#indigenous history

[intersectionalpraxis]

I documented multiple cases with @/ EuroMedHR of Israeli soldiers abducting blonde children from #Gaza claiming they might be abductee Israelis. As Israeli forces are nearing my area of refuge, I just actually told my brother’s wife to dye her blonde daughter’s hair black! [@/ MahaGaza on X. 01/07/24.] Read this twice, took me twice Zionists are kidnapping blonde Palestinian babies and pretending they're isra*lis, Palestinians are being told to dye their children's hair black [@/ Lamis_Deek on X. 01/07/24/]

Thank you to a mutual for sharing/alerting me to this. This is absolutely horrifying. Like WHO was it that said blonde and blue-eyed babies were superior??

This also makes me think of white European colonizers kidnapping Indigenous children and bringing them to "residential schools" -which were mass genocide camps. If ya'll even know a little about this history, that's what it reminds me of. Indigenous children were forcibly separated from their families and cultures. They were forbidden to speak their languages and were violently abused, and many were killed in heinous and cruel ways -there are still MANY unmarked graves in the white-settler nation of Canada.

This is beyond disturbing. I can't even imagine the horrors behind something like this. The IOF are depraved.

*Edit: for context, I'm not saying that the history of cultural genocide of Indigenous people in settler-colonial countries like Canada and the United States is a direct parallel to what is happening or what appears to be happening to Palestinian children. It just brought up initial thoughts (in terms of my perspective) about the IOF kidnapping Palestinian babies for their 'perceived whiteness,' [which made me think of Nazi Germany's white supremacist discourses], and how very specific it is of them to be taking Palestinian babies/young children and saying they are 'Israeli' [which reminded me of how Indigenous children were forcibly taken from their homeland/cultures by violent settler-colonial states]. I think most of us can agree that the intentions behind this are nefarious, and no matter the reason -I am not trying to erase the severity of and atrocities behind nearly 2 centuries of anti-Indigenous racism and systemic violence against Indigenous communities. I saw a re-blog with commentary about this -and I just want to acknowledge what they had said because this is important to address.

[dyke-delphinia]

3D Reconstruction of Tenochtitlán by Thomas Kole

[vintagesapphics]

Photos of Nancy Valverde, a Chicana gender nonconforming lesbian who was routinely arrested for violating L.A.’s cross-dressing ban throughout the 50s and has been credited as helping overturn the ban. Valverde died at the age of 92 in March of 2024.

[animentality]

[tvstvnvkke]

Tribal Names

I don’t think many people, even some native people, are aware that the legal names of many tribes are actually not from the tribe.

Often the names came about because colonizers would ask one tribe "hey, what do you call those people over there?". then they would assign the name given to that tribe. so often the names were descriptions from unrelated tribes, or in more extreme cases, insults.

The Muscogee tribe got pretty lucky since the legal name was "creek" and it came from a different tribe going "oh, those are the people near the creek". which, is accurate enough, most creek settlements were placed along creeks. a famous one that is related to the Muscogee is the name "Cherokee". "Cherokee" is a Muscogee word meaning something along the lines of "people who don’t speak our language". Even this is pretty light compared to some names. some official tribal names translate to phrases like "dog eaters" or "lazy people".

This is why it’s not uncommon for tribes to start using older names. Muscogee comes from the term for our people "Mvskoke", and the tribe has made efforts to distance itself from the name "Creek". Although it is likely still the name you’ll hear most often.

[ojibwa]

Monsheeda (Dust Maker), and his wife Mehunga (Standing Buffalo), of the Indigenous Ponca tribe, posed together in their wedding photo, circa 1900

[queerasfact]

Condoman

In 1987, Indigenous sexual health worker Aunty Gracelyn Smallwood and her team felt that safe sex advertising wasn’t effectively targeting people in Australia’s remote Indigenous communities. In response, they created Condoman - “The Deadly Predator of Sexual Health” - who spoke to Indigenous people in language they could relate to, and removed stigma from conversations about sexual health. 

Condoman became something of a cult figure in Australia, and in 2009 he was relaunched with a suite of comics, animations, and merch, including branded condoms. He was also joined by his “deadly, slippery sister” Lubelicious, who promoted consent, the use of water based lube, and women’s health, for her sisters and sistergirls (an Indigenous term analogous to trans women).

We covered Condoman in our podcast on the AIDS epidemic in Australia.

