#indigenous antiquity theft

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

On November 16, 2022, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at Boston University (BU) posted a carousel on Instagram condemning the “Jerusalem: City of Change” forum hosted by the Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies, the Department of Religion, and the program in Archaeology, in collaboration with the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA).

In its defamatory post, BU SJP accused the IAA of “indigenous antique theft,” “revising history,” “ethnic displacement,” and “settler colonialism.”

When it comes to BU SJP’s claim of “indigenous antiquity theft” — whose antiquity do they believe were stolen? The discoveries made at excavation sites such as the City of David by the IAA have confirmed the presence of Jewish people in the land of Israel for 4,000 years.

It is ironic that BU SJP accuses the IAA of being an organization “active in the colonization of Palestine and destruction of Jerusalem,” when in reality, its discoveries threaten the false narrative presented by Palestinian leaders that Jews are not indigenous to the land of Israel.

For instance, in 2011, regarding the plan to include Holocaust education in the curriculum taught to Palestinian refugees, Hamas stated, “We cannot agree to a programme that is intended to poison the minds of our children … Holocaust studies in refugee camps is a contemptible plot and serves the Zionist entity with a goal of creating a reality and telling stories in order to justify acts of slaughter against the Palestinian people.”

[warningsine]

LONDON (AP) — The British Museum was alerted more than two years ago to the possible theft or disappearance of valuable artifacts when an art historian became suspicious about objects for sale on eBay.

But the museum’s director, Hartwig Fischer, said Friday that he didn’t treat the whistleblower’s warning seriously enough and announced his resignation as investigators figure out what happened to hundreds of missing pieces, including gold jewelry, semi-precious gems and antiquities dating to the 15th century B.C.

“It is evident that the British Museum did not respond as comprehensively as it should have in response to the warnings in 2021, and to the problem that has now fully emerged,” Fischer said in a statement. “The responsibility for that failure must ultimately rest with the director.”

The museum fired a staff member more than a week ago and said legal action would be taken against that person. London’s Metropolitan Police are investigating and the museum has ordered an independent review of security as well as a ’’vigorous program to recover the missing items.″

Most of the items were small items kept in a storeroom and none had been on display recently, the museum said.

The 264-year-old British Museum is a major London tourist attraction, drawing visitors from around the world. Its collection includes the Rosetta Stone that unlocked the language of ancient Egypt, scrolls bearing 12th century Chinese poetry and masks created by the Indigenous people of Canada.

The museum has also attracted controversy because it has resisted calls from communities around the world to return items of historical significance that were acquired during the era of the British Empire. The most famous of these disputes include marble carvings from the Parthenon in Greece and the Benin bronzes from west Africa.

“We want to tell the British Museum that they cannot anymore say that Greek (cultural) heritage is more protected in the British Museum,” Despina Koutsoumba, head of the Association of Greek Archaeologists, told the BBC this week.

Fischer’s announcement included an apology to the whistleblower, Ittai Gradel, a British-Danish art historian and dealer.

Gradel told The Associated Press he became suspicious after buying one of three objects a seller had listed on eBay. Gradel traced the two items he didn’t buy to the museum. The object he bought wasn’t listed in the museum’s catalog, but he discovered it had been owned by a man who turned over his entire collection to the museum in 1814.

Gradel said he found the identity of the seller through PayPal and it was the person at the museum who has since been sacked. Gradel said that 69 other objects he bought from the same person were then “guilty by association.”

Gradel said that Fischer had done the right thing by stepping down and he accepted his apology. But he said Deputy Director Jonathan Williams should also resign, adding that Williams had assured him that a thorough investigation found no improprieties.

The museum said Friday that Williams would step aside during the independent review.

“He basically told me to sod off and mind my own business,” Gradel said. “It is beyond me how any responsible museum person could see this evidence without all alarm bells going off immediately.”

On Wednesday, Fischer had issued a statement saying that the museum had taken the allegations seriously in 2021. But he said concerns had only been raised about a small number of items and said it was frustrating to learn that Gradel, whom he did not name, had “many more items in his possession.”

Gradel said it was an “outright lie” he withheld information from the museum and said it appeared that Fischer never read the documents he sent. He said he offered any assistance they needed and they never contacted him.

“I also misjudged the remarks I made earlier this week about Dr. Gradel,” Fischer said Friday. “I wish to express my sincere regret and withdraw those remarks.”

Fischer, a German art historian, said he would leave as soon as a temporary leader could be appointed.

George Osborne, chair of the museum trustees, said the board accepted Fischer’s resignation and that he acted “honorably in confronting the mistakes that have been made.”

“I am clear about this: we are going to fix what has gone wrong,” Osborne said. “The museum has a mission that lasts across generations. We will learn, restore confidence and deserve to be admired once again.”

The museum had said it would take legal action against the dismissed staff member.

[scentedchildnacho]

They were talking at lunch about mt Soledad meal and it's size so i admitted their serial killers their Helter skelters and they have been putting my name on mass murder lists like aids for years and that was the newest attempt at killing the poverty problem off its disgusting to get away with theft and so they start looking like a whole district to asylum

Anyway I was watching Tubi about happy marriages because Milwaukee police are very conservative that way I may look into date ing but I shouldn't practice or emulate it....its not an enjoyed hospitality compared to conservative values of respect hard work and decent benefits

Ive went on dates before and I didn't feel disrespected but I didn't feel loved and companioned and it's just boring compared to modernity and bloombury Virginia woolfe love is truly the greatest thing in society and everything ever achieved is about truly loving someone

People who finally hear an ambulance as a sign of hope and conflict ending is about someone who truly loved their family

Anyway....this couple on this happy marriage show explained they emigrated from Africa because the conflict was so bad they were dispersed from one another and their home communities.....and they explained the flights over head arent just drone sound bombs their going into rural areas and dropping explosions and the people here are doing the best they can having been forced up against the coast.....

But he just explained wanting to be around her mannerisms and disposition and she was just so greater then getting upset about conflict and just very detached and indifferent so rebel girls promised me I would be given this African ability so I'm glad my western consciousness was disrupted by that otherwise I would have hyper emotional expectations all the time ...

I saw him again and he explained the nurse wanted him to get his blood pressure medications.....so i said I never view anything as medical anymore though I am a crazy person....i believe in prayer and personal angels that kill those men for being gross dudes it's man and it can only be a gross car tel dude

My skin condition deteriorated here but God finally got rid of the city to my skin so that's healing.....and I get from the creepy dude bomb rush here these horrible depressive adrenaline anxiety panic rushes till i sink into depressive nothing do not be naive truly those gross disgusting weirdos like the flower hat guy and bald skin head freakshows do not be naive those things appear to just be a beater and truth is they envy anyone who has a soul and steal it because truthfully things that weird may not have anything but the worst here

But it's okay it's just a call to creationism....something very despiritualized infects the hare Krishna till I wonder if the indigenous children there need simple taking care of

That's me about the people's from India......their always in the migrant virtual media cage just very corporate something

I don't like how the states zones cities to where the Indians live if it's the Indians always already desolate and for militaristic expertise

Anyway I said leaving me with a cart to survive is so antiquated of women's rights that can't possibly happen this day in age and I really want to emigrate the way the African marriage did there was conflict so they were like I may have housing education and a decent life and just came here and did that so I need to take that attitude and go somewhere that will give that to me instead of a creepy rape hick nasty dude world

Then the outside security kept 🔒 ing a porta people couldn't piss in a urinal and someone could have gotten out of the storm and they kept locking it on people in need so God came with storm and smashed up their tent rain protection

They kept trying to force us into portas with urinals in them....so God kept smashing up their tent if Satan wins easy body organs

That's me about God as an existent their nasty worthless people that blame abstractions not themselves till it's look He is the storm God and that's all powerful instead of reefer

Did reefer make the hovering guards go away or did God....Storm God did

He said he would want to live in Europe....I said the Europeans are so far ahead as far as social engineering everything there uses less land or square acres to accomplish something simple but you walk in and never feel crowded or oppressed with too little space

You walk in and it's like spacious and accommodating

Their so far ahead about appropriating Asian ideas about rapid population growth

Well western culture isn't doesn't inherently conserve so more can be given to communal purpose like going out and celebrating

I wouldn't want to be a European union citizen though something about it is very difficult like she has to survive a gun shot wound before she could emigrate to London

Europe is very very very expensive that way you have to truly sacrifice everything to be truly welcome there that's Europe about being a nice place to live it's like a heaven

I thought about going to south America......but all of this will all start fleeing south

And the point is so nasty butt fuck druggy freak creep finally has to be apart of a meritocracy to be in people's lives and having to stay around here will just be more butt fuck homos always trying to to escape their own punishment by killing feminine kind

So I' think I will have to emigrate extremely or nasty fuck show will try to forcibly go to everything is coed smoke ville

[indigenous-consent]

Umm....can someone with money buy this and return it to the rightful owners? Specifically whichever Očhéthi Šakówiŋ people this came from.

Balled headed war club, Eastern Sioux, circa 1860′s-1870′s

from Cowan’s Auction

[letsgostealthelouvre]

The Louvre holds, as part of its collection, the mummified head of a woman who lived about 3500 years ago. According to the Louvre, she was “found in the Egyptian expedition of 1799″. As far as I can tell that obliquely refers to Napoleon’s military invasion of Egypt which began in 1798, so it wasn’t “found” as much as it was “looting by invading military forces”.

