#Native-American Research

[usnatarchives]

Navajo papoose on a cradleboard with a baby lamb, Window Rock, AZ, 1936. 🐑

Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (NARA ID 519160).

[reality-detective]

“The History of Turquoise in Native American”

👉🏻Helps one to be honest & confident in communication with others

👉🏻Highly protective against negativity & psychic attack

👉🏻Aids in clairaudience, clairvoyance & recognizing past life issues

👉🏻Brings love & calm to the wearer

TURQUOISE is known as a truth stone. It is believed to enhance communication. It is one of the oldest protection stones known to bring strength & connection to the spirit world. 🤔

[aroaceleovaldez]

Here is a link to the Cherokee Nation's official site. Here is the Visit Cherokee Nation youtube channel. Here is a playlist for learning Cherokee (and here's one for learning Ojibwe, as a bonus cause i'm biased). Here is a link to Daybreak Star Radio, which is a radio station based in Seattle dedicated to showcasing international first nations and indigenous music that you can listen to online. Here is a pdf of various recipes, including references to which tribes they originate from. Here is a link to The-aila-test's buy native tag, and here is a link to Beyond Buckskin's buy native list (though some of the links are broken). Here is a link to the Cherokee Phoenix newspaper's official site.

now go take a minute and come back once you've done some research so everybody can stop being weird about Piper.

[boiledegghole]

another attempt on the concept of salmonid traditional art

[neechees]

White ppl & Europeans also dont get the "non Americans wouldn't know" ignorance card bullshit because if you see a word with an etymology you don't recognize, doesn't look like it came from any European language (especially English/Spanish/French), and it's location is in a place where the INDIGENOUS population faced GENOCIDE, and that was their NATIVE LAND, (by YOUR ANCESTORS lmfao) where the fuck else do you possibly think the etymology maybe came from exactly. Think real hard. Google is free. Try to remember Native history didn't start with you killing us.

[bibliophilea]

Hey guys,

As a Phandom, can we not depict w*ndigos as some cryptid or ghost thing?

The native cultures the folklore is from by and large don't want them to be used or depicted by the general populace. Additionally, the general populace doesn't know them or depict them as the original sources do - rather, they are stripped of their context. Because of this, using them is disrespectful.

Using them is cultural appropriation.

I know a number of people don't realize this - heck, I didn't know it was disrespectful and cultural appropriation until the backlash against Supernatural using them, because most the sites I visited that had them just didn't mention it. (The same goes with s**nw**kers, by the way - the folklore they're from says we shouldn't use the name, and the cultures the folklore is from don't want us using it.)

I know this has come up in the Phandom before - Phanniemay nearly used it as a prompt several years ago, but it was quickly removed once the situation was explained.

I'm not naming any names - but I'm starting to see terms and folklore we shouldn't appropriate crop up in Phandom again, so I wanted to spread the word.

Here are some sources on the actual folklore, and why we shouldn't use it:

Stolen Spirits: The Appropriation of the Windigo Spirit in Horror Literature (Kallie Hunchman, Ball State University)

More Than Monsters: The Deeper Significance of Wendigo Stories (Kaitlin Smith, Facing History and Ourselves)

A Creature Without a Cave: Abstraction and (Mis)Appropriation of the Wendigo Myth in Contemporary North American Horror (Francesca Amee Johnson, University of Warwick)

[tribow]

How does touhou Kanako show her spirit animals notable Snake traits? Suwako represents the frog. How do I look at her as the Snake as in aesthetic speaking?

Funnily enough, this is actually a common misconception with the canon. The snakes technically have nothing to do with Kanako, those belong to Suwako.

The snakes are called "Mishaguji". They're curse gods that Suwako tamed during her time as the only goddess of the Moriya Shrine. When Kanako took over, she still needed Suwako's assistance since she could not control the Mishaguji. If Kanako didn't ask for help, she would likely be constantly fighting the Mishaguji to prevent them from cursing the land and destroying harvest. Not an easy task. I'm sure Kanako would love to have all her followers believe she is controlling the Mishaguji, but the credit all goes to Suwako.

The Mishaguji are probably a lot weaker than they were in the past, but they're still around. Suwako still uses them in her spellcards. (Notably, Kanako has never used them.).

So you might be wondering, if Suwako is the powerful frog that tamed the snakes, why the heck is Kanako the "Snake"? Why is there so much art depicting Kanako with snakes?

Don't worry, you're not being pranked by fanon this time.

ZUN said in an interview that Kanako is based on two gods: Takeminakata and Yasakatome. These two gods are housed in the real life Grand Suwa Shrine.

Takeminakata is worshipped as a god of wind, water, war, and agriculture. This is very similar to Kanako. As for Yasakatome, her folklore is a bit all over the place so it's hard to pin her down. She's mostly associated with water. Kanako's first name; Yasaka, is derived from Yasakatome.

What's important is that both of these gods have been depicted as snakes in folklore. (sometimes specifically a water serpent). This is where Kanako's symbolism with snakes come from. When Takeminakata is depicted in other japanese media, it's a bit common to use snakes to symbolize him. (Dragons are also an association with him, but we're talking about snakes here).

Kanako and Suwako's backstory heavily resemble a specific piece of Takeminakata's folklore. He conquered the Suwa region by defeating the local gods of the area. The most famous battle was against Moreya, whose iron weapons were defeated by Takeminakata's wisteria vine. (wisteria is a plant. A flowering vine.)

