#Indian Residential

[torbitconsultants]

[multiplicity-positivity]

Shoutout to Indigenous systems on this day for Truth and Reconciliation!

Today, September 30th, is the Canadian National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. This is a day of remembrance for victims and survivors of Indian residential schools in Canada, though it could likely apply to those who live on Turtle Island in general.

If your system or someone you know is or knows a survivor of an Indian residential school, or has a loved one who did not survive their time in a residential school, our hearts go out to you. We are wishing for you and family a future full of strength, peace, and resilience. Inter-generational trauma can have significant impacts, and the pain imposed on your loved ones and ancestors should not be forgotten as time passes. We hope that their lives can be honored and remembered throughout history, and we want to do our part to help preserve their legacy.

For allies of Indigenous peoples, if you are able to, please wear an orange shirt today to honor those whose lives were forever changed due to the negative impact residential schools has left on indigenous communities. Remember that, even today, Indigenous peoples face hardships, disparities, and inequalities in our society. The closure of residential schools does not mean rest, healing, and proper compensation for the victims of such institutions. Let’s vow as a community to make our spaces safe and accepting of Indigenous systems, and do our part to educate ourselves on their histories so that we may be better allies in the future.

Friends, please show some support to the Indigenous people in your lives today, and do not take their presence for granted. Take a moment to learn more about the history of Indian residential schools in Canada and the United States, and the grim legacy they have left which many Indigenous communities are still dealing with today. If you are able to, please reach out to the Indigenous systems and non-systems in your lives to provide support in whatever ways they have requested.

We will include links to sites and organizations where you can learn more about the Canadian National Day for Truth and Reconciliation and the history of Indian residential schools in both Canada and the USA, along with links where you can directly support survivors of Indian residential schools. Remember, if you cannot support these organizations or individuals financially, you can show your support by educating yourselves and providing a space in your own communities where Indigenous voices can be acknowledged and uplifted.

Indigenous systems, we love you, we are in your corner, and we want to support and uplift you however we can. Please do not hesitate to get in touch if there is anything we can do to help make our spaces more welcoming for you. You have an important and treasured place in the plural community, and we are honored to be able to share this space with you. We hope that you can do your best to treat yourselves and your system with compassion and gentleness today, and take care!

‼️ Non-indigenous systems are welcome and encouraged to reblog, but DO NOT derail or try to center your voice over actual indigenous systems and those who are actually affected by inter-generational trauma due to Indian residential schools!‼️

[godbirdart]

Listen okay I'm no Swiftie but I know these tickets in the charity auction could actually raise some meaningful funds that'd go towards crucial support and resources for residential school survivors and their families.

IRSSS does wonderful work, extending their help not only to Indigenous communities impacted by residential schools, but also to families of Missing & Murdered Indigenous Women & Girls as well as Indigenous youth who may be struggling with the criminal justice system.

Regardless if you're a Swift fan or not though, if you're in the Vancouver area consider checking out the upcoming IRSSS Anniversary Gala on November 21, 2024:

https://www.irsss.ca/gala

[nofatclips]

In the Beginning Was Water and Sky, a short film by Ryan Ward

[theboombutton]

Do you have any linguistics book recommendations for laymen please pleaseeeee I'm desperate

If you want an introduction to linguistics, I highly recommend picking up the textbook for your local university's LING 101 class, rather than a book specifically directed at laypeople.

On top of the usual problems with popular science books - the commonness of quackery in the genre, the reliance on intuition, the forced and flaccid tone of profundity that especially ramps up at the end of every chapter - popular linguistics books in particular are rife with political implications. Linguistics is both a cultural and a psychological topic, which makes it easy for anyone with an agenda (or even no agenda, just underlying bigotry) to write a book and get their ideological fingers up into readers' brains in ways that are sometimes subtle.

Consider the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, the idea that the language(s) a person speaks changes the kinds of thoughts they're likely to have. That sounds reasonable, right? If someone asked you to think of a plant, you'd probably pick a plant you had a word for. And by the same principle, maybe people who speak a language without a future tense have a harder time conceptualizing the future! This is the kind of intuitive-but-profound-seeming observation/speculation that pop science books love.

It was also a big part of the rationalization/justification for the Indian residential school system and the suppression of Native languages.

(Also technically English doesn't have a future tense, but no one ever mentions that in the context of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis because the entire point of the thing is to exoticize non-European languages for fun and profit.)

These sorts of just-so stories found in pop linguistics books have profound political implications about mental or cultural diffences (read: usually inferiority) of those who speak languages foreign to the the audience, and more often than you'd think they bypass the bigotry bullshit detectors of otherwise well-intentioned readers - because of the informative tone of the work, the intuitive sense it makes for a language to change the way people think, and above all, "It can't be racist, it's about their language, not their race!"

A textbook can make these errors too, of course - the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis does come up in many introductory textbooks. The difference is that 1. a textbook is far more likely to mention that a given idea is "controversial" or "disputed," since unlike pop science they don't need to keep up the tone of mind-blowing profundity to make sales; and 2. since these sorts of bullshit cognitive linguistics theories are fully in the realm of "wouldn't it be interesting if", there's just not enough to say about any one of them to take up more than a page or two in a book that actually needs to contain information.

So yeah tl;dr just pick up a LING 101 textbook. There'll probably be less bigotry, and you'll actually learn about linguistics instead of the author's pseudoprofound wank.

[walltowalltitties]

Hello. Here's two cool places to donate to:

The Indian Residential School Survivors' Society

and

Standing Together.

They are, respectively, a non-profit organization based out of Vancouver BC dedicated to helping residential school survivors, missing/murdered indigenous women, and indigenous youth in the criminal justice system (IRSSS), and a movement dedicated to cohabitation and coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians, free of occupation and oppression and free of those who don't have the people's best interests in mind (ST).

(Both of them accept one-time and recurring donations, whichever you prefer.)

[haveyoureadthispoem-poll]

"I’ve lost my long hair; my eagle plumes too. / From you my own people, I’ve gone astray. / A wanderer now, with no where to stay."

Read it here | Reblog for a larger sample size!

[museeeuuuum]

Came back to work from my lovely trip and on my first few days back I've had to deal with a regular who has begun spouting residential school denialism

[6-2-aestheticsofhate]

Does anyone else get annoyed when people talk about people infantilizing Gabriel but they only bring it up in the context of like, sex. And not how so many people will brush aside everything Gabriel has ever done and say it wasn't on him because he was forced to by the council and they generally pin EVERYTHING on the council.

So many people remove Gabriels agency in his actions. I'm sorry but you don't become the righteous hand of the father who carries out his will and violence by accident. Implying that Gabriel did not take pride in doing what he thought was right and defending heaven and God when he clearly did and took pride in his role and was GOOD at it. He struck down Minos with no mercy without listening to him. He yelled justice as people looked on in anguish at their slain king. He struck down a man who only wanted to stop being tortured for eternity and who tried to gather an army in a bid for freedom. He sees the punishment and infinite torment of Hell as just. You can't look at Gabriel and not see him as complacent if not playing an active hand in the twisted culture of heaven. He is more sympathetic than the council and during the events of Ultrakill he actually starts to change but you cannot separate Gabriel from his violence completely. His entire character arc is realizing the amount of violence he embodied and questioning why. He did what he thought was right but it wasn't and he never questioned it. Gabriel wasn't forced to do this, not in the way most people think. People depict the council as this evil entity always over Gabriels shoulder telling him to do horrible things but in actuality its more like... they're spreading a corrupted version of their faith and Gabriel agrees with them and carries out what they say because he thinks theyre right.

People will also depict Gabriel as younger than the other council members but theres no indication of that in-game or out. He and the council were all presumably made by God on the exact same day as he had made all angels on one day in the bible. They are all the same age and the same maturity, but people will depict Gabriel as younger or more ignorant almost as a way to justify his actions or not knowing what he was doing and it was all older angel manipulating him when he is just as old as them and had existed before humans were even created.

If Gabriel and the council upheld the same beliefs and worked together... why is Gabriel redeemable or his actions excusable but the councils isn't? Why is Gabriel's spreading and enforcement of the corrupted version of Gods teaching permissible but the Council's isnt?

The right answer is that neither are good. Gabriel before the events of Ultrakill may have been kind to some but to others he was brutally violent. He may have saved Ferryman but he left the other sinners in the Styx because he thought they deserved it. He only saw Ferryman, another who worked for God, as worthy of saving. You can see the difference in how Gabriel treats people who he sees as good and who he sees as bad. He shows a lot of kindness and grace to those he thinks deserves it but to those he sees as irredeemable he had no qualms about killing them or watching as other angels mangled their limbs and left them with just enough body parts to continue their torture but be unable to disobey or rebel again like they did with the Insurrectionists. Gabriel stood by and watched this happen and did NOTHING or actively participated in it.

Depicting the council as irredeemably evil and Gabriel as a someone unable to disobey them does such a disservice to Ultrakill's story and Gabriel's character arc when Gabriel's entire story is realizing his beliefs led him to do horrible things in the name of justice and regretting it. That's his entire arc and brushing aside his violence and the wrong hes done is missing the entire core of his character.

I don't even think the council are GOOD but they're not outright evil like most people assume. They were people who were blinded by their faith and twisted it to their own ends... but Gabriel saw no issue in this until the events of Ultrakill and actively participated in it.

If you can see the shades of gray in morality with Gabriel before his realization in 6-2 that what he was doing was wrong then why do you not extend the same sympathy to the council when they could also clearly grow and change if they had the same realization? They have the same amount of blood on their hands as Gabriel. Hell, they could have less because they canonically didn't go out and fight and Gabriel pointed out they got too used to sitting around. They may spread the dogma of the faith but they are not out committing the violence themselves.

Gabriel is such an amazing nuanced character with many shades of gray to him and seeing people reduce him to a poor innocent manipulated character who had no choice in his actions is so aggravating. He's one of my favorite characters due to the nuances of his character and people just... toss all the nuance to his character aside and ignore it in favor of sanding off all his rough edges and pretending they don't exist.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Adria R. Walker at The Guardian:

On Friday, Joe Biden formally apologized for the United States government’s role in running at least 523 Indian boarding schools. His remarks were given at the Gila Crossing community school outside of Phoenix, Arizona, and marked his first visit to Indian country as president.

“After 150 years, the United States government eventually stopped the program,” Biden said. “But the federal government has never, never formally apologized for what happened – until today. I formally apologize, as president of the United States of America, for what we did. I formally apologize. That’s long overdue.” “Federal Indian boarding school policy, the pain it has caused, will always be a significant mark of shame, a blot on American history,” he said. “For too long, this all happened with virtually no public attention.” Indian boarding schools were run with the express goal to “kill the Indian in him, and save the man”, a phrase coined by the army officer Richard Henry Pratt, who founded Carlisle Indian boarding school, the first federally run Indian boarding school. From 1819 to 1969, in what Biden called “one of the most horrific chapters in American history”, the US government directly managed or funded Indian boarding schools in nearly 40 states. The schools, at which formal education was limited, forcibly and systematically stripped Indigenous children of their culture by removing them from their families and communities, forbidding them from speaking their languages and, typically violently, punishing them if they resisted.

A US Department of the Interior report released earlier this year found that at least nearly 1,000 Indigenous children died in the schools. Sexual violence was commonplace. Dr Denise K Lajimodiere, an enrolled citizen of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa and one of the founders of the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, wrote that the “boarding school era represented a deliberate policy of ethnocide and cultural genocide and human rights abuses”. “Some of our elders who are boarding school survivors have been waiting all of their lives for this moment,” said Stephen Roe Lewis, the Gila River Indian community governor. “If only for a moment on Friday, this will rise to the top, and the most powerful person in the world, our president, is shining a light on this dark history that’s been hidden.” No president has ever apologized for the abuses that tens of thousands of Indigenous children faced in the schools.

On Friday, President Joe Biden gave a formal apology for the US Government’s role in creating boarding schools for Native Americans by calling it “a blot on American history.” The boarding schools served to forcibly assimilate Native Americans and abuse if they resisted assimilation.

[thebolddetour]

" Residential Schools were a Canadian institution established by the government with the goal of assimilating Indigenous children with into Euro-Canadian culture. They operated from 1828 until 1996/7, spanning all the way across Canada. These school were often the site of all types of abuse abuse, neglect, cultural erasure, and often death."

" Most Indigenous people today are descendants of these survivors, or survivors themselves. I myself am the second generation not to attend residential school. For many Indigenous communities, the effects of intergenerational trauma from residential schools continue impacting our daily lives today. The journey towards healing is complex and deeply personal."

~~~~~~~~~~

" Orange Shirt Day, observed on September 30th every year. It is also known as National Day of Truth and Reconciliation. It is a day of remembrance and commemoration for the survivors of residential schools. It serves as a poignant reminder of the impact of residential school and the resilience of our peoples."

" In the wake of the profound trauma of being a child of residential school survivors, many Indigenous people are moving towards reconnection, healing, and cultural revitalization. Indigenous communities are reclaiming and celebrating our culture, traditions, languages and ceremonies."

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"INDIAN ART IS BEING REVIVED," Niagara Falls Review. October 18, 1933. Page 2. ---- Children model from life, forests supply materials for dyes, paints, ---- NATIVE SCHOOL ---- VICTORIA, Oct., 1 - (CP) - Indian arts are being revived in native schools of the Okanagan Valley. Children take time out from study of the three R's to scour the forests for flowers and roots which are used to instruct them in the almost lost arts of their ancestors.

Mosses, flowers, roots and bart are made into dyes and paints. Old recipes for the making of medicines from herbs and roots are tested while the children strive to Improve and perfect their creations.

Spinning, weaving, dying, pottery, clay modelling, carving and design are attempted by the children in the class-room. To the accompaniment of the click, clack of the spinning loom children sing Indian songs and listen to records of musical selection.

Ponies, dogs, cats and calves serve as life models for the drawing class. The mascot, a pet deer, is often coaxed to pose. Clays used for modelling are found on the reserve. After they have been worked they are placed in pinewood fire, then set to cool and polished. The school works out of doors.

Herbs that are collected include greaseweed which is prepared for the treatment of rheumatism. For respiratory aliments, a decoction of sunflower seeds were found beneficial. Butterfly weed, as an emetic, was voted perfect while the pitch of the fir balsam was used as a salve in the treatment of wounds.

One method used in the treatment of snake bite was the application of the powdered rattle of the rattle- snake, rubbed into the wound. Colors of the Okanagan tribe-red, black and yellow are employed in the painting class. Paint is obtained from red and yellow ochre, mixed with fish oil, and black from charred pinewood embers.

Ochre is secured from Tullameen, near Princeton. Tullameen being the Indian word for paint. In the olden days it was exported in large quantities to different parts of the American continent. The Blackfeet used it when on the war path.

[neechees]

Sorry it kind of just comes off as someone being performative if you go out of your way to say "I thought of Asian Indians first when I see the word Indian in Indian Boarding Schools oopsies" (as if to say "I'm sooo not racist, look at how not racist I am") despite the rest of the post contents obviously talking about & naming Native Americans, & kind of just makes you look more ignorant

[aisling-saoirse]

Carlisle Indian School Cemetery, Pennsylvania

Hey Everyone, Today I went to the infamous residential boarding school cemetery with my Shawnee coworker, I'm not native myself but wanted to look for record of my grandfather's former neighbor there.

The cemetery is located on an Army Facility, you have to get an ID and background check before going on. The complex history of the site is mostly erased but there are still some portions where you find relics of this memory. Of these Jim Thorpe's name (famous indigenous athlete) is plastered everywhere but whispers from the servicemen about ghost stories and rumors of unknown bodies being burned in the (former hospital) hotel's boiler room were told to us. We kind of found this a bit offensive honestly but most people we encountered were very happy we were researching the site.

The hardest part was honestly visiting the graves, there were 227, I believe more went missing. Some students had their nations attached to their names others were simply listed as unknown, almost all of them were far from home. Because I am not native I will reserve my emotions about this space, many survivor's families who I've talked to have mixed emotions about what these schools meant (after all Jim thorpe did become a great athlete). however it is very hard to suppress the image of a child stolen from their family brought to (what is explicitly) a military run concentration camp and never being seen by their family again. The violence and acts of genocide commited and continued by the united states in the act white supremacist hegemony are really everywhere. The land does not forget what it holds.

This is not meant to be a comprehensive history post, if you happen to know of an indigenous person who may have attended a residential school or are interested in learning more about them you can search for information on this website: https://nibsda.elevator.umn.edu/page/view/152

[factoidfactory]

Indigenous History Month Fact #1

Canada did not close its Indian Residential Schools until 1997.

[bronzecats]

“When the school is on the reserve the child lives with its parents, who are savages, and though he may learn to read and write, his habits, And training and mode of thought are Indian. He is simply a savage who can read and write. It has been strongly pressed on myself, as the head of the Department, that Indian children should be withdrawn as much as possible from the parental influence, and the only way to do that would be to put them in central training industrial schools where they will acquire the habits and modes of thought of white men.”

-Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada’s first prime minister, speaking in the House of Commons in 1883.