It’s not on exhibit, which is probably for the best. You can follow the link to see a photograph of her if you like, and it’s an extremely compelling image, but I decided to talk about it instead of sharing it here, as a sort of symbolic reminder of the origin of some of the images I do share here.

I haven’t talked about how the Louvre acquired a lot of its antiquities, in part because I haven’t done extensive research on it, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been thinking about it. Museums do legitimately acquire objects from ancient history; the Oriental Institute in Chicago has done several digs in partnership with the modern Egyptian government where it was agreed that the Oriental Institute would acquire some of the objects (if any) that were unearthed, and as a result I’m able to take a short train ride and explore the stunning wonders of the ancient world. But I think we’re also all aware that a lot of the ancient holdings of European and American museums are the result of, at best, grave-robbing, and at worst brutal military invasion. (Not just ancient holdings of course -- some museums hold Nazi-looted art, for example -- but that’s discourse for when I get there, and for now we’re talking about the ancient world.) 

My first true encounter with the discomfiting sensation of “should we be doing this?” was about twenty years ago; I was in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, in the Egyptian collection, and they had the head of a mummified Egyptian, just the head, on exhibit. It may have been Djehutynakht, although I saw the head somewhere beetween 1999-2003 and articles about him seem adamant that he wasn’t exhibited until 2009 when he was identified. In any case I can’t find any other mummy heads in the MFA online collection. Djehutynakht was theoretically acquired with the permission of the Egyptian government, but in 1915 the Egyptian government was a very recently invaded “protectorate” of Britain, so take that with a grain of salt.

Anyway, the upshot is that I saw a head much like the one in the Louvre, in a glass case in an art museum, and had a very disquieting sensation about exhibiting ancient human bodies. It does happen, especially with ancient Egyptian remains, and America has a sordid history with the body-theft, desecration, and exhibition of Indigenous remains; fortunately museums are beginning to correct this, but it’s a slow process and underfunded.

I’m not a scholar of ancient art and I’m certainly not a scholar of museum science; I know that this is an ongoing discussion, occasionally a justifiably heated one, and ties into concerns like the return of the Parthenon Marbles. I’m not qualified to wade into the debate fully. Some of the Louvre’s holdings, maybe even the majority of them, may be justifiably legit and acquired ethically (there is a vast difference between ethical and legal when the country the museum resides in has a history of invading the country the items came from). 

But it did feel important to talk about, to bring up the idea even if I don’t fully explicate it or state an opinion on it: that what you see here is beautiful, important to human history, and imbued with great meaning -- and also not always (not usually, up until now) of the culture in which it resides, whether it came there legitimately or not. 

[andean-deer]

hey guys in the future...

please don't make jokes about theft of north, central, south american artifacts. i take it a bit more seriously and you should too.

BUT it's not that deep? don't care, won't care.

a similar post was floating around where someone suggested that modern day archaeologists should dress like they do in the movies...

long story short it has colonial associations, the wak'akuna (artifacts) are not just objects to be paraded, plundered or possessed.

hey, indiana jones... you're on thin ice.

so much has been stolen to the point that museums will assign many countries as the origin just so it seems more legitimate. but the honest truth is they can barely tell where it's from. the context of western hemisphere indigenous artifacts has been lost so frequently because of grave robbers, antiquities smuggling, and underhanded deals between sketchy yet well-known people (ex: hiram bingham iii).

[ronnierorivero]

Whammy’s House: Bedrooms.

Near: Very neat and orderly, a lot of white. Has a large toy box in the corner of his room and models he made set up on shelves.Other than that, it's very minimalist. He has a floor lamp for lighting and his desk is tidy on the outside. The desk drawer is a nightmare.

Matt: Is there a floor? Who knows! Extremely untidy and covered in video game posters like Super Mario, Fallout, etc. His game shelf and area around the TV are the only tidy places. Has a desk/bed in theory. Keeps the room darkened and has a desk lamp for when he needs to do homework. Studies on the floor and sleeps on top of the pile in his bed. It is RANK.

Mello: In his constant need to compete with Near, he keeps his room clean. His desk is a bit messy though. He likes black, so his room has a lot of black. Has a ceiling light. 

Beyond: His room has a lot of Horror Memorophilia and Halloween decorations. He painted his desk with glow-in-the-dark paint and it glows and scares him to death in the middle of the night. Generally untidy but will clean occasionally, unlike Matt. Has colored light bulbs that he puts in his ceiling light and will pretend he is in a Rave.

A: Their room is moderately tidy. Everything is where they want it to be and where it can be found. In line with @puropoly‘s A, they have alien memorophilia in their room. Their closet is a little larger than the others and is used as a makeshift darkroom. The desk is untidy but can be easily cleaned. Has fairy lights and a green shade lamp on the side table by their bed.

Linda: very bright and colorful, lots of her art on the wall. Her desk is covered in art supplies and her room is often messy.  Will move everything to the end of the bed and sleep in a ball at the top. Also has fairy lights and a desk lamp on the side table.

L: Is rarely in his room at Whammy’s and it is therefore mostly bare. Has a floor lamp and an empty desk. The only very personalized thing he has is a painting of a kitchen. (A fake of a famous painting he saved on an art theft case).

Ivy: Her room is not messy but is crowded with animal cages and fish tanks. It smells a bit strange.There is taxidermy on the shelves and a taxidermy robin on her desk. Its very purple and girly otherwise. Has a pretty lamp with a lace lampshade and fairy lights.

Q: she likes brown and its decorated with a lot of brown and fall colors. Doesn’t have a desk, sits at a card table to do homework/case work (she doesn’t like desks). Ceiling light and a collection of antique hip flasks on a shelf.

Dice: Lives in a small cottage on the property. The living areas are decorated with art she’s picked up on her travels, particularly indigenous art bought from indigenous artists. Has some Ainu art pieces as well (She’s worked some cases for the Ainu in Japan) and Manx art inherited from her grandmother . This is more for guests sakes, her room is bare with only one picture that she switches out every month, a simple desk, floor lamp, mattress, small TV on a card table, and blanket.

[procellaes]

HERNANDO  AND  RELATIONSHIPS

     it  isn’t  very  hard  for  hernando  to  find  and  attract  a  partner  of  any  kind.  he’s  reasonably  attractive  (  when  he  isn’t  covered  in  the  blood  of  innocents  ),  is  genteel,  and  charming,  and,  most  importantly,  he  knows  how  to  use  it.  it  is  important  to  mention  also  that  intimacy  and  companionship  is  something  that  hernando  consistently  wants,  but  just  because  he  can  get  it - and  it - doesn’t  mean  he’s  necesarily  oll  korrect.

     hernando  is  a  conquistador.  he  conquers  and  that’s  it.  so  while  winning  someone  over  keeps  him  interested,  maintaining  a  successful  and  healthy  relationship  is  almost  impossible  for  him  to  do.  why  put  energy  into  something  that  might  not  work  out  when  he  can  go  off  and  start  anew?

     in  addition,  hernando  fosters  a  fear  of  personal  intimacy.  his  qualms  on  sexual  intimacy  are  detailed  here.  but  he  does  not  feel  comfortable,  nor  does  he  trust  anyone  enough  to  let  them  in.  it  isn’t  his  immortality  tat  is  necesarily  the  boundary  here,  but  rather  the  entire  relational  concept  of  sharing  a  life.  while  he  believes  that  everything  he  does  is  truly  good  (  genocide  of  indigenous  people,  colonisation,  theft  of  property  and  raw  goods,  etc.  ),  it  represents  a  different  side  of  him  that  he  considers  to  be  as  pure  as  a  baptismal  robe  or  a  member  of  an  antiquated�� mystery  cult ;  the  uninitiated,  in  this  analogy,  are  not  fit  to  see  it,  let  alone  learn  about  it,  because  they  could  never  understand  it.  hernando  works  against  himself  in  this  way,  longing  for  intimacy  and  the  things  that  come  along  with  it,  but  also  guarding  himself  but  not  his  forward  nature,  giving  any  potential  partners  strange  mixed  signals  and,  ultimately,  red  flags.  

[bond-villains-are-winning]

Making America Grotesquely Antiquated (18Jan19 edition)

Today in the Circus of Distraction:

GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES: Trump is signing a bill that will pay government employees their salaries during the shut down - but only after the government reopens.

OPIOIDS. Marketing by drug companies (White people so they aren’t “thugs” & “pushers”? Where is The Punisher when we need him?

FLINT. Good News- Michigan elected a Democrat as State AG. Maybe he will uncover more than the Republicans investigating the Republicans

GOLD. Prices are soaring. Never a good omen for the Economy. China and the Eurozone are also slumping.

Posted the above 1-4 at 10:00 am Pacific Coast time USA.

GLOBAL DEBT. 3x the Global Economy. Today’s American serfs are tied to place by Mortgage, to employer by Privatized Health Insurance. Tied to eternal debt by credit cards and student loans. COMMENTARY. I say ‘today’. In the 1950s and 60s Americans were relatively debt free. In those days OUR PERCENTAGE of Gross Domestic Product was at least a third LARGER than it is now. Today the same jobs with the same American firms OVERSEAS pay 1/3 more than the same companies pay American workers. Because we believe in our hearts that we are “rugged individuals” and that taxing the Rich a maximum 39.4% (91% in the 50s) is “theft”. Hahahahahahahaha! The jokes on us. There is theft all right: the Rich got Rich by have stealing our wages as a portion of GDP. Also by transferring taxes to the middle class as well as cancelling taxes for public schooling by bribing State and Congressional Legislators with big campaign donations (illegal in 1950s). We have become a F*cking 4th world Sh*thole because American “whites” (light brown) won’t be in the same Unions or Professional groups, schools or Churches with brown and black (darker brown) People. Or Jews or immigrants or native indigenous or LGBTQ, etc. Hahahahahaha! Golly, are we ever totally screwed by our folly and ignorance because 1/3 of the adults would rather than have their children’s faces ripped off than integrate, 1/3 doesn’t date vote because they’d starve if called to jury duty, and 1/3 is divided in 25,967 different positions which preclude uniting on anything including what to call themselves today.

