#and most native american tribes were like '...why?'

[yanderedrabbles]

Helloooo! I just loved the old west gang. Traumatized? Yes. Curious? Yes. But specifically the Lakota wrangler caught my attention, and oooh this part:

"""Don't be. You're my reward, my reparation." He brushed his knuckles across your cheek again.

"I've waited my whole life for you."

You wanted to ask why. What made you so special? Why did he want to keep you? ""

VAL, TELL ME WHAT DOES THIS MEAN? WHAT'S HIS STORY? WHAT'S HIS DEBT?

OH MY GOD HIS PART IS SO 💕💕💕💕

TELL US THEIR BACKGROUND PLEASE 🥹🥹🥹

Yandere Outlaws - The Wrangler's Past + the gang hearing about you for the first time

I think the wrangler probably has one of the most interesting backgrounds. We all know that the Wild West era was no fun at all for Native American tribes. Manifest Destiny and all the terrible things done in it's name saw Native tribes being confined to smaller and smaller reservations, with stricter and stricter rules. Bison were disappearing, the railroads were cutting across hunting lands, and permanent settlers were coming west in droves.

I think in the face of all that, the wrangler felt like he had to adapt or die. Set out on his own and try and make it in the white man's world.

I reckon he falls in with the boss after a nasty bar fight. Him against some cowboys who feel like a Lakota on "their" turf is blasphemy.

Things don't look good at all. He's a strong fighter but numbers almost always trumps skill. He's going to end up dead in the mud and no one will give a damn.

Well, until the boss arrives. Maybe the boss is an old quick draw and when the smoke settles the cowboys are down for good. Or maybe the boss just has that look to him, that keen eyed glare that makes dumb cowhands think better of their bravado.

Either way, he hauls the wrangler out of the mud and offers him a job.

"Need a man for my horses. I'll pay you good to stick with us for coupla weeks."

The wrangler agrees. Because hell, what else is there to do? And if the older man looks hard edged and hard eyed, how much does that really matter? This is the West. You either get tough or get buried.

I think one way or another, the boss earns his loyalty. He gives him a sense of belonging he hasn't felt since he set out on his own. Gives him a purpose. And well, robbing banks and derailing trains and sticking it to old Uncle Sam is about the best he can do to make up for what his tribe has been through. Just one more outlaw pricking Washington in the thumb.

And as for you, sweet thing that you are, oh, you're what he's waited for all his life.

A girl to call his own. Soft and kind, to keep the cold away. Looking in your eyes makes it so easy to forget all the shit he's been through, all the shit he's done. He's been through his share of trouble and then some. He deserves a place to rest his head, a person to call home.

So what if you aren't willing? The world has gone out of its way to take what should have been his by right. The bison, the land, the open sky and flowing water. All of it divvied up and fenced off. He's not letting anyone get in the way of the one good thing he can finally call his own.

I think the thing that initially attracts him to you is the story of you and the second in command. The second is Chinese and he hasn't had it easy either. He could either work the railroads or die in a ditch. Not the best options, but just about the only ones open to an immigrant's son.

If you were anyone else, you'd have screamed your head off when you found him bleeding in your barn.

You didn't. Instead, you put him back together and kept him safe from your pa.

When he first heard the story, it was a cold night out on the planes. They'd just pulled off a job and were sleeping rough, trying to throw the law dogs off their trail.

The second kept looking out to the west. Maybe he was keeping an eye out for pursuit, but they'd pulled their job off back east. Marshals would be coming from that direction, if at all.

Finally, he gave in to his curiosity and asked the man what the hell he was looking for.

"My girl," he said simply. "My girl stays out that way."

The outlaws grew quiet around the fire.

"I didn't know you had one," the boss said, elbows on his knees as he sharpened his boot knife. "Is that where you go off to when we're in town?"

"Mm-hmm. I like to check in on her."

The gunslingers leaned forward then, as in sync as coyotes.

"She must be one hell of a girl, if she can put up with your ugly mug."

"Is she pretty? Got those nice eyes that look up at you all sweet?"

He ignored them and went back to looking west, like he could somehow see over all those miles.

"Do you love her?" the wrangler asked suddenly. He didn't know why he asked that, just that it seemed important.

"More than I thought possible. Every time I see her it's like my heart is breaking. If I can't have her, I think I'll go mad."

The boss looked up for a second, blue eyes catching the firelight. "You gonna marry her then?"

The second laughed, uncharacteristically nervous. "She doesn't even know I exist."

The boss stopped sharpening his knife. "How do you know you love her, if you ain't never talked to her?"

"She saved my life. That's how I know."

The wrangler looked up at the sky and wondered who would go out of their way to save an outlaw.

The boss stuck his knife in his boot. "Tell us the story."

Maybe if anyone else asked, the second would have refused. You were his girl. He didn't want to share even the memory of you with other men.

But you don't say no to the boss.

When he was done telling it, the outlaws were quiet. Lost in their own thoughts. All of them thinking how sweet it would be to have a girl like that. Feeling for a second what he felt every time he thought of you.

It was the wrangler who broke the silence, only half aware he was speaking. "I'd do anything to have a girl like that. Someone so kind..."

The dark skinned outlaw leaned forward, eyes narrowed. "She sounds too good for either of you."

"And you're any better?"

He didn't get to answer. The green eyed gunslinger cut in, his voice low and mean.

"She sounds real innocent. Kind of girl who'll cry when you fuck her for the first time."

The second in command stood with a snarl, already reaching for his rifle.

"Don't."

The boss, quiet but no less dangerous for being so.

"We're all men here. We're all gonna think somethin' like that when you tell us 'bout a girl so...untouched."

The second sat back down stiffly, his jaw clenched tight.

The boss continued, "Ain't like we're gonna steal your girl from you. Let it go."

The wrangler didn't let it go though. Not even when they were back in their hideout, a whole lot richer than they were a week ago.

He stopped the second in command when he was saddling up his mustang.

"Take me with you. I want to see this girl of yours."

If it was anyone else, he'd have said no on the spot. But the wrangler had a quiet gentleness about him that made the second agree.

They watched you from a hill overlooking your father's ranch. Just two shadows against the setting sun.

One of your horses had taken sick and you were walking it around the corral. Stopping every little while to stroke its neck or rub its nose, whispering encouragement. You were patient, gentle. The hem of your skirt tucked into your belt and showing off a sliver of thigh as you moved.

The wrangler sighed and stroked his horse's neck.

"I understand now."

"Understand what?"

"Why you keep looking for her, even if you're a hundred miles away."

As they rode home, he found himself doing the same thing. Looking over his shoulder like he could somehow see you one last time.

And the first time he saw you up close? Backed up against the kitchen table, corned like a vixen at the hunt? That's when he realised exactly what you were.

You were his reward.

The one good thing he'd struggled all his life to find. You were going to be his peace. His home.

And the first time he had you? On your knees, kissing his cock, your eyelashes still wet with tears? That's when he decided he'd keep you, no matter how cruel it was. No matter that doing it would strip him of any claim to goodness. A good man wouldn't get hard seeing you cry. A good man wouldn't fuck you when all you wanted was to go home.

But then again, how could he stay a good man in a world that hated him? That wanted him dead and gone?

When he kissed you, he signed away his last bit of honour. It doesn't matter that he holds you so gently, that he touches you like a lover.

He'll never let you go. And ain't that just a bitch?

[mania-sama]

Mondstadt and Its Religious Implications

One thing that I will NEVER get over about Genshin Impact is the iconography used in the designs for Mondstadt and the implications it has. Now, don't get me wrong, as a rule of thumb, Hoyoverse has done a really good job in creating unique environments for Genshin's nations that more or less accurately portray a real-life cultural region. Liyue is based on China, Inazuma on Japan, Sumeru on India and Egypt, Fontaine on France (and Australia, if you squint), and Natlan on African and Native American tribes.

Mondstadt is based on Germany. More specifically, many of the designs and icons seem to resemble the Holy Roman Empire. Now, an important thing to note is that most of Western and Southern Europe was some denomination of Christianity at this time, with some exceptions due to various holy wars that occurred kind of all of the time. Anyway, the point is that the Holy Roman Empire was an established Catholic nation (and Germany still is predominantly Christian in modern-day). One thing about the Catholic denomination is that they proudly display religious symbols anywhere they can or in ways that they can carry with them, usually coming in the form of a rosary or a cross. When it came to specific places of holy worship, they would obviously spend no small amount of effort to completely embellish the place with gold, art, and symbols. Catholic churches are known to be the most extravagant of the denominations for a reason.

When a design team looks at The Holy Roman Empire, they will see this religious imagery everywhere. Namely, they will see the cross, because that is kind of, you know, THE Christian symbol. So it makes complete sense for them to note that down and underline it in red; for a mostly-accurate portrayal of the region they are taking from, a church and crosses HAVE to be included.

Places of worship are obviously not unique to Christianity, nor is the "cross" as a religious symbol even born from Jesus Christ. There are a few cases from different regions in which crosses and cross-like images were used for their gods. HOWEVER, with the specific cross that Mondstadt displays, and with the fact that not only is it based on Germany/Holy Roman Empire but that it is the ONLY Genshin region to use the cross in its designs (along with the usage of distinctly Christian/Catholic roles like nuns)... it is safe to assume that this is representative of the Christian cross.

You can see the issue we are about to have.

The fact that Mondstadt displays crosses as a religious symbol in CHURCHES and on the KNIGHTS' ARMORY (because most knights were historically Christian), that characters like Barbara are seen wearing in their designs, implies two things:

Crucifixation is/was a method of cruel execution in Mondstadt's history.

SOMEBODY of high esteem and worship had to be crucified, and thusly held up as the ultimate symbol of religion...

For the first point, while it IS still crazy to think that Genshin would imply this, I can, indeed, believe it to be true to canon. Why? Well, Mondtadt's history is already rife with the same abuses as Europe's actual history. From slaves to gladiator fights to rebellion to cruel monarchs, Mondstadt has not had a pretty life. Crucifixion honestly fits right in. I can imagine, in failed revolts against the aristocracy, those rebels who survived were later crucified. Other victims may be those who try to falsify gods or improperly worship Barbatos in a manner that the ruler doesn't agree with, those who commit treason, etc. etc..

Is it insane? Perhaps a little. But if we really get into it, Hoyoverse has done some crazy things with their lore so it's not really out of place, no matter how cruel the actual punishment is.

The second point is a little more complicated. Let's first rule off Christianity being a thing in Genshin - while you could consider the most of the nations to be monotheistic because they technically worship one god, the respective one of their nation, they most certainly do not obey/follow one god holistically, nor is there one mortal representative that god, nor is there a specific spirit that lives on in every believer who follows that god. So, there is no Holy Trinity; no Jesus Christ, no Holy Spirit, and there is no God, so to speak. No Christianity.

However.

One thing about Genshin Impact is that it takes from biblical mythology heavily, for some reason (and I say mythology because modern denominations don't consider the demonology stuff canon). For example, Paimon is the name of a demon who was more or less a servant of Lucifer (interpretations may vary). It is well known that the Archons are based on demons from biblical demon mythology. Even in the latest Natlan Archon Quest, Ronova, the Ruler of Death, looks unnervingly like Ophanim, the one everyone draws when they make "biblically accurate angels" or whatever.

Mondstadt accomplishes biblical references in two ways: one, that Barbatos, the demon, had four main kings/knights that rode with him. This can be seen represented in the Four Winds. Two, that these Four Winds can be viewed like how the Catholics would view a saint. Saints were, in simplistic terms, mortals who achieved great things and helped many people, and were then canonized after the death (usually). The church essentially declares them a Saint and worthy of worship. Idols and imagery are produced of these saints and hung like one would a cross or other images of Jesus Christ.

The most clear representation of that in Genshin would be in Venessa, who is a mortal who dies and then ascends to Celestia. She then becomes the Falcon of the West, one of the Four Winds of Mondstadt. So, a saint, essentially. Even though Mondstadt isn’t Christian, it certainly is Catholic.

