#The White Road of the Moon
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TBR TAKEDOWN: Week 7 (July 14)
TLDR: I have too many unread books, and I’m asking tumblr to help me downsize. Pick one or none, and comment if you can - a convincing sentence is worth a dozen votes! You’re also welcome to just choose the one that sounds the worst :D Book descriptions below the cut, see my pinned post for more info.
The Naming by Alison Croggon
Maerad is a slave in a desperate and unforgiving settlement, taken there as a child when her family is destroyed in war. She doesn't yet know she has inherited a powerful gift, one that marks her as a member of the noble School of Pellinor and enables her to see the world as no other can. It is only when she is discovered by Cadvan, one of the great Bards of Lirigon, that her true identity and extraordinary destiny unfold. Now, she and her mysterious teacher must embark on a treacherous, uncertain journey through a time and place where the forces of darkness wield an otherworldly terror
Save the Date by Morgan Matson
Charlie Grant's older sister is getting married this weekend at their family home, and Charlie can't wait--for the first time in years, all four of her older siblings will be under one roof. Charlie is desperate for one last perfect weekend, before the house is sold and everything changes. The house will be filled with jokes and games and laughs again. Making decisions about things like what college to attend and reuniting with longstanding crush Jesse Foster--all that can wait. She wants to focus on making the weekend perfect.
The only problem? The weekend is shaping up to be an absolute disaster.
There's the unexpected dog with a penchant for howling, house alarm that won't stop going off, and a papergirl with a grudge.
There are the relatives who aren't speaking, the (awful) girl her favorite brother brought home unannounced, and a missing tuxedo.
Not to mention the neighbor who seems to be bent on sabotage and a storm that is bent on drenching everything. The justice of the peace is missing. The band will only play covers. The guests are all crazy. And the wedding planner's nephew is unexpectedly, distractingly...cute.
Over the course of three ridiculously chaotic days, Charlie will learn more than she ever expected about the family she thought she knew by heart. And she'll realize that sometimes, trying to keep everything like it was in the past means missing out on the future.
The White Road of the Moon by Rachel Neumeier
Leigh Bardugo meets The Sixth Sense in this story of one girl’s perilous journey to restore a lost order.
Imagine you live with your aunt, who hates you so much she’s going to sell you into a dreadful apprenticeship. Imagine you run away before that can happen. Imagine that you can see ghosts—and talk with the dead. People like you are feared, even shunned.
Now imagine…the first people you encounter after your escape are a mysterious stranger and a ghost boy, who seem to need you desperately—though you don’t understand who they are or exactly what they want you to do. So you set off on a treacherous journey, with only a ghost dog for company. And you find that what lies before you is a task so monumental that it could change the world.
#bec posts#tbr takedown#poll#books#booklr#bookblr#the naming#pellinor#Alison Croggon#save the date#Morgan matson#The White Road of the Moon#Rachel Neumeier#tbr
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flower islands
#nature#photography#sweden#nature photography#canon#photographers on tumblr#beauty#beauty of nature#forest#woods#countryside#cabin#road#roadside flowers#roadside#country road#marguerite#marguerites#oxeye#oxeye daisy#moon daisy#daisy#flower#flowers#white flowers#white flower#floral photography#floral#florals#floral photographs
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June 2011 KTM Kathmandu Nepal
© KOJI ARAKI Art Works
Daily life and every small thing is the gate to the universe :)
#2011#June 2011#ktm#kathmandu#nepal#Swayambhunath#ring road#street photograph#street photography#moon#sky#cloud#tree in front of temple#under the tree#tree#photographers on tumblr#b&w photography#black and white photography#original photography#photography#koji araki art works#PENTAX K10#smc PENTAX-F MACRO 50mm F2.8#MACRO#PENTAX
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Waiting by Martynas Pavilonis.
instagram.com/martynaspavilonis
#illustration#art#drawing#artwork#black and white#design#night#moon#station#bus stop#road#city#suburbia#nature#dark#spooky#atmospheric#awkward#scary#tension#thriller#forest#animals#bunnies#light#waiting#artists on tumblr#artist#illustrator#martynas pavilonis
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#the fact that my ass has walked down this road#is sending me to the moon#rwrb#red white and royal blue#thank you haileanneposts for sending this to me!!!#behind the scenes#*le sigh*
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Alec: 😭 I just got a prophecy that I would father a child of no woman
Seregil: hmm... I agree that does sound unambiguously like you'll never have a child, but also, did you want a child? You knew I wasn't going to bear a child for you, right?