BREXIT. Voted on leaving months before US 2016 National Conventions. Thought Great Britain had the Darwin Award for “National Suicide” locked in. Then we played our trump card. Not to be out done Brits decided that after two PMs and two years that “ no plan” is the best plan?

OIL DRILLING on PUBLIC PROPERTY: The Interior Department’s “work or forfeit your jobs, back pay, health insurance, and pensions” slaves are processing drilling permits for the arctic wilderness areas. COMMENTARY. There is something America, it’s public, it’s politicians, it’s business leaders, even its Green radicals never discuss when talking about drilling permits. No one - no one - observes that the MOTHER F*CKING CORPORATE RICH SH*TS ARE LEASING OUR LAND. Not drilling on some privately owned land. Not drilling on land that Congress owns. Land that the OIL COMPANIES DO NOT OWN. ITS OUR LAND. Land we as a Nation decided to hold as Wilderness Reserve for future Americans in future Centuries. So WHY the RUSH to SH*T on the LAND? There is an oil glut. There is 0.00000 need to drill in Wilderness areas. SO COULD it be that our lying, thieving Kleptocracy has a need to ROB US & OUR DESCENDANTS of the value of the Natural Wilderness by selling the leases cheaply to cronies? CHEAP FOR CRONIES WHO HAVE CONTRIBUTED TO CAMPAIGNS, in whom the Kleptocrats OWN STOCK or WHO WILL HIRE the Public “Servant” when they are out of office? What factor has been included for the irretrievable loss of the Wilderness lands? NONE? Then we the people and our descendants are being CHEATED OUT OF HUNDREDS OF TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS!!!! Let us alert the Corporations and the Kleptocracy that they CANNOT LEGALIZE THIS THEFT BY BRIBERY. That we will be coming for CRIMINAL PROSECUTION and FORFEITURE of corporate and personal assets as REPARATIONS. Is it too soon to suggest this? Asking for a Comrade.

FAILURE to ENGINEER: Today is the 100th anniversary of the Boston Storage Tank Disaster which killed 21 and injured 150 others. War profiteers were using the tank to ‘stockpile’ (hoard to create artificial demand)molasses which was an ingredient in gun powder. The War ended, prices dropped and the molasses sat in a tank not engineered for its weight and mass. COMMENTARY. How much engineering is going into the Great Wall of Trump? Building along rivers involved soils, Civil, and Structural engineering. The impact on the natural landscape involves or should involve experts in animal, fisheries, fluid movement/hydraulics and archeology at a minimum. Plus the members in each Department affected that actually know what they are doing. Plus the local City and County planning departments. Plus all the same people on the other side of the boundary. Probably why the 2006 Border Barrier Act that has been adding protection for 12 years is planned for 20 year period. In pictures, Trumps steel wall is already rusting. I’m going to take a wild guess an assume Trump bypassed all the above, issued contracts for design/build and used unlawful emminent domain to seize valuable land without adequate compensation. How is that not being “the swamp”?

BEES. Per Sci American part of the cause of the diminishing bee and butterfly population loss is habitats shrinkage. “Development” of natural and wetlands results in the loss. PRESUMPTION. Dramatic increase of GOP in State Government results in dramatic decrease in protected lands?

Updated adding 6-10 and posted to @longwindedbore at 3:15 pm Pacific Coast time, USA.

CLIMATE WARMING. Reports indicate that heat is increasing even faster. COMMENTARY As the oceans heat, the least of our problems are that they expand. So greaterflooding of coasts. The amount of prehistoric gases held in the cold depths will rise with the ocean heating. Our severe winters result from lessening of permanent low pressure system over the arctic that kept the frigid jet streams at higher latitudes.

SEISMIC BLASTING. Good news. Federal judge blocks permits for blasting off the Carolina coasts for oil. (Same commentary as for Wilderness drilling above. Our Oceans. Drilling is by lease not ownership.)

SMUGGLING. Daily Kos article outlines that Trumps Boondoggle Wall would not affect drug smuggling at all. Since some of their source is the government it’s obvious that Trump has some other reason for the Wall. Jim Crow Monument for White Separatists?

CHILD MORTALITY RATES. Reblogged article from Nrw York Times. (Ranted there as well). COMMENTARY. We suck as a nation at taking care of children. So we’ll compare ourselves to Cuba and throw in a comment that ‘maybe’ they are fudging the numbers. All the while ignoring that the debate is whether we are 42 or 43 out of first place. At least we beat - barely - the Faroe Islands, Croatia and Belarus. Unfortunately, everyone but the Pro-Life/Anti-healthcare GOP-cursed US is trying to do better. Universal Healthcare is the key to early prevention and to access.

Updated and Posted topics 12-15 to @longwindedbore at 6:10 pm Pacific coast time, USA.

[madamlaydebug]

"AFRICAN CONTINENTAL HISTORY IS NOT COMPLEX. There are THREE paths it has taken: (1) FLOWERING indigenous Black African civilization, (2) INVADING Greco-Roman Christian then the whole of Europe, and (3) INVADING Arab Islamic seizing North Africa. Like a magnet broken in half, the Black populations CONVERTED (mentally, culturally, philosophically, spiritually and psychologically) TO BEING EUROPEAN AND ARABIC, then turned against indigenous African civilization. But, the Nile Valley INDIGENOUS African civilizations (the apex being African Kmt) are at the heart of all subsequent continental African civilizations.”

“The INDIGENOUS BLACK MASSES IN NORTH AFRICA along the Nile River and its delta were INITIALLY NEITHER CHRISTIAN NOR MUSLIM---these are the religions of the INVADERS who methodically ‘converted’ the Black populations as they century-by-century DEFEATED THEM AND TOOK their land, lives and mental/moral liberties. Initially, indigenous African supported NEITHER the Copts (offspring of the White interlopers who kept remnants of Kmt’s language), the Romans, NOR the Arabs. Since the Assyrians, Persians, Greeks and Roman predatory occupations, Nile Valley belief systems and religions were in disarray, were not written down, were TRANSPORTED AND TRANSMITTED BY ORAL TRADITION, and were decimated by invasion after invasion. This was the first nadir---THE LOWEST POINT---of African Nile Valley civilization: thoroughly defeated by force of arms, WHIPPED into servitude, BENT AND BROKEN, on the run, NOT fighting for political/economic/cultural or social independence, burdened by the extraction of tribute, tax, and the open THEFT of these Greek, Roman, Assyrian and Persian occupiers in North Africa, easily defeated by these invaders after Kmt’s ‘Last Pharaoh’ Peraa Taharqa’s (690-664BC) defeat 1300+ years earlier. When the ARABS showed up with their rusty swords, ISLAM, and a way of life adapted from deserts Africans recognized them believing they would get the Romans and their oppression off of their backs. The Arabs DID get the Romans off their backs; but they then REPLACED the Romans on their backs. Therefore, the fight for what was Kmt (now Egypt), in the SEVENTH CENTURY North African delta region, was essentially a WAR BETWEEN ARABIA AND ROME (Arabs and Europeans) starting in 639AD. INDIGENOUS AFRICANS were defeated on the sidelines—sporadically fighting as unpaid mercenaries for which ever organized invader enlisted them.”

UKMT MORALITY COLLECTIVE

Ife Kilimanjaro, Ph.D, Tdka Kilimanjaro, Ph.D. Yahra Aaneb, Sba., T’Gamba Heru, Elder

“MAAT: Guiding Principles of Moral Living”

Page 19

“Tossed in the balance was what became called EGYPT, then NORTH AFRICA, then later the carving up of the whole of Africa at the BERLIN CONFERENCE (1884-1885) after the holocaust of African enslavement. The VICTORIOUS ARABS ENDED UP SEIZING AND OCCUPYING the land mass of the GREATEST civilization of antiquity: Ancient African Kmt (renamed Egypt). In winning the war against Rome, the Arabs with THEIR ISLAM put their name, face and COUNTERFEIT CLAIM on the monuments, traditions, ancient achievements, history, and accomplishments of INDIGENOUS AFRICANS for the next 1460+ years UNTIL PRESENT. Today these INVADERS sell tickets to African monuments and pyramids (as if they built them) LIKE THE SPANISH IN MEXICO AND PERU sell tickets to the Aztec and Inca monuments of the great NATIVE POPULATIONS THEY DEFEATED.”

“The central POINT here is that AFRICAN morality and ethics in ancient Kmt ANTEDATED the Hebraic Torah, Roman Bible, and Arabic Quran BY THOUSANDS OF YEARS. It was written inMdw Ntr, it was indigenous to Africa, it was based on AFRICAN VALUES AND CULTURE. It was AUTHENTIC AND ORGANIC to Africa and Africans---it was NOT an imperialist import from Vatican City, Jerusalem, or the deserts of Arabia. It had its MERITS AND IMPERFECTIONS, but it was home-grown and reflected the very best of AFRICAN SPIRITUALITY. And yet, every moral or religious idea dominant populations didn’t write in their books is belittled as being inferior (e.g. pagan, kafir/infidel, acum) while those that are in their books are considered sacred scriptural emanations prophetically revealed exclusively to them by the gods that they, themselves, gave names to. This is the usual CHAUVINIST SOLIPSISM from self-appointed plenipotentiaries who act often quite recklessly as if they themselves are gods.”

