#métis writer

[giiwedinongkwe]

Remember Your Asemaa

There was once a boy. He lived by a creek with his grandmother. In the early evenings, he would go out before the sun set to look for things.

His grandmother had a gift. She was a maker, and she always transformed anything he brought home to her into something magical.

His grandmother taught him from very young the importance of laying your asemaa down as an offering, to say miigwetch for what you are taking from the land.

One time, the boy went out looking, offered his tobacco, and brought home a big partridge miigwan. He gave the feather to ookomisan, and she made a beautiful dreamcatcher to hang above his bed by the window.

Another time, he found a nice birch tree. He put down some asemaa and began peeling the bark. When he got home, his grandmother spent the whole weekend weaving a strong basket so they could pick more miinan.

This time, though, the boy went out and found a short, smooth piece of driftwood. As he was examining it, something else down by the water caught his eye. A small, rounded rock with a hole in the center. The boy, now excited, took the piece of wood and the rock back with him in a hurry as the sun was beginning to set.

The next morning, his grandmother admired the piece of wood he brought back before deciding what it would become. She began working and the boy sat in the corner playing with the small rock he found. He looked up, and saw a transformation take place before his very eyes. His grandmother tossed the whittled bits from her lap into the fireplace and came over to the boy with mitigo-jiimaan. He took it from her and they headed outside to the creek to test it out.

He placed it down onto the water. It worked! It could float! The boy jumped up and hugged his grandmother to thank her. The boy stayed outside awhile to play with his little wooden canoe.

The next morning, the boy's grandmother was upset. She explained that when she woke up she found the small canoe she had worked so hard making had been broken in half.

The boy begged his grandmother to believe that he would never break it. She thought for a moment, and asked him to calmly explain what happened the day before. When he was done, his grandmother instantly knew what had gone wrong. He had forgotten to offer tobacco. She sent the boy out with some asemaa in one half of the broken canoe, and some maple taffy in the other to offer up to memegwesiwag. She told him that the little people would accept his apology if he made sure to always offer his tobacco.

Early the next morning, the boy went to grab his special rock to take with him to go see what had happened to his canoe down by the creek. It was gone! The boy raced down to the water, hoping for some good news. His canoe wasn't there anymore, either!

The boy ran back home to his grandmother and started crying. She hugged him and told him to calm down, and that she would make him some cedar tea. The boy went to his corner by the fireplace, and couldn't believe his eyes. There was his now-fixed mitigo-jiimaan, complete with tiny, ornate carvings along where the crack had been. Inside the canoe, he found his rock turned into a necklace. His grandmother told him that he should wear it every day, to remind him to always remember his asemaa.

Chi-miigwech for reading and sharing my story.

asemaa: tobacco

miigwetch: thank you

miigwan: feather

ookomisan: [his] grandmother

miinan: blueberries

memegwesiwag: little people (dwarf spirits)

mitigo-jiimaan: wooden canoe

[giiwedinongkwe]

A large part of Anishinaabe territory is in Ontario, but Anishinaabemowin goes further than that! It’s definitely difficult to feel disconnected from, but a privilege to get to spend time learning now. It is an amazing language, with many interconnecting word roots that make it really fun to learn, and a bit easier to pick up on. Anishinaabemowin as a language is directly tied to our peoples’ connection with the land, and our stories show that. Language absolutely cultivates a sense of pride and belonging within community. I’m francophone as well, so the relationship to having had language rights stripped away and reclaiming language for cultural revitalization and language resurgence as a means of resistance is very real. Some off-reserve schools are starting to incorporate language into curriculum, and I plan on being one of the teachers that helps us get there. (For more information about the 20th century French education ban in Ontario, look into Rule 17. My school was named after Jeanne-Lajoie! To learn more about Indigenous linguocide, I recommend the poems ‘‘I Lost My Talk’’ by M’ikmaw Elder Rita Joe, ‘‘I’m Finding My Talk’’ by Rebecca Johnson, and their books of the same names. Residential schools and the 60s scoop certainly perpetuated this colonial violence tactic, so learn more about those to really understand what is going on with Indigenous language revival now). You will never catch me perpetuating language insecurity, because language is a part of someone’s connection to their identity, and it is not my place to tell them if I think they’re doing it right. For a long time, I suffered from language insecurity, unfortunately caused by other language speakers. Now, I make extra sure to introduce myself in Anishinaabemowin when going around the circle. It is a source of pride, and I hope my ancestors can hear me. If anyone feels like speaking privately on the matter, my inbox is a safe space.

Indigenous Tumblr, please interact!

TW: genocide and linguocide in America

I'm a linguistic enthusiast and non-American. I love how diverse the USA & Canada are - thousands and thousands of indigenous languages and they all are unique and so different from any language I've ever seen and heard. But all of them are endangered because the colonizers were erasing them with their speakers. Yet some indigenous languages are still spoken today. I love learning about these languages, but it feels like a colonists approach to learn about an indigenous language without learning its role in its community.

Dear indigenous people of Americas, where your languages are used today? What's their status in society? How do you feel about (not) knowing them? Is it a symbol of pride, resistance, and being part of your community or something that died long time ago? Do kids learn it in school?

If you feel uncomfortable with sharing your experience, it's fine to keep scrolling)

[the-aila-test]

Indigenous History Month - The Anthology

[fllagellant]

*🏔️Julek • Artemy

*☀️ it/its pronouns , no exceptions , 2spirit indigiqueer

*🌿 Métis indigenous + Gadjo sinti , reconnecting

‿.‿.‿.‿.‿.‿.‿.‿.‿.‿.‿.‿.‿.‿.‿.‿.‿.

