#black and indigenous stories

[fatehbaz]

The [...] British quest for Tahitian breadfruit and the subsequent mutiny on the Bounty have produced a remarkable narrative legacy [...]. William Bligh’s first attempt to transport the Tahitian breadfruit [from the South Pacific] to the Caribbean slave colonies in 1789 resulted in a well-known mutiny orchestrated by his first mate [...]. [T]he British government [...] successfully transplanted the tree to their slave colonies four years later. [...] [There was a] colonial mania for [...] the breadfruit, [...] [marked by] the British determination to transplant over three thousand of these Tahitian food trees to the Caribbean plantations to "feed the slaves." [...]

Tracing the routes of the breadfruit from the Pacific to the Caribbean, [...] [shows] an effort initiated, coordinated, and financially compensated by Caribbean slave owners [...]. [During] decades worth of lobbying from the West Indian planters for this specific starchy fruit [...] planters [wanted] to avert a growing critique of slavery through a "benevolent" and "humanitarian" use of colonial science [...]. The era of the breadfruit’s transplantation was marked by a number of revolutions in agriculture (the sugar revolution), ideology (the humanitarian revolution), and anticolonialism (the [...] Haitian revolutions) [as well as the American and French revolutions]. [...] By the end of Joseph Banks’ tenure [as a botanist and de facto leader] at the Kew Botanical Gardens [royal gardens in London] (1821), he had personally supervised the introduction of over 7,000 new food and economic plants. [...] Banks produced an idyllic image of the breadfruit [...] [when he had personally visited Tahiti while part of Captain Cook's earlier voyage] in 1769 [...].

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[I]n the wake of multiple revolutions [...], [breadfruit] was also seen as a panacea for a Caribbean plantation context in which slave, maroon, and indigenous insurrections and revolts in St Vincent and Jamaica were creating considerable anxiety for British planters. [...]

Interestingly, the two islands that were characterized by ongoing revolt were repeatedly solicited as the primary sites of the royal botanical gardens [...]. In 1772, when St Vincentian planters first started lobbying Joseph Banks for the breadfruit, the British militia was engaged in lengthy battle with the island’s Caribs. [...] By 1776, months after one of the largest slave revolts recorded in Jamaica, the Royal Society [administered by Joseph Banks, its president] offered a bounty of 50 pounds sterling to anyone who would transfer the breadfruit to the West Indies. [...] [A]nd planters wrote fearfully that if they were not able to supply food, the slaves would “cut their throats.” It’s widely documented that of all the plantation Americas, Jamaica experienced the most extensive slave revolts [...]. An extensive militia had to be imported and the ports were closed. [...]

By seeking to maintain the plantation hierarchy by importing one tree for the diet of slaves, Caribbean planters sought to delay the swelling tide of revolution that would transform Saint Domingue [Haiti] in the next few years. Like the Royal Society of Science and Arts of Cap François on the eve the Haitian revolution, colonists mistakenly felt they could solve the “political equation of the revolution […] with rational, scientific inquiry.” [...]

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When the trees arrived in Jamaica in 1793, the local paper reported almost gleefully that “in less than 20 years, the chief article of sustenance for our negroes will be entirely changed.” […] One the one hand, the transplantation of breadfruit represented the planters’ attempt to adopt a “humanitarian” defense against the growing tide of abolitionist and slave revolt. In an age of revolution, [they wanted to appear] to provide bread (and “bread kind”) [...]. This was a point not to be missed by the coordinator of the transplantation, Sir Joseph Banks. In a letter written while the Bounty was being fitted for its initial journey, he summarized how the empire would benefit from new circuits of botanical exchange:

Ceres was deified for introducing wheat among a barbarous people. Surely, then, the natives of the two Great Continents, who, in the prosecution of this excellent work, will mutually receive from each other numerous products of the earth as valuable as wheat, will look up with veneration the monarch […] & the minister who carried into execution, a plan [of such] benefits.