UKMT MORALITY COLLECTIVE

Ife Kilimanjaro, Ph.D, Tdka Kilimanjaro, Ph.D. Yahra Aaneb, Sba., T’Gamba Heru, Elder

“MAAT: Guiding Principles of Moral Living”

Page 20

[steveskafte]

LACK OF WHAT WAS I've been thinking on this a whole lot lately – what makes you a native, not a foreigner? Some say it all comes down to blood, an undefined amount of generations raised in one place. If that's the case, I'm far too much of a mutt for that. My family is new to Nova Scotia, I'm one of the first bunch born here. Before that, we were outsiders in Ontario. If belonging is only a long-term proposition, you'll have to take my Turksma line to The Netherlands, or my Skafte line back to Denmark. When they came here, the former in the 1950s and the latter in the 1920s – they snapped themselves off family trees so old in each country as to render previous residence forgotten. Is that what it means to be native, to have no written or remembered record of living elsewhere? When who'd become the natives of North American arrived from Asia thousands of years ago, they were the original humans on this continent. Are you only native if you're the first? Does being native mean a guiltless claim, a hope that your DNA history holds no blame for stealing land from others? But small-scale theft and territorial dispute is always present, even in the tribal circle – nothing in our cultures is free from wanting what's not ours. We've all been passed those human instincts down the line. Maybe it's a question of how well you know your homeland. Does walking have a way of connecting me here? Streams I've followed, coastline tracked, trees climbed and forest wandered. I've got no cultural connection, more an animal awareness, a love for what is but a lack of what was. I don't crave deep roots, have no intention of moving back where my ancestors left them. I've visited Europe, and it gave me no more desire to live there than they had. If I returned now, I'd just be a foreigner all over again. Most of my life, I've felt like I just woke with no history, crawled from the mud and got dressed as if the earth made me. That's an indigenous fable in several different cultures, so I can't claim it as my own. I've long been obsessed with what I just missed. When I was a kid, I spent hours pouring over family photos – showing stories leading up to my birth in 1987. All the factors that came together to ensure my existence, informing the elements of my early days. I feel a curious draw to movies made in the decade earlier, between then and '77. They're like looking in on secret skeletons, x-rays of misplaced memories. This is why I'm so often haunting last century's history, a peeping Steve into that more immediate antiquity. There's no way to close the greater gap, between me and ancient history. My neighbours, the eternal natives – and me, the eternal foreigner. December 16, 2022 South Farmington, Nova Scotia Year 16, Day 5514 of my daily journal.

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The Art of Listening to Trees

There are still no leads on the theft of Rosade Bonsai Studio’s azalea — a plant that had been trained for more than 60 years. The precious plant was lifted at the end of the Philadelphia Flower Show last May when exhibitors like Chase Rosade were tearing down their stands. Nor has there been any resolution to the 1995 theft at the Brussel’s Bonsai Nursery in Olive Branch, Mississippi. Nor does anyone know the fate of the 32 bonsai stolen that same year from the all-Japanese collection of the Brooklyn Botanical Garden in New York. While the hope of ever recovering these and other stolen plants have by now withered and died, the very occurrence of these crimes illustrates how firmly the craft of bonsai has taken root around the world.

Like many other Asian crafts, the art of pruning and shaping trees originated in China and traveled to Japan in the sixth century, where masters refined and codified its techniques, tools and aesthetics. After World War II, U.S. soldiers were among the first to bring bonsai to the West.

Several subsequent trends coincided to propel bonsai — or (ITAL) penjing, as it is called in China — to prominence. Ceramists discovered the subtle aesthetics of Japanese pottery, religious seekers adopted Eastern forms of meditation, and the martial arts made a big splash in American pop culture via the likes of Bruce Lee. Then it all came together in the popular 1984 film, “Karate Kid,” where a wise Japanese master uses the art of pruning, wiring and shaping trees to teach a brash American boy the value of patience, observation and respect.

Since then, an estimated 20,000 to 60,000 Americans have been “listening” to trees, understanding their “true nature,” and shaping their trunks and limbs to best express it. They have even coined a name for themselves: bonsaiists. And they spend anywhere from $100 to $20,000 a year, although there are notable exceptions like the casino owner who swept through Mississippi recently and dropped $100,000 on trained trees.

Forty years after the publication of “The Japanese Art of Miniature Trees & Landscapes” by Yuji Yoshimura and Giovanna M. Halford, the first book to present the art to Westerners, bonsai societies, clubs, associations and study groups have sprouted in virtually every large American city. This month alone, bonsai clubs are holding weekend shows in cities as far-flung as Asheville, North Carolina, and San Mateo, California.

Moreover, Americans are enthusiastically contributing their own styles to the art. Although they tend to mirror natural trees as opposed to creating stylized visual poems, in the U.S. “every practitioner does his thing,” according to master bonsaiist Dan Robinson. For Mr. Robinson, this means sculpting rather than shaping bonsai, applying such unconventional methods as “antiquing” trees by hollowing out their trunks with a chain saw. For others it may mean following the advice of the budding master Hal Mahoney, who advocates forgoing $40 imported Japanese tools in favor of such ordinary implements as nail clippers. And for many, doing one’s own thing means perpetually searching out indigenous, never-before- bonsaied species. (Yes, it has also become a verb.)

Whatever the method and whatever the plant, if the results are aesthetically pleasing and the execution masterful, the trees can command thousands of dollars. And this, everyone agrees, explains the thefts and the need to protect one’s bonsai. Increasingly, clubs and associations keep their membership lists under lock and key, articles featuring prized specimens identify their owners merely by state, and bonsaiists are tying down their trees with vinyl covered steel cables, buying fierce guard dogs or transplanting their bonsai to pots equipped with tiny transmitters.

People disagree, however, on what these thefts mean. Brussel Martin, who lost prized specimens in the July 1996 robbery in Mississippi, sees nothing more insidious than kids “who steal first and think later.” In this scenario, thieves fail to realize that bonsai are works of art that are perpetually in progress. To preserve their value the plants must receive constant and appropriate care — something Mr. Martin and others fear rarely happens. “Some people think they can make a quick buck,” says Chase Rosade who has headed the Rosade Bonsai Studio in New Hope, Pennsylvania, since 1970. “But,” he adds, “the trees probably all die.” Including his prized azalea.

Others, however, credit the thieves with more sophistication. Robert Mahler, who discovered the theft at the Brooklyn Botanical garden, says “the robbers knew what they were doing. They were selective, and they switched tags around,” making it hard to piece together which trees were missing. Asked how much the trees — some of which were 25 to 30 years old — were worth, Mr. Mahler refuses to answer. “That’s how it all started,” he says, explaining that the robberies occurred one month after a radio reported the worth of old bonsai.

As in numerous other cases, alerts with photographs posted in specialized publications and on the Internet produced no leads, leaving the question of what happens to these trees unresolved. A bonsaiist could give a tree what Mr. Mahler calls “plastic surgery.” A snip here, a reshaping there, a new pot, and even its former trainer would no longer recognize his bonsai. In the absence of any viable provenance system, such alterations would make it possible to resell even well-known trees to collectors.

Some collectors may be so keen to possess magnificent specimens that they ignore their origin. And, according to Phil Stephens, an active member of the Internet Bonsai Club with a private collection of more than 80 trees, this is exactly what happens. “There is a black market for bonsai just as there is for any other valuable artwork,” he says.

A nation-wide survey would probably show that most Americans do not consider small trees in pots art. As Mr. Martin says, “in Japan, a collector might buy a $1 million tree and sell it for $1.2 million. It is a good investment, and it appreciates like a good work of art.” By comparison, bonsai in the U.S. “is a hobby.”

Yet it is Washington, D.C., not Tokyo or Beijing, that boasts the world’s only National Bonsai and Penjing Museum. Part of the U.S. National Arboretum, the museum opened in 1976 with 53 prized trees of 34 different species, some of which are 300 to 400 years old. All were donated by Japanese bonsai associations and have since been joined by other donations and acquisitions. Today, the museum consists of a Japanese wing, a Chinese collection donated by Hong Kong collector and scholar Dr. Wu Yee-sun, as well as a North American pavilion named for the 83-year-old John Naka, the Japanese- born American master widely credited with having spread the art in the West.

Just as in other art museums, machinery regulates the temperature and humidity, security guards patrol the premises, and discreet wires connect each pot to a central alarm. In terms of the money involved, bonsai may still be a hobby in the U.S. But in terms of the treatment it receives, it has graduated to art.

[impressivepress]

LACMA’s uneven new Picasso and Rivera show reveals an unprecedented, must-see discovery

In 1915, Pablo Picasso acquired a small Cubist still life painted by his casual friend and acolyte, Diego Rivera.

The young Mexican artist, 28, had been traveling through Europe and living in Paris for years, and he and Picasso were neighbors in Montparnasse. A small but powerful surprise haunts his little still life, on view in an unusual new exhibition about the dialogue between the two artists that opened last Sunday at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

The tabletop is covered by a turquoise-green decorative cloth, similar to the patterned designs Matisse was making after his return from Tangiers. In the center, a yellow, white and red bottle of sweet Anis liquor opens out like a Cubist fan, next to a triangular black inkwell pierced by the blade of a tall purplish pen.