*📯 your good friend ArtemyJulek ( my full name ! ) on the internet .. 21 year olds on the internet rejoice ! Artist , Writer , etc etc .. me with my niches in fandom spaces . Dude who lives in Canada voice : hey

*🌻 no side blogs no extra urls I post everything here and that is that … I attempt to tag everything so you can block tags to avoid seeing something you’ re not into for whatever reason . You have to forgive me if you followed for something specific then I stopped posting about it a week later . I promise I will return . Main fandoms are the witcher , darkest dungeon , dungeons and dragons , baldur’ s gate 3 , pathfinder , mass effect trilogy and andromeda , dragon age , darksiders , dead space , red dead redemption … etc etc these are the main culprits

‿.‿.‿.‿.‿.‿.‿.‿.‿.‿.‿.‿.‿.‿.‿.‿.‿.

[blackberrysummerblog]

I liiiive! I cannot believe how long it’s been since I’ve posted an excerpt on here, but it’s been a pretty spoonless month (cue lengthy attempt at discussing the situation followed by a quick delete, because seriously? Whine moar 🙄). Thank you so much to all you lovelies who have kept tagging me; it’s been so nice to feel remembered! @wellbelesbian, @j-nipper-95, @orange-peony, @you-remind-me-of-the-babe, @youarenevertooold, @alleycat0306, @artsyunderstudy, @prettygoododds, @shrekgogurt, @larkral, @valeffelees, @fatalfangirl, @facewithoutheart, @nightimedreamersworld, @rimeswithpurple, @forabeatofadrum, @confused-bi-queer and @cutestkilla all tagged me recently and I’ve been so delighted to see what you’ve all been working on! This fandom really has the most talented writers and artists <3

As for me, I’ve been working on a few things as well! Some of you may have seen a woeful post last week when I realized I’d been writing one of my CORBs in a file I’d unwittingly created on my work account. *chef’s kiss* Beautiful. The upshot of that is that I lost thousands of words after hastily and permanently deleting the file, then buried myself under six feet of rocky soil in the backyard. But I’ve since climbed out and have been recreating it! (In my PERSONAL documents this time!) I’m not sure I’m allowed to say who I’m collaborating with or how much of the summary I can share, but I don’t think it’s giving away too much to say that it’s an AU where Baz is a demon nobleman in hell and Simon is a mortal merman who catches his eye. It’s a really creative concept and I’m excited to be working on it! Here’s a few more than six sentences (and some other fic excerpt shares) under the cut:

I’m lost in the dream again when Métis buzzes in my ear, and I try my damnedest not to hear her. I roll over and pull the shadows closer, but she burrows in nonetheless. “No,” I grumble as blue eyes and golden scales slip away from me once more, leaving nothing but ripples in the fluidity of retreating sleep. As I sit up and scowl at my father’s right hand pest, I can just about recall the setting sun limning bronze curls with a reddish halo.

Halo—ha.

“He wantsz to szeeee you,” Métis hums, settling alight in her favorite spot atop the curve of my left horn. “Sayszz it’s important.”

There’s just the barest fog of despair weaving around my ankles as I make my way to Father’s chambers, nurturing the chill that always permeates my corporeal form. An unexpected meeting seldom brings good news, but I wouldn’t say speaking with him is the last way I’d want to spend these early hours—the hypocritamus pools need sieving, after all. Depending on their recent diet and the subject Father wishes to discuss, the difference may be vanishingly slight.

The second thing I’ve been working on is from an anon prompt on @carryonprompts, which I’m going to paraphrase as “post-awtwb Simon getting kidnapped and Baz (plus Penny and Sheperd) having to be the one to play the hero to Simon’s damsel for a change.” Here’s six sentences:

I pull him up to his knees and kick his legs apart, stabilizing him.

Baz is so far out of this one’s league; I’ve never known what he sees in this deformed, ill-mannered, working-class mage.

He’s handsome enough in spite of the wings though, I suppose—in a brutish way. His eyes flash at me when I knot my fingers in his dirty hair to pull his head back, lifting his face. Square-jawed and broad through the shoulders and chest, thick-thighed, what we would have called a bit of rough, once. The faithful common laborer you could count on to throw you down on top of the bed for the pounding of a lifetime—is that all that Baz wants him for?

Lastly, a good bit more than 6 sentences from my still-unpublished crucible marriage AU, just because. I know I once posted a paragraph where Baz was taking Simon clothes shopping after being scandalized by the state of his drawers, and this is a resulting scene:

“Baz!” Snow shouts from the changing room. Balthazar’s balls, what’s the issue? He can’t want me to go in there. “Baz, c’mere!” He…wants me to go in there. I take a deep breath and push open the door fractionally.

“What, Snow?”

“Come in here!”

“I swear to magic, if you’re naked—” Oh. Oh, Crowley. This may somehow be worse. Simon is wearing the snug fitting blue knit shirt I sent him in with, and it would be showing off his biceps and chest enough to blow what’s left of my mind even if he didn’t have it hitched halfway up his abdomen. He’s changed into a pair of the short new boxer briefs we purchased in the last store (ordinarily I’d recoil at the notion of not washing them first, the heathen, but—Simon) and he’s gripping the waistband of a pair of soft grey trousers that he’s pulled halfway up his arse.

“I thought you might want to check out the new pants,” he says casually, nodding toward his backside as if I could pry my eyes away with a crowbar. “Do these get the seal of approval, then?”

I can’t speak. I think I may be salivating. Simon grins at me then, dragging one side of the trousers up while letting the other drop below the curve of his world-ending arse. He shimmies the exposed cheek in my direction, working himself into the trousers one centimeter at a time.

“You menace,” I hiss, unable to modulate my voice to a normal speaking level.

“What?” He finishes hitching the trousers up and leans back against the wall, not bothering to do up the flies. “Do I look OK?”

“No.” His face falls and I can’t bear it, even for a joke. “You look delicious. Absolutely debauched.”

“Debauched?!” Simon’s offended moue melts into something else as I slink toward him purposefully. “I don’t look debauched.”

He does. Trousers open, shirt still pushed up over his navel, curls in disarray from his habit of manhandling them when frustrated. I lean over him, my feet on either side of his, and he’s even farther beneath me than usual because of how he’s slouched back against the wall. He gasps softly when I take hold of his waistband and fasten the button of his trousers, my knuckles grazing the soft hair on his belly.