Like giving bread to the poor, Banks articulated this intertropical trade in terms of “exalted benevolence,” an opportunity to facilitate exchange between the peoples of the global south that placed them in subservience to a deified colonial center of global power. […]

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Bligh had no direct participation in the [slave] trade, but his uncle, Duncan Campbell (who helped commission the breadfruit journey), was a Jamaican plantation owner and had employed Bligh on multiple merchant ships in the Caribbean. Campbell was also deeply involved, with Joseph Banks, in transporting British convicts to the colonies of Australia. In fact Banks’ original plan for the breadfruit voyage was to drop off convicts in (the significantly named) Botany Bay, and then proceed to Tahiti for the breadfruit. Campbell owned a series of politically untenable prison hulks on the Thames which he emptied by shipping his human chattel to the Pacific. Banks helped coordinate these early settlements [...] to encourage white Australian domesticization.

The commodification and rationalist dispersal of plants and human convicts, slaves, the impoverished, women, and other unwilling participants in global transplantation is a rarely told narrative root of colonial “Bounty.”

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All text above: Elizabeth DeLoughrey. “Globalizing the Routes of Breadfruit and Other Bounties”. Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History Volume 8, Number 3, Winter 2007. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me. Presented here for commentary, teaching, criticism purposes.]

[alpaca-clouds]

The Stories We Are Missing

I hate Disney. I really do. I hate them, because they are shitty to a lot of workers. I hate them, because they consolidate so many IPs only to then make the most generic stuff with them. I hate them, because they don't invest in new ideas anymore. And I hate them for being such cowards.

However... I will give them credit for producing Iwájú and Kizazi Moto. Two afrofuturist series. Iwájú being one series that actually just tells one story - while Kizazi Moto is an anthology series like Love Death + Robots on Netflix. Well, that is all that it has in common with LD+R is that it is a scifi anthology series. It has less issues with the sexism and racism of LD+R.

And thinking about this has brought me to the one aspect of our lack on Solarpunk media, that I think gets ignored too much. Again, because white people. And this is... Well, the lack of well published afrofuturist and amazofuturist stories - or movies. And I would assume also the equivalent for other indigenous cultures. (I think the name right now is "Pacificafuturism" for the polynesians, I have no idea whether the indigenous people still living in Asia have something along the lines.)

The irony is that I actually think, well... Let's face it: There is a reason why Disney of all people is investing in some Afrofuturist projects. And that reason is that there is a big audience for this stuff. Disney probably just saw how Black Panther was printing money and was like: "I guess we'll make more of that!"

Now what does this have to do with Solarpunk?

Well, I will remind you: Solarpunk originated with Amazofuturism. And futuristic indigenous stories tend to have a lot of Solarpunk vibes at the very least. Not all of those stories will be Solarpunk, no, but even those that are not will offer us things to learn. Because I will say it once again: We really, really do have a big issue in a lot of SciFi/Fantasy that way too white and way too stuck in the storytelling conventions of western society.

And here is the thing: I doubt most people will be able to name a lot of afrofuturist media other than Black Panther, and maybe the series above. Or maybe you actually can think of some novels like the ones from N. K. Jemisin, Octavia E. Butler, or Nnedi Okorafor. But not much more.

Now, in terms of Afrofuturism there is a bit more - but the other things? Most Amazofuturism is only ever published in Portugese or maybe Spanish in some cases. And I am honestly not certain if there is even anything that is not self-published out there in terms of Pacificafuturism. (I mean, I know a few Maori movies that I guess you could consider, but...)

What I am trying to get at: I think we need more indigenous futurism/indigenous scifi. Not only so that we read more that breaks out of western storytelling conventions, I think we also just need other perspectives on the future. Because our western, white perspective is limited - and we got to imagine the future for way too long.

[outstanding-quotes]

Reading before bed was an old habit, but these days it felt like an open wound.

Norris Black, “Before I Go” in Never Whistle at Night

[thebastardgerard]

Recently, after reading my friend @metalheadsforblacklivesmatter ‘s posts, I thought it was finally time to share my own story experiencing medical racism, transphobia and sexism.

TW: MEDICAL TOPICS, RACISM, TRANSPHOBIA, SEXISM AND EDS.

Somethings about me and disclaimers:

For those who don’t know me, hi hello, what’s the dealio? My name is Kuco, I’m a two-spirit black-indigenous mixed person. I am light-skinned, but most people can tell I’m mixed or assume I’m Latino, to the point where my medical documents mark me as Hispanic despite myself telling them to change it. I’m also AFAB.

