#'give the victims' stuff to the local native americans so it looks like an indian raid'

[tlaquetzqui]

“This thing you said usually indicates that self-proclaimed Christians are really a cult, also applies to the Latter-Day Saints!”

Well the Latter-Day Saints were founded by a man with multiple fraud convictions and a habit of marrying barely-pubescent girls (and no, that was not a common practice in 19th century America—particularly not the “I just had a revelation from God, polygamy is allowed now” part), who was killed after he declared martial law over his community.

So…no, clearly, nothing cultish going on here at all.

[tremendouspeachduck]

2 Things You Must Know About  the REPUBLICAN, AMERICAN INDIAN

No.  Really?

above car - 1933 Chevy 3-window coup w/rumble seat

Do you think Pres. Trump is a bully, I don’t.  Why?

Talking about the “War on Men” …  5 touchy subjects   …

Abortion – should the man have an opinion and be able to voice it?

Free Birth Control    HERE    and    HERE   ***   Please notice, abortion is not listed as a birth control option

Pres Trump would have never won if it weren’t for the black vote  

See Video                                  and this video too       don’t forget this one

Men seem to take it to a whole other level.  The Bible has something to reveal about name calling.  Also, the systematic criticism and self-doubt are what takes it from name calling to verbal abuse – it’s a repeated pattern that, over time, can make the victim believe the insults, making it harder for them to leave (“no one will love me because they said so”).

Beyond name calling, abusers may belittle their partner, either privately publicly, or disguise disparaging comments in jokes. This can be followed up by more judgment and criticism (“You’re too sensitive”) or acting as those what they’ve said is trivial (“I was only joking”). Other examples of name calling include putting someone down, making them feel guilty, or embarrassing and humiliating them.

Healthy relationships don’t use name calling to resolve conflict or express love. Both partners make the other one feel good about themselves. It’s relaxing and fun, and neither tries to “prove” they are the only ones that will ever love them. Instead, each partner sets boundaries on what’s acceptable behavior, including what nicknames or jokes are okay.

Can you think of a great sight to see walking in the city? Click to see it

Recognizing these early warning signs can make the difference between staying in an unhealthy relationship that worsens over time, or ending it and being in one that’s healthy.

Should men care about your makeup?  The correct answer is “yes,”  if it makes the woman happy.  Lips and the smile are what is very appealing to a man.

How to support a woman’s period?  No rude comments about what’s in the trash bin, about her being moody… no jokes, no nothing.  It’s ok to make her laugh, laughter is good medicine BUT do not joke about it being “that time of the month again”.

By knowing her cycle, you can be more aware and sensitive to her changing moods and physical discomfort. This develops a deeper trust as your woman knows you are really present with what she is experiencing. Put it in your calendar so you have a heads up.

Interestingly, having an orgasm can relieve menstrual cramps, though your attitude during the whole cycle will determine whether or not she’s willing to explore this. Again , this is probably best to bring up when she isn’t in the middle of it.

She may act like she doesn’t want you there, but remember she may actually desire some TLC. Your full presence is the best medicine. She will love you for this!

Help create a cozy environment for her, and cook her comfort food. Hugs are also great.  The main thing is to not be an ass. (closing down and or not wanting to deal is being an ass)

Finding ways to be positive is the key to building a healthy body image and positive self-esteem.  What we read and watch has a huge impact on how we feel about ourselves. Because of this, we should be very particular about the magazines and websites we will look at.  We might love reading about the interesting things that people, and women in particular, accomplish.  Shopping centers aren’t only sucking your money, they are also sink holes for body confidence. Getting caught up in a conversation about the way someone else looks, whether they have put on weight and so on, inevitably leads to thoughts on our own appearance.  Don’t participate.  Touch is an incredibly powerful way of reinforcing the way you feel about your body. And if you’re touched gently, with love and care, you will feel incredible. So, try to practice gentle love and care with yourself. Wash your hair the way the hairdresser did. Wash your face the way a beauty therapist would. Give yourself a massage when you’re applying moisturizer. It feels good. And it reinforces a positive, kind relationship with your body.  Meditation is an incredibly effective tool for clearing away unhelpful thought cycles. 10 minutes. 5 minutes. 1. Whatever. Just sit, close your eyes and breathe.

Eating respectfully means accepting and being mindful of the nutrients that your body requires to function. It means eating plenty of good food and ditching sugary and pretend foods that compromise our digestive health, our hormonal balance, our mood and energy levels.  The flip side of eating respectfully is to move past the binge-fast guilt cycle. If you eat something unhealthy, please don’t punish yourself or try to restrict caloric intake. Healthy eating and body respect is not about food deprivation. It’s about food celebration.  When you look in the mirror, try to replace any negative thoughts that are pushing their way through with an affirming thought about the way you look or feel.