“Baz…nngh.”

I’ve drawn the zipper up carefully, but not so carefully that I’m not palming him over his trousers. I’ve barely touched him, but I note with satisfaction the goose flesh rising on his forearms. “Shh, love,” I murmur in his ear, tugging down his shirt so that it covers his stomach. Once he’s no longer indecent, I run both hands up under his shirt, squeezing at his thick, firm waist. Simon moans, tipping his head back to expose his long neck, and I’m dropping kiss after kiss there when I hear a sudden clearing of someone’s throat behind us.

It’s the changing room attendant, scowling in through the door that I foolishly left open. “Can I bring you gentlemen any different sizes?”

And that’s about it! I’d tag people if I hadn’t gotten to post this so late in the day, but as it stands I think most everyone’s already posted today. I hope everyone’s had a great week and that the next one is even better! :)

[this-world-of-beautiful-monsters]

I loved this book so fucking muuuuch....

From our collection: Love After the End: An Anthology of Two-Spirit & Indigiqueer Speculative Fiction (2020) ed. by Joshua Whitehead.

This exciting and groundbreaking fiction anthology showcases a number of new and emerging 2SQ (Two-Spirit and queer Indigenous) writers from across Turtle Island. These visionary authors show how queer Indigenous communities can bloom and thrive through utopian narratives that detail the vivacity and strength of 2SQness throughout its plight in the maw of settler colonialism’s histories. Here, readers will discover bio-engineered AI rats, transplanted trees in space, the rise of a 2SQ resistance camp, a primer on how to survive Indigiqueerly, virtual reality applications, motherships at sea, and the very bending of space-time continuums queered through NDN time. Love after the End demonstrates the imaginatively queer Two-Spirit futurisms we have all been dreaming of since 1492. Contributors include Darcie Little Badger, Mari Kurisato, Kai Minosh Pyle, David Alexander Robertson, and jaye simpson.

The Browne Popular Culture Library (BPCL), founded in 1969, is the most comprehensive archive of its kind in the United States.  Our focus and mission is to acquire and preserve research materials on American Popular Culture (post 1876) for curricular and research use. Visit our website at https://www.bgsu.edu/library/pcl.html.

[mittenlady]

Hi. I am bored and also wanting to bother you specifically. Which theory is better? Athena Cykes being a robot (evidence being widget, how did she never get hurt/see blood, Métis “studying” just being working with her code, autism) or her dad being the Phantom (this evidence is more Métis based like how would the psychological profile work without a match, why didn’t she just kill him, why doesn’t Athena see Bobby as weird, Athena gets double autism genes) Both work well in any context. I like Phantomdad cause Athena and Apollo can bond over terroristic fathers <3

omg me specifically… such an honor… ok lemme think this thru (this is a long one)

robothena:

• actually how does widget connect to her emotions… bc there is a way to judge how someone’s feeling based on bodily signs like pulse, temp., etc., but even at that a lot of emotions have very similar bodily reactions and part of determining how u feel is like… from the mind. if i remember my AP psych 5 correctly 😎 but also even at that widget wouldn’t logically have access to her thoughts that does not make sense unless metis like… chipped her??? or something????? which is still impossible

• i think if she’s sheltered enough then at 11 when she saw metis die, she might not have recognized it? but i feel it’s very implausible that she as a child would be so that intensely cautious + NEVER get into an accident + absolutely always be supervised enough to never get hurt. it is odd that her perspective would be that warped so that she’s unable to recognize it but idk. if she has no frame of reference is it human instinct to recognize blood… (i will not do further research at this time i am lazy)

• last two points u bring up i don’t think it’s mentioned what metis does specifically so no comment also elaborate on what you mean by the autism point because athena is giving neurodivergent but like what do you mean in context of that being evidence 😭

• she does seem to enjoy orange juice and little girl treats tho so how would that work… robots don’t really need to eat…

• also based on the navigation companions (ponco and clonco; only reason i know the proper term is for CAYA) why would her machinery be so more advanced than theirs? if aura and metis r capable of creating something so lifelike then why are ponco and clonco, made after her (i think) so far behind?

phantom dad ??:

• metis likely wouldn’t have a match for the phantom’s identity but it was simon who brought her the audio recording of the phantom’s voice i believe so that’s how she composed the psych profile knowing that. 95% sure because i had to look this up for CAYA

• tbf the phantom was wearing a jacket, but also yeah she likely could have done something in self-defense… but if they used the sword on her it’s likely any attempts @ self-defense wouldn’t have gone well regardless. there’s not really enough information in the game i don’t think to say whether or not there was an attempt or not

• bobby was able to fuck w his emotions in game and put on the appearance of emotions, if i remember correctly that was an aspect during the cross-examination/mood matrix part during it, so that’s likely why she didn’t find it off. and if she did, the game didn’t think to actually foreshadow anything by having her mention it either in passing or in her own narration during turnabout academy

i think athena and apollo both having terrorist fathers would be funny tho lol

but based on my minimal research as i consider this, the robothena one seems more plausible as it does better explain some of the illogical parts of the game. ofc it’s in the “future” but literally this made me realize that widget doesn’t make much sense with his ability to literally know what she’s thinking. like unless there’s some wack-ass science shit the writers just didn’t think necessary to share like… what is going on with that

[piizunn]

a personal reflection on decolonization

riel s. | 2022

Tansii kiiya (hello, how are you?) my name is riel starr and I am a Red River Michif artist and academic. my history on his land begins thousands of years ago among the peoples of the great plains, and my written history begins in the late 1600s with my first French ancestors and their unnamed first nations wives. my first First Nations ancestor is an unnamed woman referred to in my grandmother’s family tree as “Cree Woman”. I am Red River Métis on my mother’s side. Our historic Métis family names are Berthelet, Caron, St. Germaine, Dazé, Larivière and Dubois, and we come from the communities of Point à Grouette (now called St. Agathe), St. Norbert, and St. Vital (now modern-day Winnipeg) as well as the historic Batoche, Saskatchewan. My Berthelet ancestors were notable community leaders in Pointe à Grouette and my Caron ancestors including my fifth great uncle jean caron sr. fought in the North West resistance of 1885 at the battle of Duck Lake when he was fifty-two years old. Jean Caron Sr’s house is now a historic site in Batoche. As for myself my mother is a Métis educator and academic and my father is a settler archaeologist-turned-locksmith. I introduce myself in this way, the traditional way of Métis writers to contextualize my family, my knowledge and experiences, as well as my place on this land.

