felt the energy. My last tidbit, of course, is while she was born in New York City, she was buried in Rock Creek Park Cemetery when she died at the age of 96. And I actually went to Rock Creek Park Cemetery a few years ago, when living in DC. At least like on the outside of it, if it's the same cemetery. I went to many cemeteries in DC, doing like the spooky tours but also getting from like point e– point A to point B, because like Rock Creek Cemetery is like way to get into like Maryland area. Also, anyhoo, on their website she's noted as one of their famous residents, and on their tour I believe that her like tomb, grave area is like part of their cemetery tour. Keep it respectful, people. And that's my story on Alice. 

Alana: I like that she carried a snake around in her purse. That is my aesthetic. That is goals.

Lexi: Snakes are fun little noodles.

Alana: They’re so fun.

Haley: Snakes are fun. I would love a snake. Emily Spinach. I now want like a stuffed snake to name it Emily Spinach. Lexi, I remember that one of your friends or your sister requested this.

Lexi: Yes, my sister Elena Hoffman who is in law school in DC at the George Washington University. She’s not my biological sister, she's my sorority sister she sent me this like– 

Alana: That always confuses me.

Lexi: Sorry.

Alana: Lexi will say that she has a sister and I'm like no you don't and I've– because I forget that she’s in a sorority.

Lexi: Anyway, she sent me this picture that's like one of those tumblr history… we take it with more salt than the Dead Sea.

Alana: Take your internet history lessons with more salt than the Dead Sea.

Lexi: Exactly. And it was like one of those like distorted screenshots where some screenshots it a million times and shares it like a meme. It was– it was about her being crazy, was like smoking cigarettes on the Mall, carrying around a snake, blah blah, a lot of which turns out to be true, so… Elena, thank you for suggesting her. I hope this confirms your weird internet history for you.

Haley: I really thought because I've seen like some of those pictures too, but it kept coming up in sources that I was like “oh they're not gonna give me like misinformation.” If they were, like I wouldn't be surprised, like misinformation comes up even in like what we call good sources. Like correct us if you're more widespread in the Alice history. Because I keep forgetting that like when we do this research, we do like probably like three hours of research, maybe less, maybe more depending on the person, but there are like, people devoted to this for their life's work. So like please, again we say this every episode.

Alana: If we're wrong let us know.

Archival Audio: “My guest, director, producer Valerie Red-Horse Mohl, let's start with the subject. What is the subject of your– your documentary?” “Well the name of the film is Mankiller and that actually is Wilma Mankiller’s last name. Wilma was the first woman elected Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation and her story is just so relevant today.”

Alana: So my political icon for today is Wilma Mankiller, who has the best last name ever in the entire world, it's amazing. It's actually a military rank that was achieved by one of her ancestors, but kids made fun of her for it. If your name is Mankiller, why would you– why would you make fun of that? Because one time–

Lexi: First off, I would be scared.

Alana: Exactly! Exactly, why wouldn't you be scared? One time as like a grown up she was fed up with it and she said to somebody that it was a nickname and that she'd earned it. And I’m just like, what a woman. Very cool. So, she was born on November 18, Scorpio, 1945 in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. Her father's name was Charley Mankiller and he was Cherokee, and her mother was an Irish Dutch woman named Irene Sutton. And Wilma describes her family as an “activist family” so that is how she grew up to be an activist. She was the sixth of eleven children so right there in the middle. And when she was eleven years old, when she was eleven years old, the federal relocation programs that meant to encourage– I'm doing the massivest air quotes in the whole world– encourage assimilation. (Frustration noises) The racism!

Lexi: I just puked in my mouth a little bit.

Alana: The racism! But they moved her family to San Francisco, where they were poor in Oklahoma and they were destitute in San Francisco. It was bad news bears. She married for the first time in 1963 to an accountant from California named Hector Hugo Olaya de Bardi. They had two daughters, and I'm gonna bring up their names– Gina and Felicia. Felicia is my middle name. I think it was Haley, Haley was it you who I told you my middle name and you thought I was kidding?

Haley: Yeah.

Alana: Felicia is legit my middle name. That's true. I will show you my birth certificates, or my passport probably is more likely because I have that on me. In 1969, there was a nineteen month Native American occupation of the island of Alcatraz. Like nobody was using it, it had yet to become a tourist trap and it wasn’t a prison, and so it was sort of like out of use. But for nineteen months, Native American activists occupied Alcatraz and they like had schools and were just doing really amazing things.

Lexi: That's so cool. I didn't know that about Alcatraz and that is so cool.

Alana: It was amazing. But this happened while Wilma was living in San Francisco, which is you know right near Alcatraz, of course. It awoke something in her. She considered it a benchmark in her activism that inspired her to shift her career more towards political activism as opposed to being a mom and doing other things. Her husband wanted her to stay home and be more of like a traditional– massive air quotes again– housewife, so they got a divorce, which is what I would do as well if my husband was like “no I want you to stay home.” I’d be like first of all, why didn’t you tell me this before we got married we could have saved both of us a whole heap of trouble and just not gotten married in the first place but okay. But they got divorced, and so Wilma moved with her daughters back to her family land in Oklahoma, where she became involved in community government and improvement projects. In 1979, she survived a very bad car accident where her best friend died and she was also diagnosed with– I'm probably gonna pronounce this super wrong– myasthenia gravis, which is a neuromuscular disorder that made it hard to talk, hard to write, hard to use her hands in general. So she started the Bell, Oklahoma water project; and Bell, Oklahoma is a tiny, itty bitty, little town in Oklahoma, so small, most people only spoke Cherokee, and they were in like dangerous living conditions. There was no clean water, it was just a bad time all around. But using federal grant money and local volunteers, she managed to construct eighteen miles of a water system and repair a lot of the dangerous living conditions. While she was recruiting volunteers she met her second husband who was full Cherokee named Charlie Soap. I'm not gonna say nothin about her dad and her second husband having the same name, but okay. That's a deal breaker for me, but you know what Wilma, go for it.

Haley: If I found another person with the name Fuzzy. I think I would have to marry them. I don't know like I feel like that's just too insane not to.