Me: congrats boys, you've just described a way to father a child of no woman (mpreg*)
*I don't know why I'm trying to avoid spoilers for a book that came out over 15 years ago, but for people who have no idea what I'm on about, I need you to know that the actual evental womanless childfathering method is. Worse.
#i love that the concept of mpreg seregil is literally canonical (THE CONCEPT NOT THE ACTUALITY)#and also how phenomenally terribly that would go. like. just truly awful.#anyway. as always. Alec is truly a character who has the Most happen to him...and then he'll do some manual labor and mostly get over it lol#this is a real tangent but I still cannot believe that my kindle has The White Road marked as read#i have no memory of that book. and also goodreads doesn't think I read it whereas it does know I read the first 4??#tbf I also only had vague memories of Traitor's Moon as well (they go to Aurenën and Alec impresses people w archery)#so who can say. maybe when I restart it more memories will return as happened w this one.#nightrunner series#cc#as always- to be clear- i love that alec is like 'yes this is my horrible abomination child born from trauma. and i love them.'#this is why I'm baffled that I supposedly read The White Road but can't remember it!!!
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Sorry for a sudden disappearance yet again.
Some personal stuff happened and I had to take a hiatus but now I am back on track!
Ask Box is still open for requests and questions, so feel free to ask me!
(Click here to check the rules before sending!)
#sofiath art#balan wonderworld#bww#no straight roads#nsr#sonic the hedgehog#smile for me#smile for me game#pkmn#pokemon n#pokemon bw#pokemon black and white#pkmn sun and moon#pokemon sun and moon#pokemon sword and shield#pokemon swsh#klonoa sweep#klonoa lunatea's veil#klonoa#klonoa 2#sonic#sonic oc#sth#art requests#art prompt#multifandom#sofiath ask#tickle#tickle community#honkai star rail
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I believe I'm gonna do some cross-posting from my DA page. Here's White from No Straight Roads posing with Sailor Moon!
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On May 25, 2010, Paper Moon was released on Blu-ray in the United Arab Emirates.
#paper moon#peter bogdanovich#ryan o'neal#road movie#road comedy movies#period film#period drama#crime comedy movies#crime movies#black and white film#movie art#art#drawing#movie history#pop art#modern art#pop surrealism#cult movies#portrait#cult film
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My Twitter
Hello, everyone ☺️ for those of you who don’t know, I am practicallyperfectpoppins on fanfiction.net and t_hanson on ao3!
I’ve written for several fandoms but have shared publicly my writings for Waterloo Road, Mary Poppins, and Steven Universe over the years. I have also shared content, written and otherwise, around these fandoms on my various blogs.
I now have a twitter! So if anyone is interested in my writing updates, in my other content for these fandoms, or my general thoughts around fiction, my twitter is below!
If you just wanna say hi, feel free to say hi also 😊 mutuals, hmu so I know to follow you back! If you’re not a mutual but in the fandom, I’d love to follow similar content so hmu anyway 👀
Fandoms I’m also interested in (off of the top of my head): our flag means death, sailor moon, she ra, the owl house, gentleman jack, the sound of music, call the midwife, berena from holby, adventure time, avatar: the last airbender, bob’s burgers, buffy, the old guard, and demon slayer.
There’s more but my brain is poop rn.