Natually, my native mother and my settler archaeologist father never married and split before I was old enough to form any memories. Museums and history have always been a fascination to me; the Royal Terrell Museum in Drumheller, which I dubbed “the dead dinosaur museum” and the Royal Alberta Museum which I called “the dead mouse museum” after my favourite display. The display was a larger-than-life diorama of a mouse, it’s intestines showing, the organisms that helped decompose the corpse were also displayed, massive daddy long legs, gigantic ants, worms thicker than my arm. The RAM is an interesting place. A few years ago, it was moved into a new building downtown and I could no longer spend hours finding fossils in the limestone exterior of the original museum. The place had changed drastically. As I reminisce on what I loved about the RAM I realize that all the things I disliked were their representations of Indigenous people; the uncanny wax figures with placid skin that did not resemble a single Native person’s skin that I had met. and the artwork they portrayed as artifacts. What makes a beaded bag so different from a Van Dyck if they’re the same age? And honoured the same amount by the people who made them?

Another place of importance growing up was Fort Edmonton Park. Like Heritage Park, Fort Edmonton has costumed interpreters, who teach visitors history as if the interpreters were of that time. In the summer of 2017, my lifelong dream came true, and I became a volunteer costumed interpreter with my mentor Sheldon Stockdale, another Métis person, and we were able to teach our history in the way we felt was right, something deeply important to the Métis people. An experience we had that stands out vividly is working on Fort Edmonton’s 1920 Street, and educating visitors on the history of pemmican, a sort of ancient protein bar made from berries, dried meat, and animal fat. Pemmican was a staple of survival for the Métis, and we were asking visitors to help us in redesigning the packaging for the bar. The historic package had a representation of an Indigenous person on it, a caricature of a race. We asked visitors if turning Indigenous people into mascots should be accepted, and sadly many people didn’t see the problem. Sheldon and I borderline argued with a man who seemed to see no problem in reducing us, the people speaking to him, to caricatures. In a similar vein, someone once gave me Chicago Blackhawk’s stickers when i was six, and not knowing a thing about hockey I asked my mother who the stickers were of. I’m guessing my mother did not want to explain the history of colonization and caricatures of Indigenous people, so she dismissed my question by telling me that the man in the tacky illustration was my ancestor.

Decolonizing art history seems like an impossible task, and perhaps it is. You cannot separate someone like Emily Carr from art history in Canada, however you can change the way you teach her work. Perhaps decolonizing art history means recognizing the ways in which “art history” as a field of study is deeply Euro-centric, and how the way of teaching this history is the same. I took my first semester at AUArts in the fall of 2020 after transferring from MacEwan after completing a two-year diploma at MacEwan University. I had a sculpture class a media arts class an art history class. The more I consider how to decolonize our history the more I understand that it is not the history that can be decolonized, it is the way we are teaching said history. It is the way that so much of our education is taught to us through a colonial lens, rather than a multifaceted history with a multitude of perspectives and peoples contributing until an entire picture is formed.

In the fall of 2020 in my media arts class my professor Kurtis Lesick was discussing an artist, a black artist who had him and others participate in a performance in which in that space the black artist allowed the participants to say the N-word. Rather than describing the piece in the way I just did removing the slur, Kurtis Lesick made the conscious decision to say the N- word twice. A person I had once thought to be an ally of mine, who knew the language of decolonization. Earlier this year a classmate in this class who was also in my sculpture class in the winter of 2022 told me that ‘knowing me has made her a better person’, this woman does not know me, and I do not know her, but I knew her in that moment. I knew that she wanted me to absolve her of her settler guilt. White settlers love referencing Tuck and Yang’s Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor but sometimes I wonder if they truly understand that it is simply not enough to know the language of decolonization, that you must be actively anti-colonial in a field that is built on colonization.

I spent a lot of time at Fort Calgary this semester for my FINA class, critiquing their exhibitions wondering how they can be improved if they can be improved, and I learned that given their budget that it is not possible. Fort Calgary, like other institutions cannot afford to replace their current exhibits and entirely redesign the way they teach history. What they can do is acknowledge the missing pieces, they can acknowledge the gaps they can acknowledge the fact that there’s more than one canon of history. Sometimes I wonder if the mosaic of history is too complex to decolonize; knowing that we will never return to a world like the one that existed pre-colonization. I think about my one classmate who tokenizes me, who knows how to use decolonial language to appear one way, but who never puts those concepts into practice. I think about the settlers who think that decolonization is re-colonizing the Americas but with “the Indians” in charge this time.

I now understand that decolonizing art history cannot happen without first decolonizing institutions. I have learned that we cannot forget that we once taught art history in an i way we cannot forget the way colonization has infiltrated every aspect of the education system down to the teaching styles of each professor. if we forget how colonial art history is in the first place, we will forget why we need to decolonize. Considering the hand that art history is hard in colonization around the world, I consider about the way southeast Asian women’s bodies are talked about in my textbooks versus European odalisque paintings. Brown people’s bodies were inherently sexualized and seen as dirty, while white people’s bodies were adored and deemed Classical.