Sand is mixed into some pigments. A technical experiment, the rough surface compares actual textures with illusionistic ones, like the painted wood-grain table that Rivera also surely borrowed from Picasso.

Amid the still life’s faceted planes, however, Rivera also painted something strange — one or maybe two wine glasses that overlap. One appears white (light reflected on glass), the other wood grain (the table refracted through glass); a mottled green circle of tablecloth pierces each. Their conjoined forms produce an unexpected double-image — not just wine glasses but a human skull.

The gesture is sly. Rivera’s painting knits together two robust traditions — a common European still-life symbol for life’s vanity, plus a distinctly Mexican version of the death’s head motif, which dates back before the European conquest to Aztec, Mixtec and even Mayan art.

Rivera’s home country, 5,000 miles from Paris, was then deep into a bloody peasant revolution — a convulsive civil war that would drag on for another five years. It was plainly on the artist’s mind.

Except for a brief 1910 visit, Rivera was absent from Mexico for the war’s duration. But the painter was no stranger to its long-simmering motivations.

He was born in the once absurdly rich silver-mining hill town of Guanajuato, scene of some of the most horrific abuses of the Spanish viceroyalty after the European conquest. The family’s house was just up the street from the market warehouse where the slain leaders of the 1810 Mexican War for Independence had their severed heads strung up by Bonaparte forces loyal to New Spain.

The small painting’s admixture of traditional and avant-garde French, Spanish and Mexican elements is thus remarkable and revealing. “Cubist Composition (Still Life With Bottle of Anis and Inkwell)” adds a subtle but inescapable political dimension to Cubism’s otherwise formal investigations, which focused on principles of representation and abstraction.

Here’s another surprise: The Rivera painting, which has remained in Picasso’s family ever since he acquired it a century ago, has apparently never been publicly displayed — or even published — before now. The LACMA exhibition will be seen only in Los Angeles and Mexico City (it travels to the Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes in June), so don’t miss the unprecedented chance for a look.

Oddly, however, neither the object label nor the exhibition catalog mention the skull. Nor does either text offer any interpretation of what the picture might suggest.

Instead, the focus is fixed on details of the artists’ biographies — on how Picasso got the Rivera painting and what Rivera got in return — plus their formal experiments with materials and techniques for re-imagining representational painting. Both are important, but neither is enough.

“Picasso and Rivera: Conversations Across Time” is uneven that way. There are wonderful objects to see. But sometimes a viewer is left hanging.

Part of the reason is structural. The exhibition is organized like a graduate school art history lecture, where slides of different artworks are projected side-by-side to compare and contrast. The show juxtaposes actual paintings, sculptures and drawings, not photographs; but the binary system creates a closed loop that has trouble breaking out.

For instance, it’s easy to read visual similarities and divergences in the Cubist faceting of paired landscapes. Picasso’s earthy color and schematic architecture in a bracing painting from the crucial summer he and Georges Braque spent painting side-by-side in the French Pyrenees couldn’t be more different from the explosive burst of light in Rivera’s semi-rural scene, where the sun breaks through fog over a viaduct and factory smokestacks.

But the Rivera, painted in an industrializing town just outside Paris, is finally more closely informed by the work of Robert Delaunay than Picasso. The pairing is peculiar — as is the colorful little still life’s juxtaposition with a fine Picasso drawing in black ink and watercolor, when its vibrant palette owes so much to Juan Gris.

The show’s structural organization is reductive, simplifying art’s layered density. That’s counterproductive, working against the very complexity that makes Picasso and Rivera such brilliant, enduring artists.

In five sections, the show means to tell the story of the relationship between the two artists, as well as the relationship between the art of antiquity and their individualized forms of Modern artistic expression. The aim is not without merit.

Both artists began their training in tradition-minded academies — Picasso at Barcelona’s Academy San Fernando, Rivera at Mexico City’s Academy San Carlos. With great facility they both drew from plaster casts of Greco-Roman sculptures, as academies everywhere taught.  

Picasso’s Venus de Milo drawing, done when he was about 14, focuses like a laser on her naked upper torso and perky bosom. Rivera’s, executed at about 16, shows the armless sculpture lying on its back on the ground — European Classicism toppled. Picasso the ladies’ man and Rivera the anti-colonialist are announced, at least in general terms.

Then comes the essential Cubist room. It’s one of two major highlights in the show, partly because great Cubist paintings are rare in L.A. museum collections.

This selection of 10 includes “Student With Newspaper” (1913-14), its inebriated young man crowned by a jaunty beret, his face derived from a bleary-eyed, West African Wobe mask. Bold block-letters spell “urnal,” a fragment of “journal,” also wittily evoking “urinal.” Mixed materials of plaster, sand, crayon and paint — a delirious experiment — connect it to Rivera’s still life.

Rivera’s magnificent “Zapatista Landscape” will join the show in February, following a prior commitment to a Paris exhibition. (LACMA’s exhibition remains through May 7.) It’s an astounding mountain of Cubist structure cobbled together from the revolution-minded iconography of a serape, sombrero, straw mats and peasant gourds all anchored by the vertical slash of Emiliano Zapata’s rifle.

The catalog, however, is determined to emphasize the painting’s formal properties at the expense of its meanings. Rivera is said to have been furious that Picasso “stole” a new foliage technique from “Zapatista Landscape” for use in the shrubbery in one of his own paintings — shrubbery he later painted out.

I suspect, though, that draining the political power of Rivera’s motif for simple decorative ends might have had something to do with the Mexican’s anger toward the Spaniard. The Zapatistas were hell-bent on agrarian reforms, fueling the revolution. Rivera’s landscape foliage wasn’t just any shrubbery, and Picasso’s “theft” could easily be seen as an affront to a painting that stood as a resolute repudiation of Spanish colonialism.

The catalog even mistakenly says that Picasso’s discovery of his own “native” antiquity, shown by his use of forms from the art of ancient Iberia, predates his Cubist phase, while Rivera’s use of pre-Columbian motifs occurred afterward, beginning in 1921. The claim is disproved by the unmentioned skull in Rivera’s Cubist still life.

In the 1920s, after World War I and the Mexican Revolution were over, what shifted in Picasso’s and Rivera’s work was the artistic balance of power. For Picasso, that meant formal play derived from ancient Iberian sculpture, which reflected his Spanish heritage, mixed with Greco-Roman formats. For Rivera it meant greater prominence for pre-Columbian painting and sculpture.

The show juxtaposes the monumental, tunic-wearing graces of Picasso’s “Three Women at the Spring,” his first Neo-Classical painting, with the “Lansdowne Artemis,” an imposing first-century Roman sculpture of a Greek deity.

Meanwhile the frontal, bilateral symmetry of Rivera’s “Flower Day,” its central figure wrapped in the red, white and green of the Mexican flag, valorizes the vendor stooping beneath the massive basket-load of calla lilies, their phallic golden stamens transforming the white blossoms into sombreros. The painting faces similarly designed basalt sculptures of the Aztec female water-deity, Chalchiuhtlicue, personification of fertility.

The 15 pre-Columbian sculptures form the show’s other highlight. All but one are on loan from the peerless collections of Mexico City’s National Museum of Anthropology and the Diego Rivera Museum-Anahuacalli, the “modern Aztec temple” housing his mammoth collection of nearly 60,000 ancient artifacts. LACMA deputy director Diana Magaloni, who co-organized the show with director Michael Govan and several specialists, is former director of the Anthropology Museum and arranged the exceedingly rare loans.

In a nutshell, then, the show’s story arc goes like this: The two artists both started with Greco-Roman antiquity, then went Modern; finally, they synthesized the radically new with the venerably old, forming a kind of “Modernist Classicism” — Picasso’s based on European models, Rivera’s on American ones.

After bloody, bitter wars, a destabilized present was undergirded with indigenous foundations. That story is already pretty well-known, of course, so points off for lack of originality. But extra credit for all those impressive highlights.

~ Christopher Knight · DEC. 9, 2016.

Los Angeles Times art critic Christopher Knight won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for criticism (he was a finalist for the prize in 1991, 2001 and 2007). In 2020, he also received the Lifetime Achievement Award in Art Journalism from the Rabkin Foundation

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by Bradley Shreve 

Below are 10 history books that TCU educators may find useful. While Native historians have authored some of them, there are also titles by non-Natives, further evidence that Native voices are influencing the wider academy. In another 20 years, I am sure that some of these books will seem antiquated and out of touch with the then present realities. Just remember, all history is revisionism—and if you think that historians and educators today have had the final word on Columbus, you’re wrong.

Calloway, C.G. (1997). New Worlds for All: Indians, Europeans, and the Remaking of Early America.Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Historian Colin Calloway helped revise American Indian history in the academy with the publication of this award-winning book. Unlike previous studies that focused on how Europeans imposed their institutions on Native people and changed them forever, Calloway explores how the contact experience was a two-way street. He argues that Native people and culture profoundly influenced the invading Europeans and that, together, they created a new, distinctly American society.

Denetdale, J.N. (2007). Reclaiming Diné History: The Legacies of Navajo Chief Manuelito and Juanita. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

In her first book, Jennifer Nez Denetdale pulled few punches in her excoriation of the academy and how Western scholarship is another form of imperialism. The first citizen of the Navajo Nation to earn a Ph.D. in history, Denetdale employs some unique methods to make her case. She examines popular constructions of Chief Manuelito and Juanita, studying photographs, stories, and even their clothing. Uncompromising and ideological, Denetdale’s study helped forge a new path in the academy for Indigenous peoples’ history.