#waterloo road#mary poppins#mary poppins returns#steven universe#bellow diamond#yellow diamond#blue diamond#white diamond#pink diamond#our flag means death#ofmd#sailor moon#harumichi#haruka x michiru#the owl house#toh#gentleman jack#anne lister#ann walker#the sound of music#call the midwife#ctm#berena#bernie wolfe#serena campbell#adventure time#avatar the last airbender#atla#demon slayer#bob’s burgers
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#memories#memory#faded#fade into you#black and white#black and white photography#dark aesthetic#dark blue#blue#blue archive#blue aesthetic#blue and white#blue and black#terrifer 3#late night drives#late night drive home#empty roads#dark road#new years day#set it off#controlled#fires#fire#controlled fire#lake#late night lake#dark lake#moon on lake#dark academia#dark acadamia aesthetic
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June 2011 KTM Kathmandu Nepal
© KOJI ARAKI Art Works
Daily life and every small thing is the gate to the universe :)
#011#June 2011#ktm#kathmandu#nepal#Swayambhunath#ring road#street photograph#street photography#moon#sky#cloud#photographers on tumblr#b&w photography#black and white photography#original photography#photography#koji araki art works#PENTAX K10#SIGMA 15mm 2.8 EX Fisheye#Fisheye#SIGMA#PENTAX
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* / verse tag dump﹗
making this official for mainly myself. 😭😭
˛ ˚ 🏒 ₍₍ beware white—out⠀⠀►⠀⠀modern verse. ˛ ˚ 🏔️ ₍₍ mask of hoarfrost⠀⠀►⠀⠀viking verse. ˛ ˚ 🕶️ ₍₍ burns like the cold⠀⠀►⠀⠀espionage verse. ˛ ˚ 🩸 ₍₍ frostbitten woe⠀⠀►⠀⠀vamp verse. ˛ ˚ 🏯 ₍₍ blossom of snow⠀⠀►⠀⠀regal verse. ˛ ˚ 🗡️ ₍₍ moon knight⠀⠀►⠀⠀knight verse. ˛ ˚ 🏁 ₍₍ iceburn road⠀⠀►⠀⠀racer verse. ˛ ˚ ⚓️ ₍₍ dead man walkin'⠀⠀►⠀⠀pirate verse. ˛ ˚ ��� ₍₍ blue flame⠀⠀►⠀⠀demon verse. ˛ ˚ 🦈 ₍₍ shark week⠀⠀►⠀⠀mermaid verse. ˛ ˚ 🐺 ₍₍ child of the moon⠀⠀►⠀⠀werewolf verse. ˛ ˚ 🦉 ₍₍ lion heart⠀⠀►⠀⠀hogwarts verse. ˛ ˚ 🕯️ ₍₍ misfit flakes⠀⠀►⠀⠀scholar verse. ˛ ˚ 🕷️ ₍₍ frost web⠀⠀►⠀⠀spider—man verse. ˛ ˚ ⚔️ ₍₍ ﹪﹟﹖﹩﹗⠀⠀►⠀⠀deadpool verse. ˛ ˚ 🎤 ₍₍ snow angel⠀⠀►⠀⠀idol verse. ˛ ˚ 🎐 ₍₍ nine tailed⠀⠀►⠀⠀gumiho verse.
#˛ ˚ 🏒 ₍₍ beware white—out⠀⠀►⠀⠀modern verse.#˛ ˚ 🏔️ ₍₍ mask of hoarfrost⠀⠀►⠀⠀viking verse.#˛ ˚ 🕶️ ₍₍ burns like the cold⠀⠀►⠀⠀espionage verse.#˛ ˚ 🩸 ₍₍ frostbitten woe⠀⠀►⠀⠀vamp verse.#˛ ˚ 🏯 ₍₍ blossom of snow⠀⠀►⠀⠀regal verse.#˛ ˚ 🗡️ ₍₍ moon knight⠀⠀►⠀⠀knight verse.#˛ ˚ 🏁 ₍₍ iceburn road⠀⠀►⠀⠀racer verse.#˛ ˚ ⚓️ ₍₍ dead man walkin'⠀⠀►⠀⠀pirate verse.#˛ ˚ 🌑 ₍₍ blue flame⠀⠀►⠀⠀demon verse.#˛ ˚ 🦈 ₍₍ shark week⠀⠀►⠀⠀mermaid verse.#˛ ˚ 🐺 ₍₍ child of the moon⠀⠀►⠀⠀werewolf verse.#˛ ˚ 🦉 ₍₍ lion heart⠀⠀►⠀⠀hogwarts verse.#˛ ˚ 🕯️ ₍₍ misfit flakes⠀⠀►⠀⠀scholar verse.#˛ ˚ 🕷️ ₍₍ frost web⠀⠀►⠀⠀spider—man verse.#˛ ˚ ⚔️ ₍₍ ﹪﹟﹖﹩﹗⠀⠀►⠀⠀deadpool verse.#˛ ˚ 🎤 ₍₍ snow angel⠀⠀►⠀⠀idol verse.#˛ ˚ 🎐 ₍₍ nine tailed⠀⠀►⠀⠀gumiho verse.
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New Xbox Games for July 8 to July 12 2024
#youtube#xbox series x#Series X#Seriesx#Xbox Series S#Series S#SeriesS#XboxOne#Xbox One#Xbox Series X|S#New Games#new releases#trailers#Lifeless Moon#Naheulbeuk's Dungeon Master#Ogre Tale#SunnySide#True Colours#A Date With Deception#Alaskan Road Truckers#Busway Islands#Disaster Band#Hamster Playground#Neon White#Parasol Stars#The Story of Bubble Bobble III#Bubble Bobble#Prune and Milo#Cosmic Mirage#DayD
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Might I inquire as to what, precisely, a Mustain't is? (Aside from a string of letters I hesitate to Google in that order.)
In October 2014 I went on a road-trip to the Dryest Place In America.
I was having a rough year, very depressed from having dropped out of college for the third time. I decided a road trip was in order to re-set my brain and get a little distance. Being that it was October, and therefore all the campgrounds in the American Southwest were filled with people who have the good sense to camp in reasonable temperatures, I elected to take my parent's minivan so I could car-camp anywhere suitably isolated, and looked up some of the southwest's geographic extremes- the highest place I could drive to (Pikes Peak), the lowest place (Badwater Basin), and for fun, the Dryest Place in the continental US, which turned out to be the Pinacate Volcanic field just west of Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. It gets rain maybe twice a century and has no standing water, despite being less than 100 miles from the gulf of California.
It's a startlingly beautiful and alien place. The ground is a deep chocolate brown to black volcanic sand, and in mid October, the rabbit brush is turning bright yellow as it shifts to autumn, the organ pipe cacti are a dark green and stand, partially concealed in the brush at exactly human height. The air is alive with birds and insects and bats at night. The stargazing is like looking into the eyes of God.
You get there by driving down a little dirt road called "El Camino Del Diablo", or "The Devil's Road".
I drove out about three hours from Glendale, AZ to get there, arriving at sunset, and felt a profound sense of peace. I stargazed, listening to the bats hunt and sing, and slept peacefully for the first time in months.
I stayed out there for three days, sketching and painting the landscape, taking strolls through this almost alien landscape, and enjoying the light and sound and total absence of human intrusion besides myself.
On the fourth night, it was a new moon, and I awoke in the middle of the night. Something was amiss, and it took me a while to realize it was because I could NOT hear the bats. I was sleeping inside the van with the rear windows rolled halfway down rather than trying to set up the tent, so I when I sat up, I looked out of the van's reflective windows to discover what at first appeared to be A Horse.
It was something between pale gray and bright white in the starlight, standing maybe a dozen feet from the van, sniffing curiously. It made sense- I was in the middle of mustang country and there was quite a bit of foliage in the area for it and it did look like a truly wild horse- lumpy where the bones were jutting out, dusty about the hooves and face.
I was instantly seized by the sort of paralytic fear Sleep paralysis is made of. I couldn't move. It wasn't quite looking at me because it couldn't quite see through the windshield into the shadowy into the shadowy interior, but I had the distinct impression that if I looked away, it would know, and get me.
I already had problems with horses. My beloved Aunt Helen's Prize mare tried to kill me on two separate occasions, and the year before I had to carry my sister-in-law backwards out of a slot canyon whilst reciting the Saint Crispin's Day Speech as loudly as possible to keep a mustang from trampling us to death.
This is approximately what it should have looked like:
Instead, it was... off. like trying to draw a horse from memory.
The waist tapered in.
The legs were slightly too long or the torso slightly too short, probably both.
The ears were Triangular.
The head wasn't quite right- Too narrow and the jaw wasn't heavy enough.
The tail was too long and arced unnaturally away from the body.
The neck arched.
The nostrils were too high and close
The mouth too long.
Whatever this is, a Mustang it Ain't.