People who have purpose are too busy getting stuff done to worry about how they look. In the end, creative expression, passionate parenting, effective leadership and growing the best-goddamn-tomatoes-in-the-neighborhood is far more satisfying than making sure you look good in an outfit at all times.

Positive self-image is a habit, not an attribute and your partner can be helpful.

This is an excerpt from my post: THE IROQUOIS CONFEDERACY: THE “SAVAGE” EMPIRE.

The Haudenosaunee (Iroquois: Mohawk, Seneca, Oneida, Onondaga and Cayuga) really cherished population stability. Being that their population was so limited and ever diminishing due to disease outbreaks and near constant conflicts, the Haudenosaunee highly preferred losing as few men as possible. They usually evaded fighting armies that outnumbered theirs as well as avoiding fortified enemy positions and fighting pitched battles. The Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) preferred instead to employ ambushes, strike preemptively, and launch lightning fast raids under the cover of darkness. The Haudenosaunee would travel deep into enemy territory in very large numbers to scare off potential enemies from attacking them before breaking up into smaller war parties, after which these war parties would utilize swift and stealthy attacks usually in the form of ambushes or night raids.

Closer Look by Doug Hall.

Another tactic the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) employed was after traveling by way of canoes under the cover of night they would place rocks in the canoes to weigh them down and cause them to sink out of sight They would then speedily assault the enemy in coordinated attacks, vanish back into the wilderness and return to their canoes before the enemy had enough time to recuperate, assemble and counterattack. With the deadliness of firearms introduced into the equation, the Natives learned to fire at enemies from behind the cover of trees instead of the European practice of firing coordinated volleys from fixed formations.

One Step at a Time by Doug Hall.

One disadvantage the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) had over the Euro-American colonies was that Native populations were constantly diminishing and fluctuating. The Euro-American colonies surrounding them, on he other hand, were growing and receiving a constant flow of immigrants with the occasional military reinforcement from Europe. The limited number of Natives as well as their fear of dying and becoming lost souls, urged them to retreat from battle more readily than Euro-American forces – even after just a few casualties. They used safer methods of combat like the previously mentioned ambushes, night raids, espionage, and scorched earth tactics: destroying their settlements or crops in order to retreat and deprive the enemy of shelter or resources.

A Quick Glance by Doug Hall.

The Natives that wanted to lead a proposed raid against a perceived enemy would send a messenger with tobacco tasked with expressing the purpose and details of the mission, asking them to join their cause. The Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) who decided to engage in said raid would first take part in the smoking of a pipe filled with tobacco. Before leaving for the raid there would be a feast and dancing, during the ‘Dog (War) Feast’ the warriors would engage in a ceremony called the ‘striking-the-warpost’ where they would sing war songs, dance, and boast about their military exploits. After each achievement is mentioned the warrior strikes a red-painted post with their weapon (club or hatchet), the young Natives that had yet to have achieved any great feats simply danced and struck the warpost once.

A Moment Away by David Wright.

If these young Natives had proven themselves to be brave warriors during their expedition they would be seen as men and accepted as a warrior by being given their first feather. These young braves could also attain higher status, honor and prestige. I read of one story of an elder who joined in but in place of dancing he performed an awe inspiring passionate reenactment of his life as a warrior, a deep performance that displayed an array of emotions as he described all that he had experienced and accomplished throughout his lifetime.

man on right - Carson Cooper is a member of the Tlingit and Haida tribes and an Alaska native. Lee Redeye (on left) is a member of the Seneca tribe and was raised on the reservation in Irving and in New Mexico. Both attorneys are relatively new to the law firm Lippes Mathias Wexler Friedman LLP , with Cooper having joined in 2017 and Redeye earlier this year.  

Another attorney, Owen Herne, branched out on his own after beginning his career in corporate counsel for a tribe. He is a member of the Mohawk tribe and runs Herne Law PLLC.

These  three local attorneys in Buffalo, NY took different paths to focus on Indian law, but they share a bond in the desire to build careers around their ancestry.

The Jogah, or Jungies, are a race of small humanoid nature spirits from Iroquois folklore, sometimes referred to in English as “dwarves” or “pygmies.” They are usually invisible but sometimes reveal themselves to humans

After nightfall, the call of the Whip-poor-will signals their arrival.  It is important to leave baskets of food, such as corn cakes and berries, or even meat in the woods for them. Those who see the Little People should not look directly at them, they think it’s rude. If they catch you staring, they might point a finger at you, rooting you to the ground, while they take your belongings. Another rule is don’t speak of them in the summer, when they are most active.

At this time of Bad Spirits, there lived a medicine woman. One night, during a terrible storm, she heard the whip-poor-will. When she looked outside, the bird wasn’t to be found, but a small boy stood in the rain on her doorstep. It turned out he was a grown Jogah, who told her to come help someone who was sick. Though the storm was fierce, he led her through the woods a long way.