While my experience is bad, it’s not unique to just me. Other people who are apart of the BIPOC community have faced the same or much worse. Regardless, please listen those in the community with darker skin. They often face much worse. If you’re only comfortable listening to those with lighter skin and feel more comfortable while claiming you’re an ally, you’re wrong and need to do better.

My story:

In 2021, I was experiencing nausea and vomiting after I ate. After a week of this continuously happening while working, I went to see a doctor who sent me to a surgeon, who sent me to a gastroenterologist to see what could be done without surgery.

This doctor was a cis white man in his late 60s who was apparently “retired.” After pointing out my symptoms and how they were getting worse, he looked through my medical history and noticed I had anxiety. He immediately went to the conclusion of a “brain-to-gut” connection, saying it was often found in woman. (Shock to no one, that wasn’t the case. Also, the issue was not my anxiety. My anxiety has progressive gone down and was at the lowest it had been in YEARS. My therapist at the time even confirmed this himself.) During this time, he also repeatedly referred to me using she/her pronouns, despite that my medical record points out that I am transgender and went by he/him pronouns at the time. (Despite me pointing this out, he continued to ignore this.) He gave me medications that were supposed to help, a doctor’s note (as I worked at the time) and sent me on my way.

Things only got worse. After 6 months of my symptoms getting worse and worse (to the point I could not eat solid food and started vomiting liquid) and several tests, he still believed it was a brain to gut issue. I had lost a lot of weight, to the point my own family noticed.

One of the last appointments I had with this doctor involved what’s called a gastric emptying test. For this test, a radioactive isotope (which isn’t harmful to humans) is put into some eggs and ingested. Pictures are taken of your stomach to track how long the isotope stays in your stomach after 2 hours, 3 hours, and 4 hours. Normally, your stomach is meant to empty at the 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 hour mark. (By what I was told, mind you.)

My stomach emptied finally at the ladder end of 4 hours. This was considered on the way lower end of normal.

Once my doctor got this result, this was his response: The test says that your empty is at the lower end of what was normal, so that’s normal. Just keep taking your meds. It’s more common for Caucasian (white) people to have more serious gastric problems. Just so you know, I’m not writing you another note for your work, it’s not what I do.

This is what broke the camel’s back.

I called my primary care doctor and let her know that I wanted a different doctor who was a woman to see. I told her that he wasn’t listening to me nor taking me seriously and I refused to see him again. I also let her know that he was refusing to write me anymore work notes, despite the issue not being resolved. (A small time after this, my job let me go due to not having a return date. They said I was allowed to reapply afterwards, but I didn’t for different reasons. That’s another story for a different day.)

My primary care doctor sent me to a different doctor who was a woman and also happened to be a POC.

I had an appointment a week later, in which I told her all my symptoms and how I was barely able to eat it drink anything without being nauseous and vomiting. She listened to me while looking at my previous results from previous tests, in which she saw my gastric emptying test.

Her response was: Your test says your emptying is on the lower end of what’s normal, but by what you’re saying, it’s only gotten worse. Why didn’t he give you anything? I’m surprised you’re even talking to me right now.

I told her that he had said that due to my anxiety, it was a brain to gut issue, which was common for “woman” and continually insisted on that, as well as his other comments. She concluded I have a condition called Gastroparesis, or delayed gastric emptying. This is a condition that affects the stomach muscles and prevents proper stomach emptying. While there isn’t a certain idea of why it happens, it’s thought that those who previously suffered from EDs and have diabetes contract it more. (I had suffered from EDs when I was younger and have a history of diabetes that runs in my family, which is where I believe my causes came from.)

I suffered 9 months with this condition without proper treatment, in which my symptoms were prolonged, got worse, and almost passed, all because if ONE doctor.

