#indigenous thought

[nexwsyexw-the-curious]

Marxism is as alien to my culture as capitalism and Christianity are.

-Russell Means, Oglala Lakota patriot, July 1980

Below is an excerpt of the speech from which it comes, and a link to the full transcript at the bottom.

"It takes a strong effort on the part of each American Indian not to become Europeanized. The strength for this effort can only come from the traditional ways, the traditional values that our elders retain. It must come from the hoop, the four directions, the relations: it cannot come from the pages of a book or a thousand books. No European can ever teach a Lakota to be Lakota, a Hopi to be Hopi. A master's degree in "Indian Studies" or in "education" or in anything else cannot make a person into a human being or provide knowledge into traditional ways. It can only make you into a mental European, an outsider. 

"I should be clear about something here, because there seems to be some confusion about it. When I speak of Europeans or mental Europeans, I'm not allowing for false distinctions. I'm not saying that on the one hand there are the by-products of a few thousand years of genocidal, reactionary, European intellectual development which is bad; and on the other hand there is some new revolutionary intellectual development which is good. I'm referring here to the so-called theories of Marxism and anarchism and "leftism" in general. I don't believe these theories can be separated from the rest of the of the European intellectual tradition. It's really just the same old song. 

"The process began much earlier. Newton, for example, "revolutionized" physics and the so-called natural sciences by reducing the physical universe to a linear mathematical equation. Descartes did the same thing with culture. John Locke did it with politics, and Adam Smith did it with economics. Each one of these "thinkers" took a piece of the spirituality of human existence and converted it into code, an abstraction. They picked up where Christianity ended: they "secularized" Christian religion, as the "scholars" like to say--and in doing so they made Europe more able and ready to act as an expansionist culture. Each of these intellectual revolutions served to abstract the European mentality even further, to remove the wonderful complexity and spirituality from the universe and replace it with a logical sequence: one, two, three. Answer! 

"This is what has come to be termed "efficiency" in the European mind. Whatever is mechanical is perfect; whatever seems to work at the moment--that is, proves the mechanical model to be the right one--is considered correct, even when it is clearly untrue. This is why "truth" changes so fast in the European mind; the answers which result from such a process are only stopgaps, only temporary, and must be continuously discarded in favor of new stopgaps which support the mechanical models and keep them (the models) alive. 

"Hegel and Marx were heirs to the thinking of Newton, Descartes, Locke and Smith. Hegel finished the process of secularizing theology--and that is put in his own terms--he secularized the religious thinking through which Europe understood the universe. Then Marx put Hegel's philosophy in terms of "materialism," which is to say that Marx despiritualized Hegel's work altogether. Again, this is in Marx' own terms. And this is now seen as the future revolutionary potential of Europe. Europeans may see this as revolutionary, but American Indians see it simply as still more of that same old European conflict between being and gaining. The intellectual roots of a new Marxist form of European imperialism lie in Marx'--and his followers'--links to the tradition of Newton, Hegel and the others. 

"[...]

"There's a rule of thumb which can be applied here. You cannot judge the real nature of a European revolutionary doctrine on the basis of the changes it proposes to make within the European power structure and society. You can only judge it by the effects it will have on non-European peoples. This is because every revolution in European history has served to reinforce Europe's tendencies and abilities to export destruction to other peoples, other cultures and the environment itself. I defy anyone to point out an example where this is not true.

"So now we, as American Indian people, are asked to believe that a "new" European revolutionary doctrine such as Marxism will reverse the negative effects of European history on us. European power relations are to be adjusted once again, and that's supposed to make things better for all of us. But what does this really mean?

"[...]

"Now let's suppose that in our resistance to extermination we begin to seek allies (we have). Let's suppose further that we were to take revolutionary Marxism at its word: that it intends nothing less than the complete overthrow of the European capitalists order which has presented this threat to our very existence. This would seem to be a natural alliance for American Indian people to enter into. After all, as the Marxists say, it is the capitalists who set us up to be a national sacrifice. This is true as far as it goes. 