Maybe colonization is another movement in the worldwide canon of art history. Another period in the bar graph of history- as google images seems to see art history. Perhaps Emily Carr and Paul Gauguin are the faces of this genre. Just as colonization cannot be forgotten among its victims, it cannot be forgotten by its perpetrators, who still believe they are a superior culture and race. Genres of literature such as post-colonial writing from India and Sri Lanka may suggest, there was a period of colonial art and literature, perhaps it is ongoing, possibly dying out, maybe here to stay. There will always be an antithesis, an attempt to view art and art history from a different perspective, and that is how we can decolonize art history.

[panther-os]

[beats forehead on table]

Iridonian Zabrak - Eeth Koth, Agen Kolar, Maris Brood, Sugi, etc

Dathomirian Zabrak (mixed Iridonian Zabrak and Dathomirian) - Darth Maul, Savage & Feral Opress, Akaavi, etc

Dathomirian - Mother Talzin, etc

Rattataki - Kaliyo, etc

Most likely mixed Rattataki and Dathomirian - Ventress

I get it. I understand the confusion, I really do. If we take the show at face value and don't look at Legends or the lore from other canon sources, either the Nightbrothers are all Zabraks and the Nightsisters are all Dathomirians or there's some really weird sexual dimorphism going on involving extra or missing bones. It's a combination of the writers not thinking and the animators being so overworked.

But it still irks me beyond belief so.

Dathomir has a long history of ship crashes and assimilating any survivors into their clans - Dathomirian Zabraks are the descendants of the largest known event, a whole fleet of settlers headed for a completely different planet. The closest real world equivalent I know of are the Métis, a distinct ethnic group and cultural identity who originated with mixed Natives and became their own thing. But Dathomirian Zabraks make up a small fraction of the overall Dathomirian population.

Nightbrothers are not the only male community on Dathomir and not the only community of Dathomirian Zabraks. The reason all Nightbrothers are Zabraks is that a) male Dathomirian children are returned to their father's clan and b) there are literally no canonically mixed people I can think of in The Clone Wars. Saw and Steela may be Black with blue eyes, but they're still distinctly only human. Once again, it's the writers not thinking and the animators being so overworked, with a bonus of both white-washing and non-whitewashing racism.

Nightsisters are not the only female community on Dathomir and are actually ostracized by the other clans of Witches because of their history with the Sith. (This doesn't make other Witches pro-Jedi, it just makes them anti-Sith.) Nightbrothers are also not the only male community on Dathomir that the Nightsisters reproduce with - though from what we've seen, they do only reproduce with Nightsisters.

Zabraks 👏 have 👏 horns.

Are there Dathomirian Zabrak Nightsisters? Yeah, definitely. With the hoods that go way over their foreheads, it could be almost any of the background Nightsisters we see on screen. But we can clearly see that Mother Talzin doesn't have horns unless they're only on the sides and back of her head - and with her super tall forehead and black sclera, she's either pureblood Dathomirian, mixed with something else, or stupid enough to tattoo her eyeballs - and Ventress definitely doesn't have any horns at all.

Dathomirians in general and specifically Nightsisters 👏 are not 👏 automatically 👏 Zabraks.

Thank you for coming to my tedtalk

[this-is-my-main-i-follow-from]

I'm a Métis folk Catholic. I have a friend who is a Slavic folk Catholic & an author. She writer her stories & she COULD write it so that such-&-such character doesn't sin or suffer or w/e, but she can't BC it is not true for that character. Have you ever been writing & you wanted smth to happen but then your characters get away from you?

That's her view of god. He is the all powerful author, but he respects the characters he made.

It's just her way of looking at things tho, & she is not representative of all Slavic folk Catholics, Slavs, folk Catholics, roman catholics, Christians, or theologists. Just one person's perspective.

On a lighter note, love the meme

[themovieblogonline]

INKWO FOR WHEN THE STARVING RETURN debuted January 24th at Sundance  in the Animated Shorts Film Program  with three additional in-person screenings to follow. The film will also screen online across North America January 29th, 7:00 AM  PST through February 3rd, 3:55 AM  PST. Currently in development, the 18-minute Sundance short at Sundance is a brief look at what they're making over at Spotted Fawn Productions (SFP) and the National Film Board of Canada. Spotted Fawn Productions (SFP) is an Indigenous-led and community-oriented Vancouver-based studio founded in 2010, which focuses on visionary illustration, stop motion, 2D, 3D and virtual reality animations. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGuM4eK0-WQ “Inkwo for When the Starving Returns” takes place two lifetimes in the future (Denendeh), when the world hangs in the balance. Sadly, that seems very much like the world today when the Doomsday Clock was just re-set at 87 seconds to midnight---the closest to catastrophe yet. The animated story focuses on a young, enigmatic gender-shifting warrior named Dove. “Inkwo” means medicine; it is used to defend against an army of hungry, ferocious monsters that re-emerge to feed upon humans. The flesh-consuming creatures become stronger with each body and soul they devour. The creatures are appropriately horrific and threatening.  Amanda Strong, showrunner for the series, is a Sundance Native Lab Fellowship recipient (the first Canadian Indigenous Fellow), a Red River Métis artist, writer, producer, director, and mother. A Canadian Screen Award and Emmy-nominated director, Amanda is the owner, director and executive producer of Spotted Fawn Productions. Her collaborative creations amplify Indigenous storytelling. The story is adapting a collection of short stories and graphic novels such as “Wheetago War,” by award-winning storyteller Richard Van Camp. It features voice talents Tantoo Cardinal (“Legend of the Fall,” “Killers of the Flower Moon”) and Paulina Alexis (“Reservation Dogs”) and Art Napoleon (“Moosemeat & Marmalade”). The series articulates truths like this: “When people forgot their connection to the land, they lost themselves as well.” That message isn’t relevant to just a futuristic animated series about monsters. The fading family farm, our pollution of the very food we consume, the escalating climate changes globally being largely ignored by leadership---all bear testimony to the truth of that observation. Another scripted moment, between the frog that Dove saves (who promises strong medicine----“Inkwo”) is a call to action to fight and protect against the forces of greed. There  seems to be a surplus of greed abroad in the land, so, hopefully the “Inkwo” will help those who disagree with the way things seem to be going currently.  Another insightful line: “We are all born hunted.” Certainly feels that way more and more, especially if you are an immigrant in the U.S. The animation and voice talent and direction of this Sundance offering are top-notch.  The message of the short: "Taking a stand to defend the remaining humans and animals left on Earth." A worthy goal. In the United States in January, 2025, all of us need to take a stand to defend  humans and animals surviving on Earth. Perhaps we could start by rejoining the Paris Climate Accords and the World Health Organization and not re-create the sort of camps established in WWII.  As concerned citizens, we must urge elected representatives to do what they know is best for democracy. Endorsing and embracing an autocratic kakistocracy is counter-productive to safeguarding peace and prosperity. Read the full article