While I got better for a time, I’m still battling with this condition, as well as other conditions that came along.

~~~~~~~~~

When those in the BIPOC community tell you we don’t trust white people, especially doctors, it’s because we’ve been shown time and time again the complete disregard for our care and safety.

Use your allyship for good and protect us.

I would like to thank my friends for your help, but especially with my partners and my friend @metalheadsforblacklivesmatter . They helped me so much through those 9 months, and even now continue to help and support me. I love you guys so so much. 🩵🩵🩵

[have-you-read-this-short-fiction]

[felucians]

Hobie x Afro-mexicana!reader who's aesthetic is Mexicore

(Mexicore: The combination of Indigenous Latine/Mexican culture and alternative/scenemo/goth subcultures - created by Pierce The Veil - example of the fashion from @zamber_lamber on TikTok pictured as I am unable to find any afromexican examples online)

[bbeeew]

howdy gamers

Small delema

I'm writing a book called "where's my hair" and all the different ways people style it (specifically curly hair). One problem, I need background information on why people style their hairs and how they do it

And I want specifics. Tell me about how you shave your head until it's only an inch tall and you braid it into 5 foot strands to stand up for yourself for being told it was weird and wrong

Tell me about how you have hair so thick that the only way to maintain it is when it's impossibly short

Tell me about girlies with 4c hair that grow it out so that they can die it any color of the rainbow because they love the colors

Tell me about the pale girls with hair that just barely curls so people say they don't have curly hair.

But most importantly

Tell me your stories and reblog this so I can hear from everyone

[bones-n-bookles]

Books from a lil bookstore! Went with @petrichorpaws and our friend who owns Nike, the Leonberger pictured <3

I bought;

The Beast You Are, by Paul Tremblay

> I want more fiction to read, and like. Look at it. Look at that title. I had to.

Soil: The Story of A Black Mother's Garden, by Camille T Dungy

> gardening, connecting with nature, diversity in nature, diversity in people, and learning more about POC are all things I love adding to my library and skill set. I'm slowly working on adding more non-animal focused books to my collection, currently primarily stuff on race and trans people

Last Stand: George Bird Grinnell, The Battle to Save the Buffalo, and the Birth of the New West, by Michael Punke

> conservation and American history book! While bison specifically aren't my interest, their history is incredibly worth studying and something I want to learn more about, and conservation books in general I always find something worthwhile and important in, even in animals and plants I have no particular interest in. History is another topic I'm slowly adding to my library, primarily focused on the Americas and Russia

Indigenous Continent, by Pekka Hämäläinen

> INCREDIBLY relatedly, looking at American history through a very different lens, focusing on indigenous perspective instead. Incredibly excited to read this one in particular

Fen, Bog, and Swamp: A Short History of Peatland Destruction and Its Role in the Climate Crisis, by Annie Proulx

> more conservation and history! I know very little about peatland, it's not something I've got much experience with being from central California, so eager to learn more

The Name of the Wind, by Patrick Rothfuss

> petrichorpaws suggested this one and the blurb on the back immediately had my attention! I don't read much fiction, much less non-animal related fiction, but I want to make an effort to branch out to it, and a friend's suggestion is one of my favorite places to start <3

Nike's owner also insisted on buying us some candles, I got three of them (The Writer, Enemies to Lovers, and Book Boyfriend), and surprised me with getting a book me and petrichorpaws were both ogling but didn't buy;

Stories from Bird Banding; Comics and photographs from the field, by Aya Rothwell

[dove-da-birb]

I bet canadian history is more interesting...why is amerikan history so boring

...

what's canadian history like???

Okay, so it has been a bit since I've been in public school, and the most recent history course I took was a college course;

There's your standard stuff like knowing about how Canada became a country (1867), and also knowing about our Charter of Rights and Freedoms. There's also the war efforts (ranging from War of 1812 to modern peacekeeping missions).

I personally do not care what some white dude did all those years ago; like the first prime minister was a massive racist. I outright do not celebrate any holiday which celebrates colonization (Victoria Day, Canada Day, Thanksgiving, etc.).

In more recent years there has been more inclusion of the history of our Indigenous people, and the genocide that happened and is still happening today. Actually, on September 30th it's the national day of Truth and Reconciliation.

As a general disclaimer before you go searching through Canada's history; you will find genocide, as North America is a colonized continent. You will find articles and survivor accounts of "Indian" Residential 'Schools', of which they are still discovering mass graves of children. These 'schools' were an act of cultural genocide and were active until 1996, and were governed by both the government and various churches.