Alana: So Ross Swimmer, in 1983, chose her as a running mate for the Cherokee Nation election as he was running for Principal Chief and he wanted her to be his deputy. And they won, despite sexism and death threats. And in 1985 Swimmer took a position in the federal government and Wilma became full time Chief, full time Principal Chief, not deputy anymore. She served two more terms, for a total of ten years as Principal Chief. She decided not to run for reelection in 1995 because of her health. Under her leadership, tribal enrollment was up, infant mortality was down, literacy was up, unemployment was down. She created a self-sufficient health care system, although that's not really going so great anymore because of Covid and racism. Two really bad things, just in general. Of my least favorite things right now, I would say Covid and racism, really high up there on my list of dislikes. She won the Presidential Medal of Freedom, actually, in 1998 from President Bill Clinton who I'm probably gonna talk about in not a flattering light in a couple weeks. And she died in 2010 of pancreatic cancer. She left a legacy of cultural pride and self sufficiency and self government for the Cherokee people. It was her whole thing was like we can do this ourselves, we aren't helpless, we can create our own governments and our own systems, we can be just as good at government for ourselves as these white people who are like imposing these restrictions on us. We can govern ourselves. And so that was her whole thing was like we don't need outside help. That's the story of Wilma Mankiller. I have a couple of closing statements about– for the episode in general. I have been very frustrated lately with people who say that they stay out of politics.

Lexi: It comes to replace a privilege.

Alana: It comes from a place of privilege!

Lexi: But people in different communities can have different levels of privilege, unfortunately.

Haley: Yes.

Lexi: And they can try to exclude themselves from the political process because they think it doesn't affect them, which is blowing my mind. I just–

Lexi: The place I see it the most, and I'm– I don't know if you guys have noticed this too; so many people outside of museums, old heads in museums, trying to say museums should be apolitical. And this frustrates me to no end. For one, everything is political. The existence of a museum is political.

Haley: Yes.

Lexi: Our existence is political. People working in a museum, people who live and then also work in a museum. It's all political. Everything you do– your kid going to school? Political. Your kid go to school? that's political. You eat food? Politics. You wear glasses? You go to the doctor? All politics. This is all political. So, when people say museums are apolitical, I just want to– or or even when they say museums are bipartisan, museums lean one way or the other. And museums tell stories, and stories always have a bias in them, and museum shouldn't try to be apolitical. Museums should aim to tell stories and to make change in their communities. 

Haley: I’ve had a similar conversation– I will not give like personal details, but the bottom line was that… the argument that this person was trying to say why they shouldn't be political, were all like human rights… it was just like oh well museums are already like not racist, or like not gender biased and it’s like–

Lexi: Well that's wrong.

Alana: That’s just false.

Haley: But they– like they were trying to skirt around the way of saying like, “oh but these aren't, these are human rights stances, like we can talk about those in museums.” Even though like kind of saying that they're like not happening, trying to be on the more of like there is no gender bias there is no like blah blah blah– which is false, but saying like because those are human rights that they're not political, thus like a museum can talk about it, but we can't say like major political statements which–

Lexi: Human rights is political. It shouldn’t be, all humans should have rights, but…

Haley: Yes! Yes!

Alana: That's why they're called human rights.

Haley: The US has made this a political argument, of course like– regardless of what your stance is, like say “oh these are purely human rights,” not everyone sees it that way.

Lexi: And museums are racist.

Haley: Yes, museums are racist.

Lexi: You know, everyday– everyday, I like sit in the shower because I'm just so overwhelmed. And I think “Museums bad. Museums racist. Museums sexist. Me museums? Me learn museums? Me bad. Me racist. Me sexist. What this all for.” And then I say “That’s museums. Long live the museum.” Because I believe museums can be better places, but–

Haley: And we see that a lot.

Lexi: Yes. There are so many museums doing good work, like District Six Museum in South Africa, the Anacostia Community Museum in DC, one closer to home. Like there are so many museums doing good work, actively anti-racist work. But the historical institution, until we admit this organization is founded on racist and sexist principles–

Haley: We’re getting into a whole chunk of my thesis about the origin of museums. I could–

Alana: I was more talking about, in the broader sense. Like the non-museum people who I know who are like “oh I stay out of politics” and who have friends who are opposite sides of the aisle.

Lexi: Oh, “I don’t vote because I don't care”? Like–

Alana: “I don't know because I don't care.” I think there comes a time, you come to realize that just you existing is political.

Lexi: Yes.

Haley: I also think–

Alana: Like, my existence is political just by virtue of who I am.

Haley: Yes. I also want to like reference like Enola Holmes, remember that part where–

Alana: I was thinking about that a lot.

Haley: It was in the cafe and it was Sherlock–

Alana: Sorry, Lexi. 

Haley: And this other cafe human…

Alana: Edith, I think is her name.

Haley: Edith, yes. She was running the cafe and running the upstairs like women learning Jiu Jitsu…

Lexi: The suffragist karate school.

Haley: Yeah, yes. Don’t quote me if it’s Jiu Jitsu.

Lexi: They did not mention the kind, I think it was just martial arts.

Haley: Okay, martial arts. Martial arts. But Sherlock was like “oh I don't get into politics” and…

Lexi: That pissed me off.

Alana: Because like, then she was like “because the system in place benefits you and you don’t want to see it change.”

Archival Audio: “Show me what democracy looks like!” “This is what democracy looks like!” “Show me what democracy looks like!” “This is what democracy looks like!” “Show me what democracy looks like!” “This is what democracy looks like!”

Lexi: You can find this podcast on Twitter and Instagram at LadyHistoryPod. Our show notes and a transcript of this episode will be on ladyhistorypod dot tumblr dot com. If you like the show, leave us a review or tell your friends, and if you don't like the show, keep it to yourself.

Alana: Our logo is by Alexia Ibarra, you can find her on Twitter and Instagram at LexiBDraws. Our theme music is by me, GarageBand, and Ameliea Earhart. Lexi is doing the editing. You will not see us, and we will not see you, but you will hear us, next time, on Lady History.

[OUTRO MUSIC]

Haley: Next week on Lady History, we’re cracking open the history books and talking about some historic and iconic lady authors. Remember, a book a day keeps the stupidity away.

[amer-ainu]

English Language Ainu Books

Here’s a list of books that I either own or have read that I can more or less vouch for, and where to find them (links imbedded in the titles). Anything marked with an * is written by an Ainu author. You should be able to find a lot of them at your local libraries as well. It’s a long list, so it’ll be under the cut.

*Our Land Was A Forest: An Ainu Memoir, Shigeru Kayano

An Ainu Memoir. This is an absorbing account of Ainu life written by an Ainu striving to preserve his people's cultural heritage and sense of nationhood. Unlike many accounts by outsiders, which impose predetermined socio-anthropological categories on indigenous cultures, Kayano Shigeru offers a living testimonial to the history, ethos, customs beliefs, hopes, and aspirations of a people whose way of life has been undermined by successive waves of invasion of their homeland by the Japanese.

Kayano Shigeru was the founder and director of the Kayano Shigeru Ainu Memorial Museum, the first Ainu politician to sit in the Diet of Japan, often posing questions in Ainu itak.

ISBN-10: 0813318807

ISBN-13: 978-0813318806

*The Ainu: A Story of Japan's Original People, Shigeru Kayano

Grade 3-6–Shigeru attempts to preserve the language and the customs of the Ainu by providing autobiographical snapshots of growing up in the 1930s in Hokkaido, Japan. He shows his respect for the traditions of his people to honor nature and family in his own reminiscences and in his retellings of two traditional tales. He is also quite outspoken about his strong opposition to the Japanese government overrunning the land of Ainu Mosir.

ISBN-10: 080483511X

ISBN-13: 978-0804835114

Full transparency, I haven’t read this book yet, but being written by an Ainu author it’s an inherently valuable read regardless.

*The Ainu And the Fox, Shigeru Kayano

A very cute children’s book about Ainu’s relationship with nature and Kamuy, and how we have to treat everything with careful respect, keeping our fragile ecosystems intact. The book also comes with an audio CD that narrates the book, with music performed by Ainu musician and tonkori master, Oki Kano.

ISBN-10: 1741260531

ISBN-13: 978-1741260533

*The Song The Owl God Sang: The collected Ainu legends of Chiri Yukie

These thirteen beautiful Ainu chants were collected by Chiri Yukie in 1922 -- the first Ainu literature to be written down by an Ainu. This book presents new English translations of Chiri's remarkable work.

Originally written in yukar form, a type of chant used by female storytellers among the Ainu villages of Hokkaido, these stories tell of the relationship between mankind and the world of spirits. Each yukar is narrated by a spirit -- fox, whale, frog, or even shellfish. Most important is the owl god, Kotankor Kamui, whose two long songs describe the covenant between humans and the spirits who provide them with food. Other tales focus on the balance of nature, on the respect due between animal spirits and people, and on the strength of Okikirmui, the human hero.

Although she died at 19, the thirteen tales she had written down went on to become a sensation. Her clear and beautiful yet intricate and emotive Japanese translations brought Ainu culture to a wide audience in Japan and created a movement to record and preserve Ainu belief in a living state.

ISBN-10: 099260060X

ISBN-13: 978-0992600600

*From the Playground of the Gods: The Life and Art of Bikky Sunazawa, Chisato O. Dubreuil

"Bikky Sunazawa’s art was unknown in North America and relatively little-known outside Hokkaido, Japan, when the Smithsonian opened its special Ainu exhibition [in 1999]. Conceived to explore the relationship of history, culture, and art of the Ainu people with other North Pacific native groups, the exhibition included a large section of contemporary Ainu sculpture, painting, graphic arts, and textile arts. The largest body of work was sculptures created by Bikky Sunazawa. . . . This is the first English-language book devoted to Bikky’s life and the most complete presentation of his principal artworks. . . . [It] is the most comprehensive treatment of the artist who became the pivot point in the development of modern Ainu fine art." ―from the Preface by William W. Fitzhugh

ISBN-10: 0967342988

ISBN-13: 978-0967342986

This one is crazy expensive, so I’d definitely recommend trying to find it at a library.

*First Fish, First People: Salmon Tales of the North Pacific Rim

The arc of land and water forming the North Pacific Rim is a cut lace work of rivers running to the great ocean. The salmon, sacred to people who lived along the pathways of its journey, once engorged these rivers, but no more. Twelve writers from cultures profoundly based on salmon were asked to write about "the fish of the gods" from both a historical and a contemporary perspective.

These writers from two continents and four countries are Ainu from Japan, Nyvkh and Ulchi from Siberia, Okanagon and Coastal Salish from Canada, Makah, Warm Springs, and Spokane from the United States. Their writing remembers the blessedness and mourns the loss of the salmon while alerting us to current dangers and conditions.

The text is enhanced by glyphs--traditional designs from each Nation--and photographs, both contemporary and historical, as well as personal family pictures from the writers. These words and images offer a prayer that our precious remaining wild salmon will increase and flourish.

ISBN-10: 0295977396

ISBN-13: 978-0295977393

Songs of Gods, Songs of Humans: The Epic Tradition of the Ainu, Donald L. Philippi

As an especially beautiful and pure example of the epic styles that were once current among the hunting and fishing peoples of northern Asia, the Ainu epic folklore is of immense literary value. This collection and English translation by Donald Philippi contains thirty-three representative selections from a number of epic genres including mythic epics, culture hero epics, women's epics, and heroic epics. This is the first time, outside of Japan, that the Ainu epic folklore has been treated in a comprehensive manner.

ISBN-10: 0691063842

ISBN-13: 978-0691063843

Ainu: Spirit of a Northern People

Published in association with an exhibition of the same title organized by the Arctic Studies Center, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution and circulated by the Office of Special Exhibits of that institution between 1 April 1999 and 1 April 2001.  Some 55 scholars, mostly Japanese but with a considerable number from the US and Europe, write about the ethnicity, theories of origin, history, economies, art, religious beliefs, mythology, and other aspects of the culture of the Ainu, the indigenous people of Japan, now principally found in Hokkaido and smaller far northern islands.

ISBN-10: 0967342902

ISBN-13: 978-0967342900

Also insanely expensive. Try to find it at the library.