"But, as I've tried to point out, this "truth" is very deceptive. Revolutionary Marxism is committed to even further perpetuation and perfection of the very industrial process which is destroying us all. It offers only to "redistribute" the results--the money, maybe--of this industrialization to a wider section of the population. It offers to take wealth from the capitalists and pass it around; but in order to do so, Marxism must maintain the industrial system. Once again, the power relations within European society will have to be altered, but once again the effects upon American Indian peoples here and non-Europeans elsewhere will remain the same. This is much the same as when power was redistributed from the church to private business during the so-called bourgeois revolution. European society changed a bit, at least superficially, but its conduct toward non-Europeans continued as before. You can see what the American Revolution of 1776 did for American Indians. It's the same old song. song. 

"Revolutionary Marxism, like industrial society in other forms, seeks to "rationalize" all people in relation to industry--maximum industry, maximum production. It is a doctrine that despises the American Indian spiritual tradition, our cultures, our lifeways. Marx himself called us "precapitalists" and "primitive." Precapitalist simply means that, in his view, we would eventually discover capitalism and become capitalists; we have always been economically retarded in Marxist terms. The only manner in which American Indian people could participate in a Marxist revolution would be to join the industrial system, to become factory workers, or "proletarians," as Marx called them. The man was very clear about the fact that his revolution could only occur through the struggle of the proletariat, that the existence of a massive industrial system is a precondition of a successful Marxist society. 

"[...]

"So, I suppose to conclude this, I should state clearly that leading anyone toward Marxism is the last thing on my mind. Marxism is as alien to my culture as capitalism and Christianity are. In fact, I can say I don't think I'm trying to lead anyone toward anything. To some extent I tried to be a "leader," in the sense that the white media like to use that term, when the American Indian Movement was a young organization. This was a result of a confusion I no longer have. You cannot be everything to everyone. I do not propose to be used in such a fashion by my enemies. I am not a leader. I am an Oglala Lakota patriot. That is all I want and all I need to be. And I am very comfortable with who I am."

People love to go “ in the Soviet Union they picked your job for you 😭” yeah cunt that’s what we’re doin now too except they make you bark like a dog for three weeks straight first getting denied everywhere you wanna work until you end up somewhere you dont like anyway. Let’s just cut out that middle man why don’t we

[twotwotwospirit]

reminder that indigenous queer folks do not need to fit your colonial definitions or conceptions of queerness in order to be valid, worthy, and spectacular.

if your concept of what a lesbian looks like requires that all lesbians have shaved or short hair, then you’re excluding ntv lesbians who honour our ancestors by growing our hair long.

i’m no less of a butch for having hair that goes down to my tailbone. i’m no less of a butch for wearing my hair in a braid. i’m also still butch when i wear beaded earrings, a ribbon skirt, and moccasins.

if your idea of queerness is tied to whiteness, that’s just a shame. indigeneity and queerness go together like inhaling and exhaling. one cannot exist without the other.

[woodsfae]

For usamericans who may not know how to support decolonization and indigenous people in their every-day lives, may I suggest checking this list of native-owned businesses, curated and maintained by indigenous folks. There's food, candles, cbd pre-rolls, clothes, jewelry, hats, baby things, handicrafts, art, and hundreds of other useful and wonderful things. I check this list before I buy non-native owned as often as I can.

Also check out the native-owned (pulitzer-prize winner Louise Erdrich started it!) bookstore and press Milkweed Editions (dot org) for an amazing selection of books by indigenous authors. I recommend Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer (a collection of essays that will change your thinking if your mind is open at all) that's great for sitting down to read for bite-sized chunks. For book recommendations, check out this infographic!

Do you own property and want to support landback but still need a place to live? Odds are good that there's established precedence in your area to transfer its jurisduction to a local tribe and pay your land taxes and etc to them instead of the settler government!

Here is a list of charities and fundraisers for indigenous support.