Suddenly, the storm seemed to stop as they began to descend into the ground. They were in the realm of the Little People. Weegun led her to a beehive shaped chamber of rocks. Inside, a very old woman lay in bed, very ill. The Makiawisug told the medicine woman that this was Granny Squannit, who must be made well. Granny Squannit is very powerful, and she is known to cause storms when she argues with her husband. Her illness was the reason for this storm. Worse, healers often look to Granny Squannit when the need is dire for help in healing, and here she was the one who was sick. The medicine woman treated Granny Squannit for nearly a moon before she got better. In return for restoring Granny Squannit’s health, the Makiawisug gave the medicine woman a basket of gifts and told her to remember them. She was blindfolded and taken back home.

Only when she returned did she open the basket. Inside were quartz crystals, painted skins and bunches of herbs.

People in the USA have natives who are very spiritual living maybe next door.  Embrace your neighbor - let’s get back to our community roots.

Community involvement is the solution to mass murder/shootings

Close your eyes, lean head back on pillow or head-rest, take deep breaths and listen to the story unfold         Special Cherokee Nation Song video

nice fire & listen to music flute music vid   Do you want to learn the Mohawklanguage?      the sacred horse song    See  My fav horse

Please leave message below, then Go To top, nav to previous or next

[sixeightsuited]

Horizon Zero Dawn and Cultural appropriation: A very different view.

For the first time EVER, I’m sitting on the other side of a discussion about appropriating native culture.  Why?  Well, let me lay the framework.

First off, I’m not a guy who “knows a Native American” or has a “Native friend”  I am a 100% Anishinabe (Ojibway) dude who lives on reserve and has fought racism, stereotypes, pan-Indianism, and cultural appropriation fiercely for as long as I can remember. I’ve been the victim of horrendous racial violence as a child, adolescent, and adult, and I’m also a gamer.

I am the first to point out anything that smacks of any of the above and after I saw the Dia Lacina essay on “Horizon: Zero Dawn” being culturally insensitive and appropriating Native culture, I felt for the first time in a situation like this that I had to say something in rebuttal.

Lacina takes issue with the use of the words Tribal, Primitive, Braves, and Savage being used in the game (fyi they’re used to describe predominantly white people in game and they’re White words we didn’t use to describe ourselves thus I claim no ownership of, nor want to, anymore than I want to be a redskin, Indian or Wahoo)  

It seems (IMO) that most of her beef comes from an apparent belief that numerous aspects of generic tribal culture that appear in the game (making clothing from skins, hunting with spears and bows, living in a Matriarchal society, etc) are the sole domain of the Native American and just to be safe and cleverly keep her POV less subject to scrutiny, she applies it even more broadly to indigenous people world wide (I will just refer to us in particular as NA cuz I’m lazy and I also don’t refer to myself as a Native American) and basically that anything that is remotely “tribal” shouldn’t be used in gaming without our or someone else’s permission.

 In fairness, I don’t know if she’s actually played the game but as someone who is currently in the midst of doing exactly that, I can tell you that I have a pretty good idea of what stuff triggered her being upset and why, and while I absolutely respect her right to get offended by whatever she likes, and she makes excellent points about some other games, I am going to point out that there are flaws with this logic.

First of all, the basics: HZD is set in a post-post-apocalyptic future where people are living in tribal groups in a very destroyed world.  Machines exist but as hybrid animal/dinosaur type creatures and technology is pretty much non-existent in day to day human life.  

The heroine of the story is a red haired, white girl named Aloy who lives as an outcast with her adopted father, Rost.  Without giving a lot away, they are fiercely shunned by the local tribe for something Rost did and also the fact that Aloy is motherless.  

Impressively and rightly, though somewhat dismissively remarked upon by Lacina, is the way women and especially women of color are portrayed so positively in-game as this particular tribe is a total Matriarchy run by elders of various ethnicity.  African, Asian, White, and a variety of undefined people of color are common everywhere in the game.  (The leader of one band of warriors is a very fierce, commanding, intelligently portrayed black woman with a powerful presence.)  It reflects a fairly global society from a “skin color” perspective without any horrible accents or broken speech.

They worship an “All-Mother” goddess and their culture is (at least how I saw a lot of it) fairly heavy on European i.e. Celtic, Germanic, Scandinavian, etc type symbolism and the rest is filled in with mostly generic tribal-ish stuff that you could find in countless cultures around the world.