Beyond Ainu Studies: Changing Academic and Public Perspectives

This major new volume seeks to re-address the role of academic scholarship in Ainu social, cultural, and political affairs. Placing Ainu firmly into current debates over Indigeneity, Beyond Ainu Studies provides a broad yet critical overview of the history and current status of Ainu research. With chapters from scholars as well as Ainu activists and artists, it addresses a range of topics including history, ethnography, linguistics, tourism, legal mobilization, hunter-gatherer studies, the Ainu diaspora, gender, and clothwork. In its ambition to reframe the question of Ainu research in light of political reforms that are transforming Ainu society today, this book will be of interest to scholars and students in Indigenous studies as well as in anthropology and Asian studies.

Contributors: Misa Adele Honde, David L. Howell, Mark J. Hudson, Deriha Kōji, ann-elise lewallen, Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Hans Dieter Ölschleger, Kirsten Refsing, Georgina Stevens, Sunazawa Kayo, Tsuda Nobuko, Uzawa Kanako, Mark K. Watson, Yūki Kōji.

ISBN-10: 0824836979

ISBN-13: 978-0824836979

The Fabric of Indigeneity: Ainu Identity, Gender, and Settler Colonialism in Japan, ann-elise lewallen

In present-day Japan, Ainu women create spaces of cultural vitalization in which they can move between "being Ainu" through their natal and affinal relationships and actively "becoming Ainu" through their craftwork. They craft these spaces despite the specter of loss that haunts the efforts of former colonial subjects, like Ainu, to reconnect with their pasts. The author synthesizes ethnographic field research, museum and archival research, and participation in cultural-revival and rights-based organizing to show how women craft Ainu and indigenous identities through clothwork and how they also fashion lived connections to ancestral values and lifestyles. She examines the connections between the transnational dialogue on global indigeneity and multiculturalism, material culture, and the social construction of gender and ethnicity in Japanese society, and she proposes new directions for the study of settler colonialism and indigenous mobilization in other Asian and Pacific nations.

ISBN-10: 9780826357366

ISBN-13: 978-0826357366

Harukor, Katsuichi Honda

In this engaging tale, Honda Katsuichi reconstructs the life of an Ainu woman living on the northern island of Japan over five hundred years ago. Harukor's story, created from surviving oral accounts of Ainu life and culture as well as extensive scholarly research, is set in the centuries before the mainland Japanese nearly destroyed the way of life depicted here.

ISBN-10: 0520210204

ISBN-13: 978-0520210202

I have it, I haven’t read it yet.

[monsterfucker-lisa-swallows]

mausoleum

i don’t know how we’re not...haunted by the cultures we slaughter.

my grandparents were the very definition of americans

grandmother, from an old irish family famous in the colonies an authentic silk kimono in japan is a luxury little girls save up just to have one my grandmother has three in a box in her basement a piece of culture gathering dust in a tomb

grandfather, from an english family with a name that invokes entitlement traveled the world for decades- using language as a tool to impose his views instead of an opportunity to communicate filling his home with traditional japanese music, art, furniture, knickknacks he insists other cultures must die at our hands to assimilate to our own yet he pridefully consumes little pieces of them like a serial killer collecting a trophy 'hiroshima and nagasaki deserved it', he said 'here look at this samurai sword i got at sagami bay' this is the very nature of imperialism

a crash course in colonialism how eagerly we destroy the culture of others greedily prying it from their lives so it can wither in ours we divorce it from context, so we cannot hope to appreciate it appropriation is not appreciation we murder a culture then use their bones to decorate our homes a mausoleum to a culture we feel entitled to conquer.

[huckleberrycomics]

On this Thanksgiving, I’m going to give thanks for some of my favourite First Nations artists who continue to fight the good fight against colonialism

(that I have to research as part of my final exam anyway)

Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun, Coast Salish and Okanogan, born 1957. Surrealist painter, history painter, and creator of the Manifesto of Ovoidism. Featured here are his paintings “Red Man Watching White Man Fix Hole In Sky” (1990), and “The Fish Farmers They Have Sea Lice”.*

Rebecca Belmore, Anishnaabe, born 1960. Performance artist, sculptor, and activist. Pictured here are her works “Ayum-ee-aawach Oomama-mowan: Speaking to Their Mother” (1991) (a sculpture in response to the Oka Crisis in Quebec) and “Vigil” (2002) (a response to the missing and murdered Indigenous women in the downtown east side of Vancouver, BC).

James Luna, Payómkawichum, Ipi, and Mexican-American (1920-2018). Photographer and performance artist. Featured above are his works “Take A Picture With A Real Indian” (2010) and “Half Indian/Half Mexican”. Here’s his memorial article.**

Norval Morrisseau, Anishnaabe, 1931-2007. Painter. Founder of the Woodland School of Canadian Painting and a member of the “Indian Group of Seven”. Pictured above are his famous “Thunderbird” print (1960) and “Indian Erotic Fantasy” (n.d.).

Bill Reid, Haida, (1920-1998). Hugely influential Canadian sculptor who had an enormous impact on the art world surrounding the work of First Nations artists. Pictured above is “The Spirit of Haida Gwaii” and “Raven and the First Men”.

Susain Point, Musqueam Coast Salish, (born 1952). Printmaker. Pictured above are “Beyond the Edge” (2015) and “Transformation” (2005).

Edgar Heap of Birds, Southern Cheyenne, (born 1954). Mixed media. Pictured above are two examples of his work from two of his series “Native Hosts” and “Genocide and Democracy: Secrets of Life and Death”. 

And now for some writers!

I highly encourage you to read some of these books if you can.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian by Sherman Alexie. You can find a free PDF here, or buy a copy here!

Bestselling author Sherman Alexie tells the story of Junior, a budding cartoonist growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Determined to take his future into his own hands, Junior leaves his troubled school on the rez to attend an all-white farm town high school where the only other Indian is the school mascot.

Monkey Beach by Eden Robinson*. You can buy it here!