The reason why I am going over all of this is to say that, well, it may not be necessarily implying that Venti was the one who was crucified. That is the popular opinion when discussing the crosses - that somewhere along the way, Venti was crucified. I am here to say that that really might not be the case. While the Holy Trinity is interpreted by many denominations to all be one and the same as each other, it is still a fact that it was Jesus Christ who was crucified, not God Himself. Jesus is the son, not the God.

Which is to say that it could be anyone, really. The most clear "child" of Barbatos that comes to mind is Venessa, who we could interpret as someone who could have been, at one point, crucified (though she was not). Rulers and people of high esteem also claim her titles and name like monarchs would claim holiness and divine right in Europe. Again, the problem with this is that she was not crucified and lived a very successful life post-rebellion.

The other option that comes to mind is the Unnamed Bard. He also could have been crucified. Even though we know he died in battle, it is not unreasonable that his corpse would have been strung up by pissed-off nobles upon the defeat of Decarabian. But, again, the problem being is that a. the timelines don't match up (Barbatos was not yet the Anemo Archon), and b. they won the rebellion so he still probably wasn't crucified.

So, it could be someone we haven't heard of, or someone deep in Genshin lore that I don't know about. Or, you know, perhaps Venti really was crucified. I don't know.

THIS is what Hoyoverse is implying. AND I DON'T LIKE IT (it's fucking hilarious).

[bucephaly]

Reconnecting Cherokee Masterpost

I’ve had a few Cherokee posts blow up on here and as a result I’ve gotten lots of ‘my grandma said she was cherokee’ ‘I’m supposed to have Cherokee roots I wish I knew anything about it’ ‘I was never taught anything about my Cherokee ancestry’ type sentiments in my activity. So! I wanna make a little masterpost with some resources on how to verify or disprove these types of family stories and how to get started for those interested in reconnecting!

A little about me and a disclaimer. I’ve not been reconnecting that long, about a year and a half, and before that I didn’t know I was Cherokee. I did not grow up Cherokee and I am white. What I’m going to be talking about is simply resources for genealogy, language, good places to connect online, etc. these are all things I’ve dealt with as I reconnect, but I am not any sort of authority on Cherokee issues or culture. The purpose of this post is to get people who know absolutely nothing about Cherokee identity and community started in learning more and seeing what needs to be done before reconnecting. And I acknowledge that the genealogical records and resources available for Freedmen descendants and Afro-indigenous people may not be as conclusive, and I simply urge Afro-indigenous people to do what research you can. I am also only Cherokee, I can’t speak for how any of this works for other tribes. Now, to get started

I’ll be talking about

Genealogy

Enrollment

Basic info about Reconnecting

and Language

Genealogy

Genealogy is the most important first step for anyone wanting to reconnect, or even just wanting to claim Cherokee ancestry at all. Unless you have done genealogy research that has shown ancestry connecting you to ancestors on the accepted Cherokee rolls or you are or have family who are citizens of one of the 3 federally recognized Cherokee tribes, please do not make claims of Cherokee identity or ancestry.

Fake ‘granny stories’ of Cherokee ancestry are very common, particularly in the South / Appalachia. These stories often go something like ‘my great-grandmother was fullblood Cherokee. She hid out from the soldiers rounding the Cherokee up for the Trail of Tears.’ There are many many variants, such as children being adopted by a white family, being traded away, or just otherwise being left behind or abandoned. I also frequently see ‘they escaped and hid in the mountains,’ ‘they pretended to be white / black,’ etc. Remember, the Trail of Tears happened in 1838, 185 years ago. My ggg grandfather was 2, so unless you are 60+ it would be unlikely that a great grandparent was alive during that period. This mythical great-grandmother is also occasionally an ‘Indian princess.’ There are many excuses for why ancestors might not show up on known Cherokee records, such as ‘the records were burned in a courthouse fire’ or ‘they were intentionally removed from the records,’ etc. Physical features are also claimed to prove stories, such as high cheekbones, dark hair, darker skin, etc. Old family photos showing grandparents with tan skin, etc, are also brought up pretty frequently. None of those prove anything, as many people of European or mixed ancestry can have these traits. Stories like this are also not exclusive to white families, they can definitely be present in Black families as well. These stories are most often entirely fabricated or resulting from a misunderstanding. It’s pretty common to have someone be familiar with the fake stories but convinced that their family story is the one exception and has to be real, which ends up being instantly caught as fake by anyone that knows the history, you’d be surprised haha. Here is a post I’ve made talking about fake stories in more depth.

DNA testing cannot prove descent from any specific Native tribe. An ‘indigenous American’ result on a DNA test does not prove native ancestry, as DNA tests are frequently wrong especially when it comes to ‘trace ancestry’. Nor does a DNA test showing 0 native DNA prove that one doesn’t have native ancestry. DNA tests are a novelty and irrelevant to native genealogy. The only time they are useful is in finding cousins through DNA matches, which can be especially useful for adoptees. Here is a post where I go more in depth on this

Now, getting into actual genealogy, the main process with Cherokee genealogy is fairly simple. I’m not going to go in depth on the process of genealogy in general, there are plenty of resources for that. Get what info you can from your family [names, birthdates, places people lived] of your recent ancestors, then find their census records [census records from 1950 and earlier are publicly available] or what records you can, and go back, finding their parents, etc. The goal is to get around to 1900. See where they were living at that point, as that will effect what rolls they might be on. There are three main Cherokee rolls that are looked at for determining ancestry [but there are other rolls as well]

The Dawes Rolls taken between 1898 - 1914 recorded the Cherokees living in the Western Cherokee Nation, Indian Territory before Oklahoma Statehood. This roll came with allotments, parcels of land given to the Cherokees. Cherokee Freedmen are also recorded on this roll, along with Intermarried and Adopted Whites. This is the roll that CNO and UKB uses for enrollment. Here is where it can be searched.

The Baker Rolls taken between 1924 - 1929 recorded the Cherokees living on the Qualla Boundary in western North Carolina. This is the roll that the EBCI uses for enrollment

The Guion Miller Roll taken between 1906 - 1911 recorded Cherokees living anywhere and was associated with a cash payout.

I can’t find free searchable databases of the Baker or Miller rolls, but you can find them on some ancestry sites like ancestry.com with a membership or free trial. Also, be aware that these rolls all have “Declined” sections of people who applied and were declined for having no proof of ancestry, mostly just applying to try to get money or land meant for Cherokees. This is especially true of the Miller roll, where 2/3rds of the applicants were declined.

If your ancestors aren’t on any of these rolls, can be found in US census records before 1900, or aren’t living in the Cherokee homelands in the early 1800s, they are almost surely not Cherokee. Also, be wary of results on ancestry sites that start cropping up in the 1700s where the only evidence is another person’s family trees. There are many people claiming descent from Dragging Canoe, Chief Moytoy, and others that put these things on their ancestry trees when none of these people have any descendants. And people will just make up entirely fictional people. Just be sure there are actual documents tying them to the Cherokee and to your ancestors [as people will make up fake children of real figures like Nancy Ward as well]

There is a fantastic resource for Cherokee genealogy in the Cherokee Research and Genealogy Facebook group. The researchers are experts on Cherokee genealogy and will run your lines for FREE and determine conclusively whether you have Cherokee ancestry or not. When they find someone with Cherokee ancestry, they will also find your ancestors’ enrollment applications, allotment locations, etc. they’re really fantastic and I highly recommend checking them out and saving yourself the trouble of doing the research yourself. Just read their rules thoroughly. Even if you did do some research, if you hit a wall or just want confirmation, check them out! Especially if you think you found legitimate ancestry, getting them to double check will remove any doubt.

Enrollment

There are three federally-recognized Cherokee tribes. Each has their own community, resources, and different requirements for enrollment. These are: the United Keetoowah Band [UKB] located in Tahlequah, OK, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians [EBCI] in Cherokee, North Carolina, and the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma [CN or CNO] in Tahlequah, OK. Each of these have distinct histories. Cherokee Nation is the largest by far.

Be wary of fraudulent state-recognized Cherokee tribes. If a Cherokee tribe is not one of the three mentioned above, then it is not recognized by the others as legitimate. These state tribes often take resources that are supposed to be going to legitimate native communities [such as school funding], spread misinformation, etc. These communities often have obviously fake non-Cherokee traits such as ‘naming ceremonies’ and members with laughably stereotypical names like ‘spirit wolf’ and ‘white owl’ lol [also, this is specifically about state tribes claiming to be Cherokee, I can’t speak to the legitimacy of other groups.]

Two of the three Cherokee tribes have a blood quantum requirement. Blood quantum [BQ] is how much ‘native blood’ one has, depicted as a fraction. BQ is a very complex topic in native communities, which I won’t get into here. EBCI has a 1/16 BQ requirement, so to be a citizen you must has 1/16 Eastern Cherokee blood, as well as have an ancestor on the Baker Roll. UKB has a 1/4 BQ requirement, so citizens must have 1/4 Cherokee blood and an ancestor on the Dawes Rolls or the 1949 UKB roll. CNO has no BQ requirement, if an ancestor is listed as By Blood on the Cherokee Dawes Rolls, or listed as a Cherokee Freedman, then you are eligible for CNO citizenship.

Do not come into Cherokee spaces just asking what sort of benefits enrollment can get you. It’s pretty disrespectful and makes it seem like you only care about what you can take from us.

Reconnection

So you did your genealogy and found that you have documented Cherokee ancestry, what next? Reconnection is a long and difficult process and I’ve barely even started, but I’ll try to give what resources and info I can.

Who can reconnect? This can vary between people, but most often I see people [biased towards Cherokees who are active online] saying that anyone with legitimate documented Cherokee ancestry can reconnect. Some people prefer reconnectors are able to enroll in one of the 3 tribes, some prefer people have connected living family, it varies a lot. In my experience as someone who is white and not a citizen yet, if you are respectful and humble, people are pretty accepting. It’s also important to think about why you want to reconnect. You need to be prepared to give back to your people as much if not more than you get. That means learning the language, the history, learn about current issues, etc. Don’t go into it just wanting to be able to say you’re Cherokee as a fun fact or get some sort of monetary benefit. It’s also important to remember that you will get asked to prove yourself. Don’t be offended if you’re asked if you’re enrolled, who your family is, how you’re Cherokee, etc. This is part of our cultural protocols. Not only do we want to keep people with fake family stories from getting into our spaces, we also just like finding relatives! You need to remember your place as a reconnecting Cherokee. Don’t think having legitimate ancestry suddenly means you’re able to talk with authority on native issues or suddenly claim to be oppressed. If you’re white, don’t suddenly start claiming to be a POC or “white-passing,” you can be white and Cherokee. Cherokee is not a race.

Consider Why you want to reconnect. I see a lot of people that want to 'reconnect' seemingly just so they can put cherokee in their bio and feel like part of a special club that can do closed practices and say they're two spirit or whatever. When you reconnect, the most important people will be the rest of the cherokee community. If you're more worried about performing to nonnatives, think long and hard about your priorities.

Reconnecting is a difficult process, especially if you are far from any Cherokee communities. You cannot reconnect alone. You aren’t reconnecting to some distant past, or to stories in a book, you are reconnecting to a living community. This can be tough for people who are far from Oklahoma or North Carolina, and there are some things that are not really possible to learn except in person. But you can still learn, and there are some online spaces. I particularly find the ᎠᏂᏣᎳᎩ ᏍᎦᏚᎩ (Cherokee Community) Facebook Group valuable. It’s kinda small, but it’s one of the best ways to engage with Cherokee community online. Sorry if you’re a Facebook hater, Facebook is going to be your best bet for actually meeting people and engaging. The Cherokee Community group requires proof of ancestry before members can join. This usually just means sending your tribal ID or your thread in the Cherokee Research and Genealogy group to an admin and they’ll let you in.