Other ways to educate yourself and learn what indigenous people are working on nationally and locally is to follow indigenous people online! Many Native peoples on various social medias tag with #indigenous, #native, and by looking at those you will find many other tags and people to follow.

If you have extra cash, consider paying indigenous people's bail, donating to some of the causes linked above, or look for local initiatives to support in your own community!

[mademaciyapi]

Happy Native American Heritage Month

admittedly, when 'Indigenous People's Day' or 'Native American Heritage Month' come around, i can't help but feel a little angry. millions of my people suffered and died at the hands of this country - and they think one month of remembrance is enough to make up for it?

but as i've gotten older, i've started to feel more appreciative of the fact that i am even here to celebrate these holidays at all. because the truth is, i'm the survivor of a genocide. i think that i should try to celebrate the fact that i am alive today, rather than only being angry about moments in history that i can't change. not everyone is as lucky as me - especially right now, on the other side of the world where such horrendous things are happening all over again to someone else..

but i can't exactly stop the anger completely (especially with current events in mind) so maybe meeting halfway would be acceptable.

I lived, bitch!! they tried to kill us, but i'm still here! and that's worth celebrating.

[transjewdyke]

would you say the same to a white person living on the american continents? when a part of a community commits genocide, when a part of a community does harm, the whole is culpable—at least, that is what my o:wa taught me. a lot of western jews are wildly unaware of indigenous practice, which seems out of place when coupled with the claim of global community.

i get that a lot of you don’t/won’t agree, but this is my stance as a a:shiwi native and a jew, and i am free to live in that truth, just as you are free to neglect it

you’d punch a nazi but would you listen to a jew talk about antisemitism for even ten minutes

[gayhenrycreel]

gotta say, theres something really weird about how online queer spaces pretend that intersex people dont exist. even american queer rights orgs seem to ignore us. and then i see kiwi sites on queer communities and theres comparatively a lot of intersex stuff. i go to a local nurses office and intersex people are included in a pamphlet on representation in books. every queer rights org has a link to to sites for intersex rights. am i crazy or is america falling behind? its quite... concerning

[skansennow-arghans]

dear fellow dragonkins: "queztel" is not a dragon species. He is a Mexica deity. Calling yourself a queztel is racist. Because he is not a dragon, but a very important deity from a people that have been genocided and colonised for hundreds of years. If you see someone calling themselves that, call it out.

also, the Amphithere is a historical winged heraldric dragon/serpent! It's much more realistic than calling yourself a mesoamerican god!

[ouroborosorder]

I think Arknights' Sami may be, outright, one of the coolest ideas I've ever seen in a piece of fiction. Most things would have said "The Collapsals are why Sami is like this!" But no, Arknights knows better. Sami is already a place where snow falls upwards, where you can see the ghosts of people who are not dead, where 4 story tall shadows pass by and block out the stars at night. Sami is strange, illogical, and hostile, but it is not Wrong. It's just a place where the natural order is different from anything else in the world, but you can come to comprehend it, come to an accord with Sami and the way it exists. But the Collapsals are Wrong. Their blood is poison, their bodies are corpses, their knowledge is a curse. You can't comprehend it. You can't come to an accord with it. You can only die. It is one form of strangeness, the comforting unsettling feeling of a different natural order, being intruded by one that is just outright Wrong, uncanny, broken, and evil.

[clonerightsagenda]

I am not going to say TLT is about fossil fuels because it's about a lot of things and it's reductive to boil it down to anything, but a society fueled by necromancy/death magic/corpses is reminiscent of our society fueled by and built with petrochemicals (oil, natural gas, plastic), and given that within the necromancy framework the role of the cavalier is to be metaphorically, literally, and/or spiritually consumed, it's interesting that the first cavalier was the planet Earth. This new world is still based on devouring the planet.

Does this make Paul a metaphor for nuclear fusion I'm joking but I suppose the question Alecto must resolve is whether we can escape needing to consume to survive.* And maybe we can't - stop trying to make your carnivorous pets vegan - but can we find a method of consumption that's less destructive?

(Some people may see Paul as that answer but I am a Hater who isn't into ego death.)

[leavethebagelalone]

can i offer you a n8v miku in these trying times

palette: x

[vigilskept]

gnashing my teeth thinking about how veilguard talks about the gods only as a joke when they could've gone somewhere truly crazy.... you're so right.

Yeah... you get it. It's just such a missed opportunity!

I don't even mind the jokey tone they use a lot of the time, because we all joke about things we struggle to understand/cope with.

Except Veilguard refuses to let you even try to broach the subject beyond that surface level. In fact, when it does let you engage with it at all, it manages to make things even less nuanced!

I'm just going to talk about Bellara's quest here since it's the most directly linked with the elven gods, and it's already a lot. Fundamentally, her companion quest is asking us two things:

Should elves be blamed for the actions of the Evanuris?

Should they preserve any of their past at all?

The first one is absurd to even begin with. It's not even a good or interesting take on the (very christian!) question: "Are we responsible for the sins of our ancestors?"

The Evanuris are not the ancestors of modern elves. Dalish religion implies that modern elves descend from those who the rebels never freed from slavery to the Evanuris.

This setup is already awful without looking at any of the parallels Bioware has (intentionally) drawn between the elves of Thedas and Jewish/Indigenous people. I have to put the rest of this under the cut because I genuinely don't think it can be shortened without making it sound flippant. In the context of the coding of the elves, the theological/social implications of all of this are so much worse.

TLDR: the indigenous/jewish coding of the elves makes bioware's treatment of elven religion in veilguard thoughtless at best, cruel at worst. they did not have to write themselves into this corner. there was a way of handling this lore reveal without the implication of elven religion (again, jewish/indigenous coded) being obsolete

So, the religion of the Dalish was part of their enslavement. It's the belief they were forced into by the cruel gods they are still devoted to. That's already pretty bad. How could it get worse, you might wonder?

Whether Bioware deviated from their initial inspirations for the elves or not, the implications for these lore reveals in light of those parallels are particularly cruel. Those two core questions in Bellara's quest? Yeah. Those have both been levied against the oppressed groups that Bioware chose to draw inspiration from. Both historically and presently. To justify atrocities against them.

And to be clear, Bioware does not deviate from or subvert the usual indigeous and jewish-coding of the elves in their writing here. If anything, they end up actively endorsing a very significant element of antisemitic and anti-indigenous sentiment.

Indigenous-Coding

Advocates of colonisation have always justified it by arguing they were 'saving' groups of people who were stuck in the past. They had been ‘left in the dark’ through ignorance of Christianity. In the more secular sense, this was framed as Europeans having journeyed through history to reach enlightenment, while the rest of the world was still in an ‘uncivilized’ state.

Christianity and progress had to be brought to these people to save their souls and bring them into the future with everyone else. Their Gods? There were only two possible ways to frame those. Either they were not real at all, or they were evil. Either way, they were obsolete.

In the Americas, these arguments were still used when corralling indigenous children into residential schools or tearing them from communities through the adoption system. Governments pushed the idea that they had to be forced to assimilate because they were 'backward' in their practices and beliefs.

In the settler-colonial state Canada, where Bioware is based, it's still common enough to hear people justify all of this as having been done "for their own good." Even those who admit that the ways colonization was perpetuated were cruel will still try to defend it by telling you, "it was bad, but their ancestors weren't saints either."

Sounding painfully familiar yet? A little uncomfortable in the context of Bellara's questline?

Jewish-Coding

Since the dawn of Christian Church, Jewish people have had a very fraught place in Christian theology. Christianity claims that that the coming of the messiah in the person of Jesus Christ makes the religion of Judaism obsolete. Christians believed the obvious answer to this problem was that Jewish people should convert.