I watched it from the back seat as it sniffed around the front of the van, curious with about the side mirrors. It moved around the van, nibbling experimentally on the front door handle. It came up to the side windows, sniffing like a dog, and it's breath didn't fog up the glass.
Finally, it came up to the rear window, which was rolled halfway down to let the fall night air in. Not even half a pane of glass and two feet of air between us, and I could clearly see it's bright blue eyes.
Horses have Elongated pupils to give them a wide field of vision, and eyes that rotate sideways in their sockets so the pupil remains parallel to the ground. Rather creepy to watch, especially the ones with blue eyes.
A real horse that was curious about the interior of the van would have come up to the window more or less sideways, and looked at me with something like this:
Instead, the damn thing walked up and faced the back window head on, staring back at me with this:
I'm not sure how long we watched each other like that, eyes locked. My eyes burned. I couldn't blink. My mouth was dry. I couldn't swallow. My throat began to ache. I couldn't make a sound. My skin began to twitch, like I was severely dehydrated. I couldn't move. My lungs burned. I couldn't move. I couldn't move. I couldn't move. I couldn't move.
Something was touching the side of my hand on the seat next to me. It's my water bottle.
The realization must have broken the terrible paralysis in the lower parts of my brain first, because by the time I consciously realized I could move again, I was already flinging my water bottle out the window at it.
The top was open, and splashed out the window at the Mustain't.
I've never heard such a scream out of an animal. Something halfway between the sound of unquenchable rage vibrating in someone's chest and the way rabbits cry out to God when the dogs catch them.
It jumped back, pivoting away from the van, snarling at the water bottle. I don't think you're supposed to be able to see All of a horse's teeth at once, no matter how angry it is.
I watched it run into the night for some distance, it's pale body visible against the black sand and the dark gray shadow of the ancient volcanic cone it was headed for.
When the blood stopped pounding in my ears, I could hear the bats again.
I debated leaving right then, but I didn't want to get out of the van with that thing in the area, nor litter by leaving the water bottle out there. I also had the awful idea that if I left now, it might somehow be able to follow me home. I ended up staying up three hours to watch the sunrise, shaking and trying to figure out if I'd woken up from a vivid dream, if my meds had stopped working, or if that had really happened. I didn't dare move until I actually felt the temperature rise, before stepping out of the van to grab the bottle. I had my camera ready- I was still using a DSLR back then- to take pictures of the hoofprints, to show how close it had gotten to the van.
No hoofprints.
Beetle tracks in the soft sand around the van, and the clear foot-and-wing prints of a bird that had hopped around then taken off. But no hoofprints.
I went over the entire campsite with the tent broom, to make sure I removed every scrap of evidence I had ever been there, including my footprints, grabbed my water bottle, and drove the three hours back back to Glendale, then decided to do seven more hours of driving to Moab, Utah just to put more than 500 miles, the state line and at least nine things that could be considered "running water" between me and the Mustain't.
-
I still have that water bottle. It has a dent in the bottom from hitting something, but that could have happened at any time. Strange thing though. I can't drink that bottle dry. I'll have it on me, drink whatever I've put in there- water, juice, iced coffee- and eventually feel like I've drunk the whole think and that it's empty. But I open it up and it's still at least a quarter full. I drink that. I get thirsty. I open it up again. ...and there's always a mouthful left.
Not sure what the side effects of drinking from a bottle cursed by a Mustain't to always have some left are, but it lives in the Emergency Breakdown Kit in my car now, just in case I meet another one.
---
(I'm a disabled artist and make my living telling stories, please consider supporting me on Ko-Fi or Pre-order the Family Lore book on Patreon)
#Family Lore#scary stories to tell in the dark#or out camping#Horses#sort of#The Mustain't#long post#trypophobia#I know these are usually funny but this one is spooky
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Wikipedia editors push offensive language to delegitimize some Native American Tribes
Article Text As Follows:
Wikipedia editors push offensive language to delegitimize some Native American Tribes
By Sherry Robinson
Special to The Independent
ALBUQUERQUE — When Lily Gladstone won a Golden Globe and Oscar nomination for her role in “Killers of the Flower Moon,” the public recognized a Native American actress. But to Wikipedia readers, she is an American actress whose father was Blackfeet and Nez Perce and whose mother was white.
