#or. Or. OR. YOU COULD JOIN IN ON LANDBACK

[neechees]

White people are leaving "offerings" at a Native American burial ground in Tampa to ask for "protection" from the incoming hurricane

[biophonies]

when I drew this comic 3 years ago I had NO idea how far it would reach. I'm happy to finally share a corrected version with proper abbreviations, and even MORE state names of indigenous origin ♥️

however, the goal of this comic was to inspire people to do your OWN research on indigenous history. To question everything we have been taught, and everything that has been pointedly left out. This erasure, this “forgetting”, of history is not just of the past… it is happening now. - Across so-called Canada, the US, and US-occupied islands, native women are victims of murder at 10-12x the rate of non-native people, and are the most likely to go missing without being searched for by the law. - Native reservations have the highest rates of poverty in the US, with over HALF of tribal homes with no access to clean water (with more joining this list by the year) - Native people are 6-10x more likely to be unhoused than the rest of the population, and native teens suffer suicide rates higher than any other demographic. This list of modern day genocide goes on (thank you for compiling @theindigenousanarchist <3) and yet take a look at those environmental stats!

Native people manage to do SO much for the planet as a whole - thanklessly - and with all this stacked against them. Don't even get me started on kin fighting in south america. Could you imagine if there was help? #landback is resistance to genocide, and it is the key to saving our warming earth.

So look into it and the other hashtags, cuz a cartoon goose ain't a substitute for a proper education. Love to my grandparents who always kept a map of tribal territories of turtle island on their wall, to speaking on our Tsalagi & Saponi heritage. Love & solidarity forever, happy research, and happy #indigenouspeoplesday

LANDBACK.ORG

(Also, if you care to support the artist, I'm publishing a book ! and writing another - a fantastical afroindigenous graphic novel - that I post exclusively about with tons of other art on my patreon.)

[northwest-cryptid]

I was once told I was white passing enough that I should "just join the winning team" since I could "get away with it" just because you don't encounter racism in your life doesn't mean others do not.

I was once removed from a knife shop in Portland because upon checking my ID the guy running the place identified that my name was Native and told me he "wouldn't supply my kind with the means to scalp people." Just because you might not encounter racism in your life doesn't mean other do not. (They checked my ID because my family has been the victim of numerous identity theft and credit card theft cases, so my old credit card had "ask for ID" on it to help protect from that.)

I have had my language mocked multiple times in my life while trying to teach people who stated they wanted to learn it. I've been told to "speak american" while conversing with Natives in their language (in this case Cherokee since I actually had an easier time learning enough conversational Cherokee than I did Lakota which I'm still learning despite it being my first language because resources are so scarce and it's an ever evolving language) so again, just because you haven't encountered racism in your own life doesn't mean others haven't.

It's very easy to say that Native issues "aren't that deep" when you're not aware of how deep the racism goes. When you don't live it, and don't experience it; you have no idea how it feels to encounter it and be told it's not a big deal.

Savage is a slur that has been used against our people since the declaration of independence, and honestly even before that. It's something we are reclaiming; but that doesn't mean it's okay to be said. I do not lash out at people who use it, but I do remind them that it's a slur that has been used against my people. The good people who actually care typically apologize or will state that they didn't know it was offensive or that they didn't consider the use for it. Which is fine, I'm not mad at them for it; they didn't mean any harm and their intent is more important to me than their words. However the few times I've been called a "savage" after I say something sassy only to respond to the individual by saying "well, I am Native" and they tell me "oh get over it, no one has used that word offensively in at least 100 years." I do not let that shit slide.

It's easy to overlook and ignore racism that you do not face. When the media and the government would have you believe we're already dead and gone or that fighting for our rights outside of (and even including) "Landback" is pointless.

I don't fault people for not knowing about the racism against Natives, I fault them exclusively for how they act upon learning about it. Because I assure you that nothing aids the racists who rape and murder our people, who steal our land and poison our water with their pipelines; nothing helps them more than when you learn of what they're doing, and look the other way.

If you refuse to look away from Gaza, if you refuse to look away from the racism and crimes against Black individuals, then I need you to stand with Natives; educate yourself on our matters as you would theirs, ask us about what's going on; listen when we tell you something is wrong.

We're human too, we're still here; and we still matter just as much as anyone else.