When many did not, they were labeled as ignorant, obstinate, stuck in the past. They were so focused on their history that they couldn't see the truth which had been revealed in the present. There’s a significant legacy of this idea in Christian artwork with depictions of Synagoga blindfolded next to the clear eyed Ecclesia. You still hear echoes of this sentiment in antisemitic language today.

As for the nature of the Jewish God... there is some deviation here. For some Christians, He is God the Father, and He is good. For others — and this idea has been around from early Christianity till now — He is the Creator of the material world, but He is evil.

There are innumerable variations of Christian gnosticism that probably wouldn't be productive to get into on a Dragon Age Blog. What I need to underline here though, is that the idea of the Old Testament God as the devil/the demiurge/fundamentally evil, has been used to justify atrocity towards Jewish people for over a thousand years.

Should elves be blamed then? For the sundering of the Titans? For the Veil? For the Blight? For the evils of this world, created by their Gods?

Implications for Veilguard

Not only is religion in Dragon Age: The Veilguard often devoid of nuance or ignored outright, when the game does engage with it at all, it does so in a way that quite literally draws on these incredibly harmful antisemitic and anti-indigenous sentiments that have been (and still are) used to perpetuate real harm.

To be clear, I don't think the writing here intends to endorse the idea that elves should be blamed for any of what's going on. Bellara's anxieties are being projected onto her people as a whole while she grapples with what this all means for her, I get that. In fact, you could be generous and read some of this as a critique of this particular kind of anti-indigenous/jewish bigotry.

However, I don't think that absolves the writers of any of the implications they've created by confirming that the elven pantheon did exist and was canonically evil.

Elements of Dalish/elven culture might be preserved after all this, but the conclusion the game railroads you into is that their religion is obsolete. Just like Judaism. Just like the many Indigenous religions around the world. Except in Dragon Age: The Veilguard, it’s no longer just the bigotry of outsiders claiming that to be the case. It’s now the objective truth of the setting.

Going forward, the elves of Thedas can keep their culture, but they can’t practice their religion. If they continued to practice, they would be framed the way the Venatori are: evil and stuck in the past. This really can’t be overstated: this is the exact rhetoric that has justified centuries of violence and oppression of Jewish and Indigenous people. This rhetoric is still around and still weaponized.

It’s so cruel to create an in world ‘lineage’ that draws so heavily from their cultures and histories, then validate the rhetoric that has been used to hurt them. At best, it’s thoughtless. But as a company based in a settler-colonial state, this is something they should’ve put thought into, given that they chose to code their elves and Jewish and Indigenous. That was their responsibility, actually.

What gets me about all this is that they actually didn't need to force that conclusion at all. They could have kept the Evanuris as cruel tyrants without demonising the Creators and their worship at the same time.

The Evanuris weren't always Gods. They weren't even always rulers.

In Trespasser, when asked how they became Gods, Solas tells Lavellan that they did so slowly. That it started with a war. That fear bred a desire for simplicity. For right and wrong. For chains of command. That generals became respected elders, then kings, and finally gods.

Veilguard confirms all of this. The addition it makes is that before all this, the first elves were spirits who made their bodies out of the Titans. This all occurred over the course of thousands of years.

None of this needs to be retconned in order to allow for a respectful yet nuanced portrayal of religion!

TLDR pt2: bioware, u could’ve avoided literally ALL of this by making the evanuris part of a priestly class who seized power after the war with the titans. it wouldn’t even have undermined ur lore! u could’ve kept dalish religion alive! u could’ve implied complex political dynamics for your ancient elves without even having to write it! why didn’t you even try?

Trying to Fix This Mess

Say the elves took their bodies from the Titans and settled the lands of Thedas. Say the Titans even allowed this for a time. The dwarves were made from their own bodies after all.

Yet the elves didn't have the same connection with the Titans as the dwarves did. They had no stone-sense, so they couldn't understand the Titans' song.

Generations down the line, some of them took too much from the Titans. More than they were willing to give. That was when the Titans lashed out, making the earth tremble so that all the elves had built crumbled beneath them.