Dunbar-Ortiz, R. (2014). An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States. Boston: Beacon Press.

Perhaps more than any publication in the past decade, this book dramatically showcases recent historical revisionism. It is a scorching condemnation of the United States as a settler-colonial state built on White supremacy and genocide. Dunbar-Ortiz rips previous historical interpretations (including many in this bibliography) as perpetuating national myths and rationalizing land theft and murder. Even the multiculturalism that informs many histories today fails to escape Dunbar-Ortiz’s indictment, which she claims is “an insidious smoke screen” that obscures the country’s “national chauvinism” and sordid history. Written concisely and accessibly, this book packs a powerful ideological punch.

Fixico, D.L. (2013). Indian Resilience and Rebuilding: Indigenous Nations in the Modern American West. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

Donald Fixico, a Native historian who currently teaches at Arizona State University, has authored or edited numerous volumes over the past 30 years. In his most recent book, he re-conceptualizes modern American Indian history as one of great achievement and progress. Where most histories focus on the tragedies of allotment, assimilation, termination, and relocation, Fixico explores the expansion of sovereignty and self-determination. Native nations were on the “verge of extinction in 1890,” he says, but persevered and went on to build their communities, harness resources, and protect their land base. The road was hard and there remain many obstacles ahead, but Fixico maintains historians should “look anew at what has been accomplished by Indians” over the past century.

Hoxie, F.E. (2012). This Indian Country: American Indian Activists and the Place They Made. New York: Penguin.

Acclaimed historian Frederick Hoxie traces American Indian history using biographies of Native activists who worked on behalf of their tribal communities. Some of the subjects in this book will be familiar to readers, while others will not. But by illuminating these obscured histories, Hoxie shows how individuals have deftly utilized political and legal channels for the betterment of Indian Country and the larger Native community.

Jennings, F. (1975). The Invasion of America: Indians, Colonialism, and the Cant of Conquest. New York: W.W. Norton and Company.

Francis Jennings’ groundbreaking book did the same for professional or academic history as Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee did for popular history. While Brown’s bestseller focused on the American West, Jennings uses New England as his case study of European conquest and its catastrophic effect on the Native nations. Jennings was writing during the Watergate scandal and a low point in Americans’ trust in government institutions, which clearly had a profound influence on the tenor of this study.

Mann, C.C. (2005). 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. New York: Vintage Books.

Charles C. Mann was not trained as an academic historian, but he does have a profound gift for writing. This acclaimed, bestselling popular history is both highly readable and intellectually stimulating. Mann brings to the masses a dramatic reconceptualization of the Americas before contact. Utilizing a variety of methodologies, his book shows how Native people transformed landscapes and made impressive technological advancements long before the arrival of Europeans.

Nabokov, P. (Ed.). (1991). Native American Testimony: A Chronicle of Indian-White Relations from Prophecy to the Present, 1492-1992. New York: Penguin.

Unlike the other books on this list, Nabokov’s edited volume presents a collection of Native voices from the past 500 years, offering Indigenous perspectives on major historical events and developments. Recently, Nabokov has been heavily criticized for his book The Origin Myth of Acoma Pueblo, which revealed sacred stories without the tribe’s consent. This volume, however, has been widely acclaimed, including accolades from Vine Deloria Jr. who penned the foreword. The book presents a wide array of Native viewpoints on issues ranging from Anglo trade practices during the colonial or early republic eras to the Alcatraz occupation and beyond.

Richter, D.K. (2001). Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

“If we shift our perspective to try to view the past in a way that faces east from Indian country, history takes on a very different appearance,” asserts historian Daniel Richter. That is how this Pulitzer Prize finalist approaches the early history of what would evolve into the United States. Rather than succumb to the classic national story of westward expansion, readers view the contact experience and its repercussions from Indian Country, which, Richter reminds us, was America until recently.

Roessel, R. (1974). Navajo Livestock Reduction: A National Disgrace. Chinle, AZ: Navajo Community College Press.

Diné College founder Ruth Roessel compiled this collection of stories and oral histories chronicling the federal government’s livestock reduction program of the 1930s. All of the stories are firsthand accounts from Navajo people who experienced this tragic chapter in American history. Moreover, this was one of the first titles from the first tribal college press, further underscoring the historiographical significance of Roessel’s work. Difficult to find, this gem is as much about self-determination and sovereignty in the historical discourse as it is about livestock reduction.

Bradley Shreve, Ph.D., taught history at Diné College for several years and currently is managing editor of Tribal College Journal.

[sa-waai]

Interesting read.

Here's Why African History is being suppressed and ignored by white scholars. RACISM, HISTORY AND LIES

Max Dashu

Some doctrines of racial supremacy as classically taught in Euro/American institutions, textbooks and media:

PHYSICAL CALIBRATION DOCTRINE: In which white anthropologists treat people as racial specimens, measuring "cephalic indices" and attempting to prove superiority of the "white" brain. Ugly racist terminology: "prognathism," "platyrhiny," "steatopygous," "sub-Egyptian." Mug-shot lineups of "the Veddan female," "Arapaho male, "Negroid type," "Mongoloid specimen" characterize this approach. Out of favor in the mid-20th-century, it has enjoyed a revisionist comeback with sociobiology and works claiming racial differentials in intelligence, such as "The Bell Curve."

TECHNOLOGICAL CALIBRATION DOCTRINE: Insists on forcing archaeological finds as well as living cultures into a grid of "development" based on whether tools, materials and techniques valued by "Western" scholars were in use. Example: "They were a stone age civilization who never discovered the wheel!" This model forces cultures into a progressional paradigm: Old and New Stone Ages, Bronze Age, Iron Age, Industrial Revolution, Space Age. This classification ignores the complexity of culture, and the fact that metallurgic technology and military might are not the ultimate measure of advanced culture.

STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT DOCTRINE: The assumption that "primitive" cultures represent lower "stages" in historical evolution, and have yet to attain advanced forms of culture. One English scholar referred to "the child-races of Africa." Usually, social hierarchy, militarization and industrialization are taken as prime measures of "advanced" civilization. In the 19th century, scholars openly used the terms "savage," "barbarian," "civilized." Though these offensive words have (mostly) been dropped, the underlying assumptions are still quite influential. (For a good discussion of how the insistence on talking about "tribes" distorts African history, see http://www.africaaction.org/bp/ethall.htm. )

SPREAD OF CIVILIZATION DOCTRINE: Credits all achievements to conquering empires, assuming their superiority in science, technology, and government. Adherents are usually incapable of perceiving advanced earth-friendly systems of land management, agronomy, medicine, collective social welfare networks, healing, astronomical knowledge, or profound philosophical traditions among peoples considered "primitive" by dominant "Western" standards.

PASSING OF THE TORCH DOCTRINE: Claims a chain of cultural transmission from Mesopotamia and Egypt to Greece to Rome to western Europe to the USA, leaving vast gaps where the history of the rest of the world should be. (And the discussion never returns to Egypt or Iraq to consider what happened there after the fall of their ancient empires.) Most of the planet's cultures are discussed only in relation to the European conquest, if mentioned at all. As a result, few people have any idea of the history of Sumatra, Honduras, Niger, Ecuador, Mozambique, Ohio, Hokkaido, Samoa, or even European countries such as Lithuania or Bosnia.

IF IT WAS GREAT, IT MUST HAVE BEEN WHITE: If advanced science, art, or architecture is found in Africa or South America, then Phoenecians, Greeks, Celts, Vikings (or, in the extreme case, space aliens) must be invoked to explain their presence. (Here, whiteness often functions as a relative concept, as "lighter than.") This bias gives rise to a pronounced tendency to date American or African cultures later than warranted, and as a result dating for these regions is constantly having to be revised further back into the past as evidence of greater antiquity piles up.

Corollary: IF IT WAS WHITE, IT MUST HAVE BEEN GREAT. Thus, the conqueror Charlemagne was a great man, in spite of his genocidal campaign against the Saxons, but the Asian conquerors Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan were simply evil. Stereotypes of head-hunters picture Africans (in the absence of any evidence for such a practice there) but never Celtic head-hunters in France and Britain -- much less Lord Kitchener making off with the Mahdi's skull in Sudan, or U.S. settlers taking scalps and body parts of Indian people. This doctrine also underlies the common assumption that European conquest must have improved life for subject peoples.

A 19th century French engraving imagines the conquest of Algeria as a showering of the benefits of superior civilization on abject, genuflecting North Africans.

IF IT WAS NOT WHITE, AND ITS GREATNESS IS UNDENIABLE, THEN IT MUST BE DEPRECATED IN SOME WAY: Example:The Epic of Man, published in the '60s by Time/Life Books, says of the advanced civilization of ancient Pakistan: "It is known that a static and sterile quality pervaded Indus society." It used to be the academic fashion to call ancient Egypt a "moribund" civilization which "stifled creativity." Similar writings dismissed the "Incas" (Quechua) as "totalitarian," or the Chinese as "isolated" and "resistant to change," ignoring their interchange with steppe societies as well as Southeast Asian cultures.

The AFRICAN GAP DOCTRINE: After examining the first humans hundreds of thousands of years ago, this historical approach completely skips over most of the African archaeological record. It discusses ancient Egypt but ascribes its civilization to "the Middle East," denying its African identity and archaeological connections with Saharan and southern Nilotic civilizations. Saharan civilization, Ile-Ife or Mwanamutapa are not discussed at all. Africa is simply dropped from historical consideration until the era of European slaving and colonization, when it is portrayed as culturally and technologically deficient. The existence of female spheres of power in Africa is ignored.