The best lesson for reconnecting is learning how to shut up and listen. I see way too many people joining cherokee groups as brand new reconnectors and immediately starting to talk and add their input on everything. You need to be able to just watch and learn and take the learning opportunities as they come instead of insisting on having someone go out of their way to teach you. So many people make fools of themselves in this groups by being loud when they have no idea what they're talking about, and insisting they get an Indian name, or wanting tattoos, or wondering if they can say they're two spirit, etc etc all when they don't seem to know anything else about our culture. You need to put work in first. Learn to read syllabary and attend the language classes, look into learning to weave or bead or whatever, get a few books by legit Cherokee authors and read them, binge some osiyo TV, etc etc. Learn what you can give before trying to see what you can take.

Here are some good basic things to check out for reconnecting

OsiyoTV

Cherokee Nation YouTube

Museum of the Cherokee People YouTube

Cherokee Stories of the Turtle Island Liars Club by Chris B Teuton, Hastings Shade, Sequoyah Guess, Sammy Still, and Woody Hansen

Cherokee Earth Dwellers by Chris B Teuton and Hastings Shade

Mooney’s Myths of the Cherokee [note: this was written by a white man in 1900 after after spending some time with the Eastern Cherokee. The history is iffy, but the stories were recorded directly from Cherokee storytellers.]

Trail of Tears: The Rise and Fall of the Cherokee Nation by John Ehle

Do your own research, but be extremely wary of Anything posted publicly online. There is lots of misinformation about Cherokee culture. Personally, I mostly do my learning in the vetted Cherokee Facebook groups, in books written by actual citizens, and by talking with connected friends. Google is rarely your friend in this case.

Language

The language is the center of our culture, it is what makes us Cherokee. It is our duty as Cherokees and as reconnecting people to learn the language. I can’t stress enough how important it is. If you aren’t putting any effort to learn the language, it shows others that you aren’t committed and you will likely have trouble getting any help reconnecting from others, it just looks bad haha. Not saying you have to be fluent overnight, I’ve been reconnecting for a year and I still am very much a beginner, ‘it doesn’t matter how slow you go, as long as you don’t stop’ as CNO language teacher Ed Fields says. Luckily, there are plenty of resources for learning online!

It’s good to learn the syllabary or at least familiarize yourself with it early, as it’s a good introduction to the sounds present in the language. It’s an important part of our culture and the language too. There are also many learning resources that are only in syllabary, so you’re missing out on those if you don’t know it. Here are some good resources for learning:

Simply Cherokee Syllabary by Marc W Case [HIGHLY recommended. I got reasonably confident in syllabary in like a weekend thanks to this book. You can find fairly cheap ebooks versions. It has a story for each character that makes it so easy to remember and associate the characters with their sounds.]

Learn Cherokee Syllabary app [Apple] [Android]

Syllabary fonts and keyboard

There are lots of resources for learning the language. It’s really good to hear it as often as possible when learning vs just reading it, as I’ve messing up so much in my pronunciation from just reading it and now I’m having to break habits. You preferably want to hear first language speakers. There are two main dialects of Cherokee, usually roughly split between Eastern and Western. Dialects vary a lot within those communities as well. If you still have contact with any relatives that speak Cherokee, it’s always better to learn as much as you can from them.

Cherokee Nation language department [just explore this site, they have lots of resources!]

Cherokee Learner site [explore this site too, this is a great compilation of pretty much every Cherokee language resource, eastern and western]

Online Cherokee Class with first language speaker Ed Fields

RSU Cherokee Lessons [youtube]

Mango lessons

Other apps, including the Memrise course

That’s all I can think to say right now! I’ll probably add to this later as I learn more, find more resources, and get suggestions from others. But for now, good luck, ᏩᏙ, ᏙᏓᏓᎪᎲᎢ !

Online Cherokee dictionary [see grammar guide at the top too]

[reasonsforhope]

"The U.S. government is entering a new era of collaboration with Native American and Alaska Native leaders in managing public lands and other resources, with top federal officials saying that incorporating more Indigenous knowledge into decision-making can help spur conservation and combat climate change.

Federal emergency managers on Thursday also announced updates to recovery policies to aid tribal communities in the repair or rebuilding of traditional homes or ceremonial buildings after a series of wildfires, floods and other disasters around the country.

With hundreds of tribal leaders gathering in Washington this week for an annual summit, the Biden administration is celebrating nearly 200 new agreements that are designed to boost federal cooperation with tribes nationwide.

The agreements cover everything from fishery restoration projects in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest to management of new national monuments in the Southwestern U.S., seed collection work in Montana and plant restoration in the Great Smoky Mountains.

“The United States manages hundreds of millions of acres of what we call federal public lands. Why wouldn’t we want added capacity, added expertise, millennia of knowledge and understanding of how to manage those lands?” U.S. Interior Assistant Secretary Bryan Newland said during a panel discussion.

The new co-management and co-stewardship agreements announced this week mark a tenfold increase over what had been inked just a year earlier, and officials said more are in the pipeline.

Newland, a citizen of the Bay Mills Indian Community in northern Michigan, said each agreement is unique. He said each arrangement is tailored to a tribe’s needs and capacity for helping to manage public lands — and at the very least assures their presence at the table when decisions are made.

The federal government is not looking to dictate to tribal leaders what a partnership should look like, he said...

The U.S. government controls more than a quarter of the land in the United States, with much of that encompassing the ancestral homelands of federally recognized tribes...

Tribes and advocacy groups have been pushing for arrangements that go beyond the consultation requirements mandated by federal law.

Researchers at the University of Washington and legal experts with the Native American Rights Fund have put together a new clearinghouse on the topic. They point out that public lands now central to the country’s national heritage originated from the dispossession and displacement of Indigenous people and that co-management could present on opportunity for the U.S. to reckon with that complicated legacy...

In an attempt to address complaints about chronic underfunding across Indian Country, President Joe Biden on Wednesday signed an executive order on the first day of the summit that will make it easier for tribes to find and access grants.

Deanne Criswell, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, told tribal leaders Thursday that her agency [FEMA] began work this year to upgrade its disaster guidance particularly in response to tribal needs.

The Indigenous people of Hawaii have increasingly been under siege from disasters, most recently a devastating fire that killed dozens of people and leveled an entire town. Just last month, another blaze scorched a stretch of irreplaceable rainforest on Oahu.

Tribes in California and Oregon also were forced to seek disaster declarations earlier this year after severe storms resulted in flooding and mudslides...

Criswell said the new guidance includes a pathway for Native American, Alaska Native and Hawaiian communities to request presidential disaster declarations, providing them with access to emergency federal relief funding. [Note: This alone is potentially a huge deal. A presidential disaster declaration unlocks literally millions of dollars in federal aid and does a lot to speed up the response.]

The agency also is now accepting tribal self-certified damage assessments and cost estimates for restoring ceremonial buildings or traditional homes, while not requiring site inspections, maps or other details that might compromise culturally sensitive data."

-via AP, December 7, 2023

[wiisagi-maiingan]

I think the thing that bothers me the most about this wave of "actually I do think all settlers should leave" posts coming from NDN bloggers (who would NOT be saying that shit just a few months ago) is like. Who is exactly is considered a settler?

Is it Black people whose ancestors were brought to North America as slaves?

Is it immigrants who came to the US and Canada in hopes of a better life compared to countries who are being horribly exploited?

Is it refugees who fled from war and violent persecution in their home countries?

Or is it just white people? What if they're immigrants for the above reasons? Are we okay with sending people to their deaths? How do we even decide who's white enough to be a settler? Who would be deciding that? Will things like ethnicity and religion be taken into account, especially when those things are relevant to their safety in their families' home countries?

And what about mixed people? What about mixed Natives? How many Native people can honestly say that they don't have "settler blood" and family members who aren't Native? Would it be based on things like tribal enrollment, even with all the already horrible tribal politics going on? Or what about blood quantum and all its issues and its role in colonialism? What about Native people who, for whatever reason, don't know their tribes? What about tribes that aren't federally recognized? What would happen to them? What would happen to us?

There's a reason why indigenous sovereignty and Land Back movements are so intent on rejecting the idea that sovereignty would mean everyone else leaving. It's not just out of kindness, it's also because that kind of separation IS NOT POSSIBLE. It just isn't. There is no clean line between "settler" and "indigenous", especially not after a few hundred years.

(And I've said it before, but to all the non-Native Americans and Canadians posting about how they'd actually be sooooo fine with being violently murdered in an indigenous revolution: shut up. You are not helping and you're a fucking liar who's only comfortable saying that shit because you know it'll never happen to you.)

[whencyclopedia]

How Death Came into the World (Modoc Legend)

How Death Came into the World is a legend of the Modoc nation whose ancestral lands once covered the region of modern-day northeastern California and southern Oregon, USA. Their story of the origin of death shares many similarities with those of other Native peoples of North America as well as with the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice.

Pit River Valley, Modoc County, California

Robert F. Ettner (Public Domain)

The Modoc were 'discovered' by Euro-Americans c. 1820 in their ancestral lands of what is now southern Oregon and northern California. They are described by the American ethnographer James Mooney (l. 1861-1921) as a small band who were culturally isolated, which makes the similarities between How Death Came into the World and the Orpheus/Eurydice myth all the more interesting.

The Modoc had been living in the region for approximately 14,000 years before the arrival of the Euro-Americans but, by 1864, had been forcibly relocated to reservations, eventually two separate ones in the territories of modern Oklahoma and Oregon. They retained their stories, however, including How Death Came into the World, which is still told today.

The main character of the tale, Kumokums, is the Creator God of the Modoc (also known as Kemush, Kumokum, Kumush, Koomookumpts, Gmukamps) and his name is translated as "Old Man of the Ancients" or "Primeval Old Man", suggesting his existence from the beginning of time. In one version of the Modoc Creation Story, Kumokums travels to the Land of the Dead to select the spirits that would animate the people of four tribes of the region: the Shasta, the Warm Springs, the Klamath, and the Modoc. In How Death Came into the World, he again travels to the Land of the Dead but, this time, to bring back the spirit of his recently deceased daughter.

Native American Death Origin Myths

Native American origin myths concerning death are remarkably similar, even when the nations have had no known contact with each other prior to Euro-American contact and efforts to synthesize cultural beliefs as expressed in Native American literature. Scholar Larry J. Zimmerman writes:

Most accounts of the origin of death accept the logic that space is limited on Earth and room needs to be made for new life. On the whole, the afterlife is regarded as a place much like this one but with more game, corn, or whatever was prized…Almost all Indian peoples believed in some plane of existence beyond the realm of the living, but descriptions of the afterlife differed greatly, and the issue of what happens to the soul after death was a highly complex one for many tribes.

(246)

As Zimmerman notes, there was no doubt – for many, if not all Native American nations – that the soul survived physical death and went on to another realm, but that did very little to help a survivor deal with the grief of their loss. Native American origin myths concerning death tried to assist with that by explaining how death came to be and how even those responsible for the decision suffered the same grief at their loss.

The basic paradigm involves a figure of some degree of authority who makes a decision concerning mortality, then loses someone close to them, and wishes to reverse their earlier judgment – but, once the choice has been spoken into existence, it cannot be taken back.

Modoc Harvest Diorama

Michael Barera (CC BY-SA)

The Kiowa of the Plains Indians culture have a similar tale, sometimes given as How Death Came into the World and sometimes as Why the Ant is Almost Cut in Two, which follows this same model. In that story, the trickster figure Saynday (well-known from the Saynday tales) interacts with Red Ant as they discuss mortality and Saynday's concept of resurrecting the dead after four days. Red Ant rejects his proposal, claiming there are already too many living things on the earth and death is necessary to make room for those yet to be born or already living. Saynday agrees with her and decrees death as the final chapter of life on earth but, when Red Ant's son is killed, her grief is so intense she tries to kill herself, wishing she could have back what she had lost.