The history of any colonized place has a history bathed in blood, but it may not be taught due to different policies (cough, racist policies, cough).

Sorry for my bit of a tangent, I'm just so tired of people ignoring the history, because the 'past' is very much still felt today.

[floralovebot]

man people who racebend characters of color are REALLY showing their asses in how they think we're all interchangable and see us as a checklist for "Getting A Good Grade In Woke :)" rather than just... acknowledgment of the existing natural diversity of planet earth and the different ways people make life of it.

its insensitive to reimagine disneys tiana as asian, not because asian people dont face racism or cant enjoy cooking or didnt exist in 1920s new orleans- but because tiana is the first and still only black disney princess and was written and designed as such. her race informs and deepens her writing and her struggles, her love for her dad and specifically wanting to validate a jim crow era black man's sacrifices for his family, her connection to him and her community through her cooking when they all struggle to keep food on the table. similarly mulan shouldnt be rebranded as african american, not because black women couldnt exist in china or never crossdressed to join the army or dont face misogyny- but because mulan is a folk hero of historical chinese legend and as mulan, specifically cannot be divorced from that background. (also, frankly? the early white princesses arent really as well written for the most part, and their culture of origin is virtually never taken into account aside from visuals in their development, if that).

thats what ticked me off so bad about the monster high reboot. nb frankie was so cool and an asian draculaura was so fun but then they just... took away the black girl? and by extension, her sisters and thus ALL the black girls and like, dude not cool? nothing wrong with her being latina but being afrolatina is a different experience than being african american. afrolatinas deserve rep but that doesnt mean they shouldve taken clawdeen from african american girls. then there was some back and forth as to where specifically draculaura's family is from, and lagoona's origins vary from source to source dolls vs movie vs tv too and you just really feel the lack of effort and cohesion in the writing rooms. it really is just all just numbers on a chart, quotas to be filled there.

even with shows like winx where its ambiguous at times and kind of a raceblind take at others, theres so little for ANY of us that redesigning without that in mind becomes poaching. why would you take when ive been given so precious little? why would you want to change this one gift from people like me that lets me know i'm seen and loved? sure, other people deserve to have that too but if they want to borrow then take those who have so much they wont even miss it?

asdfghjkl sorry for the essay, i guess i had a breakthrough in how to put why this specific issue gets to me.

YESSS THANK YOU

Like it's so fucking weird to me!!! And GOD I wanted to say something about gen3 Clawdeen but I wasn't sure if I was "right" or if it was my place to say but exactly!! Being afrolatina is wonderful and they deserve representation too but it is still ultimately a different experience from being black american and they shouldn't have taken that away from black girls! I'm glad that mixed kids have her as rep now but they shouldn't have taken her away!! They very easily could've made a new character to fill that role instead!

AND YES to the winx point!! At the end of the day, it doesn't matter that some of the girls races or ethnicities are more ambiguous, they still have Canon races and people shouldn't be taking that away and giving it to someone else. That's not how representation works! Ever! Like if someone redesigned Aisha to be asian, that wouldn't make me happy or give me More representation. All that would be doing is taking away representation from black people! Same thing with Musa, Flora, Nabu, etc.

It also feels So fucking scummy when a white person's excuse is just that they Personally didn't see a character as their canonical race/ethnicity and that's why they changed it?? Like I don't give a shit if You personally don't see Nabu as an Indian man. That doesn't change his blatant coding. Same with characters like Flora who are more ambiguous. It doesn't matter if You Personally don't like her being Latina. She is. Fucking deal???

[fatehbaz]

Ecologies of Imperialism in Algeria, by Brock Cutler, begins with an account of food poisoning in nineteenth-century French Algeria. A deep rural crisis of drought and famine in the late 1860s had reduced the amount of fuelwood coming into the city of Algiers, leading one baker to use construction debris shipped to the colony from Paris to fire his bread oven in early 1869. The lead paint on that metropolitan rubble, product of Baron Haussmann’s transformation of the French capital, became a toxic element in the bread that sickened settlers in the colony. The author [...] treats this small episode as a microcosm of the divides, the unruly circulations, and the nonhuman actants and processes that characterized the early decades of colonial rule in Algeria, which the French invaded in 1830.