Keep an eye on this blog throughout the week as we continue highlighting queer Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history and culture for NAIDOC Week.

[prisonhannibal]

Sámi artist Mari Boine joiking the village Máze.

[ID: 1: Sámi activists in gáktis (traditional clothing) holding a banner that says “we came here first” in norwegian. A banner in the background says “we will NOT move”. 2: sámi man in gákti standing with his fist raised in front of big stones that have the word “let the river live” painted on them]

Joik is a type of traditional sámi singing that’s meant to evoke/express a person, animal or place through rhythm, sounds and energy. You don’t joik about someone, you joik them. Joik is mostly sounds, and often have no lyrics or short lyrics. “Máze” has lyrics calling Máze beautiful and saying “Under water they would put Máze church, Máze school”, which is referring to the Alta conflict in the 1970s and 80s.

Máze is a small village on the norwegian side of the borders in Sápmi. Around 98% of the population is sámi. In the late 1960s, the Norwegian government announced plans to build a hydroelectric power plant and dam in the Alta river, which would have huge consequences for sámi reindeer herding and fishing in the area, preventing sámi people from continuing to practice their traditional way of life. The earlier plans for the dam would have put Máze under water, displacing all the people living there and destroying a village that has existed for hundreds of years. After resistance from sámi activists, the plans were altered in 1973 so that Máze would survive.

Sámi people fought against the construction of the power plant for years, with protests, peaceful civil disobedience (like chaining themselves and creating blockades around the site), and a hunger strike where they slept in lávvus in front of the norwegian parliament in 1979, and a second hunger strike in 1981. 10% of the norwegian police force was sent to the construction area and there was talk of sending the military to assist the police, but this was stopped by the minister of defense at the time. several hundreds of people were removed by force from protests and arrested.

The Alta hydroelectric power plant was finished in 1987 and is still in operation. This is one of the most famous examples of Norway’s green colonialism in Sápmi, but it’s also one of the biggest examples of Sámi spirit and resistance. Máze continues to exist, more than 50 years later. Sámi people are still here and we’re still fighting for our right to continue our traditional lifestyles and culture, for example with the large civil disobedience actions in 2023 over the Fosen case.

Čájet Sámi Vuoiŋŋa! show sámi spirit! ❤️💚💛💙

[gwydpolls]

Time Travel Question 57: 19th Century

These Questions are the result of suggestions from the previous iteration.

This category may include suggestions made too late to fall into the correct grouping.

Please add new suggestions below if you have them for future consideration.

[thoughtportal]

undefined

California genocide 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_genocide

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Island_massacre

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Round_Valley_Settler_Massacres_of_1856%E2%80%931859

[intersectionalpraxis]

"In 2023, Native American children are still forced to cut their hair. A school in Kansas forced an 8 year old Native child to cut his hair because it didn't fit the requirement for boys. Despite being protected by the First Amendment of Freedom of Expression and Religion."

I remember the story of a young Black teen who was told if he didn't cut off his locks before a wrestling match he could not participate. There was footage of him looking despaired while they cut off his hair. Or another time when another Black teen who was told if he didn't cut his dreadlocks he couldn't attend his own graduation ceremony -he was suspended just like so many have been for refusing to cut their hair. I'm also thinking of the countless times Black girls and women, who have disproportionately experienced hair bias, been told their hair isn't 'professional,' if it hasn't been straightened.

Telling Indigenous people to cut their hair has white supremacist roots (as it does for the cases I just mentioned above) -settler-colonizers did this when they kidnapped and forced Indigenous children into these genocidal concentration camps (yes, that's what they were) and it's beyond despicable. And is something that is a political issue because hair is political -for so many cultures and traditions, it is sacred -this is just horrifying.

[jewish-vents]

As a proud Jew and a member of the Iŋalit Iñupiaq people I have never felt as seen as reading a Choctaw Jew's post on here. Christian missionaries hauled my people off of our lands and killed most of us and they didn't even inhabit the land. They didn't even build shit there, they just took it to take it, and I'm supposed to go "ah yes America has no colonizers" and not laugh when these people say "Hebrew is a colonizer language"? Motherfuckers, MY LANGUAGE IS EXTINCT BECAUSE OF YOU! You know who didn't ever try and force a language on anyone? The Ashke Jewish man my great-great grandmother fell for and married. People really expect me to be onboard with their fact-free zero colonialism rewrite of history while my people's lands remain off limits to us, illegal to even visit, the US government holding onto it on the off chance there might be oil there even though they never bothered to even drill for it in over 70 years.