The Shoshone (Shoshoni) nation has a similar tale in which the central characters are Wolf and Coyote. Wolf suggests that death should be only a temporary state, which one could return from if the living enact a certain ritual that includes shooting an arrow beneath the deceased. Coyote rejects this plan, noting that there would then be too many of the living and resources would be spread too thinly. Wolf accepts Coyote's suggestion and decrees death as a permanent state, but when Coyote's son is killed, he comes to Wolf and asks that the decision be reversed. Wolf then reminds him that it was Coyote himself who insisted on death as a permanent state and that decision cannot now be altered.

Other Native American nations have similar origin stories for death, but the Modoc tale is unique in that it also provides an explanation of why the people had winter and summer camps, how their calendar was devised, and a detailed description of the Land of the Dead.

The story is also of interest to anthropologists, historians, and literary scholars for its similarity to the story of Orpheus and Eurydice from Greek mythology, which makes it stand out; as scholar Alice Marriott phrases it, "the Orpheus-Eurydice theme is unusual in North American Indian mythology" (190). There is no known record of interaction between the Modoc and anyone who would have known the Orpheus/Eurydice tale prior to contact between the Modoc nation and Euro-Americans, and How Death Came into the World is understood to pre-date that time as it seems to have already long been a part of the Modoc oral literary tradition.

Continue reading...

[onionbug-critical]

"You hate to see a woman winning!"

Oh of course, it's ALWAYS gender and identity politics and NEVER the shit THAT SHE DID? There's several other women creators that GOT hate because... You guessed it they suck or at least have qualities that DOESN'T have to do with their genders or because people do it for the lulz, let's get down the list...

J.K Rowling, obviously self explanatory. She was a TERF, LGBTQ+Phobic, Queer Baited numerous times... All in all terrible woman.

Gooseworx, the same community that her friend created had eventually shat on TADC (Still does it to this day.) while the same community within Glitch has also shat on it (Murder Drones) decided to bring up a trans womans weird drill fetish that HAS NOTHING to do with them, while also apparently either photoshopping evidence of them grooming a minor? Neither was confirmed or denied so it's false allegations. All because she was at the right place at the right time. In this case Goose was cancelled for no reason because people genuinely hates seeing something thrive.

Steph Myers had written Twilight which was a crime in of itself which spawned FIFTY SHADES OF GREY, then profited off of a struggling Native American tribe, WHICH STILL NEEDS SUPPORT. She also wrote a child imprinting on a grown ass adult from when the child was a baby, pedophilia basically.

Rebecca Sugar got hate from people who genuinely didn't like the LGBTQ+ themes, while also harping on her for not making "good enough" POC characters when the relationship between Ruby and Sapphire is seen as Interracial, is this not good enough representation? Didn't help that 4Chan was trolling the community and Lily "I didn't write stolkholm, and my sisters mentally insane and she was the one who raped ME." Orchard shat on it's already beaten down corpse. Funnily enough Sugar doesn't go online to argue with critics and neither does the crewniverse usually telling the fans they are being trolled and to ignore the offensive edits which never worked.

Amy Schumer is to put it bluntly, unfunny. Almost as unfunny as Viv, but the reason why everyone hated her was because she stole jokes. That's it. And everyone thought her humor sucked. Stupid reasons but those are criticisms.

FlowerFell's Creator only got hate because of kinnies and shippers. They were so overwhelmed that they abandoned the project and left entirely. This is what the Hazbin Hotel Fandom's turning out.

PartyCoffin is the creator of Welcome Home, they got hate because of NO other reason other then people harassing the creator and being genuinely rude.

Lily Orchard gets hate for legitimacy good reasons and will continue to receive it.

SaiScribbles ALSO gets hate and is older then me. For good reasons.

Sophie Labelle / AssignedMale drew over children to make cub art. And most of their comics are seen as aggressive as well.

BlogueTheGreatRogue had did some proshipping SNCA if they weren't marketing it towards kids.

Naimei the creator of TCOAL was a person who had a history of making incest related things, marketing off coomers with the fetish and providing EPI for little children and making apologia regarding the concept of Incest.

And you all think they get hate because they are women, Nigga PLEASE.

God forbid you criticize someone, they gotta bring up they are women/man/trans/black/white/mixed/have autism/bpd/npd/did/whateverthismay.

I DONT CARE IF YOU ARE ALL OF THE ABOVE YOU ARE NOT FUCKING EXCEMPT FROM CRITICISM. WHAT DO YOU WANT A FUCKING COOKIE FOR BEING ALL OF THOSE? IT'S COMPLETELY FINE TO HARASS AND CRITICIZE A TRANS MAN OR MAN FOR THE SAME ACTIONS WOMEN DOES, BUT WHEN WE DO IT? ITS NOT FINE. DOUBLE STANDARDS! DO. BETTER.

[clementine-thedestroyer]

Finally made my decisions on which owl each of the 141 are!! Because yes, I’m still thinking about this!! I’ve been drawing this idea a bit too, mostly in the form of a hybrid AU because since before I can remember, I’ve always just loved the idea of humans with wings- so why not do a bit of well needed drawing practice to bring it to life?

John - Great Horned Owl

Why: Even from when I first started thinking of all this, I always knew Price would be a Horned Owl- mostly because I thought the ear tufts would look cute on him and Great Horned owls look eternally grumpy (just like our favorite captain), but also because to me, a Great Horned Owl is kind of the most iconic and recognizable species of owl. They’re almost like the kings of the owl world and they’re beautiful creatures (big ones too!). I felt that just fit really well for Price. It’s hard to describe but I just see the resemblance so clearly in my head.

Fun facts (included because I love owls and hopefully you do too): Great Horned Owl can take down and will even eat other large birds of prey like Peregrine Falcons!! Also, they can scream!! Just like barn owls!!

Kyle - Western Barn Owl

Why: So I actually had some trouble with Gaz. A lot of owls could have worked, but I really wanted one that captures how beautiful I find him. I could stare at his face for literal hours, and I think the reason I eventually settled on the Western Barn owl is because (like I mentioned in my earlier owl post) I think barn owls are just gorgeous. Most owls can be described as gorgeous, but barn owls just look so (almost hauntingly) beautiful to me. They look intelligent- they look deadly. What more could you ask for from a bird?

Barn owls both haunt my night mares (my father scared the shit out of me with a mask made to look like one once) and live in my day dreams. What better bird to (hopefully eventually) draw Kyle as.

Fun facts: They scream!!! Look up their calls- it really is like a scream! I believe most owls are able to scream/screech, but I love that it’s the barn owl’s call.

Also!! And this is so interesting, the Native American Newuk tribe believed that if you were a good and brave person, you became a Great Horned Owl when you died, while if you were evil, you became a Barn Owl. Technically this wouldn’t apply to the Western Barn Owl since it’s an old world species, but I still thought it was interesting- plus it talks about Prices owl too! (There’s a lot more Native American tribes that held beliefs about Great Horned Owls, but I struggled to find a consistent reputable source for those so take that with a grain of salt.)

Simon - Barred Owl

Why: Originally, I was considering the Snowy Owl, Boreal Owl, and Ural Owl. Eventually I had actually decided on the Ural owl before, while doing research on another owl I saw a picture of a Barred Owl that immediately struck me. While the Barred and Ural Owls both look relatively similar, the Barred Owl definitely has more ghostly (hehe, get it?) air to it, and I think it’s facial disk is a bit more defined, reminding me a bit of Simon’s mask. While the Barred Owl is a new world bird and the Ural Owl is an old world bird, it didn’t live in the UK so I mean yes… I *have* technically given 2/4 of the 141 American species of owls- but the Ural owl didn’t even live in the UK so it’s fine.

Fun facts: The Barred Owl’s only natural enemy is the Great Horned owl!! Make of that what you will, but personally, as a big fan of that one Ghost x Price dynamic where Price is the only thing bigger and badder than Ghost, I know what I’ll be making of it.

Johnny - Tawny Owl

Why: I mean it has a little brown mohawk. How could I not make this Johnny? These owls are quite adorable and honestly, most of the reason I chose this one was the brown stripe drown its head looking just enough like a mohawk for me to giggle about it.

Fun facts: This guy actually lives in Scotland!! Its range is pretty big and includes almost all of Europe and a bit into the Middle East, but the fact that it can be found in Scotland just makes it an extra perfect choice for Johnny.

If you’re a long time follower, you may vaguely remember how in a post I said that in hybrid AUs, I love when a character is a hybrid of a species that’s native to where they were born/where their family is from. While I do love that idea, I also unfortunately realized most of my favorite owls are American, so Johnny and Kyle are the only ones that idea really comes through with. Simon and Price’s owls are completely American ones.

(Below the cut are my honorable mention + the owl I imagine Laswell as- because this post is already super long)

Laswell - Northern Saw Whet Owl

Why: In addition to being native to North America, this owl’s color reminds me a lot of Laswell’s hair. It’s a small owl, but it’s quite fierce. It’s been known to eat only the heads of its prey if prey is plentiful, and that bit of info reminded me of laswell a bit. She’s so strong and confident- I love her.

Fun facts: There’s Native American beliefs about Saw Whet Owls too!! They’re super interesting and there’s quite a few!

Honorable mention:

Laughing Owl

The laughing owl is an adorable owl which apparently chased its prey on foot, rather than flying after it- which sounds really cute. The owl could only be found in New Zealand and unfortunately has been extinct for probably about 100 years, with its extinction being caused when European settlers arrived on the island. Really, this honorable mention section was just an excuse to tell you about them.

(Most of my info from this was gathered by browsing owlpages.com - which is a lovely website you should totally check out if you like owls!!)

[talonabraxas]

Mount Shasta

There’s a well-known legend that says that somewhere deep beneath Northern California’s 14,179-foot-tall Mount Shasta is a complex of tunnels and a hidden city called Telos, the ancient “City of Light” for the Lemurians. They were the residents of the mythical lost continent of Lemuria, which met its demise under the waves of the Pacific (or the Indian Ocean, depending on who you ask) thousands of years ago. Lemurians believed to have survived the catastrophe are said to have settled in Telos, and over the years their offspring have been sporadically reported wandering around the area: seven-feet-tall, with long flowy hair, often clad in sandals and white robes.

Lemurians aren’t the only unusual figures said to inhabit this stand-alone stratovolcano, easily seen from Interstate 5, about 60 miles south of the Oregon border. Mount Shasta is believed to be a home base for the Lizard People, too, reptilian humanoids that also reside underground. The mountain is a hotbed of UFO sightings, one of the most recent of which occurred in February 2020. (It was a saucer-shaped lenticular cloud.) In fact, the mountain is associated with so many otherworldly, paranormal, and mythical beings—in addition to long-established Native American traditions—that it’s almost like a who’s who of metaphysics. It has attracted a legion of followers over the years, including “Poet of the Sierras” Joaquin Miller and naturalist John Muir, as well as fringe religious organizations such as the Ascended Masters, who believe that they’re enlightened beings existing in higher dimensions. What is it about this mountain in particular that inspires so much belief?

“There’s a lot about Mount Shasta, and volcanoes in general, that are difficult to explain,” says Andrew Calvert, scientist-in-charge at the California Volcano Observatory, “and when you’re having difficulty explaining something, you try and understand it.” Calvert has studied Shasta’s eruptive history since 2001. “It’s such a complicated and rich history,” he says, “and Shasta itself is also very visually powerful. These qualities build on each other to make it a profound place for a lot of people—geologists, spirituality seekers … even San Francisco tech folks, and hunters and gatherers from 10,000 years ago. It’s one that can have a really strong effect on your psyche.”