 I really didn’t get a “Native American” vibe off the game.  Of course, I don’t automatically presume to claim sole ownership of things like tribal life, hunting with bows and spears, and worshiping spirits of various elements solely for my own.  Random fact: Because there are over 500 distinct First Nations in N. America, we, believe it or not, didn’t all ride horses, live in tipis, use bows and arrows, tobacco and sage, and worship Eagles and Wolves.  Why? Well…use your brain.  Tobacco and Sage don’t grow EVERYWHERE, horses came over with the Europeans (and if you saw where I live you couldn’t have and cant for the most part get a horse through the bush if you tried) Eagles and Wolves don’t live EVERYWHERE….get the point?  Anyways….

If you examine Rost, he like most of the men has a braided beard and other seemingly Viking/Middle Ages inspired features, is white, speaks clear, unbroken English, and is a loving, protective and very positive role model for the girl.   Aloy for her part, is also fairly Viking-esque (to the point of looking incredibly like Lagaertha from the show Vikings but with red hair) also Egrit from GoT, and is no damsel in distress who needs men to save her. NOWHERE in the game have I encountered any Tipis, wigwams, Sweatlodges, or Non-White people speaking in stereotypical “Me smoke-um peace pipe, He go dat-a way” fashion.

The  opening cinematic is very touching (and long) as we see the orphaned Aloy as a baby in Rost’s care being carried around in a bundle on his back (which pretty much every culture did in one form or another at some point in time) and him ultimately taking her to the spot where a child of the tribe receives it’s name.

I really liked this idea as it isn’t often portrayed in a lot of mediums outside of stereotypical “Dances With Wolves” bullshit. Also, naming ceremonies are not the sole domain of NA people and what occurs bears zero resemblance to any NA ceremony I know of.  (It was actually a little Lion King at one point lol) But it’s a powerful moment in the beginning with much more that occurs during it but I won’t spoil that either.

Aloy herself is a pretty complex character.  She’s extremely independent, defiant, and questions pretty much everything about why things are the way they are and wants to do something about it.  You actually begin playing her as a 6 year old which is pretty unique and even then she’s tough and fearless and determined to explore her world.  

She is in no way hyper-sexualized (I’m looking your way Overwatch) Her clothing and everyone else’s, is utilitarian and appropriate for the environments she lives in, and so far, I have not encountered anything with her or any other character that made me go “WTF?”and trust me, my radar for that shit is HIGHLY SENSITIVE.  This isn’t Avatar, people.  It’s not John Smith. It’s not The Great Wall or Pocahontas.  This isn’t white dude shows up and saves the helpless non-white people while helpless native woman falls in love with him stuff.  It’s a fictitious future where we maniacs blew it up, damn us all to hell!

But here’s the more annoying thing for me as an actual Anishinabe.  I don’t need people speaking for me or getting offended on my behalf.  I am very capable of doing that myself. I am also in no way writing this claiming to be speaking for any other NA people or persons. It’s based on my observations from actually playing HZD and examining the various fictional “cultural” elements in the game.

If you see a skin tied inside a hoop and automatically assume it’s a dreamcatcher” ripping off “our culture” (FYI Dreamcatchers are a 20th century thing whose popularity was a result of pan-Indianism that exploded in the 70s.) or if you see feathers on a spear or as part of a costume (nowhere is anyone wearing a single eagle feather in the back of a beaded headband or a Dakota looking headdress either) and automatically presume it to be ripping off NA culture, you’re REEEEEEEEEEALY reaching.  If you think caring for the environment, obeying matriarchs, worshipping elemental spirits, or making your own clothes is solely the property of NA culture, see previous statement.

By all means get offended.  Get offended by Chief Wahoo.  Get offended by the Washington Redskins.  Get offended that thousands of Native women have been murdered or gone missing and nothing’s been done about it.  Get offended by Johnny Depp or Robert Beltran playing Native people instead of actual Native people getting those roles.  Get offended by shit like Adam Sandler’s “Ridiculous 6” where a native woman is called a “hot piece of red prairie meat” or Depp’s “Lone Ranger” movie.

Get offended that my family was destroyed by the Residential Schools and that the 60s scoop took babies away from their families and people, that forced sterilizations took place and mass graves of dead Native children exist at former Residential School sites.

Don’t just jump on the I’m offended bandwagon because you saw some feathers or skins or spears or bows in a game and immediately grew indignant and wanted to claim them as OUR culture.  They’re not.  They’re almost globally universal in numerous cultures at various points in time.  Get offended, as she rightly mentioned, when the game Overwatch sexualizes the shit out of almost every female character and takes West Coast tribal art and makes a costume out of it.  

THAT is appropriation.  White people holding powwows in Europe (powwows are also pretty much not traditional and are extremely pan-Indian, not to mention full of us appropriating each other’s Native cultures ie. Dakotas wearing Jingle Dresses, Ojibway wearing Dakota regalia, etc) is appropriation.

This game……I’m just not seeing it the same way.  And I’m nobody.  I have no ties to Guerilla or anybody other than myself and my community.