"No other religion acts like this" first of all please read up on Islamic imperialism and get your boot off the neck of my indigenous Middle Eastern brethren and secondly Christian-governed Alaska wouldn't let Native students attend school with "American" children - that is literally how the law phrased it - unless we abandoned our language, our clothes, our songs, our stories, our religion and even traditions as basic as sharing food with poor families in the community. You wanna know how my great-great grandmother met my great-great grandfather? They were both arrested for violating the law and "indoctrinating" children into "Native, anti-European practices" by which I mean THEY WERE BOTH ARRESTED FOR GIVING FOOD TO POOR PEOPLE. They were both arrested by CHRISTIANS!

And people mistake my brown skin for proof of goy status and want to talk shit about how the only good colonizer is a dead colonizer. You're white and you're in ALASKA, you might want to rethink the words coming out of your mouth when most of your ancestors came here to mine gold and get rich and mistreat indigenous people. Even if I accepted the idea that Israel is doing colonialism, which I do not, nobody moved to Israel to get rich and rape indigenous women with impunity to the point where there are words in Inuit languages for gangrape done by white men.

I don't want to hear another thing from a white goy in Alaska about Israel being colonizers when the US bought Alaska from Russia. We were colonized twice for you to get to be here and tell me to my face how colonizers are bad. AND THEN people want to say my Ashke ancestors were colonizers. Fleeing Russia is not colonization, one, and two, WHY DO YOU THINK THEY LEFT?! For fun? What, they heard our weather was nice and wanted to come visit?

I am going to need white goyim to learn US history before they open their mouths.

I'm sorry this is long and I yelled/capslocked but I have had to bite my tongue so many times to not cause a scene because I don't want the university to come up with an excuse not to let me graduate due to poor conduct. It is so tiring. I feel like I'm holding my breath all the time. Graduation is tomorrow. Shabbat shalom.

.

[memories-of-ancients]

Iroquoian Wooden Armor

by Malcolm P.L.

An interesting series of videos where this gentleman researches, then constructs a set of replica wooden armor as used by the Iroquois before European contact.

Part I : Introduction

Part II : Overview

Part III : Thoughts on the Back Shield

Part IV : Socio-economics of Iroquoian Armor

Part V : The Iroquoian Shield

[olowan-waphiya]

What is NIBSDA?

NIBSDA was conceptualized to serve as a national digital platform and digital repository for boarding school archival collections throughout the United States. As part of truth-telling, access to boarding school records for survivors and descendants is paramount to understanding this history and its consequences on Tribal Nations. Through cultivating historical insights, NIBSDA supports community-led healing initiatives throughout American Indian and Alaska Native Nations towards restored Indigenous cultural sovereignty.

⚠ In negotiating these pursuits, you may encounter content that can trigger secondary trauma or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD); we encourage individuals to prepare themselves prior to engaging with these collections and to seek counseling or healing if you experience any stress related to boarding school history.   Indigenous peoples are warned that NIBSDA may lead to other external resources that contain images, names, and references to deceased persons. For more information, please see Content Warning. ⚠

[wildfeather5002]

Indigenous folks, ex-christians & anyone who's knowledgeable on social issues, I have two questions that have bothered me for a long while and I believe y'all might know how to answer them.

The question: I read a webcomic about community A living on an island along with another community B with different culture & beliefs from them. Community A believes that their culture & religion are the correct ones and that members of community B are dooming themselves to eternal damnation (in a religious sense) if they don't adopt the beliefs & practices of community A.

I saw someone talking about the comic in its comment section, saying that one of the characters who's a member of community B is selfish for not adopting the burial practices from community A's religion, because according to that someone, not burying their loved one like community A believes is correct is " potentially dooming their loved one to eternal damnation".

If you're indigenous, has rhetoric / talking points like this been used against your own religious / cultural practices? Could you give any concrete examples?

If you have religious trauma / are ex christian of any kind, have people used talking points like this to guilt trip, to frighten, or to shame you into obeying religious rules? (People belonging to other religions than christianity are welcome to give their perspectives as well!)

[glowingcritter]

Little girl using ulu & Mama drying fish

Alaska

The World of the American Indian, National Geographic, 1974