Mount Shasta is one of the most prominent of all the Cascade volcanoes, an arc that runs from southwestern British Columbia to Northern California, and includes Washington’s Mount Rainier and Oregon’s Mount Hood, among others. “It’s so steep and so tall that it even creates its own weather,” says Calvert. This includes the spaceship-looking lenticular clouds that tend to form around the mountain, created, he says, “by a humid air mass that hits the volcano, and then has to go up a little bit to cool off.” But they only contribute to Shasta’s supernatural allure, along with its ice-clad peak, steaming fumaroles, and shape-shifting surface that’s being constantly broken down and rebuilt by ice, water, wind, and debris. The mountain also sits about 15 miles or so west of the standard arc line of the other Cascade volcanoes—a move that took place about 700,000 years ago. “We don’t really have a good explanation for why it moved out there,” Calvert says, a statement that seems to make Mount Shasta’s mysteries appear more otherworldly by the minute.

The Mount Shasta spiritual legacy goes far deeper than contemporary myths and sightings. For Native Americans in particular, the mountain is a sacred place, straddling the territories of the Shasta, Wintu, Achumawi, Atsugewi, and Modoc tribes, which can date their lineages back to a time when eruptions actually took place there. (Its last eruption, says Calvert, was a little over 3,000 years ago.)

There’s Something About Mount Shasta

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for making my mom’s boyfriend feel bad on purpose?

disclaimer: my parents have an open marriage

so i (20m, northern cheyenne) don’t have a problem with the modern celebration of thanksgiving.

really. i don’t.

the whole “pilgrims and indians” schtick is gross, but i find that generally, outside of elementary schools, nobody thinks about that part very much. people mostly just want to see their families and eat weird food. and i fucks w that.

the problem comes in with my mom’s boyfriend.

my mom (52f) is white, but she’s been married to my dad (53m) who is also northern cheyenne for 26 years. she’s the DEI coordinator for our county’s public school system and she’s one of my favorite most trusted shire people ever. so i never really have to censor myself around her. i can make jokes and complain and vent and etc etc etc. she’ll always listen.

her BOYFRIEND though.

i really do like my mom’s boyfriend (41m). he’s super cool, recommends good books, teaches me about plumbing, all sorts of other Manly Step Dad Shit (/hj).

but he is decidedly extremely caucasian. like so white.

he’s not /racist/ but he’s that in-between that a lot of white people are where they’re never mean, but you gotta watch what you say around them bc they bruise like a two week old apple.

there have been a few instances where i have in fact bruised his sensitive white man apple skin.

1) i was listening to a podcast with my mom about people indigenous to Hawai’i protecting Mauna Kea. we were listening to it out loud in our living room, and her boyfriend came in and listened for a few minutes before asking me to turn it off because it was “depressing”. fair enough. i figured he was having a rough day and i turned it off. (side note, it was All My Relations, “For the Love of the Mauna”.)

2) we were driving somewhere and trading off command of the AUX. i put on a song by Nahko and Medicine for the People, specifically their parody of “My Country Tis of Thee”. he again said he didn’t like it, it was depressing, and could I please turn it off. i did.

3) this is where i’m the asshole. we’re planning for thanksgiving, and i mentioned wanting to do a anticolonial thanksgiving. we’d watch some stuff about the wampanoag tribe (first contact tribe at plymouth rock), i’d make frybread and fried squash blossoms (along w my mom who would make the thanksgiving basics) we’d have a grand old time. her boyfriend asks why we can’t just enjoy thanksgiving without making it too political.

i’m like. that’s not political? it’s cultural?

and he says that to him it feels self flagellating and it would make him feel bad.

and i said honestly? the idea of thanksgiving’s history makes Me feel bad. and not to complain dude, but as an american indian, it’s always about you, and never, ever about me. so truly, i don’t care if you feel bad. we’re not doing a fucking colonized thanksgiving in this house. so if you’re just here for that sham bullshit, go and stay gone.

my mom says she agrees with me that an attempt at a decolonized thanksgiving is a good idea and a good compromise for our mixed family, but that i was way too harsh on her boyfriend and should’ve tried explaining in a kinder way first, since he’s really not educated on this stuff. i see where she’s coming from; i worry i might’ve scared him off of ever learning about cultural decolonization. ik it’s not my responsibility to make him care, but that doesn’t change the fact that plenty of white people are subconsciously looking for a reason not to care about natives, and by being a dick i might’ve just handed him that reason. so not only was i an asshole to him, but an asshole to my community at large by disservicing our reputation.

idk. i think i ruined thanksgiving :/

What are these acronyms?

[wild-west-wind]

Hi 👋As a Park Ranger (interpretative, like me?), I assume you know all about how the NPS was formed- most of the land was brutally, illegally taken from the local tribes. I've been having a moral dilemma about my role in the national park system. I love educating the public and being a positive influence, but am I upholding an oppressive system? I know that if I were to switch to education or to museums, it'd be the same question. What I'm asking is: how do you reconcile with that?

I mean, this is true of all the land in the US, so it's bigger than the park service.

Before I dig into this as a white person, here's what Deb Haaland has to say:

I think that the Park Service has a lot to reckon with historically, and I think parks lately are showing some interest in trying to do that. From big parks like Yellowstone bringing diverse Indigenous stakeholders to to table on management decisions while also supplying buffalo to regrow and strengthen herds thousands of miles away, to Canyon de Chelly's requirement that tourists travel into the canyon only with a Navajo guide in recognition of the location's sacred nature, to Pipestone National Monument celebrating ongoing traditional pipestone quarrying, to advocacy for protection by the Department of the Interior at Bears Ears.

As a (pretty much entirely) white interp ranger, I understand that I'm living in someone else's home, but I was living in someone else's home when I lived in LA too, and none of that is unique to the US. And honestly I think, for the tremendous flaws of the National Park idea, at least we try to preserve things. In a lot of colonial nations that hasn't been the case.

I think more National Park Sites should form better relationships with local tribal governments, and see what they want. Different people have different relationships with different places, and will want different things. I think the Park Service should open the door to co management more, and encourage more opportunities for Indigenous people to tell their own stories and not leave it all in the hands of randos like us. I think we're moving the right direction in that regard.

The fact of the matter, in the end, is that none of this begins or ends with the Park Service. It's a puzzle piece, a tool used to enact, enforce, repair, undo, and uphold the ideals of a nation that has never effectively dealt with its past, present, or future. I think protecting land from development and preserving natural spaces is a valuable, albeit naive, goal. It can't be done in a vacuum though. As I look toward a future of the National Parks, I see a lot more Native involvement in their management. That will look different in each site, in reflection of the different cultures there. I can't speak to what that will look like for anywhere in particular, but it is happening already, and as educators it's part of our job to explain the whys and hows of that to people who don't get it, and who think sharing will mean losing something they love. At the end of the day, that thing they loved was broken, and there is good momentum behind fixing it, and most people can understand that given time.

I think it's good that you feel guilty. It means you're paying attention. I think the important thing now is to turn that into momentum and passion. Figure out what you can do and do it.

[bucephaly]

Hi, um. I am very confused by this: why would people lie about being Cherokee? I'm white, I don't mean to overstep here, I just kind of flashed back to my History of Native Americans class and from what I can tell, being Native means a shit ton of mistreatment in the past and present, a lot of absolutely absurd stereotypes, weird fetishization and creepy dehumanizing language. My great grandfather was Cherokee and he hid that pretty consistently because he knew it was going to be an obstacle to his education, his career and basically his life in general. While some digging into genealogy later confirmed it was legit, I kind of already knew from the start because people don't usually lie about something they forbid you from mentioning outside the family and which they knew would take them from "one of the brightest minds in your field" to "[insert comment about being One Of The Good Ones here]". So why would someone lie about this? It feels like that'd backfire pretty hard given how racist everyone was/is in the US. I'm not doubting it happens - people are jackasses who'll lie about most things - but I just flat-out don't get why it happens. Why, of all the lies to pick, would someone go with a lie about their ethnicity? I know this might be veering into "please explain to whitey about racism" territory but if there's an article or a book or something on this, please let me know because this is so baffling to me. Who would want to be oppressed when oppression is so awful?

So I'm from the south. Everyone and their dog here claims to have cherokee ancestry and there are a number of origins for the stories. I think there's a factor of white people playing Indian being more accepted than real natives. To many of them it's a novelty or fun fact, some of them take it farther and establish fake 'tribes', usually recognized at the state level but not federally because they have no actual history.

During the confederacy, it actually became sorta a weird show of white southern pride to claim to have cherokee ancestry, basically saying 'my family has been here in the south long enough that we were here before the cherokees were removed.' So it was a way to show 'deep roots' in the south.

There was the Guion Miller roll, where cherokees were given a payout of $133 each because of a lawsuit. A lot of people applied knowing full well they weren't cherokee, just hoping to get some money. We even see lawyers advertising the payout to get people to apply just to see if they could get some. 2/3rds of the applicants were declined for having no proof of Cherokee ancestry, and I figure some family stories may have started there. If it wasnt the applicant themself keeping up the lie, maybe it was someone later finding the application and thinking it must have been truth.

In some cases, the cherokee land lotteries could be the origin. Once cherokees were forced out of north Georgia, their land and everything on it, including their houses and personal belongings, was raffled off. Settler families made themselves at home and even started passing down the cherokees belongings as heirlooms. Eventually the story got twisted into the family being cherokee instead of stealing from them.

Then there are some other things. Mixed people claiming to be native because it was less stigmatized than being mixed, ancestors that could've lived in a place called cherokee or near the cherokee and that got misunderstood. The stupidest origin was an ancestor that lived in the 1700s who had a funny name, so she got recorded as being cherokee in the family Bible despite being from Virginia and having sounds in her name that aren't present in the cherokee language.

And I imagine there are plenty that were just tall tales someone told a kid for fun and it got passed down.

I'm not sure about the history of when these fakes started cropping up more, but I know it's been on the rise a lot in the last few decades.

And of course, nowadays, people love hiring people that give them diversity points without actually being diverse. And fake state tribes can make money. Here in the south, there isn't that much of a legitimate native presence. There is one real tribe in my state, none in two neighboring states. People here don't really figure real natives still exist outside those people with a cherokee gg grandmother that gave them high cheekbones. You'd be surprised how many people I hear saying 'oh yea but I doubt there are actually any fullblood cherokees left' and shit like that.

Oh, and also. Nowadays people love to avoid having to accept that their ancestors were colonizers. Hell, even my aunt who is also cherokee has said stuff like 'I'm sad that we have English ancestry, I was hoping we'd be Irish. I don't wanna be descended from colonizers' like.. auntie the Irish were colonizers here too. People love to be seen as less white. Youll hear pretendians saying 'no don't call me white, I'm not white I'm cherokee!' Etc. And ofc there are the hippie types.

Idk. I hope that helps somewhat, basically society is a lot more willing to accept a pretendian than a real native in a lot of cases. Plus I think a chunk of the modern issues faced by native communities is generational from past oppression [on top of the very real current oppression in native communities] and pretendians just cannot understand that.

And ofc the obligatory disclaimer that I'm reconnecting, I'm new to this too so im not an expert.

If you wanna see how many fakes there are [note: many many from Alabama and Kentucky], join the cherokee research and genealogy Facebook. Just for fun, I'm putting a post of theirs under the cut [it's long] that lists all the wild excuses and stories people have given for why their ancestors don't show up as native in research.

[cowgremlin11]

*grabs you by the throat (/j)* give me as many Wild West facts physically possible, and also if you know any good websites/videos on The Wild West possibly pretty please blinks eyes 🥺🥺👉👈

this is gonna be a doozy welcome to my autism.

my area of expertise relates to southeastern wyoming btw kisses. this is going to be very long. starts out rambly and then i busted out my actual notes that ive been compiling. if you have specific areas you wanna know about feel free to ask i love using my major for this stuff :D

before the cut im gonna include my fav websites i reference (i dont do much video research sorry, im the bitch with a bookshelf full of heavily annotated books and a fat google doc file)

for fashion: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search?geolocation=North+and+Central+America&era=A.D.+1800-1900&material=Costume&showOnly=withImage

for navajo info (you can look at my comic if you wanna know why i focused on this tribe specifically): https://www.navajo-nsn.gov/

for dialogue/slang: https://freepages.rootsweb.com/~poindexterfamily/genealogy/OldWestSlang.html

OK TIME TO RELEASE THE AUTISM

so there were reservations right. wanna know the events leading up to the battle of little bighorn? basically in the 1850s the sioux tribe, crow tribe, and northern arapaho tribe (roughly speaking, these are the tribes most mentioned from this time) were all forced to live in the same range of territory spanning northern wyoming, around the little bighorn river. there was the fort laramie treaty which ensured that the tribes in this area would be provided help for 30 years and that nonnative settlement wouldnt be allowed. well they found gold in the black hills about 20 years later and that went out the window. miners rushed the area for gold and forced the natives to move again. tensions rose, the treaty was ignored by all parties and only mentioned when convenient, and then the battle of little bighorn happened

TRAINS!!!!! TRAINSTRAINSTRAINS. fun fact train robberies were actually very common in the 1800s! jesse james (yes that one) committed the first one in iowa in 1873.

bank robberies were very rare! cus when you think about it, yeah ofc thats gonna be hard. its in the middle of town, its one entrance, and theres safes you gotta either crack in 10 seconds or blow with dynamite, risking the cash inside.

most other crimes include larceny, burglary, home robberies, horse robberies, stage coach robberies, cons, etc.

buffalo :( they were hunted for many reasons. 30 million to less than 100 in the span of about 30 years. they were hunted to piss off the native tribes, since buffalo were sacred to many and when the government had them killed theyd take the skin, the tongue, and leave the carcass to rot before retrieving the bones to ship back to the east for production of stuff like glue. but also, they would be hunted due to the way the buffalo impacted the railroad industry. theyd damage the rails, and in lines going through mountains theyd actually huddle up on the track because its instinctively the safest place to be. this would cause days long backups

last names had some cool stuff happening! after the civil war when slaves were freed, a great deal chose their own names. some chose names after national heros, some would take their parents name, and some would take the name of their old masters as a very intentional way to make sure they could never wipe their hands clean of the cruelty they committed to the enslaved. so yeah thats metal as hell. on a related note, “Historians estimate that 20–25% of cowboys in the American West were African American. They worked as ropers, trail cooks, wranglers, and bronco busters. African Americans learned the cowboy way of life from Mexican or Spanish cowboys, Native American cattle handlers, or their former slave masters. African Americans also contributed to the West as miners, homesteaders, town builders, and entrepreneurs.”

BRIEF ART HISTORY TIME. AKA MY FUCKING MAJOR.

In 1886, American art was influenced by French Impressionism, and American artists began to experiment with the style

Impressionism reflected a modern reality that could be troubling

Impressionist artists expertly depicted the alienation that this new Paris proffered. An unfortunate symptom of such modernity was the loss of an intimate, knowable community; now citizens were strangers in an anonymous crowd.

During the mid-1880s, as French Impressionism lost its radical edge, American collectors began to value the style, and more American artists began to experiment with it after absorbing academic fundamentals.

and now, for some stuff im pasting over from my fat google doc

Country Witchcraft, Wisdom, and Lore

“you can sleep with a skeleton key under your pillow to increase your chances of flight during sleep. you can wrap a horseshoe in white cloth and place it under your pillow to speak with the devil’s wife during your sleep. you can leave a glass of water out and ask your ancestors for visions during your sleep.” (Oberon, 15)

“folkloric witches don't use circles the way most wiccan folks do. circles do pop up in folklore but not too often. circles appear almost always when something is being conjured.” (oberon, 16)

“it was a brass screw in a gun that prevents a witch from placing a curse on the gun” (oberon, 18.)

“piss in a mason jar, throw in broken glass, mirrors, barbed wire, sulfer, and bullets. bury it somewhere on your property. if a spirit or spell comes looking for you they will mistake the urine for you and get caught in the bottle.” (oberon, 19)

fashion

the Victorian tradition of wearing mementos in honor of deceased loved ones. Many of these items included ashes placed into rings or necklaces made out of human hair. However, over time mourning jewelry evolved and became more of a fashion statement, even though most jewelry wearers lived on and continued to struggle with their grief.

the items weren’t just mementos to wear around one’s neck, but were something that you carried with you 24/7, no matter how much you may have hated it.

https://gemgeneve.com/the-necklace-from-antiquity-to-the-present/

Precursor of the Bulgari ones by far, one of the most typical examples is the serpent necklace paved with turquoise. In the 19th century, turquoise stands for “forget me not”, and the colour of the Forget Me Not flower is, precisely, turquoise. Therefore, the stone itself means “don’t forget me”. With the snake biting its tail being the symbol of eternity, this necklace is actually a love jewel. The message of these serpents is not at all about evil, but it is a love message: “Don’t forget me. Love me forever”. As the symbolism of forms and stones is deeper, wearers in the 19th century are much more aware of this particular message.

The necklace remains at the base of the neck, but what changes are the motifs and the materials. In the 1860s and 70s there comes to be a craze for archaeological revival jewellery and women go to wear ancient-looking jewellery. Archaeological revival necklaces were copies of genuine ancient pieces. Jewellers like Castellani try to reproduce not only the design but also the materials, and the techniques. Sometimes, these necklaces are close replicas. Some other times they are pastiches: they look like antique in style but are an invention of the late 19th century jewellers, as no such necklace would ever have been created in ancient times.

Materials become unusual: from little shells to tiger claws, for example: this was a consequence of improved travel, of tourism, and people going travelling and acquiring souvenir jewellery in exotic locations and bringing them back to Europe.

Dances/musicians

https://www.learn2dance4fun.com/dance-classes/country-dance-lessons/western-waltz-dance-lessons/

https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/babel-a-o

“In the Houston city directory of 1881 he went by the name Alexander O. Babel and continued to be the musical attraction at the Solo Saloon. The Galveston Daily News later commented in 1885: “Whether he played by note or not, he tossed from the keys of the grand piano that stood on a stage at the side of the large hall every variety and shade of music from the most delicate to the most sonorous tones.” Babel also gave concerts in other towns and church festivals in Texas.”

From playing piano in texas to mining in new mexico. Played in chicago, then new york, 

Lots of papers making him into a myth. Writer from texas saw this and disproved it. 

“Despite the disparaging remarks from some Texas periodicals, Babel created a sensation across the United States to the delight of audiences in Milwaukee, St. Louis, Atchison, New Orleans, Cincinnati, Chicago, New York, and Bangor. He was hailed as a piano master who played more than 1,200 songs and even performed at times with a cloth over the keys. The “Texas Wonder” played at dime museums, concert halls, theaters, and other venues and sometimes gave hourly recitals.”

“By 1887 advertisements included mention of his musical partner, Mattie Babel, dubbed the “cowgirl cornetist.” Most accounts called her Babel’s wife (though at least one newspaper referred to her as his sister). Given that no one named Mattie appeared among the Babel household in early censuses, Mattie Babel was probably A. O. Babel’s wife and possibly the same Emma Rumpel mentioned as the spouse of O. A. Babel in Houston.”

Babel and his wife Mattie continued to give performances well into the 1890s and toured Canada and Europe.

research i did for a specific character whos gonna show up in chapter 4:

Freed people established all-Black towns, such as Bookertee, Clearview, Lima, and Pleasant Valley. These towns provided a market for African-American farmers and a sense of community.

The discovery of gold in 1867 at South Pass drew many immigrants to western Wyoming.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery_in_Oklahoma#:~:text=The%20history%20of%20slavery%20in,state%2C%20with%20prominent%20racial%20issues. 

https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9780203496756/slavery-cherokee-nation-patrick-neal-minges 

the Indian Removal Act was the reason for the movement of the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole to Oklahoma (not yet called that. With these nations moving to the west, they brought with them black people, including slaves. This was the beginning of slavery in the land of Oklahoma. 

When the Cherokees were relocating it was estimated that 10-15% of the nation were African Americans. This nation in particular brought not slaves, but freed blacks. This was one of the main reasons that they were forced out of their previous land. The nation had become a safe space for slaves to run away to and slave owners wanted to diminish that possibility for slaves in the south.

By 1866, the Cherokee Nation, once so proud, had been reduced to ruins

With the forced removal of the five nations into the land of Oklahoma throughout the course of time, slavery began and progressed in the Indian territory. Specifically, in the Choctaw and Chickasaw nations, slavery and the ownership of black people became common.

https://www.lib.utk.edu/cherokee/EvolutionCherokeePersonalNames.pdf

research i did for the chinese characters

1848: The California gold rush brought more Asians to the United States, especially Chinese people from the Guangdong region

The discovery of gold in 1867 at South Pass drew many immigrants to western Wyoming.

The Union Pacific Railroad's construction in the late 1860s brought settlers to Wyoming. The railroad created towns like Cheyenne, Laramie, and Rock Springs, and attracted cowboys and cattle drives.

The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 Many Americans on the West Coast attributed declining wages and economic ills to the Chinese workers who were only 0.002% of the population, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act to placate worker demands and assuage concerns about maintaining white "racial purity." Repealed on December 17, 1943 

https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/565882.shtml 

During the 1850s, the first revolt of the Taiping Rebellion by the Hakka people took place in Guangdong. Because of direct contact with the West, Guangdong was the center of anti-Manchu and anti-imperialist activity. 

https://www.history.com/topics/immigration/asian-american-timeline 

https://www.history.com/topics/asian-history/taiping-rebellion 

In 1856, a second Opium War broke out with the west, continuing until 1861.

https://www.history.com/topics/19th-century/chinese-exclusion-act-1882

stuff for solveig

“The huge population growth between 1800 and 1900 led to overcrowding within the social structure of the day and was one contributing factor to the wave of emigrants leaving Norway for North-America.” 

“During the next centuries, much of the farmland was sold off to the previous leaseholders and became private property for the many. Owning your own land has been – and still is – an important part of the Norwegian identity.”

https://evergreenpost.eu/the-old-norwegian-farm-its-land-and-surroundings/ 

AND THATS ALL I CAN POSSIBLY THINK OF THAT I HAVE ACCESS TOO RIGHT NOW.... IF YOU HAVE QUESTIONS OR WANNA KNOW ABT SPECIFIC STUFF TELL ME AND I CAN EASILY ANSWER THEM AND PROVIDE A GOOD DEAL OF INFO

[mdhwrites]

Why TOH really doesn't want a theme of discrimination.

Every demon in the show is depicted as evil, dumb or as good... because they don't want to be a part of demon culture.

That's the thesis and it's not an over exaggeration. In the main cast, the only demon of the DEMON REALM is Hooty who is treated as slow, less intelligent than the other members of the cast, and as a joke by the writers as he never elevates himself above being simply comic relief. Association with him seems to be the earliest sign that Lilith is meant to be seen as a joke and her relationship with Hooty ostracizes her from the rest of the cast. Makes her appear weird because she's the only one who can like the bird tube.

Otherwise, they're all antagonists. Most of them are just one note villains for that matter. In S1, every demon with a real speaking role is a villain. The monster hunters, Warden Wrath, Tibbles, the basilisk, the publisher for King and even Boscha if her third eye denotes demonic heritage. Anyone who we see at least as neutral are pretty much just background characters. The ones from the prison in the first episode are really the only ones who get a moment of heroism.

Now you might say: What about Bat Queen? She's the richest person on the Isles and she... Isn't a demon. She's a palisman. Made by, or at least for, a god with the insinuation they give. Bare minimum: Not for any demon known to the Isles. So she doesn't count.

There ARE witch antagonists in S1 thankfully. They're Matt, who goes on to obviously be a good person at heart, Amity who... Duh and Lilith who is also redeemed. None of this happens to any of the demons though even if ostensibly this is their world since the entire dimension is named after demons.