[knick-nudiex]

 1,547,870 Black people in Canada, which is 4.3% of the total population. This makes Black people the third largest racialized group in Canada. 

Explanation

The Black population in Canada has more than doubled since 1996. 

The Black population is expected to reach over 3 million by 2041, making it the second largest racialized group in Canada. 

The provinces with the largest Black populations in 2021 were Ontario, Quebec, Alberta, British Columbia, and Manitoba. 

The census metropolitan areas with the largest Black populations in 2021 were Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, Edmonton, Calgary, Winnipeg, Vancouver, Hamilton, Oshawa, and Québec City. 

Preston, in the Halifax area, is the community with the highest percentage of Black people, with 69.4%; it was a settlement where the Crown provided land to Black Loyalists after the American Revolution. Brooks, a town in southeastern Alberta, is the census subdivision with the highest percentage of Black people, with 22.3%. The community there is mainly composed of East African immigrants.

In the 2011 census, 945,665 Black Canadians were counted, making up 2.9% of Canada's population. In the 2016 census, the black population totalled 1,198,540, encompassing 3.5% of the country's population.

The 10 largest sources of migration for Black Canadians are Jamaica (136,505), Haiti (110,920), Nigeria (109,240), Ethiopia (43,205), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (37,875), Cameroon (33,200), Somalia (32,285), Eritrea (31,500), Ghana (28,420), and the United States (27,055).

69.1% of Black Canadians are Christian, while 11.9% are Muslim and 18.2% are irreligious. This is compared to 53.3%, 4.9%, and 34.6%, respectively, of Canadians as a whole. Among first-generation Black Canadian immigrants, 74.2% are Christian, 13.3% are Muslim, and 11.4% are irreligious.

A small amount of Black Canadians (0.6%) also have some Indigenous heritage, due to historical intermarriage between Black and First Nations or Métis communities. Historically little known, this aspect of Black Canadian cultural history began to emerge in the 2010s, most notably through the musical and documentary film project The Afro-Métis Nation.

At times, Black Canadians are claimed to have been significantly undercounted in census data. Writer George Elliott Clarke has cited a McGill University study which found that fully 43% of all Black Canadians were not counted as Black in the 1991 Canadian census, because they had identified on census forms as British, French, or other cultural identities, which were not included in the census group of Black cultures.

Although subsequent censuses have reported the population of Black Canadians to be much more consistent with the McGill study's revised 1991 estimate than with the official 1991 census data, no study has been conducted to determine whether some Black Canadians are still substantially missed by the self-identification method.[citation needed]

Mixed unions

In the 2006 census, 25.5% of Black Canadians were in a mixed union with a non-Black person. Black and non-Black couples represented 40.6% of pairings involving a Black person. Among native-born Black Canadians in couples, 63% of them were in a mixed union. About 17% of Black Canadians born in the Caribbean and in Bermuda were in a mixed relationship, compared to 13% of African-born Black Canadians. Furthermore, 30% of Black men in unions were in mixed unions, compared to 20% of Black women.

[pocodecobooks]

Yet to read

In the original language:

Where They Burn Books They Also Burn People – Marcos Antonio Hernandez

Where they burn books the also burn people consists of two novels based on historical events. At the center of both stories are men consumed by religious fervor, and the theme that binds them together is the role of Catholicism in (settler) colonialism.

Buffalo Is the New Buffalo – Chelsea Vowel

Where Tommy Orange gives Indigenous peoples a present, Chelsea Vowel gives them a future. Buffalo is the New Buffalo is a collection of futuristic stories that combine sci-fi tropes with Métis storytelling. This is another way to combat the destructive narrative of Indigenous peoples as extinct: imagining Indigenous futures. In Vowel’s hands these futures are not merely future-scapes with Métis people in them; they are Indigenous futurity, which is is as much about the future as it is about repairing Indigenous ways of living. “Instead of accepting that the buffalo and our ancestral ways will never come back,” they write, “what if we simply ensure that they do?” (Vowel 21).

Het Paradijs van Oranje - Bea Vianen

Set right before the independence of Surinam, a Hindostani Surinamese writer living in the Netherlands is disillusioned with the Surinamese political situation. The novel has a strong focus on the inner life of its main character. This novel interests me particularly because my school literary curriculum did not include Dutch-language literature from Surinamese writers.

Glory – NoViolet Bulawayo

Inspired by the fall of Robert Mugabe in November 2017, Glory is about the unexpected fall of Old Horse, the long-time leader of a fictional country inhabited by animals. Shrouded in this surreal layer, Bulawayo writes sharply about contemporary politics. What intrigues me about the novel is that it is narrated by animal voices, as I love literature that experiments with narration.

In translation:

The Palm-Wine Drinkard – Amos Tutuola

The Palm-Wine Drinkard, written by Nigerian writer Amos Tutuola, draws on Yoruba folktales. It follows a rich man addicted to palm-wine on a quest to find his tapster in the realm of the dead, so that he may drink more palm-wine.