Three long-time editors at the online encyclopedia argued that even though Gladstone grew up on the Blackfeet reservation, she couldn’t be called Native American unless she was an enrolled member of the tribe. When Gladstone’s uncle weighed in to say she was enrolled, they dismissed his comments. She is still, in Wikipedia’s view, “an American actress.”
In recent years, outside of a national debate in Indian Country over fake tribes, a handful of Wikipedia editors have been deciding who is Native American and who isn’t.
Look behind the curtain of the sprawling site and you will find a network of 265,000 volunteer editors writing and editing within a Wiki universe that has its own rules, language, police and courts but no traditional hierarchy.
Wikipedia’s structure allows likeminded editors to work together, but it also permits editors with a bias to advance their agenda. The site has drawn criticism from media and academics for slanted articles on Blacks and Jews. Wikipedia documents its own systemic bias in an article by that name and attributes the problem to too few minority editors. The typical editor, it says, is a white male.
By Wikipedia's definition, the only real tribes are federally recognized; editors of Native American material denigrate state-recognized and unrecognized tribes and seem preoccupied with revealing fake Indians.
The fakes are out there, and they’re a problem. But there’s a big difference between people who invented a Native ancestry and people who have a long, documented heritage.
For this story, aggrieved tribal members didn’t identify themselves because they fear the site’s size and power – it reaches 1.8 billion devices a month – and some editors’ vindictiveness.
Behind the curtain
Wikipedia is transparent about its process. Click on “talk” at the top of each article and you find the (sometimes endless) debates among editors about an article and see the site’s rules in action.
Editors are anonymous because the Wikipedia Foundation has a strong commitment to privacy, says a spokesperson. However, readers don’t know what expertise editors have or whether they’re Native American.
Editors select their subject matter. With experience they can rise in the pecking order until they gain authority to reverse or eliminate the edits of others. They quote the site’s often arcane rules in Wiki-Speak to anyone who disagrees. While Wikipedia espouses objectivity, neutrality and civility, discussions can take the low road.
On Lily Gladstone’s talk page, a newish editor, user name Tsideh (Apache for bird), asked, “What are your sources supporting the idea that Native Americans are only those who are enrolled in a US recognized tribe?”
A Wiki editor, user name ARoseWolf, answered: “A notable subject can make a claim… but you must have that respective tribal nation’s acceptance as verification through enrollment."
Gladstone’s uncle wrote: “I’m a primary source for Ms. Gladstone’s tribal heritage. Her father is my brother. Through our father, we are both enrolled in the Blackfeet Tribe in the USA,” he wrote. “Our mother is enrolled Nez Perce. So Ms. Gladstone is a direct descendant of both Blackfeet and Nez Perce.”
ARoseWolf shot him down. “We can not use primary sources to verify such information and, you, as a claimed family member have a WP:COI which means we need an independent source.”
WP:COI is the Wikipedia rule on confl ict of interest. Wikipedia forbids primary sources, and yet they’re the gold standard for journalists and academics.
Tsideh challenged the position that only enrollment in a recognized tribe “entitles somebody to claim to be a Native American” as an unfounded, minority point of view that Wiki editors didn’t support with a citation or explanation.
ARoseWolf and others chastised Tsideh for violating Wiki rules on bullying, false accusations and arguing Wiki policy. Tsideh countered that Leonardo DiCaprio didn’t have to prove he was an Italian American, but Lily Gladstone had to prove she was a Native American.
As the back and forth continued, ARoseWolf slammed a new editor who "just happened to find this discussion,” a dig that implies one party enlisted another to join the debate. That too is a Wiki violation.
Bohemian Baltimore, another regular, insisted, “If she’s not enrolled, she may be a descendant, but she’s not a Native American.”
Who is Native American?
Terry Campbell, a Navajo born in Tuba City, Arizona, who lives out of state, has been studying Wikipedia for five months, after friends complained about poor treatment in trying to edit Wiki pages.
One friend wanted to add some facts to an article about a tribe. “These changes were rejected by a handful of editors who cited other Wikipedia pages as sources,” he said, “and I thought that was very, very odd.”