And what if the firstborn among the elves had taken up priesthood to guide the younger ones. They were closer to spirits than the elves that were born into this world, and so the younger ones looked to them for guidance. Maybe they were the ones who were trusted to reach out to the more powerful of the spirits who chosen stay in the Fade, their old kin who preferred to keep their distance from the physical world to preserve the essence of what they were. The spirits of Justice, of Benevolence, of Craft. Those who the elven people paid homage to, and trusted to preserve them in turn.

So when everything seemed to fall apart, the elves turned to their Keepers, their priests, and asked of them what they ought to do. How could they make the earth stop shaking? What would they have to do to be at peace again?

Whatever the spirits themselves may have responded, many of the Keepers (among them the Evanuris) took up arms and chose war. They saw it could be won so they fought, sundering Titans from their dreams and stilling the land.

And yet there was no peace.

Some Keepers sought to hold on to their power as generals, and wanted to wage war on new shores to keep it. Some Keepers thought they had already gone too far, claiming they had acted without the guidance of the spirits who hadn't wanted war.

These Keepers could've caused chaos and endless bloodshed, so the Evanuris formed their alliance to suppress the others. Likely, they thought they were doing so for the benefit of all the elven people. More war meant more death, and it was needless now that the land was still. And even if what they did to the Titans was wrong, it was done and they could not fix it. Better to silence those who meant to stir up fear among the people.

The Evanuris fought until they were the last faction left, naming the few holdouts the Forgotten Ones. They were praised for bringing peace to Elvhenan, and trusting in their guidance their people crowned them as rulers.

Yet some dissent always remained. None of them were infallible. They were no longer spirits, they hadn't been for thousands of years. They were now more accustomed to command than to priesthood after all that war. They had drawn on the power they had stolen from the Titans to gain the advantage over their enemies, and the corruption of the Blight was starting creep in, ever-so-slowly.

Maybe some of the people, unhappy with their rule, started to voice the thought that was expressed by their rival Keepers once more: that the Evanuris had grown distant from the spirits. That Elgar'nan didn't serve Justice anymore. That Mythal had strayed from Benevolence.

So Evanuris took the mantle of godhood for themselves. It was only for peace and stability.

It would be too dangerous if anyone could claim they were deviating from the will of the spirits, so they would claim they were those great spirits. Elgar'nan was Justice, Mythal was Benevolence. They would use their rule only for the benefit of the people, not abuse their power.

And there you go. None of what I've written above can't be neatly incorporated into the existing lore of Veilguard. It leaves the elves of Thedas precisely where they started in Dragon Age: Origins. Distant from their ancient Gods, trying to pick up the pieces of their forgotten past.

[twotwotwospirit]

creator free me from skinny masc propaganda and let me embrace beefy hunky butch love

[drumlincountry]

Today I had the pleasant realisation that the Irish language will outlive me.

[yuri-alexseygaybitch]

Related to previous rb I hope everyone who ever participated in turning the w*****o into a fucked up deer monster in pop culture kicks fucking rocks

[autismnation]

seeing people deny katniss being clearly indigenous coded really irritates me.

a lot of people use the excuse that, because she’s in the woods most of her time, she’s in the sun and gets a tan. she says that she, like everyone in the seam, has olive skin/dark hair/gray eyes. so unless everyone in the seam is also going out into the woods (spoiler alert: they’re not. in fact, they’re spending most of the time in the mines, away from the sun.) then katniss is a woman of colour.

but, okay, let’s ignore the signs that she is indigenous. she is still a person of colour! that’s the whole point of the seam/merchant sections in town.

it’s about class inequality and how race plays a part in that!

[honourablepranksinatra]

As the years go by it is just funnier and funnier how Murdoch apparently Cannot Be Inspector due to Catholic discrimination.

Like yes we've had a woman inspector and yes now we have an Asian inspector (yay Paul Sun-Hyung Lee!) but this *checks notes* white straight man is catholic?? ...Sorry Toronto just isn't ready for that