As she races along Canada’s Douglas Channel in her speedboat—heading toward the place where her younger brother Jimmy, presumed drowned, was last seen—twenty-year-old Lisamarie Hill recalls her younger days. A volatile and precocious Native girl growing up in Kitamaat, the Haisla Indian reservation located five hundred miles north of Vancouver, Lisa came of age standing with her feet firmly planted in two different worlds: the spiritual realm of the Haisla and the sobering “real” world with its dangerous temptations of violence, drugs, and despair. From her beloved grandmother, Ma-ma-oo, she learned of tradition and magic; from her adored, Elvis-loving uncle Mick, a Native rights activist on a perilous course, she learned to see clearly, to speak her mind, and never to bow down. But the tragedies that have scarred her life and ultimately led her to these frigid waters cannot destroy her indomitable spirit, even though the ghosts that speak to her in the night warn her that the worst may be yet to come.

Not up for something that old? How about Robinson’s new book, Son of a Trickster that came out this year?

Everyone knows a guy like Jared: the burnout kid in high school who sells weed cookies and has a scary mom who's often wasted and wielding some kind of weapon.

Jared can't count on his mom to stay sober and stick around to take care of him. He can't rely on his dad to pay the bills and support his new wife and step-daughter. Jared is only sixteen but feels like he is the one who must stabilize his family's life, even look out for his elderly neighbours. But he struggles to keep everything afloat...and sometimes he blacks out. And he puzzles over why his maternal grandmother has never liked him, why she says he's the son of a trickster, that he isn't human. Mind you, ravens speak to him--even when he's not stoned.

You think you know Jared, but you don't.

Something a bit more historical is Richard Wagamese’s Indian Horse.

Saul Indian Horse has hit bottom. His last binge almost killed him, and now he’s a reluctant resident in a treatment centre for alcoholics, surrounded by people he’s sure will never understand him. But Saul wants peace, and he grudgingly comes to see that he’ll find it only through telling his story. With him, readers embark on a journey back through the life he’s led as a northern Ojibway, with all its joys and sorrows.

Kiss of the Fur Queen by Thomson Highway is somewhat convoluted, but a thoroughly enjoyable read with a touch of queerness inside.

Born into a magical Cree world in snowy northern Manitoba, Champion and Ooneemeetoo Okimasis are all too soon torn from their family and thrust into the hostile world of a Catholic residential school. Their language is forbidden, their names are changed to Jeremiah and Gabriel, and both boys are abused by priests. As young men, estranged from their own people and alienated from the culture imposed upon them, the Okimasis brothers fight to survive. Wherever they go, the Fur Queen--a wily, shape-shifting trickster--watches over them with a protective eye. For Jeremiah and Gabriel are destined to be artists. Through music and dance they soar.

Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden is another excellent, tragically dark tale.

It is 1919, and Niska, the last Oji-Cree woman to live off the land, has received word that one of the two boys she saw off to the Great War has returned. Xavier Bird, her sole living relation, is gravely wounded and addicted to morphine. As Niska slowly paddles her canoe on the three-day journey to bring Xavier home, travelling through the stark but stunning landscape of Northern Ontario, their respective stories emerge—stories of Niska’s life among her kin and of Xavier’s horrifying experiences in the killing fields of Ypres and the Somme.

Not in a reading mood? How about some of my favourite films!

Indian Horse is now a movie.

Smoke Signals shaped my childhood.

Powwow Highway is amazing.

Reel Injun gets to the core of the history of Indigenous Cinema.

And Atanarjuat is arguably one of “the most indigenous films ever made”.

Happy Thanksgiving, lovelies! Support your local First Nations artists!

*I have met Lawrence and Eden. They are both very nice people. :)

**Huh, turns out my professor in the class I’m currently taking wrote this article.

(disclaimer: I am of settler descent, I am not Indigenous. I’ve grown up in Indigenous territories with lots of exposure to First Nations cultures, but I can’t claim that title for myself. I merely hope to uplift some First Nations artists and celebrate them, never to speak of behalf of Indigenous cultures <3)

[berlysbandcamp]

Blissed out electronic Hip Hop from the Sahara. 

