#still not over that one douche in the youtube comments sarcastically calling me a *real pocahontas* because I brought up native things

[mostly-mundane-atla]

i realize you probably dont care about the upcoming netflix adaptation but the cast pretty much got confirmed and people are talking about it again so, whats your take? are you lookin forward to it or dont care for it?

Usually I wouldn't care about this, and I have said before to please not involve me in discourse i haven't already talked about, but I was going to make this post anyway so

*cracks knuckles*

Alright children, it's come to my attention that some people don't know their etiquette regarding Indigenous peoples and are making themselves look a fool.

First: you are not entitled to anyone's family history under any circumstances, save perhaps them paying you to do a family tree.

There is an aspect of this specific to Native people. I don't know how it works for Native folks in Canada but in the United States, when you are born Native your parents do some paperwork and the Beaureu of Indian Affairs gives you a Certificate of Indian Blood, stating exactly how Native you can be proven to be based on how Native your parents can be proven to be. The Certificate of Indian Blood is often called a pedigree with bitter irony because in essence, that's what it is. We come with papers like fancy show dogs, just instead of it qualifying our "breed" it's qualifying our right to be enrolled in tribal membership.

I keep my pedigree with all my other important documents, like tax information, birth certificate, social security card, that sort of thing. I inherited a total blood degree of 1/4 Eskimo from my mom and thus qualify for tribal membership. Past a certain point, I wouldn't be considered "Native Enough" based on blood alone and i'd have to get a special dispensation to be legally recognized as an Indigenous descendant. It doesn't matter what my tribe or nation's traditional customs regarding kinship and identity were, by United States law, I could be declared "Not Native Enough" no matter my connection to my culture, no matter how accepted I was by my Native family. Kinda fucked up, isn't it?

Oh, and the Beaureu of Indian Affairs is part of the US government. They ran the schools where kids got beat for not speaking English. We have to tell them we are members of this marginalized group that seems to keep demanding safe drinking water and the right to not be kicked out of our homes at the expense of oil companies if we want access to healthcare and scholarships we may not otherwise have access to because of our "unique situation" (systemic disadvantage). This marginalized group that faces police brutality and wrongful arrests for peacefully protesting our right to live in the few places we have been allowed to live. So if the US government decides Native people are a problem, they have a registry of us. Kinda fucked up, don't you think?

So with that all in mind, do you see how uncouth and just plain nasty it is to demand proof of someone being "Native Enough" or "The Right Kind of Native"? If some freak tries to dig up this info and he's more mixed than some have deemed acceptable (so 1/4 or less) or god forbid doesn't even have his papers or tribal membership for any reason (justified paranoia, clerical error, any degree of negligence on the parents' part) he gets to look forward to being treated even more like a pretendian than the fans have already seen fit to treat him as. How fun.

Every day I wake up I am made to remember that I'll never look "Native Enough" to a huge swath of people who may not have even talked to one of us face-to-face. And it's only a matter of time before one of them sends me a message, written to sound like they're crawling on their belly because they have nothing but respect for "Real Natives" but if they saw me in the regalia my older cousin in Nome made for me so I could graduate high school in regalia, they'd throw a fit. If they saw me after I eventually get my tavlaģun, all pale skinned and blue-eyed, they'd treat me as a study in cultural appropriation, as if i'm not trying to learn whatever variation of my ancestral tongue I can get my hands on.

I can totally understand why he or anyone else might have thought it was better not to specify. Like my first reaction (and this isn't necessarily correct nor something i'm proud of, just the first thing that came to my mind) to seeing Katara was cast as that Mohawk girl from Anne with an E was "they couldn't even get a real eskimo?" I'm guessing others felt similarly. If he didn't wanna deal with that, I can't blame him.

If you think he doesn't look brown enough to convincingly play someone native to the tundra, i recommend the following: go on youtube, look up "inupiaq" and watch at least five of the videos that come up to see how varied we are.

Don't watch this live action adaptation if you don't want to, but if you refuse on the grounds of "the actor's not native enough :/" and go on to ignore actual Native media, that's some performative shit if I've ever seen it. Seriously, how many of the people complaining have watched Smoke Signals? Dance Me Outside? On the Ice? How many were hyped over Reservation Dogs (first two episodes are on Hulu as I'm writing this post)?

Anyway, I'm tired. I'm probably not gonna watch the live action series, but that has nothing to do with Sokka's actor not being "brown enough" to be seen as one of the red and brown. I'll finish off this post with a 1491s video so everyone can get a taste of Native media and maybe elevate it more than discourse over who gets to play a Fantasy Eskimo who was originally written and played by white guys with no Actual Eskimo input: