#indigenous tag

[xiexiecaptain]

Fun fact: in Anishinaabemowin, the term for a cat purring is "nagamo gaazhagehns" / "nagamo biizhehns" / " nagamo boozhehns" (different dialects have varying words/spellings for a house cat)

But the main thing is that "nagamo" is the verb for "he/she/that one sings"

Cat purring in Anishinaabemowin is essentially called "cat singing"

[themotherofhorses]

friendly reminder: May 5th is the MMIWG day- the national day of awareness for missing and murdered indigenous women & girls.

as a young indigenous woman, allow me to present you with just a few statistics:

Indigenous women (+ girls) face a murder rate more than 10x times the national average

Homicide is the 3rd leading cause of death among ntv girls & women (10-24) and the 5th leading cause of death for ntv women (25-34)

More than 4 outta 5 (84.3%) Indig women have experienced violence

More than half Indig women (56.1%) experience sexual violence

indigenous women are sacred. the violence against us is a national shame.

credit to https://www.csvanw.org/mmiw/.

additional information can be accessed through https://www.nativehope.org/missing-and-murdered-indigenous-women-mmiw

[spark-glow]

In relation to the 'news' surrounding Sacheen Littlefeather, i'm really going to need non natives to kinda sit back on this one. I mean it. It gets exhausting having to repeatedly explain ideas of blood quantum and it's catastrophic effects on indigenous communities to allies that're strangely gun-ho about attacking someone who may or may not be Native.

CONTEXT ; Jacqueline Keeler, for those who are uninitiated, is a notorious 'pretendian hunter' and authored a list of 'confirmed pretendians' that erroneously implicated several people as race fakers when that was flat out not the case. This was most famously the case with Ben Nighthorse Campbell ( who mind you, isn't a good person, but that doesn't matter here ), where she claimed that he had no Cheyenne ancestry despite him being a registered tribal citzen of the Northern Cheyenne nation. At no point did she confer with tribal officials to confirm her belief.

She is the author of the piece that is now implicating Sacheen as a race faker, and that alone should be a red flag to people. The whole piece leans on the idea that Sacheen's sisters, Rosalind and Trudy, always knew that Sacheen was lying and spent years and years and years holding back from speaking out out of the belief that Sacheen's career would fizzle out eventually.

If they always knew, then why did Rosalind flat out say on twitter that she found out recently FROM Jacqueline Keeler herself that they aren't Native?

( Link to tweet )

Jacqueline should not, in my opinion, be trusted to speak on issues of 'real native status'. Anyone who values mindlessly rooting out 'pretendians' over doing community work of real merit isn't worth giving the time of day to. Her evidence for most things is flimsy and should always be taken with a HEFTY grain of salt.

I need everyone to understand that obsessing over 'pretendians' and blood quantum and who has a right to claim nativeness is a fool's errand. Blood quantum as a concept is a tool of colonization, and is something we're still trying to shake off to this day. Smaller Native communities are losing their land rights and tribal sovereignty because of blood quantum stipulations put out by the government. At some point, there may be no one with a large enough quantum to claim tribal affiliation for these small bands, despite thriving communities still existing.

So, imagine our frustration at non natives pointing at people and saying 'lol I bet you're only 0.1% native, shut up' like that's some kind've all powerful gotcha. It displays a profound lack of understanding for our experiences and how we define nativeness. Please try and get that blood quantum is an issue that we as a community debate about all the time and that it's just.. something that's best left to those it effects. You aren't helping any indigenous people by perpetuating this shit.

I don't know what Sacheen's claim to Nativeness really is. I do not trust Jacqueline's word as far as I can throw it, which isn't very far. Her sisters openly hate her and seem to not know how to get their story straight. This all conveniently comes forward after her passing, so she couldn't defend or explain herself if she wanted to, and all of it feels very suspicious to me. I don't know what Sacheen's claim to Nativeness really is, and yanno what, I don't care. At the end of the god damn day, this sorta thing is not my business and it's not your business either.

[disabledopossum]

Protect ICWA

[ryanazayku]

Tamagit ⵜⴰⵎⴰⴳⵉⵜ

[underwaterspiderbird]

Shove your blue aliens right up your ass you ignorant, white privileged, mayonnaise mung diving, cop calling, psychedelic hating, culture stealing, NDN child stealing, self defense from minority demonizing, Hollywood dickriding, dog park frequenting, potato salad and raisin-eating, paper feather hat wearing, turkey finger making, land acknowledgement giving, history class from 1st grade believing settler cockroaches I'm rly on y’all fuckers’ asses🖕🏼🖕🏼🖕🏼

[the-most-pathetic-edge-marquis]

hey!!!! remember standing rock water protectors and the dakota access pipeline?

the massive, poorly constructed environmental risk that spat all over the Standing Rock Sioux people's treaty rights? that dug up their sacred burial sites? the one where the oil corporation who owned it bought out a private company to do a sham of an "environmental analysis" and never consulted the tribe and STILL didn't actually get approval? the one that's literally operating illegally and without proper permits right fucking now?

yeah, that.

you remember that.

surprising absolutely no one, the army corps of engineers this week (September 8, 2023) released an EIS (environmental impact statement) draft for public comment that takes into account absolutely 0 of the tribe's concerns, and in fact did not consult with them once in the process!

they're going to officially approve the pipeline.

what's the good news?

IT'S A DRAFT. YOU CAN SUBMIT PUBLIC COMMENT RIGHT NOW UNTIL NOVEMBER 13!!!

This link RIGHT HERE (https://action.lakotalaw.org/action/dapl-eis-2023) will take you to a Lakota Law Project page where they've set up a form to make it easy to submit a comment.

All you have to do is add your name, email, and zip code, and it pulls up a form with a pre-written message you can just click and submit, listing the most pressing concerns. You can also personalize it if you want, but you don't have to. This will take you two minutes. Please.

you can also access the comment information on the USACE website here, email NWO-DAPL-EIS@usace.army.mil yourself, or call Brent Cossette, the contact for the draft, at 402-995-2716!!!

you can also donate directly to the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe here.

[crabussy]

god I'm so fucking furious at the removal of Te Reo Māori names from organisations around Aotearoa. it's a complete non-issue, every organisation has the English name directly underneath the Māori name. I have never once as an English speaker been unable to understand what an organisation is for. Winston Peters, the Deputy Prime Minister, who is literally Māori himself, said “Te Papa is a historic name but tell me this waka kotahi, how many boats have you seen going down the road?”. Waka does not just mean canoe. it means vessel, and waka kotahi (the transport agency of Aotearoa) explains this VERY SIMPLY on their official website. waka kotahi means to travel together as one. Can you see how fucking upsetting this is. A Māori person in power who is in agreement about banning his own language, being so cocky about something that he does not even understand due to the suppression of the language of his people. It makes me sick. I've seen reports from Māori people all over Aotearoa speaking out about how upset and furious they are, how decades of progress have been undone in the fight to restore the rights of their people who have for so long been oppressed and have suffered the effects of colonisation. Please share this if you can, I hate knowing how few people will hear about this, I know there is so much injustice in the world right now and it is so exhausting, I know. I love you all, keep it up.

https://waateanews.com/2023/11/27/te-reo-public-service/

[aspharah]

shoutout to bi ppl fr. bi women, bi men, bi nonbinary people. blows a kiss to masc bi women and fem bi men in particular. fat bi people, bi poc, aspec bi people, trans bi people, i love all you guys

[shadow-bender]

Please pray and raise awareness for Cole Brings Plenty, a Lakota actor and student. He was found on april 5th. This is such an awful and cruel act of violence, im having a hard time finding the words.

April 8th Rising Hearts has organized Braids for Cole, so please wear your hair in braids and bring awareness so that Cole and his family can get justice.