Sound familiar?

Moreya still has his own shrine called the Moriya Shrine. Yup, that's right it's a real place and not something ZUN made up. However, if you look into it, Moreya isn't depicted as a frog. Where the heck did that come from?

Well, Takeminakata has another piece of folklore with a frog involved. He calmed the waves of the raging seas by defeating a frog god. This story commonly depicts him as a snake as well. (Snakes eat frogs in real life!) The frog in this story is sometimes interpreted as one of the local gods, which could be the Mishaguji or Moreya.

"The Mishaguji"??? Aren't they the snakes in Touhou? Well...yes! It's just that they're local gods just like Moreya was and...and....we're in too deep!

Folklore is commonly spread through word of mouth! It's a mythological game of telephone! The details can change based on who is telling the story! I haven't even told you the many other names Takeminataka goes by. If I went over all the nuance with the folklore and its connections to Touhou this would be a gargantuan post!

Ignoring that, what's important is that this is where Kanako's symbolism with snakes come from. Even if she doesn't control the snakes of the Moriya shrine, Kanako IS the snake that defeated the powerful frog and conquered its land.

[someguywriting]

One of the most common misconceptions people seem to have about the western/cowboy era (in pop culture, around 1860-1900) is that people back then must have been extremely homophobic, or strung up every gay person within a hundred mile radius.. well, I'm here to tell you as an authority on the subject (an autistic man who's got a special interest in the civil war/reconstruction era) that you're mistaken!

People really didn't start to care much about classy or 'civilized' things until the Victorian era came around! Lots of things were demonized from 1900 onwards, like alcohol for example. There was alcohol, and then there was prostitution, and then there was drugs (marijuana was in a lot of over the counter medicine until it was banned) and the church swept the country over!

Cowboys weren't terribly concerned about gay people, because typical cowboy life was hard and tough. The land didn't give back, it was lonely out on the prairie unless you were near a big city, and people helped eachother out where they needed it because the "west", the land of the Louisiana purchase, hadn't been too populated yet. It was inhabited by indigenous people, but they didn't build cities that stayed in one place, they were nomadic and moved around with the food (buffalo, antelope, deer, etc).

Lots of men travelled together because sexism was very much alive and well, and it was seen as too rough a life for a woman out on the prairie. That was why prostitution was so lucrative, or why men out west would pay to even just see ladies underwear. Two men travelling and living together, doing things like cooking and taking care of a house together was totally normal. Some of them were purely partners as in they looked out for eachother and made a go at a business or a farm, and some of them were something more! Really, a lot of the culture back then revolved around minding your own business. If a cowboy stopped at two gay cowboys place for a drink of water, he didn't stop to call them slurs or look down on them, he thanked them for the water and kept on riding.

Sure, it was taboo and there probably were some people who would've been homophobic and cruel about it, but it's like that with all things, and sadly that probably wasn't the biggest prejudice they would hold. Two men in love living on a homestead together looked a lot better to most people than an indigenous tribe simply existing, or a free black man buying supplies from a store.

Please, dear god, stop writing your western stories with gay men who are horribly afraid of being tortured to death or hung! They probably wouldn't go around telling everyone they're gay, but they definitely wouldn't be as unsafe as a black man or an indigenous person from that time period. Or even a woman!

gay cowboys, everybody

[masquerade-v]

Today I offer you another hairstyle and earrings I made for Orion. Tomorrow, who knows? (Hopefully a proper drawing or something since I finally have some free time for once.)

Previously version is under the cut. Let me know what you think!

[hollowsart]

-cracks knuckles-

I don't have twitter and I've never drawn a Miku before in my life, but I adore that trend happening rn and wanna drop down my two cents, so let's go with the research to make a Hatsune Miku: but she is from my family (hard to explain, but it's absolutely Texan)

[leafbatraccoon]

12-11-5-3-2 !! there's a werewolf in the school hallway

had fun with @saruin's challenge and had myself a lil wolfshake getting orange for skin color and hair was a happy accident bc i made the "skin color" her wolf fur instead as i planned from the start

cc credit too the lovely community members featured: @sforzcc @daylifesims @woosteru @sentate @sewerwolfx @nsves @the-crypt-o-club @nucrests @zeussim @marsmerizing-sims @solistair @kumikya @its-adrienpastel @arethabee @goppolsme @makesims @thepeachyfaerie @valhallansim @hishel @softpine @simandy @okruee @miikocc i tried tagging everyone my eye caught even if its just skin deets or tats or a necklace <3 <3 <3 thanks for everything you do always

[butch-reidentified]

finding that I'm very quickly shifting mentally in certain ways. especially when it comes to a lot of things I've routinely held myself back from saying until recently.

it's hard to describe what the feeling is exactly but it's definitely healthy to let it out finally, even if that means more conflict or whatever. i know why i held myself back before, but i no longer feel that way so. 🤷

[reality-detective]

We should have listened to the Native Americans 🤔

[hannahalexart]

Prince Damien and his little twink butler 🐕

[boiledegghole]

fishie friday. the salmonids are picking mangos

[neechees]

Back then when I didn't know who Ellis was (& this was before her Smeyer apologist vid) i had only watched the one Pocahontas video essay from her, and even then I was impressed but also wondering on the amount of like. Very INNER issues she seemed to include on the video and had wondered if she had help from other Native creators in making the video because she mentioned things a lot of white people don't usually even recognize. But now yeah I really do think it's just because she took everything from Ali's writing