The BERING STRAIT DOCTRINE insists that all indigenous American peoples came across a land bridge between Siberia and Alaska, filtering down through Central America into South America. Problem: numerous archaeological sites in the Americas predate any possible Bering Strait migration by many thousands of years. Access from Alaska to the rest of North America was blocked for millennia by two great ice sheets that covered Canada. An narrow opening that might have allowed passage appeared much too late (about 13,500 years ago) to explain the growing evidence that people were living in both North and South America much earlier than these "first" migrations.

By 1997-98, the tide of opinion began to turn: several scientific conclaves declared that a majority of attending scholars rejected the Bering Strait theory as a full explanation of how the Americas were peopled.The long-doctrinal hypothesis of Clovis hunters as the first immigrants is crumbling before the new dating, as hundreds of pre-Clovis sites pile up: Cactus Hill, Virginia (13,500 BP); Meadowcroft Rock Shelter in Pennsylvania (14,000 - 17,000 Before Present); Monte Verde (13,500 BP); Pedra-Furada, Brazil (15,000 BP, and possibly as old as 32,000 BP).

Bering Strait diehards discount the oral histories of indigenous Americans. In spite of the huge diversity among the American peoples and differences between most Americans and east Asians, all are declared to be of "Mongoloid racial origin." After the initial press stampede declaring "Kennewick Man" to be "white," study of the genetic evidence shows something entirely different. Instead, it appears that there have been several waves of migration: from central China, from the ancient Jomon culture of Japan, from south Asia or the Pacific islands. And "Luzia," an 11,500-year-old female skeleton in Brazil "appeared to be more Negroid in its cranial features than Mongoloid," in the stodgy anthropological terminology of the New York Times (Nov 9, 1999). (Actually she most closely resembles aborignal Australians.) But there is also a uniquely North American X-haploid group of mitochondrial DNA, which has yet to be explained.

THE POWER OF NAMING

STEREOTYPING entire peoples as mad, uncontrollable threats: "Wild Indians," "Yellow Hordes" or "the Yellow Peril." As inferior nonhumans: "primitives," "savages," "gooks," "niggers" -- this last term used not only against African-Americans, but also by 18th-century English colonizers of Egypt and India. Even the word "natives," which originally meant simply the people born in a country and by extension the aboriginal inhabitants, took on heavy racist coloration as an inferior Other.

POLARIZATION: "Scientific thought" vs. "primitive belief"; "undeveloped" vs "civilized"; or "the world's great religions" vs. "tribal superstitions," "cults," "idolatry" or "devil-worship." Depending on where it was created, a sculpture could either be a "masterpiece of religious art" or an "idol," "fetish," or "devil." Few people realize that "Western" scientists did not match the accuracy of ancient Maya calculations of the length of the solar year until the mid-20th century.

Indians who resist colonization and land theft are commonly portrayed as evil in popular media, which applies negative labels such as "Renegades." Here indigenous people are Other; the intruders in their country are The Good Guys. The white hero is named after the Texas Rangers, systematic killers of Indian families. His Indian sidekick's name, Tonto, means "fool, stupid person" in Spanish. RENAMING: Dutch colonists called the Khoi-khoi people "Hottentots" (stutterers). Russians called the northwest Siberian Nentsy "Samoyed" (cannibals). These are blatant examples, but many nationalities are still called by unflattering names given by their enemies: "Sioux" (Lakota); "Miao" (Hmong); "Lapps" (Saami); "Basques" (Euskadi); "Eskimos" (Inuit). European names have replaced the originals in many places: Nigeria, Australia, New Caledonia, New Britain, etc. (But "Rhodesia" bit the dust, after a revolution.)

DEGRADATION OF MEANINGS: "Mumbo jumbo" has become a cliché signifying meaningless superstitions, but it comes from a Mandinke word -- mama dyambo -- for a ritual staff bearing the image of a female ancestor. (Look it up in any good dictionary.) "Fetish" now connotes an obsessive sexual fixation, but originated as a Portuguese interpretation of sacred West African images as "sorcery" (feitição). The holy city of Islam is often appropriated in phrases like "a Mecca for shoppers."

DOUBLE-THINK: Conquest becomes "unification," "pacification,""opening up," and conquered regions are dubbed "protectorates." The convention is to use Europe as the standard, writing texts from the viewpoint of the conquerors / colonizers. Thus, a Rajasthani rebellion against English rule was termed the "Indian Mutiny." A peculiarity of this thinking is the tendency to refer to times of bloody invasions and enslavement with respectful nostalgia, as in "The Golden Age of Greece" and "The Glory That Was Rome," or "How the West Was Won." British subjugation of southern Nigeria is recast as The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.

A contributor to Men Become Civilized, edited by Trevor Cairns, explains it all to children:

"When the king of one city conquered others, he would have to make sure that all the people in all the cities knew what to do. He would have to see that they all had rules to follow, so that they would live peacefully together."

Double-think finds ways to recast genocide as regrettable but necessary, due to failings of the people being killed, who are somehow unable to "adapt." Distancing the agent is key here, obscuring the violence with the idea that some kind of natural process is at work: "vanishing races," "by that time the Indians had disappeared."

THE POWER OF IMAGES

Hollywood tomtoms beat as fake Indians jump up and down, uttering brainless cries and grunts. There's the "squaw" complex in literature and cinema, the faithful Indian sidekick, and Robinson Crusoe's "Man Friday." John Wayne as the Western movie hero, saying: "There's humans and then there's Comanches." Or in real life, the actor tried to justify the settler theft of Indian countries: "There were great numbers of people who needed new land, and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves."

This picture appeared in an insurance ad.

Advertising is an important transmitter of historical misrepresentation. It draws on colonial mythologies such as the notion that the Dutch "bought" Manhattan for the equivalent of $24 in trade goods --in spite of the fact that the Indians did not think of land as something that could be sold. The role of violence is completely obliterated. Even history books do not go into the massacres of Native people. On Staten Island settlers slaughtered the people they called "Wappingers," and afterward played football with their severed heads. Tarzan goes up against witch doctors and eye-rolling African chiefs. The Caribbean is shown as full of fearful, superstitious natives and zombies, Arabs who have nothing to do all day but loll around in harems, or cheat the white hero. Seductive Suzie Wongs, thieving Mexicans, and shiftless and sexually insatiable African-Americans. Movies commonly depict the Chinese as obsequious and deceitful, Arabs as treacherous, Africans as ignorant and barbaric.

COUNTERPOINT

The Mande were farming millet and other crops in West Africa in 6500-5000 BCE.

Temples in Peru and Sudan are much older than the Parthenon.

People in Mississippi, Illinois and Mexico traded with each other and exchanged ideas and symbols, as the the sea-faring Ecuadorians did with Costa Rica and western Mexico.

A small-statured Black people built the oldest civilization in southeast Asia, leaving megalithic temples and statuary in south India, Cambodia, Sumatra and other Indonesian islands.

Archaeology shows that the earliest formative influences on ancient Egypt came from Sudan and the Sahara, not the "Middle East."

The oldest megalithic calendar in the world has recently been discovered in the Egyptian Sahara, dating back to 7000 years ago. European megaliths may have an African origin.

Polynesian mariners had begun navigating by the stars and settling the vast ocean expanses of the Pacific islands before the time of Moses.

WHAT GETS DEFINED AS HISTORY?

In the last half century, the boundaries of "acceptable" history have been expanded by a multidisciplinary approach, including sources previously dismissed: orature (oral tradition), linguistics, anthropology, social history, art, music and other cultural sources. More recently, the social locations of historians have come under consideration as a factor shaping their perspectives, along with a sense that there is no absolutely "objective" view of history. Past claims of objectivity have biases clearly visible today, notably in siding with European settlers and slavers against non-christian cultures, and the almost total eclipse of female acts and experience from historical accounts.

A reader who might react negatively to a blatant expression of racism often misses perceiving one cloaked in scholarly language, in assumptions, judgments and misinformation most people have not been educated to catch. It does not occur to many people to question a pronounced overemphasis on Europe, the smallest continent (actually, a subcontinent of Asia.) If a chapter or two on African and Asian history is inserted in a textbook, publishers go ahead and call it a world history. Typically, media depictions of history have not caught up with information now available in specialized academic sources, and continue to present the old stereotypes and distortions as fact.

More on Racism, History and Lies

BARBARIANS AT THE GATES

In the early '90s a hue and cry was raised in the national media against "multiculturalism." It threatened the very foundations of Western Civilization, explained an outpouring of magazine articles and newspaper columns which shed much heat but little light. A Newsweek cover blared: "THOUGHT POLICE: There's a 'Politically Correct' Way to Talk About Race, Sex and Ideas. Is This the New Enlightenment -- Or the New McCarthyism?" As if this wasn't heavy-handed enough, it adds a warning, "Watch What You Say." (December 24, 1990)

"In U.S. classrooms, battles are flaring over values that are almost a reverse image of the American mainstream. As a result, a new intolerance is on the rise." William A. Henry III, "Upside Down in the Groves of Academe", Time Magazine, April 1, 1991

"'It used to be thought that ideas transcend race, gender and class, that there are such things as truth, reason, morality and artistic excellence, which can be understood and aspired to by everyone, of whatever race, gender or class.' Now we have democracy in the syllabus, affirmative action in the classroom. 'No one believes in greatness.' Bate says mournfully. 'That's gone.'" Gertrude Himmelfarb, Op-Ed in New York Times Magazine, June 5, 1991

"If there is insufficient authentic African culture to meet the demands of self-esteem, then culture must be borrowed from ancient Egypt. No black pharaohs? A few must be invented. Not enough first-rate women poets? Let second-raters be taught instead." --James Kilpatrick, "Poisoning the Groves of Academe," San Francisco Chronicle, April 15, 1991

The assumption that were are no great women poets, no black pharaohs, no other greatness than the usual diet of "Western Civilization" is so ingrained that it is regarded as incontrovertible. Protesting the monochrome, all-male landscape of classic pedagogy becomes "intolerance." But what then are we to call the refusal to open up media and educational horizons to the full spectrum of human achievement?