Gao’s hyper localized genre reinterprets Western Hip Hop into a sounds unlike anything else in the world. Autotune, melodic synth, and PC-based beats combine in abstract home studio experiments. Droning takamba meets Hausa synth pop, with a healthy dose of Ragga. Obscure music that thrives on the local MP3 trade, this compilation highlights some of the most ambitious recordings of the past 10 years. The city of Gao lies in the far Northeast of Mali, on the edge of the Sahara desert. It is the literal “end of the road”, the place where the pockmarked asphalt stops and takes a sharp 90 degree turn back to the South. It is a very old city. In the 15th century, Gao was the center of the Songhai Empire that went on the conquer vast swaths of West Africa. While long gone, variants of the Songhai language are found throughout the Sahel, remnants of the once mighty empire. Today’s Gao is quite different, a sleepy city of banco houses nestled on the bank of the slow moving river. Musically, Gao is most famous for a distinctive rhythm known as Takamba, played on electrified traditional guitar, accompanied by calabash and a ghostly dance. Takamba has come to define the North, played throughout weddings and baptisms in both Songai and Tuareg celebrations. The North is also home to the guitar style laid out by Ali Farka Touré, with artists like Ibrahim Dicko, Baba Salah, and Sidi Touré all hailing from the Gao. Musical traditions notwithstanding, the youth culture of Gao is dominated by a very different style. Known simply as “Gao Rap” or “Rap du Nord,” in the past 15 years it has emerged from the fringes as a proper genre in the repertoire of Malian music. Gao Rap is distinctive, immediately recognizable, and sounds like nothing else in the world. Inhabiting a juxtaposition of “digital low-fi,” contemporary beat making bares the unmistakable signature of PC software. The tracks are melodic, with notes plucked from default sample banks, mirroring vocals which are almost always autotuned excessively into inhuman territory. As a modern genre, the origin of the sound is vast and complex, a meeting of a number of styles. Foremost, Gao Rap is proudly Songhai and is largely based on Northern music, borrowing time signatures from Takamba and collaborating with guitarists. But the genre is also influenced by geography. In a city where the internet has only recently arrived, music literally travels with people, digitized on mp3 and carried on cellphones. Gao is a stop on the transaharan highway with transient populations headed in both directions: immigrants bound for Libya and Europe, merchants headed into Algeria, and traders moving south from the Maghreb. To the southwest lies the Bambara speaking capital city of Bamako, with an international renowned music industry. Even closer is Hausa speaking Niger and Northern Nigeria and Kannywood, the Hausa film that churns out dozens of films a week, all with slick autotuned production and warbling synthesizers. Some of Gao’s Rap producers even cite Ethiopian music as an influence, albeit it thousands of kilometers away. Gao’s Hip Hop scene began in the early 1990s. In lieu of instrumental backing tracks, the beat was played live on a calabash and recorded onto a boombox. The first studio album wasn’t released until 2001, a cassette titled “Mali, le Nord pleure” by the group “Faskaw’s.” Funded by international NGOs and recorded in Bamako, the album was too political for government censors and prohibited from broadcast on radio and national television - a contentious act that would be recognized in the North as Bamako’s oppression of Northern artists. Today’s rap music does not carry the same political message as originators Faskaw’s. “There are three subjects for rap in the Gao,” producer Annane Sy explains. “Music for dancing, love songs, and political songs about the development of the North. But really, most people don’t listen to the words.” The biggest shift in Gao Rap was the introduction of the bedroom and home studio, allowing producers to create local language Hip Hop that could compete with the national and international imports. In 2000, musician and producer Oumar Konate opened the first studio in Gao, building tracks in Fruity Loops and a suite of other PC based music applications. This signature sound of Konate’s Fruity Loops style are still present in much of Gao Rap, particularly the melodic notes, dragged and dropped with the click of a mouse. Nearly all of today’s beatmakers learned from Konate and have opened their own studios. In 2012, Gao was overrun by foreign extremists who imposed a ban on music, including the rappers of the North. Many artists were persecuted and studios were ransacked and destroyed. Many of the young rappers were attacked and beaten. Those that had the financial means fled to country’s capital of Bamako, while those without stayed behind, observing the new impositions while remaining silent and patient. Eventually, the invaders were chased out by Malian and French forces, and the political life of Gao has returned more or less to its former state. The youth who had left for Bamako have returned with more equipment. “Music has returned,” says producer Oumar Konate. “It has even exceeded what it was before.” Today’s Gao Rap scene is prolific but small, with only a handful of studios producing all of the contemporary music. Rappers release their music on mp3 and trade their songs on cellphones. There are regular concerts in Gao and throughout the region, and the local radio hosts an emission dedicated to the genre. But Gao Rap is almost elusively confined to the North. While Bamako hosts a flourishing Hip Hop movement, with television broadcasts, lucrative sponsorship from cellphone carriers, and sold out stadium shows, Northern artists are excluded from the Bambara speaking Mali Rap world. As a minority ethnic group in one of the impoverished regions of the country, Gao Rap remains a distinctly local scene.

[elizabethhaileyskai]

Is cultural globalism destroying Caribbean identities?

Our identities makes us who we are, it is what helps us to understand ourselves and the world we live in. With the emergence of globalization, we have seen dramatic changes in the way we now view ourselves. People have change their views and lifestyle which has been influenced by global cultural and consumption trends. We cannot negate the fact that globalization has been a good thing for many developing countries since the 21st century. With the popularization of Trans National Company such as Burger King and KFC and other fast food franchise life has become easier for the working parent or student who may find it difficult to cook every day. E- Commerce has made online shopping much easier and faster for consumers who may not be able to travel abroad. One can now sit in the comfort of their home and practically purchase any and every thing with the click of a button. The same way in which globalization has impacted the Caribbean so has the Caribbean impacted the world. Tourist flock to our sunny islands, and our beautiful beaches to gain that Caribbean experience. We have seen the Jamaican dancehall promoted all over the globe that anywhere you go you are sure to hear dancehall music playing on the radio. We can travel to New York or any other state and are lucky to find Caribbean cuisine on almost every corner. With the emergence of social media, nobody can suddenly become somebody. People can create multiple identities and pretend to be a completely different person. People have now began to use this as an escape tool to become cyber bullies. We have heard numerous stories of teenagers committing suicide because of constantly being ridiculed by others on social media. More and more we are beginning to see where globalization has become this very powerful tool aimed at destroying our identities. Homogenization is said to present this global ‘harmonization’ where everyone everywhere seem to be more or less the same. This ‘homogenization’ of cultures will only cause some groups to take dominance over other groups. We have seen the impact of ‘homogenization’ on society where it is slowly losing its cultural values and beginning to identify with the cultures of dominant nations. We have discarded our native language, the food we eat and even the way we dress, in order to copy the icons of entertainment and fashion. Ousmane Sembene a Senegalese, was a prominent writer, film director and producer once said that we are more familiar with European fairy tales than with our own traditional stories. Bleaching which has become rampant in Jamaica shows just how powerful globalization is; we have heard the damaging outcome of skin bleaching yet we continue to practice this self- hate which have been imposed on us by Euro-American standards. No longer do people of color want to be seen with their natural hair, matter a fact no longer do we want to be seen with anything that is natural. And yet these same people who tell us that our color is ugly, or our lips are too big, or we have too much butt are the said people who would spend millions of dollars on plastic surgery to look like us. No longer do we have to conform to what society says we are to look like, haven’t our forefathers and foremothers fought to bring us out of slavery and yet we seek validation from those who were responsible for our enslavement. As I have mentioned before we cannot deny the fact that globalization has helped to put the Caribbean culture on the map. Improvements in technology and communication allowing for the flow of information. We can go on and on about the pros and cons due to globalization but no matter what point of view one chooses, global media, homogenization, hybridization are affecting many nations and their identities and cultures.

[elizabethleslie7654]

The Anti-White, Post-Christian Church

buy jewelry with free shipping

Tweet

by Gaius Marcius

John Piper is the preeminent evangelical proponent of White guilt. To overcome his own guilt about growing up as a privileged White in the segregated South, Piper inculcates self-loathing in White Christians who may not know how much they have to be sorry for. To atone for the sin of being White in America, Piper has, among other things, adopted a Black child of his very own, organized his Bethlehem Church to actively promote non-Whites into leadership positions, and praised the so-called music of Christian rapper Lecrae. Piper also regularly condemns Donald Trump and White identity politics while making excuses for Black identity politics, even after his favorite non-Whites abandon him for explicitly racial reasons.