My First and Only Love - Sahar Khalifeh

A Palestinian novel about life in Palestine under the British Mandate, resistance and first love. Nadal returns to her family home in Nablus after decades away following the Nakba in 1948. There she meets with her first love and dives into her past.

The Question of Red - Laksmi Pamuntjak

A modern take on the Mahabharata that intertwines myth with history. Amba, named after a tragic mythical figure, finds that her life resembles the myth more and more. At the same time, she must navigate the political chaos of 1960's Indonesia.

Signs Preceding the End of the World - Yuri Herrera

Makina leaves behind her life in Mexico to cross the border to the U.S., in order to find her brother. She carries two secret messages: one from her mother, and one from the Mexican underworld. Herrera reflects the border in his writing style by playing with language.

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 11.16 (before 1940)

951 – Emperor Li Jing sends a Southern Tang expeditionary force of 10,000 men under Bian Hao to conquer Chu. Li Jing removes the ruling family to his own capital in Nanjing, ending the Chu Kingdom. 1272 – While travelling during the Ninth Crusade, Prince Edward becomes King of England upon Henry III of England's death, but he will not return to England for nearly two years to assume the throne. 1491 – An auto-da-fé, held in the Brasero de la Dehesa outside of Ávila, concludes the case of the Holy Child of La Guardia with the public execution of several Jewish and converso suspects. 1532 – Francisco Pizarro and his men capture Inca Emperor Atahualpa at the Battle of Cajamarca. 1632 – King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden was killed at the Battle of Lützen during the Thirty Years' War. 1776 – American Revolutionary War: British and Hessian units capture Fort Washington from the Patriots. 1793 – French Revolution: Ninety dissident Roman Catholic priests are executed by drowning at Nantes. 1797 – The Prussian heir apparent, Frederick William, becomes King of Prussia as Frederick William III. 1805 – Napoleonic Wars: Battle of Schöngrabern: Russian forces under Pyotr Bagration delay the pursuit by French troops under Joachim Murat. 1822 – American Old West: Missouri trader William Becknell arrives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, over a route that became known as the Santa Fe Trail. 1828 – Greek War of Independence: The London Protocol entails the creation of an autonomous Greek state under Ottoman suzerainty, encompassing the Morea and the Cyclades. 1849 – A Russian court sentences writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky to death for anti-government activities linked to a radical intellectual group; his sentence is later commuted to hard labor. 1855 – David Livingstone becomes the first European to see the Victoria Falls in what is now Zambia-Zimbabwe. 1857 – Second relief of Lucknow: Twenty-four Victoria Crosses are awarded, the most in a single day. 1863 – American Civil War: In the Battle of Campbell's Station, Confederate troops unsuccessfully attack Union forces which allows General Ambrose Burnside to secure Knoxville, Tennessee. 1871 – The National Rifle Association of America receives its charter from New York State. 1885 – Canadian rebel leader of the Métis and "Father of Manitoba" Louis Riel is executed for treason. 1904 – English engineer John Ambrose Fleming receives a patent for the thermionic valve (vacuum tube). 1907 – Indian Territory and Oklahoma Territory join to form Oklahoma, which is admitted as the 46th U.S. state. 1914 – The Federal Reserve Bank of the United States officially opens. 1920 – Qantas, Australia's national airline, is founded as Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services Limited. 1933 – The United States and the Soviet Union establish formal diplomatic relations. 1938 – LSD is first synthesized by Albert Hofmann from ergotamine at the Sandoz Laboratories in Basel.

[ashleysingermfablog]

Wk 8, March 29th, 2024 Research

Thoughts and writings by María Iñigo Clavo

Tz’utujil artist Antonio Pichilla’s 2007 sculpture Envoltorio (Wrapper) is an unknown object wrapped in red fabric.

From the text: Mysticism as Traces, Signs, and Symptoms of the Untranslatable... Thoughts and writings by María Iñigo Clavo, 2020…

In the 2000s, concepts such as Bonaventura de Sousa Santos’s “ecologies of knowledges” began to signal a shift in approach to artefacts and their spirituality noting that each epistemology had its own wisdom to share, making evident the weaknesses of translation that uses just one specific epistemological frame. Clavo unpacks how today (2020), a new generation of thinkers are taking up the question of translation as a reliable space of negotiation in a framework of spiritual artefacts. Scholars such as Métis Zoe Todd and Anishinaabe Vanessa Watts have written on how non-Western epistemologies have been misappropriated or abstracted in historical and some contemporary and still prominent museum spaces, galleries and by collectors of these artefacts.For example, Watts takes up Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory—which popularized the notion of the interconnection between humans and nonhumans—to argue that Latour nonetheless maintains a hierarchy of beings with humans at the top. According to Watts, this misunderstands the Amerindian sense of nonhierarchical confluence between humans and the “natural”/nonhuman world.

Robin Wall Kimmerer in her Braiding Sweetgrass text, unpacks life as in alignment with the 'Web of Life' (Native American philosophy). She aligns with the text above by also interacting that no human stands at the top or centre of the life web. The life web acts as a way of seeing that all animals, plants, micro-organisms and even soil sub-straits are dependant on one another.

José Carvalho calls this attempt to adopt or assimilate non-western cosmologies in an hegemonic frame the creation of an “epistemological counterpoint,” in which new concepts are only allowed to be part of the “score” as long as they follow a principal (Western) melody, a melody that disregards life as web but prevails with humans or 'man' has having dominion. 

This critique of textual and conceptual translation is equally applicable when it comes to the visual arts and their modes of display:

In Mayan cultures, there is a tradition of wrapping things for various purposes. Food, personal belongings, and objects with special spiritual energy such as bones, the objects of ancestors, or stones, might be wrapped in textiles that serve as protectors of the object’s magical energy. Each community has its own traditional textiles of different colors, and knowledge about them is ancestrally passed through generations. The textiles operate as the connectors between two worlds: the magic/spiritual/unknown and the material human realms. Wrapping is an act of secrecy, and this privacy and opacity carries a sacred sense.