Which, as a note, also is part of why saying TOH is anti-colonial means ignoring an entire race.

Even KING, who should have been the demon representative in the main cast, was then retconned not to be one. Worse yet, only once that retcon began did the show start treating him with any real respect. As a demon... He was just a dumb comic relief character as far as the show is concerned.

So when we FINALLY get a reoccurring demon... It's Kikimora. That should be all I need to say there.

Now the final argument: Vee. Vee is a good person, right? She's not a villain or antagonist, just a good person. And you would be right. The framing on Vee is the problem. As the ONE genuinely just good demon, we have to evaluate how she is different. She is different... Because she rejected the Demon Realm. Her parallels with Luz are even supposed to make it clear that she is better at being a human THAN LUZ. Which has the awful implication, if we want to say TOH has anti-discrimination theme, that the only good demon, is a domesticated demon. One who wants to be a human.

That's. Fucking. Awful.

And just to cover my bases: Yes, discrimination is more than a race thing but the concept of discrimination on race is actually pretty much the only one ever brought up. The fact that no one gives a shit about ethnicity or sexuality or gender actually hurts the theme because you have to project those things onto the show instead. And any allegory to discrimination is explicitly done through races. Fantasy races but that still frames it as a racial issue so its theme on anti-discrimination is going to struggle to branch out beyond racial lines because it effectively ignores that any other form of discrimination might even EXIST.

And for the finale!... I don't think any of this is on purpose by the writers. Yes, they bring discrimination into the show but just like how real life conflicts will often ignore the complexities of all the groups present, such as us referring to all Native Americans as one whole group rather than their separate tribes and histories, the show effectively forgets about the demons. They're just there for flavor because if literally all of the characters of the demon realm were elves, it wouldn't feel like it fits the name at all. It adds spice to a scene and adventure if you have demons of all sorts and sizes.

But the witches are the conventionally attractive characters who are easy to latch onto and so they are the main cast. Everything that looks other becomes a target for villainy because of that juxtaposition. Unfortunately, none of this helps any sort theme of inclusivity. That we are supposed to look past the outer shell and see the person within, regardless, race, gender, sexuality, etc. like that.

Instead, TOH tells a very basic fantasy story and in doing so, falls into the fact that a lot of classic fantasy was written by racist white dudes and the fact that the term demon is charged due to LOTS of religions that paint them out as wholly evil. Without actually interrogating these concepts, it can be easy to fall into them.

So yeah, I think this is a theme people need to stop trying to apply to TOH.

======+++++======

I have a public Discord for any and all who want to join!

I also have an Amazon page for all of my original works in various forms of character focused romances from cute, teenage romance to erotica series of my past. I have an Ao3 for my fanfiction projects as well if that catches your fancy instead. If you want to hang out with me, I stream from time to time and love to chat with chat.

A Twitter you can follow too

And a Kofi if you like what I do and want to help out with the fact that disability doesn’t pay much.

[kaurwreck]

Can I ask why you hate Steinbeck? I didn't really like his work either, but it also didn't really inspire any strong emotion in me, so I'm curious about the loathing. Love your analyses and have a nice day!

This was a very lovely message. I'm glad you enjoy my analyses and thank you for the kind words. I'm heinously sleep deprived, but I can't settle because I'm frothing at the mouth over Steinbeck and the Dust Bowl, so maybe providing some context will mollify my seven demons enough to let me rest.

But, I'm drained, so rather than provide any meaningful analysis, I'm going to offer a very brief, broadstrokes, abridged timeline of the Dust Bowl, with emphasis on its historical context, most of which will be haphazardly plucked from myriad sources, which I'll link.

It doesn't capture all, if much of any, of my feelings on the matter, but certainly, it's a snapshot of the bitterest bits.

In 1540, Francisco Vasquez de Coronado of Spain became the first European to venture into the Great Plains. He and his expedition were searching for the mythical golden city of Quivira. Instead, they found Kansas.

From 1804-1806, Lewis and Clarke go on an 8,000-mile hike to the Pacific Northwest, harbingering calamity.

The United States of America, drunk on white supremacy, gold in California, religious fervor, and the glut of the Louisiana Purchase, decided it had a divine right to expand westward across North America. In manifesting its destiny, the US leveraged unconscionabile treaties and laws like the Indian Appropriations Act of 1851 (along with guns, starvation, and illness) to force many Native Americans to reservations in the West.

From the mid 1850s to the mid 1860s, the West and Plains were struck by a severe drought. This really fucked up the bison, who died in vast numbers.

The Homestead Act of 1862 accelerated the settlement of the western territory by granting land claims in thirty states for a dirt cheap filing fee, five years of sustained residency (after which they could file to recieve proof of ownership), and on the condition that settlers "improve their plot by cultivating the land." These areas were the traditional or treaty lands of many Native American tribes.

Most of those who purchased land under the first Homestead Act were not farmers or laborers and came from areas nearby (Iowans moved to Nebraska, Minnesotans to South Dakota, etc). The act was framed so ambiguously that it seemed to invite fraud, and early modifications by Congress only compounded the problem. Most of the land went to speculators, cattle owners, miners, loggers, and railroads.

Many homesteaders believed that all native peoples were nomads and that only those who owned land would use it efficiently. Few native tribes were truly nomadic. Most nomadic tribes had certain locations they would travel to throughout the year. Other tribes had permanent villages and raised crops. As more settlers arrived, Native Americans were driven farther from their homelands or crowded onto reservations.

Influxes of settlers brought marked changes to the region: bison numbers decreased, fences were erected, domesticated animals increased, water was redirected, non-native crops were planted, unsustainable farming methods increased, and native plants diversity dwindled.

[In 1866, by the way, Congress enacted the Southern Homestead Act to allow poor tenant farmers and sharecroppers in the South to become landowners during Reconstruction. Poor farmers and sharecroppers made up the majority of the Southern population, so the act sold land at a lowered price to decrease poverty among the working class. It was not successful; even the lowered prices and fees were often too expensive. Also, the land made available was mostly undeveloped forestry.]

The late 1870s brought more drought in the Plains. Locusts, which were common to the Plains prior to their sudden extinction, thrived in the drought, ate everything in their path, and ruined crops. The 1875 swarm is estimated to have involved 3.5 trillion insects and covered an area of the West equivalent to the entire area of the mid-Atlantic states and New England. These were the worst swarms during the period of European settlement.

In 1875, Congress passed the Indian Homestead Act to give Native family heads the opportunity to purchase homesteads from unclaimed public lands. This was under the condition that the family head relinquished their tribal identity and relations and, again, "improved" the land. The US government did not issue fee waivers, so many poor non-reservation Natives were unable to pay filing fees to claim homesteads. Those who could pay had difficulty accessing the land because of border disputes due to distance and discord between the US Land Office and the Bureau of Indian Affairs. This made white settlements easier to finalize into land ownership.

For the most part, the 1870s drought was followed by a period of wetter than usual conditions that encouraged widespread belief that 'rain follows the plow'. As in, settlers convinced themselves and each other that by cultivating the land using dryfarming crops that needed more water than the Plains could sustainably provide, they could alter its climate, and rains would come.

In 1886, a severe winter killed vast numbers of cattle. This was shortly followed by another severe drought that went on until 1896.

In 1887, Senator Henry Dawes of Massachusetts decided that Native Americans would prosper if they owned family farms, and his Dawes Act carved reservations into 160-acre allotments. This allowed the federal government to break up tribal lands further. Only those families who accepted an allotment of land could become US citizens. Much of the land subject to the Dawes Act was unsuitable for farming, and large tracts of the allotments were leased to non-Native farmers and ranchers.

After Native American families claimed their allotments, the remaining tribal lands were declared “surplus.” The remaining land was given to non-Native Americans. Land runs allowed the land to be opened to homesteaders on a first-arrival basis.

Unable to catch a hint, the 1880s was a feverish period of settler migration to the West, boosted by both the railroad companies and state and federal governments promising land to those who'd settle it, seemingly without regard for the land's actual carrying capacity.

By the late 1880s, the bison population was thoroughly decimated, meaning the threat of starvation for Native Americans was constant, forcing dependence on the US government and its paltry settlements. Railways, rifles, and an international market for bison hides led to “the Great Slaughter” from about 1820 to 1880, and the bison population plummeted from 30-60 million (estimates vary) to fewer than 1,000 animals. Other factors that contributed to the near-end of the bison: the US military’s directive to destroy bison as a way to control the Native Americans, the introduction of diseases from cattle, drought, and competition from domestic livestock (horses, cattle, sheep).

By the 1890s, drought made clear that the methods of 'dryfarming' used for non-irrigated cultivation of crops, never based on sound science, were wholly inadequate for settling the arid regions of the West. The drought also ended the idea that sturdy settlers, working alone, could manage; the amount of land needed to support even a family was much larger than specified in the Homestead Act but, more crticially, also larger than a family working alone could irrigate. Notably, the 1890s drought was not very dusty, as the Plains were still grassy.

The 1890s drought is partly responsible for the beginning of federally-driven irrigated agriculture with the Reclamation Act of 1902. The act provided for irrigation projects known "reclamation" projects — because irrigation would "reclaim" arid lands for human use. (Unrelatedly, evidence suggests that Native Americans and their precursors may have been in the Plains for at least 38,000 years.)

Theoretically, under the Reclamation Act, the federal government would provide inexpensive water for which farmers would pay, and such payments would then finance the construction of the water projects. The projects' immense construction costs soon proved the premise unrealistic. For example, earlier self-supporting projects created by local initiatives had cost less than twenty dollars an acre. The federal reclamation projects, by contrast, cost an average of eighty-five dollars an acre. Thus, the farmers' share of the federal expenses proved too great a sum for their repayment.

The farmers couldn't pay for their self-sustaining irrigation projects, but Congress extended the repayment periods and continued its irrigation projects. (When repayments still weren't coming in by 1910, Congress advanced $20 million from general treasury funds).

By 1909, most of the prime land in the valleys along the West's rivers had been homesteaded, so to allow dryfarming, which again, the last drought made clear was ill-suited for the arid climate, Congress increased the number of acres for homesteads willing to cultivate lands which could not be easily irrigated. There was a wet period, so the soil was fertile, and settlers, who were still immigrating to the Plains in droves, understood that to mean they were right, rain followed the plow, so they plowed the shit out of it.

In the 1910s, the price of wheat rose, and then, with the onset of the Great War, so did demand for wheat in Europe. So, the settlers plowed up millions of acres of native grassland to plant wheat, corn, and other row crops—still on marginal lands that could not be easily irrigated, even with Congress's pretty dams in every river.

In the 1920s, the war had ended, so the demand for American wheat dropped, and the post-Great War recession sank prices. But, it was also the dawn of tractors and farming mechanization, so settlers went in together on machines they couldn't afford to produce wheat fewer people wanted on land too submarginal to sustain it, and tore that grass up with the wild abandon (like, literally, they abandoned soil conservation practices) of transplants who didn't know anything about the grasslands they were ecologically devastating.

Grasslands, by the way, are fertile because when grasses die, their roots die too, and then their roots decay and fertilize the topsoil into rich earth, which nourishes the other grasses—a self sustaining cycle of life and death. Grasses also have extensive root systems that bind soil particles together, improving soil structure and preventing erosion. Soil erosion occurs when soil is exposed to the impact of wind and water, detaching and transporting soil particles, eventually deteriorating the soil's fertility. Soil erosion can also become dangerous when soil is swept downstream and becomes heavy layers of sediment that disrupt water flow and suffocate aquatic flora or when tossed by the wind so that suspended particles cloud the air, eyes, and lungs.

The Great Plains is the windiest region in North America, namedly because of the airstreams coming down from the Rockies to the West, the shifting pattern of the jet stream in upper levels of the atmosphere, and the fronts of warmer, moist air masses moving in from the Gulf of Mexico to the southeast entangling with the cooler, drier air moving southward from Canada and the Arctic.