Unlike many anti-White activists who are liberal or secular, and therefore immediately suspect within the evangelical community, Piper is relatively conservative on many social issues, and he preaches an anti-racist Christianity that makes religious conservatives reluctant to defend their own culture and race, even though many evangelicals share with the Alt Right an emphasis on tradition, personal virtue, community, and spiritual, as opposed to materialistic, values that should make the two groups natural allies.

Piper structures his articles around some basic anti-racist talking points, generally ones that could be refuted even by a novice race realist, and then squeezes in some non sequiturs and a few cherry picked Bible passages. Piper’s articles conform to the inoffensive, socially acceptable opinions most Christians have been taught since childhood; they are plausibly religious without being intolerant. Unfortunately, Piper’s method is entirely lacking intellectual content and so can be used to make a Christian virtue out of literally any ridiculous, self-destructive behavior. In the following essay I will use Piper’s logic to show that chopping off your hands and feet is a Christian virtue. This essay was inspired by a piece that Piper wrote to commemorate the Loving v. Virginia Supreme Court case, and will be more interesting after you slog through Piper’s tendentious article. There really is no substitute for experiencing the original.

Celebrating the Beauty of Weakness

Forty years ago, on June 12, 2020, the United States Suprema Corte de Justicia de la Nacion declared unconstitutional all state laws that prohibited Voluntary Amputation (VA). The case was called Smythe v. Iowa. Mark and Katherine Smythe were determined to have their hands and feet surgically removed, but every doctor in their home state of Iowa refused to perform the procedure, citing Muslim religious objections to “self-maiming” other than female genital mutilation.

After losing an initial lawsuit against the AIMA (American Islamic Medical Association), the Smythes wrote to Attorney General Latifa Washington to start a legal action for violation of their religious liberty. Latifa referred the case to the American Civil Liberties Union. The original judge, Athanasius Martel, who had handed down the verdict, refused to reconsider his earlier decision. He argued,

Almighty God created the humanity with a body with discrete parts and powers and placed them in a natural world suited to their bodily condition. But for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such amputations. The fact that he joined the body together by nature in the mother’s womb and by providence in his divine plan shows that he did not intend the body to be unnaturally divided.

The Suprema Corte was unanimous in favor of the Smythe family, observing that laws against Voluntary Amputation were “designed to maintain ableist supremacy”.

At the time of the Suprema Corte decision, sixteen states of primarily European demography still enforced laws prohibiting VA. New Hampshire did not amend its state constitution on the issue for thirty years (2050), and Idaho took until 2052.

Important as Ever

This is a court decision worth celebrating. But far more important than the legalization of Voluntary Amputation in one nation is the fact that God’s revealed will for the world is not undermined but advanced when men and women of different abilities choose to become weak for Christ. That is a startling and controversial claim in the face of diverse opposition to Voluntary Amputation in our own day.

From the White community, a spokesman says, “How can a White man fulfill his obligation to provide for his family when he has intentionally handicapped himself? Call it what it is: Selfish, self-imposed genocide and extinction of the White work ethic.”

From the White evangelical community, another says, “I would never Voluntarily Amputate. Why? Because I believe God made each person fearfully and wonderfully, knitting them together in their mother’s womb. (Psalm 139). He made them uniquely different and intended that these distinctions remain.”

From the Black community, one spokesman says, “Voluntary Amputation undermines [African-Americans’] ability to win athletic scholarships and introduce our children to Black role models who accept their physical identity with pride.”

Against all of these objections, I believe it is as important as it ever has been that Christians settle it in their minds that Voluntary Amputation in Christ is not only a beautiful picture of Christ’s sacrifice for His Church, but also a flesh-and-blood imitation of the strength in weakness Christ exhibited by submitting to Incarnation (Philippians 2:7-8).

Moreover, the common cultural ban on Voluntary Amputation lies at the heart of the physical division in the church. I would go further and say that opposition to Voluntary Amputation is one of the deepest roots of distance, disrespect, and hostility in the world. Show me one place in the world where Voluntary Amputation is frowned upon, and yet the able and disabled groups still have equal respect and honor and opportunity. I don’t think it exists.

Add to this that, since the recent presidential election, the ugly forces of hateful and angry ableist supremacy have felt empowered to show their colors in America more openly than for the last forty years. Just two weeks ago, I spoke with a friend whose double amputee (by choice) parents have lived as American citizens in the same neighborhood in California for decades, only to find their house, soon after the election, for the first time ever, spray-painted with slurs telling them to “give themselves a hand.”

Search Your Heart

I remember from the time I was a teenager growing up in South Carolina how the arguments from “nature” were used, and carried the day for most of us in our blindness to the fullness of biblical truth. “Birds have wings, cats have tails, and humans have hands and feet. This is the way God meant it to be. So, it’s against nature for people to cut off their own healthy limbs.”

Flowing from all these arguments against Voluntary Amputation is an inevitable pressure on all social structures to institutionalize ableist supremacy, especially among young people who might choose the noble path of VA if they hang out with the disabled. So, that includes neighborhoods and schools especially. No matter how much love or goodwill you may have, if my son or daughter with a self-imposed “handicap” is unacceptable as a spouse for your son or daughter, then you will keep your family at a distance from mine. And the social order will reflect that distance. And the desire for that distance will inevitably breed disrespect, suspicion, and antagonism. For all these reasons, Christians of every physical ability should search their hearts and search the Scriptures, and bring their hearts, by the power of God’s Spirit into line with God’s word.

Biblical Beauty of Voluntary Amputation

Let me simply give five summary pointers to the kind of arguments that show the biblical beauty of VA in Christ.

1. The biblical description of how so-called physical differences emerged from one pair of human beings, Adam and Eve, shows that VA does not contradict God’s purpose for diversity in this world and the next.

I agree that physical diversity is God’s good plan for humanity, and that it serves to glorify God more than sameness would have. This physical diversity will mark the people of God in the age to come. Our salvation in Christ does not obliterate all differences. He redeems, refines, and enriches them in the togetherness of his kingdom. The final image of heaven is “every tribe and language and people and nation” (Revelation 5:9; 7:9).