A friend citing sources that prove her tribe survived the Indian wars and received state recognition ran up against Wikipedia guidelines on determining Native American identities that were largely crafted by two editors, user names CorbieVreccan and Yuchitown. Wiki editors used the guidelines to reclassify dozens of state-recognized tribes as “heritage organizations” and removed “Native American” from biographies of prominent tribal members or, worse, called them a "self-identified Native American.”
The implication, Campbell explained, is that the tribe no longer exists and that its members are suspect or even “Pretendians.” Wikipedia has a page for that too.
The same group has shaped many articles on Native subjects. Campbell said he combed through references and found they were misrepresented, taken out of context, sourced from far-right academics, or unreliable.
“The scope of this issue is huge,” Campbell said. “It permeates all the Native articles I checked.”
Campbell recognized talking points from what he called a far-right movement in Indian Country intent on erasing state-recognized and unrecognized tribes. (New Mexico has no state-recognized tribes and six unrecognized groups or tribes.)
Some Native Americans and Anglos, he said, believe that Indigenous people outside the circle of federal recognition should be considered non-Native. They also want to prevent members of the disenfranchised groups from selling their art, receiving ancestral remains, accessing disaster relief or re-establishing their homeland.
Outside Indian Country, it’s not generally known that U.S. Indigenous groups live within a caste system based on government recognition, with 574 federally recognized tribes on top, dozens of state-recognized tribes second, and several hundred unrecognized tribes last.
In 2021, Yuchitown wrote, “The overwhelming majority of ‘List of unrecognized tribes in the United States’ are completely illegitimate.”
There are many reasons why groups aren’t recognized. Some avoided the reservation. Some lost their recognition during the termination era. Some were broken up and scattered during the Indian Wars. Some went underground, practicing their culture secretly while passing as Hispanic. Many simply stayed put.
When Wikipedia editors claim that “Native American” is a political status conferred by the U.S. government, that an individual can only be called a “descendent” until their tribe is recognized, they push this narrative, Campbell said. It’s a contradiction of federal Indian law and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, “As a general principle, an Indian is a person who is of some degree Indian blood and is recognized as an Indian by a Tribe and/or the United States. No single federal or tribal criterion establishes a person’s identity as an Indian. Government agencies use differing criteria to determine eligibility for programs and services. Tribes also have varying eligibility criteria for membership.”
Extreme points of view
Campbell has contributed to a lengthy report, as yet unpublished, that identifies biased editors. They include Yuchitown, CorbieVreccan, ARoseWolf, Indigenous girl and Bohemian Baltimore.
“It was like a tree with many interconnecting branches that had been created over time by the same small group of people pushing extreme points of view,” Campbell said.
Initially the group made changes slowly, he said, “but they started pursuing their agenda aggressively after November, when state-recognized tribes retained their voting rights in the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI). Essentially, after the movement to delegitimize state-recognized tribes failed officially, the key players doubled down on altering and controlling the flow of information about Native Americans through Wikipedia.”
Campbell observed widespread violations of Wikipedia standards: “I found evidence that they blatantly misquoted and misrepresented sources to push extremist political beliefs; teamed up to manipulate the consensus system by voting in blocks; exploited Wikipedia rules, such as conflict of interest, to block outside editors from making changes to Native-related pages; excessively cited opinion pieces from fringe political figures, including those accused of racism and anti-semitism; blocked the use of legitimate primary and secondary sources that contradict their extremists beliefs, which violates Wikipedia’s rule against information suppression; posted originally researched, politically motivated essays instead of well-sourced articles; and harassed and defamed Native American tribes and living Native American people.”
Reacting in February to an early draft of the report posted on Google, the editors were incensed that anybody would voice complaints “off-Wiki.” ARoseWolf wrote that “we have been attacked, threatened with legal action and had misinformation/ false claims spread against us.” She and Yuchitown denied being part of a conspiracy against tribes or organizations and said they were just following Wiki rules. Yuchitown accused critics of being “meat puppets” of a person who objected to some Native content and enlisted others to back them up. In WikiSpeak this is meat puppetry.