A response to John Baines' review (August 11, 1991) of Cheikh Anta Diop's Civilization or Barbarism and Martin Bernal's Black Athena:

To the Editor, New York Times Book Review:

Mr. Baines' review of Diop and Bernal express alarm that their books "attack modern conceptions of the origins of Western Civilization" by showing the anteriority of African (especially Egyptian) achievements. It seems to me that he would like to deny the context of the whole discussion, which has been centuries of exalting the Greeks as the fount of Western Civilization and denying the role of Africa in the ancient world. Egypt is treated as part of the "Middle East," and her relations with the rest of Africa ignored. In this context, to demand an "intellectual contribution that will stand without reference to issues of race" is to perpetuate an injurious status quo.

This denial is especially ludicrous in the frequently-heard claim that because Egyptians were "ethnically mixed," they were not black. Southern African peoples are ethnically mixed, yet it would occur to no one that they are other than black. More to the point, if an ancient Egyptian were to find herself in the United States, she would fall within the range of colors we describe as "black." This business of reddish-brown-skinned men and golden-skinned women was a convention in Egyptian art (and one adopted by the Cretans, Greek vases, and Etruscans, bearing out the hypothesis of Egyptian influence). If Mr. Baine wants to take the golden women as a racial marker for light-skinned Egyptians, is he also willing to concede dark-brown-skinned Etruscan men? His claim that considering the race of the Egyptians is "unhelpful"--and the many others who declare it irrelevant--is coy and evasive.

Max Dashu, Suppressed Histories Archives

[The Times did not publish this letter.]

See Ibrahim Sundiata's excellent article, Afrocentrism: The Argument We're Really Having, for more discussion of the African-ness of the Egyptians and racialist agendas of denial.

Here is a recent example of how the pernicious ideas described in this article percolate into popular consciousness. An October 18, 2005 post to an Illinois Museum site reacted to the one of the greatest sculptures in Indian America (known as the "Birger figurine") falls back on the Technological Calibration model:

"The Cahokia Indians never made it out of the stone age, not even to the primitive level of metal working found in the Mayan, Toltec, and Inca societies further south... [If they had left a written record, we would know more] but since they never made it that far, we have to rely on their works." [from the site Indian History: Unearthed artifacts from Cahokia]

More food for thought from Peggy McIntosh, who wrote White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack (1988)

“I have met very few men who were truly distressed about systemic, unearned male advantage and conferred dominance. And so one question for me and others like me [meaning white feminists concerned with male domination] is whether we will be like them, or whether we will get truly distressed, even outraged, about unearned race advantage and conferred dominance, and, if so, what we will do to lessen them. In any case, we need to do more work in identifying how they actually affect our daily lives. Many, perhaps most, of our white students in the United States think that racism doesn’t affect them because they are not people of color; they do not see “whiteness” as a racial identity. In addition, since race and sex are not the only advantaging systems at work, we need similarly to examine the daily experience of having age advantage, or ethnic advantage, or physical ability, or advantage related to nationality, religion, or sexual orientation….

“Disapproving of the system won’t be enough to change them. I was taught to think that racism could end if white individuals changed their attitude. But a 'white skin in the United States opens many doors for whites whether or not we approve of the way dominance has been conferred on us. Individual acts can palliate but cannot end, these problems.”

Peggy McIntosh, Ph.D. from the Winter 1990 issue of Independent School

© 2000 Max Dashu ... Updated 2008

Suppressed Histories Archives

[ecotone99]

[SF] Matilda and Hucks

Matilda would feel immense burden: annoyed with only herself, for having unloading her family issues upon her readers. She had avoided battle for days: too embarrassed by the permanent fixtures called family, as to continue on...acting like a hero. Matilda would find her services requested once more this day: as the Boar boasted of his favorite liar...to be cut free from their crimes. The woman named Hucks had decided to prematurely abandon ship, as the world began to hold the Boar accountable for his inhuman treatment: holding humans hostage by throwing people in a refurbished cage.

To this lack of accountability: Matilda cracked her neck from side to side, as an antiquated way to warn Hucks that she now held target...warranting a display of her might. Matilda sought out the educated woman and asked why she boasted of her theft of services as she had said nothing to the masses upon her stage: yet willingly received payment from the tax-payers...that had only wished for answers and a better tomorrow. The woman began to mumble and huck her excuse filled rhetoric once more...forever blinded by the truths she had formed out of thin air by disconfiguring the truth.

Matilda didn’t have time for this shit. She wielded her wee fist: meeting the large gaping mouth of Hucks with her physical might at last. She watched as the woman smiled and wiped the blood from the corner of her mouth…the lack of discipline finally getting the best of her. Hucks charged at Matilda like a sow in a territorial rage: contemptuous, as she was left to face her own issues head on. Matilda felt the tall woman grow heavier: Hucks pummeled the petite woman to the ground, and began to squeal in rage. Getting her own ass handed to her...was pretty common for Matilda, and so she defensively held her forearms up as to shield herself from the beast. Hucks held the upper hand...the woman: a dead-eyed savage born from immense privilege. Hucks continued punching the stranger and squealing that her only crime had been: annoyance to her own allergic reactions to the truth.

Matilda did as she had done with Athena: yelling at the woman that she had won, and that she held no contention for her. Hucks continued delivering blows upon her protected stance: unsure if she were allowed to stop without dictation of the Boar crowned king. The woman straddled her opponent and silently began to cry. Matilda began to weep once more: for her furious words only made situations worsen. The sow of a woman finally seized from her one-sided fight and allowed Matilda to set herself free from below her spread-legged stance: holding her weight on the small woman…half her size. Matilda had only sought out the woman for having dare called the people of her Nation and lands weak: if they cried. Matilda had been forced to address the anguish she coveted, as it had been a mask for the hatred and fear she held towards people: the curse of agoraphobia. Matilda had emotionally cast away her own immeasurable might: locked away in an invisible cage.

Matilda sat with the woman, as she avoided making sound with her flowing tears. She asked Hucks of her new strategy: now that she had turned her family into pariahs...forever cursed with political leprosy. Matilda informed Hucks that the money she had stolen was finite, as her grandchildren would be burdened and impoverished by a future filled with environmental degradation. The woman said nothing at last: her lies finally falling heavy as they left her biggass mouth hole. Matilda returned to her chipper self: exclaiming that the woman had served punishment enough, for she had to feel the world cringe as the Boar had kissed her for good luck. Matilda informed Hucks that the gesture had made her barf in her mouth a bit, and that she was now upset by her own inability to unsee: the Boar kissing Hucks goodbye. Matilda felt relieved that the woman attempted to smile in response to her disgust...for a kiss she hadn’t even been forced to receive. Evidently she found humorous joy in the truth.

Matilda continued on with her impromptu speech: telling Hucks in friendly confidence: that the Boar wasn’t the only thing that terrorized the minds of the citizens. Matilda informed her that her honorary Grandma named Wanda had once resided valid points to such issues: stating that there could be no good reason for the woman to say “me too”, as long as citizens demanded the perpetual “need” for a bachelor. This resonated with Hucks: having forgot there were other aspects of the “culture” campaigned by the dead-eyed savages themselves. Matilda asked Hucks finally: why she were held accountable for all of her Peoples. Informing Hucks that they had called her a “drunk Indian” as a youth: her only crime was believing that she had been equal to her peers up until that point. She told Hucks how she had flipped her life around: yet the dead-eye savages still called her youth “drunk Indians” anytime they pleased. She boasted that her Indigenous Warriors had intentionally deviated from the data provided by their ancestors, and now openly fought for sobriety as a family. Matilda noted the irony: for the fact that a perverse man-baby...had been elected hold position upon the Supreme Court, and diminished title and the entirety of their important work...simply with his attendance. Their Justice System would forever be tethered to the man-baby and deemed incompetent or intoxicated by the citizens...as the Supreme Court historically trademarked the term “I like beer” by accident. Forever holding the entire nation accountable for its growing battle with alcoholism. Matilda didn’t need hate-filled and irreconcilable words to talk shit...for these things had now come to fruition as historical truth.

Matilda saw the woman begin to grow angry again: tired of not talking aboot politics once more. Hucks stood up to leave, and felt the small woman hug her tall torso: wishing her luck and saying goodbye to the woman with unsurpassable talents for lying. Matilda told Hucks that she no longer needed to lie: safe and surrounded by love and admiration, and reminded her to stay hydrated to replenish her tears. Matilda excitedly waved her farewell, as Hucks slowly walked off into the distance: her future unknown. The woman confused forever by this random battle with a citizen…evidently disarmed by forgein words of appraisals: for her furrowed brow were the only part of her that were initially cursed to tell the truth.

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