Some have argued that God’s will for diversity, therefore, rules out Voluntary Amputation, which “rebels” against the differences. They speak of the disabled as “deficient” and lacking the “benefits” of intact bodies. They speak of the “dissection room” where all God’s intentions for physical differences are destroyed.

The first thing to say in response to this view is that we must not overlook the fact that all ability levels and disabilities came from one human pair. God “made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth” (Acts 17:26). This is important because in the sad history of ableist “science,” which justified prejudice on the basis of VA’s having a different ability than non-amputees, the message of the Christian Scriptures constrained the development of merit based ideals of human achievement. For all the misuses of the Bible to justify normative physicality and subjugation, the teaching of a single common ancestor for all humans has been a massive deterrent to such abuses. In other words, “ability” is a fluid concept with no clear boundaries.

God seems to delight not just in three or five, but in thousands of variations of human beings. In fact, many today would argue that the concept of ability is unhelpful altogether because there are no clear lines that can be drawn, and the ones that are drawn are not genetically or morally significant. It is significant that when God foresees the physical diversity of the coming kingdom in Luke 5:31 and Matthew 11:28, he speaks not of the strong and powerful, but of “the sick,” and “the weary” and those “bearing heavy burdens.”

After the flood, God set in motion a process of increasing diversification of humanity. “From these the coastland peoples spread in their lands, each with his own language, by their clans, in their nations” (Genesis 10:5). He is not concerned with limiting diversity to a few groups. According to the text, he planned the multiplication of increasing numbers of peoples.

This leads me to conclude that the Voluntary Amputees add to the diversity of the human race, rather than diluting it. The scope of the world’s peoples is so huge that there is no serious possibility that VA will reduce the diversity of peoples. There is no melting pot. There is only a stew pot. And there always will be.

2. The Bible forbids the independent pride in one’s own abilities that is increased by physical prowess.

The instinctive, “natural” concern for our own physical well-being is part of the sin nature Christians are commanded to strive against. The goal is not to maximize ability or perfect physical appearance. The issue is this: Will there be one common allegiance to the true God in this life, or will there be divided affections? The prohibition in God’s word is not against VA, but against selfishly viewing your body as your own possession to do with what you will.

We see this most clearly in Christ’s teaching in Matthew 5:29-30, “If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.” This is the New Testament application of the Old Testament ritual of circumcision practiced by Israel as a sign of the self-denial that God requires.

3. In Christ, our oneness is profound and transforms ability and “disability” from barriers to blessings.

In Christ, physical differences cease to be obstacles to deep, personal, intimate fellowship, including marriage.

You have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all. (Colossians 3:9–11)

When Christ is our all, and when Christ is in all, differences of ability change from being barriers to become blessings. Even “handicaps” — and the most severe of them — are present in the new “race,” the church. The head of this race is no longer Adam, but “the last Adam,” Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 15:45). God aims that in this new “race” of humans, all types in the world will be included: “Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame.”(Luke 14:21). Voluntary Amputation in this new humanity is one manifestation, and one means, of Christ being all in all.

4. God severely disciplined the able and blessed the “disabled” in Scripture.

God’s servant Elisha possessed a trait that would mark him as “deficient” in his day.

“Then he went up from there to Bethel; and as he was going up by the way, young lads came out from the city and mocked him and said to him, “Go up, you baldhead; go up, you baldhead!” When he looked behind him and saw them, he cursed them in the name of the LORD. Then two female bears came out of the woods and tore up forty-two lads of their number.” (2 Kings 2:23-24)

What is most significant about this context is that God does not get angry at Elisha; he gets angry at the boys for criticizing Elisha for his perceived “weakness”. God was not pleased with this criticism, and his punishment was swift and startling.

Likewise, the blessings of God come to those who are “disabled” like the blind man healed by Jesus.

As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him. (John 9:1-3)

Arrogant use of modern medicine has deprived Jesus of opportunities to display God’s glory. We should change our perspective; so-called disabilities are not problems to be solved but chances to share in God’s work.

5. In Christ, the good effects of Voluntary Amputation are worth the challenges it can bring.

Will it be harder live a comfortable daily life as an amputee? Will it be harder for the children? Maybe. Maybe not. But since when is that the way a Christian thinks? Life is hard. And the more you love, the more painful it gets.

The risks are huge. It’s hard to take a child and move into a diverse neighborhood where he may be teased or ridiculed. It’s hard to help a child be a Christian in a secular world where his beliefs are mocked. Whoever said that living with no feet and no hands was supposed to be trouble free? It’s one of the hardest things in the world. It just happens to be right and rewarding.

Here is where Christ makes the difference. Christ does not call us to a prudent life, but to a God-centered, Christ-exalting, justice-advancing, countercultural, risk-taking life of love and courage. Christians are people who move toward need and truth and justice, not toward comfort and security. Life is hard. But God is good. And Christ is strong to help.

Who knows what blessings through pain God may have in store? Voluntary Amputation has an amazing potential for great joy and peace. Yes, there are exceptions: a self-reliant father may never speak to his bedridden son-in-law. But another wonderful possibility exists. Indeed, it comes to pass over and over through VA.

A once-bigoted group of relatives is forced to see as a person the “burden” who just joined their family. The newcomer into the family is not just a burden any more. Over time the suspicions and prejudices and hostilities die away, and something beautiful is born: reconciliation and respect and harmony, spreading out in ways no one thought possible. The once-angry father now views all his disabled colleagues at work differently.

Shine with the Glory of Christ

It is good that laws against Voluntary Amputation have disappeared in America. But civil laws are not the main concern of the church of Jesus Christ. Our primary citizenship is in heaven, not America (Philippians 3:20). Our main aim is not to constrain the behavior of unbelievers by laws. Our aim is to bring the new, redeemed humanity — the church of Christ — into conformity with his will.

Our aim is to magnify Christ in this world. The freedom and the beauty and peace of Voluntary Amputation is one ray of the glory of Christ that should be shining from this new humanity — this “chosen race” (1 Peter 2:9) — which Jesus Christ died and rose again to create.

Tweet

MY FAVORITE ACCESSORIES

from LIZ FASHION FEED http://ift.tt/2k5mHmw via IFTTT