“Volunteers on Wikipedia vigilantly defend against information that does not meet the site’s requirements,” the Wikipedia spokeswoman wrote. “These volunteers regularly review a feed of real-time edits to quickly address problematic changes; bots spot and revert many common forms of negative behavior on the site; and volunteer administrators (trusted Wikipedia volunteers with advanced permissions to protect Wikipedia) further investigate and address negative behavior. When a user repeatedly violates Wikipedia policies, Wikipedia administrators can take disciplinary action and block them from further editing.”
Inaccurate and insulting
In 2006, Wikipedia established the WikiProject Indigenous Peoples of North America to improve its Native-related content of 14,000 articles and more than 37,000 pages.
Recently, a hot topic on the project’s talk page was a proposal to change a category name from “unrecognized tribes” to “organizations that self-identify.”
On April 15 Melissa Harding Ferretti, chairwoman of the Herring Pond Wampanoag Tribe in Massachusetts, wrote, “The proposed renaming of the category on Wikipedia is not only inaccurate… but also insulting.”
Ferretti is one of the few Natives to take on Wiki editors openly.
Herring Pond was originally listed with other Wampanoag tribes. In 2022 Yuchitown stripped “state-recognized” from the page, even though the state Commission of Indian Affairs regularly engages with them. Last year Yuchitown created a separate page for Herring Pond. Wiki editors resisted attempts to make changes or corrections.
After Wikipedia called Herring Pond a “cultural heritage group" and a nonprofi t that "claims" to descend from Wampanoags, Ferretti wrote in a Wiki discussion, “There is no claim, it’s a fact! Might I add, nonprofit status was imposed upon Tribal nations in the ‘90s because we didn’t have our federal recognition yet.”
Her tribe has a well-documented history. “We still have care and custody of our sacred places, burial grounds and our 1838 Meetinghouse, one of three built for the Tribe after the arrival of the colonizers. Our continuous presence and stewardship of these lands are recognized by historical records, deeds and treaties.”
Ferretti wrote that tribes without federal recognition already face significant hurdles to gain recognition, "and being labeled as 'self-identified' can add to these challenges by casting doubt on our legitimacy.” Mislabeling unrecognized tribes “can lead to the spread of hate, misinformation and further marginalization.”
Some Wiki editors agreed. One wrote that “there are strong negative connotations to saying someone who is Native 'self identifies,' because the inference is that they are Native in name only or falsely claiming to be Native. A change like this will impact countless articles…” Bohemian Baltimore, ARoseWolf and Yuchitown insisted there were no negative connotations. They opposed calling an unrecognized group a tribe because it legitimized groups with unverified claims. ARoseWolf said, “If they had proof of their connection to the original people they would have gotten federal recognition.”
This is a frequent refrain among the insiders, who apparently think the application process is a slam dunk instead of the long, difficult, expensive journey it is.
Yuchitown noted that “all of the editors who actively contribute to and improve Native American topics on Wikipedia have voted to support the renaming.” It’s a remarkable declaration that he and his allies act in concert.
The insiders took even stronger action against Lipan Apaches in Texas.
Late in 2022, Yuchitown changed the entry of the Lipan Apache Tribe of Texas to say that NCAI recognizes the tribe as state-recognized but the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) does not. In fact, NCSL took down its web page listing federal and state-recognized tribes because it couldn’t verify the accuracy.
In boilerplate that appears on all the Texas unrecognized tribes’ websites, Yuchitown said Texas has no legal mechanism to recognize tribes, citing an online article that in turn cites the discredited NCSL web page.
In 2022, a tribal member and Yuchitown fought back and forth, reversing each other’s edits. In WikiSpeak, it was edit warring. The tribal member informed Yuchitown that the NCSL page he quoted no longer existed. CorbieVreccan told the member she was up against “two experienced editors,” and Yuchitown accused her of conflict of interest and edit warring. His fellow travelers demanded to know if she had an official position with the tribe. She didn’t.
ARoseWolf wrote, “As Wikipedia is not a state or government-controlled entity it can make up its own rules for what content is allowed on its platform.”
The Wikimedia spokeswoman says that in some extreme cases the foundation relies on a trust and safety team that will investigate and may also take action.
Campbell wrote in the report that many Native American communities and people “have been targeted by the small group of propagandists in this complaint… And the thousands of people who make these communities have been slandered and assaulted on Wikipedia through the actions of these propagandists.”
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