Between 1925 and 1930, settlers plowed more than 5 million acres of previously unfarmed land, stripping the soil of its native grasses to expand their fields.

In 1929, overspeculation, excessive bank loans, agricultural overproduction, and panic selling (among other things) caused the US stock market to have a kitten hissy fit, kickstarting the Great Depression.

In 1930, the first of four major drought episodes began in the Plains.

In 1931, despite the lower demand, the settlers leveraged mechanized farming to produce a record crop. This flooded the market with wheat that no one could afford to buy. So, settlers couldn't make back their production costs, so they expanded their fields to try and produce more to make a profit, planting wheat or leaving unused soil bare.

The unanchored soil that was once rich, biological earth became friable, and was swept by high winds into apocalyptic dust storms.

In 1932, the US authorized federal aid to the drought-affected states, and the first funds marked specifically for drought relief were released in the fall of 1933.

[In 1933, Congress created the Tennessee River Valley (TVA). The TVA, under the banner of a sweeping mandate from Congress to promote the "economic and social wellbeing" of the people living in the river basin, decided that too many Southerners were living on the land. From 1933 to 1945, TVA sought to solve the South's economic problems by seizing 1.3 million acres from Southerners and displacing an estimated 82,000 people, many of them illiterate and impoverished, from their homes in order to build 16 hydroelectric dams. They flooded valleys where people once lived.]

[In 1938, President Roosevelt addressed the Conference on the Economic Conditions of the South: "No purpose is closer to my heart at this moment than that which caused me to call you to Washington. That purpose is to obtain a statement—or, perhaps, I should say a re-statement as of today—of the economic conditions of the South, a picture of the South in relation to the rest of the country, in order that we may do something about it: in order that we may not only carry forward the work that has been begun toward the rehabilitation of the South, but that the program of such work may be expanded in the directions that this new presentation will indicate."]

By 1940, 2.5 million people had moved out of the Plains states; of those, 200,000 moved to California. They were not met warmly, and their lives in California were as difficult as the ones they'd left in the Plains, with approximately 40% of migrant farmers winding up in San Joaquin Valley, picking grapes and cotten.

[The Dust Bowl migrant farmers took up the work of Mexican migrant workers, 120,000 of whom were deported from San Jaoquin Valley during the Mexican Repatriation — which refers to the repatriation, deportation, and expulsion of Mexicans and Mexican Americans from the United States during the Great Depression between 1929 and 1939. Estimates of how many were repatriated, deported, or expelled range from 300,000 to 2 million (of which 40–60% were citizens of the United States, overwhelmingly children).]

John Steinbeck published The Grapes of Wrath in 1939, in which he invokes the harshness of the Great Depression and arouses sympathy for the struggles of [some] migrant farm workers. He's praised as having "masterfully depicted the struggle to retain dignity and to preserve the family in the face of disaster, adversity, and vast, impersonal commercial influences." He based the novel on his visits to the migrant camps and tent cities of the workers, seeing firsthand the horrible living conditions of migrant families—

[—and, quite possibly, Sanora Babb's Whose Names Are Unknown, which was written in the 1930s but not published until 2004, since Random House cancelled its publication after The Grapes of Wrath was released in 1939. Babb had moved to California in 1929 to take a job at the Los Angeles Times. When she arrived, the stock market had crashed, the Great Depression had begun, and the promised job dried up. A migrant without a home, she slept in a city park before leaving for Oklahoma in the mid-1930s, where she witnessed the terrible poverty gripping her native state. Eventually, she returned to California to work for the FSA, serving migrant families stranded without a home or a job, just as she had been years earlier. In contrast, John Steinbeck gained much of his understanding of Great Depression conditions in Oklahoma second hand, through reading reports by federal aid workers like Babb and Collins and from his experience delivering food and aid to California migrants from the Southern Plains. The two novels share strikingly similar imagery, so if you enjoyed The Grapes of Wrath, you'll likely also enjoy Whose Names Are Unknown.]

The Grapes of Wrath won the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and it was cited prominently when Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962.

[Steinbeck scholar David M. Wrobel wrote that "the John Steinbeck/Sanora Babb story sounds like a classic smash-and-grab: celebrated California author steals the material of unknown Oklahoma writer, resulting in his financial success and her failure to get her work published...Steinbeck absorbed field information from many sources, primarily Tom Collins and Eric H. Thomsen, regional director of the federal migrant camp program in California, who accompanied Steinbeck on missions of mercy...if Steinbeck read Babb’s extensive notes as carefully as he did the reports of Collins, he would certainly have found them useful. His interaction with Collins and Thomsen — and their influence on the writing of The Grapes of Wrath — is documented because Steinbeck acknowledged both. Sanora Babb went unmentioned."]

Writer Timothy Egan calls the Dust Bowl, "a classic tale of human beings pushing too hard against nature, and nature pushing back."

[To justify itself to Congress and the American public, TVA painted a dim picture of the farms it was going to flood and residents of the South. In films, books, and speeches, TVA pointed to poor farming practices and erosion as the chief culprits in the region’s poverty. Poverty and environmental problems in the South had more to do with lumber and mining industries, which extracted natural resources before abandoning the mountains. But TVA depicted the valleys as “wasted land, wasted people,” as if Southern farmers themselves were to blame.]

When Eleanor Roosevelt visited California in 1940 and saw squatter camps and the model government camps and was asked by a reporter if The Grapes of Wrath was exaggerated, she answered unequivocally, “I never have thought The Grapes of Wrath was exaggerated.” Steinbeck wrote to thank her for remarks: “I have been called a liar so constantly that sometimes I wonder whether I may not have dreamed the things I saw and heard in the period of my research.”

[With a budget in the tens of millions of dollars, TVA devoted just $8,000 and 13 staffers to resettlement efforts. Almost as many tenants as landowners were evicted by TVA, and for this class of “adversely affected” farmers, the agency assumed even less obligation. “It is the very necessity of the tenants having to go which will make them find their own solution to their difficulties,” wrote one TVA staff member.]

Anyway, no, I don't like Steinbeck, and I don't enjoy reading about the Dust Bowl.

[Damning the Valley by Wayne Moore, America's Forgotten History Of Mexican-American 'Repatriation' an interview with Francisco Balderrama]

[midnightluck]

Aventurine is Rom-Coded

Back on my bullshit with more over-analysis for my best blorbo LET'S GO

DISCLAIMER I am not Rom, I am just an interested party, pls correct me if i'm wrong or disrespectful here it's been a long time since I got to deep dive this topic. Will be also discussing the slur as context with full knowledge of the context. ALSO I am BIASED take this with a barrel of salt, and I haven't cited my sources since I did this research in high school for writing Dick Grayson fic okAY HERE WE GO

So like, can we talk about Sigonia??? Like???? What the fuck kind of culture has "may your schemes remain hidden" as a general wellwish? Can we talk about how "Sigonian" is a slur????? and ALSO they are so Rom-coded, CAN WE TALK ABOUT THE CULTURAL GENOCIDE PARALLELS PLEASE--

So FIRST OFF, Romani != Romanian, Romani != "gypsy", Romani != criminal. Romani is a tribe, is a culture, is a way of life. It's nomadic and art-centric and Romani, as a language, is not Romanian, no matter what some folk use in fic (sources: 1, 2, 3). It's a language that borrows from most European languages, and because Rom are nomadic, they then spread that back to those countries. For example, the English word "love" is used in Rom to mean "money," possibly the basis for the idiom "show me some love" meaning "pay up". (also, side note: as there are different groups and traditions, there are some pretty widely varying dialects; here's some more about that if you're interested.)

The Rom culture involves moving on and traveling. This is fascinating for townies (derogatory) and for the vast majority of people because it's an alternative lifestyle, and often children or teens or young adults would fall in love with the people or the lifestyle and follow the caravan, at least for a while. This led to the Rom's reputation as babythieves and childstealers. "Lock up your children," people used to say, "because the gypsies are coming to town." Maybe some caravans did take kids, we don't know, because fresh blood is important to continue family lines? But citation needed and A N Y WAY

So the Rom would roll into town, half-show and half-trading, perform for money, spend money, and move on. Because they were transient, there was less pressure to maintain a reputation, and a lot of the "tricks" and bad trades led to the term "getting gypped" being coined from the word "gypsy," which is why it's a slur; it literally means "someone who is intending to steal from you". One such common trick was Ekkeri, akkery, u-kéry an, which was a "magic spell". Put your money into this handkerchief, say the spell, it doubles. Do it again; it doubles again. Oh, you want me to do it with all your life savings? Sure, here's the hankie, the longer you wait to open it, the more it'll grow, buh-bye! Ekeri Aikeri is likely the original basis for the common rhyme Hickory Dickory Dock, and like all nursey rhymes was presumably a warning: if you hear this, be wary. (sources: 1, 2, 3)

So the Rom became more and more marginalized, and as any marginalized group will tell you, that's not a winning recipe for longevity. There's currently an inherent, unexamined bias all modern kids are taught, to be wary of strangers, to be wary of "gypsies" because they're enchanting magical creatures who will walk into town one day and leave with your money or your heart or your dreams (see Shakira's Gypsy), but they're not, the Rom are people, and people are not one thing. The stereotype of a "gypsy" is constantly enforced and as the population dwindles, more and more people are assuming that the Rom aren't real people, that the way of life has died out, and why be careful when there's no one left to harm? Only there is and they are trying but they no longer have the infrastructure to support themselves outside of society and they have to give up their culture to be a part of society because society thinks they're extinct fairy tales. It's a lot like what happened with Native Americans in the US, except that there were more Native Americans, they had settled land and history, and they fought back. The Rom didn't have a place to defend because nomads, couldn't point to history because oral traditions, and now there's so little to prove they ever travelled the entire continent of Euraisa and spread culture and art and magic. The only things the wider world has left of Rom culture are in our words, and even then those are carelessly used and more weapon than word.

TL;DR I have a lot of feelings on this but LET'S GET TO AVENTURINE.

Unlike real Rom, he's got the eyes--everyone can see at a glance that he's a schemer, a liar, a storyteller and a gambler. He wears his heritage on his face and he doesn't try to hide it, just like he doesn't try to hide his serial number. Someone tried to own him, and he beat them. Someone tried to kill his culture, and he won't let it die. He's been a foreigner longer than he'd ever been Avgin, but that kind of heritage doesn't die, even when everyone else does. Take Sparkle looking at him and saying "What's one of your kind doing here?"

Sigonia IV is the planet; there were multiple races on it, according to the lore, and Aventurine was an Avgin, a race that was wiped out. "Sigonian" is like calling someone an "earthling"; you're not wrong, but you are grouping everyone in together, and the Avgin and the Katican are terrible enemies who would not appreicate that in the least, I assume.

In-game characters use "Signonian" over "Avgin" which feels like "gypsy" over "Rom". Aven is presenting himself as a "gypsy," letting people call him that, embracing the stereotype and leaning the fuck in because it's better to be a Sigonian than to let the entire Avgin culture die entirely.

It's a lot of weight to carry, but that's the thing about a magic trick: the real trick is hiding how hard it all is. Magic is the art of making the impossible seem easy and natural, after all; look at this shiny pretty distraction, isn't it flashy? Isn't it bright and pretty and so easy? Just a twist of the wrist to produce anything your heart desires, and never mind how long it took to set it all up (we'll discuss performative luck build next time!)

Anyway so that's my take on his identity and cultural issues; he's too visibly an outsider to ever be trusted, but he's too alone to ever be supported in a culture. He knows he's alone, and what's more, he knows that everyone is looking to him as their only example of what an Avgin is, of what they were. He is defining his entire culture, in defiance of society, and all he has to do that with is childhood memory. There's this fuckoff big weight on his shoulders which is part of why he can't die; his reputation is every Avgin's reputation, and he will defend that more bitterly than his own. Aventurine doesn't lose because Avgin don't lose.