These divisions and circulations include those between metropole and colony, between modern and not modern, between person and environment, between human and nonhuman, and across the colonial frontier with Tunisia. [...]

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The first [of three major narrative veins in Cutler's study involves] [...] bread [...], the consumption of wheat grown on the Mediterranean plains of Algeria [...]. The toxic bread affair of 1869, however, was a reminder that the distance between metropole and colony was not so great. [...] The second vein examines the production of new ecosystem relations [...]. [T]he violence of decades of uneven conquest and the confiscation, appropriation, and enclosure of land and its reorientation toward regional and international [European] markets between 1830 and 1870 thoroughly destabilized rural Algerian life. This fragility turned lethal in the final years of the 1860s, when a series of environmental crises - locust plagues and drought - caused widespread famine and ultimately the deaths of up to eight hundred thousand Algerians. [...] The emptied land and cheap labor that were outcomes of the environmental crises enabled [France] to complete the capitalist transformation of rural Algeria [...]. Another outcome of the environmental crisis was an increase in the number of rural Algerians migrating to cities, where they were perceived as both a threat to public order and a reservoir of potential labor energy. [...]

[D]ivisionary logics, including the line between city and countryside and the modern gendered subject, were being performed, produced, and reproduced in the context of environmental crisis.

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[Another] major element [in Cutler's scholarship] [...] is an exploration of the complex politics of policing French Algeria’s eastern border with Tunisia, in the era before French colonial rule began in the latter polity in 1881. [...] [T]his border, officially demarcated in 1846, was only integrated into local ecosystem relations over the course of subsequent decades. Repeated performance of sovereignty through patrols and taxation of pastoral communities that lived and worked in the frontier commons instantiated the border, but the border region remained resistant to the forms of modern statecraft, such as standardization, bureaucratization, and written transactions, that French authorities preferred. [...] [Cutler] draws on intentionally “mundane” examples to show how they were critical to the steady reproduction of a modern imperial border (p. 47). [...] [A specific] episode of transborder [dispute] [...] in 1869 [...] became a referndum within the settler community on the virtues of military rule and a reminder for that [European] community of [supposed] indigenous incompatability with modernity. [...]

[T]he various divisions illuminated by the story - between modern and not, between inside and outside, and between European and Algerian - were performances staged at various times and places, not eternal features of the society or landscape. The repetition of “divisionary logics,” in the author’s telling, were at the heart of French colonial modernity (p. 149). [...]

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[T]horough reading of the French colonial archive, from official sources as well as memoirs, newspapers, and periodicals [...], [t]he first two narrative threads, on bread and disaster, demonstrate the significance of moments of crisis [...] in actually changing the course of history [...] [and] longer-term [...] ecological transformations. The other thread, however, examines how the mundane performance of modern sovereign power and its divisionary logics, over time, made real or even naturalized the new imperial frontier between Algeria and Tunisia. Both [...] society-wide crises or the steady performance of the mundane logics of power [...].

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All text above by: Jackson Perry. "Review of Cutler, Brock. Ecologies of Imperialism in Algeria". H-Environment, H-Net Reviews. April 2024. Published online at: h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=59842. [Text within brackets added by me for clarity. Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me.]

[gorekiss]

lots of nb leftists thinking they know about the black experience 2day……

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

you know. there are few things that make me sit and think carefully about my instinct to say something would be a Good Fictional Metaphor for a real-world issue like the time i saw the take with my own two eyes that piranesi is a powerful, insightful, accurate metaphor for both colonialism in general and slavery in the US

[have-you-read-this-short-fiction]

"Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience™" is available to read here (NOTE: Submitter has added TWs for racism against indigenous Americans and alcoholism. Read at your own risk.)

[jimbotimes]

LIVE: KOREATOWN SPEAKS UP

This very special bonus episode features the live recording of the first ever panel-discussion by K-Town Is Oaxacan Korean. On Thursday, November 2, 2023, K-Town Is Oaxacan Korean, also known as K-Town Is OK, brought together long-time and former residents of Koreatown into conversation. The panel, free and open to the public, was held just over a year after the public release of a private…