*edited to correct information*

[xiexiecaptain]

Since biboon & the storytelling season are nearly over, please enjoy this collection of pictures that look like they could be from an aadizookaan

Mm yes so sacrit, very mno-bimaadiziwin

[themotherofhorses]

hello everyone!

if you follow me, well, first of all, many thank yous for the follow. allow me to introduce myself. My name is vic, and I’m a proud diné and mescalero apache woman. and im here with a few friendly reminders:

ICWA protects native children and youth.

today the supreme court will hear arguments opposing ICWA from this white evangelical couple, who claim it to be a form of racial discrimination. and if the court rules in favor of them, the consequences will be devastating for both native families and tribal sovereignty.

historically speaking, our cultures, traditions, languages, and children have been stolen from us. we cannot allow for this to happen once again.

click the link below to see how to help the native community! join us, please. do not stand in silence. if you are reading this, please share! reblog! tell your grandma and first cousin and best friend! anything is something.

[irawhiti]

while everyone's rightfully talking about oppenheimer and its flaws regarding the erasure of japanese and native american voices regarding nuclear testing and detonations, i'd like to bring up the fact that pacific islanders have also been severely impacted by nuclear testing under the pacific proving grounds, a name given by the US to a number of sites in the pacific that were designated for testing nuclear weapons after the second world war, at least 318 of which were dropped on our ancestral homes and people. i would like if more people talked about this.

important sections are bolded for ease of reading. i would appreciate this being reblogged since it's a bit alarming how few people know about this.

--

in 1946, the indigenous peoples of pikinni (the bikini atoll) were forcibly relocated off of their islands so that nuclear tests could be run on the atoll. at least 23 nuclear bombs were detonated on this inhabited island chain, including 20 hydrogen bombs. many pasifika were irreversibly irradiated, all of them were starved during multiple forced relocations, and the island chain is still unsafe to live on despite multiple cleanup attempts. there are several craters visible from space that were left on the atoll from nuclear testing.

the forced relocation was to several different small and previously uninhabited islands over several decades, none of which were able to sustain traditional lifestyles which directly lead to further starvation and loss of culture and identity. there is a reason that pacific islanders choose specific islands to inhabit including access to fresh water, food, shelter, cloth and fibre, climate, etc. and obviously none of these reasons were taken into account during the displacements.

200 pikinni were eventually moved back to the atoll in the 1970s but dangerous levels of strontium-90 were found in drinking water in 1978 and the inhabitants were found to have abnormally high levels of caesium-137 in their bodies.

--

i'm going to put the rest of this post under a readmore to improve the chances of this being reblogged by the general public. i would recommend you read the entirety of the post since it really isn't long and goes into detail about, say, entire islands being fully, utterly destroyed. like, wiped off of the map. without exaggeration, entire islands were disintegrated.

--

as i just mentioned, ānewetak (the eniwetok atoll) was bombed so violently that an entire island, āllokļap, was permanently and completely destroyed. an entire island. it's just GONE. the world's first hydrogen bomb was tested on this island. the crater is visibly larger than any of the islands next to it, more than a mile in diameter and roughly fifteen storeys deep. the hydrogen bomb released roughly 700 times the energy released during the bombing of hiroshima. this would, of course, be later outdone by other hydrogen bombs dropped on the pacific, reaching over 1000 times the energy released.

one attempt to clean up the waste on ānewetak was the construction of a large ~380ft dome, colloquially known as the tomb, on runit island. the island has been essentially turned into a nuclear waste dump where several other islands of ānewetak have moved irradiated soil to and, due to climate change, rising seawater is beginning to seep into the dome, causing nuclear waste to leak out. along with this, if a large typhoon were to hit the dome, there would be a catastrophic failure followed by a leak of nuclear waste into the surrounding land, drinking water, and ocean. the tomb was built haphazardly and quickly to cut costs.

hey, though, there's a plus side! the water in the lagoon and the soil surrounding the tomb is far more radioactive than the currently contained radioactive waste. a typhoon wouldn't cause (much) worse irradiation than the locals and ocean already currently experience, anyway! it's already gone to shit! and who cares, right, the only ""concern"" is that it will just further poison the drinking water of the locals with radioactive materials. this can just be handwaved off as a nonissue, i guess. /s

--

at least 36 bombs were detonated in the general vicinity of kiritimati (christmas island) and johnson atoll. while johnson atoll has seemingly never been inhabited by polynesians, kiritimati was used intermittently by polynesians (and later on, micronesians) for several hundred years. many islands in the pacific were inhabited seasonally and likewise many pacific islanders should be classified as nomadic but it has always been convenient for the goal of white supremacy and imperalism to claim that semi-inhabited areas are completely uninhabited, claimable pieces of terra nullius.

regardless of the current lack of inhabitants on these islands, the nuclear detonations have caused widespread ecological damage to otherwise delicate island ecosystems and have further spread nuclear fallout across the entirety of the pacific ocean.

--

while the marshall islands, micronesia, and the surrounding areas of melanesia and polynesia were (and still are) by far the worst affected by these atrocities, the entirety of the pacific has been irradiated to some extent due to ocean/wind currents freely spreading nuclear fallout through the water and air. all in all, at least 318 nuclear bombs were detonated across the pacific. i say "at least" because these are just the events that have been declassified and frankly? i wouldn't be shocked to find out they didn't stop there.

please don't leave the atomic destruction of the pacific out of this conversation. we've been displaced, irradiated, murdered, poisoned, and otherwise mass exterminated by nuclear testing on purpose and we are still suffering because of it. many of us have radiation poisoning, many of us have no safe ancestral home anymore. i cannot fucking state this enough, ISLANDS WERE DISINTEGRATED INTO NONEXISTENCE.

look, this isn't blaming people for not talking about us or knowing the extent of these issues, but it's... insidiously ironic that i haven't seen a single post that even mentions pacific islanders in a conversation about indigenous voices/voices of colour being ignored when it comes to nuclear tests and the devastation they've caused.

[disabledopossum]

Just realised that the anniversary for my Dad's…death is coming up. I don't know how to feel about it.

My Aunt told me that his friends are going to do a motorcycle run, to give my Dad one last ride. They have some of his ashes and I wish I could go..

Since he passed, I've come to terms with a lot about my life. The mistakes that I made along the way. The people I hurt and everything is sitting in the pit of my being.

Dad left behind so many lessons and his tools.

I know he left on his own terms, and he did not want me to be in person to see him…like that. He was a proud man, and fought hard throughout his life.

But I feel selfish, for just wanting to hug him one last time and say how much I love him.

Dad died in hospice, on June 25th ( Saturday ) around 11:am. That's when my Aunt called me. I saved a screen shot of the moment where my world turned grey.

"I'm so sorry, Honey." She said…her voice breaking. "He's gone…"

He didn't want me to see him in that hospital bed. Hooked up to those wires. Not like that. He knew it would stick with me…

And he did. Because my other Aunt, days before he passed sent me a picture of Dad in his hospital bed. ( I deleted it, but it's stuck in my mind.)

She's been removed from my life. I won't forgive her for that. I don't hate her, but I cannot speak to her anymore.

Forgive the rambling. But I needed to put my thoughts out and process it. To see the reality of what this date means to me.. Dad died in June. And what was once...a warm feeling during this time has now because a burning reminder that he's gone.

[ryanazayku]

[underwaterspiderbird]

if we’re keeping it a buck fifty, knife and all, NPD/BPD/cluster b demonizing is deadass some modern day McCarthy-ism shit. someone says something you don’t like? they’re abusive. someone disagrees with you passionately? they’re a narcissist. someone tells you to pull your head out of your ass? they’re an evil monster. someone has any semblance of a spine? they’re an abuser AND they sat at school lunch with adolf hitler. i swear to everything i love that y’all mfs do not really care about anything you say. you don’t care about doing good. you’re not activists. you’re just fucking rats. y’all are the same kids in elementary school to start shit with a kid and run to the teacher the MOMENT fists come flying your way. Y’ALL MFS’ TEKASHI SNITCH NINE ON THE LOWKEY. just don’t be surprised if the next time you go up to someone and try to ruin their life bc they hurt your feelings, that you run into the wrong motherfucker and you get shot. in fact, i HOPE you karen’s do. get shot. if you’re gonna demonize neurodivergent ppl to take out your own pathetic insecurities and self-inadequacy on everybody else, then i hope you get shot. i put it out there. i’m done with you rodents and i got a good fucking feeling all the cluster b homies out there you shat on are too. fuck around and find out.