In this decolonical text, the footers as written by art writer María Iñigo Clavo provide a wealth of information not only the article on spiritualism, decolonisation and being the other, or otherness. This is my favourite footnote and I would like to add it here...

On an author that has studied decolonial thought... "I am not an anthropologist and am not attempting to write as an expert on indigenous cultures or cosmologies. I would like to state that I do not believe that non-indigenous people cannot address indigenous spirituality, or research or make art about it. Rather, I think that an utterance from any place can contribute to the processes of collective healing and learning from each other, and thus, I assume that the place from which my utterance (as any place) comes involves its own blind spots."

[laresearchette]

Friday, December 08, 2023 Canadian TV Listings (Times Eastern)

BREAKING NEWS “The Daily Show” is now exclusive to Paramount + Canada and, as far as I know, not airing on broadcast or cable networks in Canada.

WHERE CAN I FIND THOSE PREMIERES?: BABY SHARK'S BIG MOVIE (Paramount +) THE SACRIFICE GAME (Shudder) A VERY DEMI HOLIDAY SPECIAL (The Roku Channel) MAGIC IN MISTLETOE (W Network) 8:00pm

WHAT IS NOT PREMIERING IN CANADA TONIGHT? BACKYARDS GONE WILD (TBD - HGTV Canada) OWN CELEBRATES THE NEW COLOR PURPLE (TBD - OWN Canada) MR. MONK'S LAST CASE: A MONK MOVIE (TBD)

NEW TO AMAZON PRIME CANADA/CBC GEM/CRAVE TV/DISNEY + STAR/NETFLIX CANADA:

AMAZON PRIME CANADA DATING SANTA MERRY LITTLE BATMAN SILVER AND THE BOOK OF DREAMS UN STUPÉFIANT NOËL WORLD'S FIRST CHRISTMAS (O PRIMEIRO NATAL DO MUNDO) YOUR CHRISTMAS OR MINE 2

CRAVE TV ABOUT MY FATHER ALMOST PARADISE (Season 2) ANGEL FALLS CHRISTMAS COMFORT FOOD WITH SPENCER WATTS (Season 1) CONAN THE BARBARIAN (2011) FORD V FERRARI FURRY VENGEANCE KRAMPUS LEMONADE MARY MAKES IT EASY (Season 3a) MY CHRISTMAS HERO OÙ ES-TU CÉLINE? PONTYPOOL ROYALLY WRAPPED FOR CHRISTMAS SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE SURREALESTATE (Season 2) TAKE THIS WALTZ VENOM THE YOUNG ARSONISTS

DISNEY + STAR DIARY OF A WIMPY KID CHRISTMAS: CABIN FEVER

NETFLIX CANADA BLOOD VESSEL (NG) LEAVE THE WORLD BEHIND WOMEN ON THE EDGE (AR)

NHL HOCKEY (SN) 7:00pm: Penguins vs. Panthers (TSN5) 7:00pm: Sens vs. Blue Jackets (SNWest) 9:00pm: Wild vs. Oilers

NBA BASKETBALL (SN1) 7:00pm: Raptors vs. Hornets (TSN/TSN4) 8:00pm: Warriors vs. Thunder (SN Now) 8:00pm: Cavaliers vs. Heat (SN Now) 9:00pm: Rockets vs. Nuggets (TSN3) 10:00pm: Nuggets vs. Suns (SN1) 10:00pm: Clippers vs. Jazz

ABOUT MY FATHER (Crave) 7.25pm: Encouraged by his fiancee, a man and his father spend the weekend with her wealthy and exceedingly eccentric family. The gathering soon develops into a culture clash, allowing father and son to discover the true meaning of family.

AMPLIFY (APTN) 7:30pm: Celebrated Mohawk rock star Tom Wilson crafts a powerful song based on a famous painting by Métis artist Christi Belcourt. In conversation at a diner, the two remarkable artists explore their creative processes and sources of inspiration.

NCAA MEN'S HOCKEY (TSN3) 8:00pm: Colorado College vs. North Dakota

HAPPIEST SEASON (CBC) 8:00pm: A young woman agrees to go home with her girlfriend for Christmas, but discovers she hasn't come out to her conservative parents.

7TH GEN (APTN) 8:00pm: Jordan and Brandon Nolan, born and raised in Garden River First Nation, are part of an NHL legacy. Discover how these brothers are sharing their love of hockey with Indigenous youth across the country.

CHRISTMAS ON WINDMILL WAY (CTV Life) 8:00pm: Mia Miejer expects that her Mimi will win the Christmas Market Dutch Bake-Off competition, but her Mimi has difficult news to share: she must sell the deed to their Windmill Way property, which has been in their family for generations.

THE REAL HOUSEWIVES OF JERSEY (Slice) 8:00pm: Sass in the City

THE CASE OF THE CHRISTMAS DIAMOND (Super Channel Heart & Home) 8:00pm: Blue-collar Andy finds herself accused of theft when a multimillion-dollar gem suddenly goes missing from her rich friend's estate. With the help of a famous mystery writer, Andy must find the real culprit amid the litany of wealthy guests.

OWN SPOTLIGHT: OPRAH & NICOLE AVANT (OWN Canada) 9:00pm: Oprah has an intimate conversation with filmmaker and philanthropist Nicole Avant; Nicole shares the terrifying moment of learning that her beloved mother, Jacqueline, had been killed in her own home, and how she navigated that devastating loss.

DEVIL IN THE OZARKS (Investigation Discovery) 9:00pm: A brazen sexual assault shocks a small town, but goes unsolved for 20 years, until a nearby murder produces a suspect with matching DNA.

THE YOUNG ARSONISTS (Crave) 9:00pm: Four girls form an intense and obsessive bond while reclaiming an abandoned farmhouse in an isolated community.

W5 (CTV) 10:00pm: The Baby in the Snow

CRIME BEAT (Global) 10:00pm (SEASON FINALE): The Deadly Contract