#tw; anti-indigenous racism

[ladyimaginarium]

[newsfromstolenland]

In one private chat group conversation, a Mountie was accused of saying a new female employee "was overweight and insinuating that the shape of her vagina was visible through her clothing."

In another, a second RCMP officer allegedly bragged about "Tasering unarmed Black people" and called a sexual assault investigation "stupid" — drawing comments from other members of the online group who "made fun of the victim" and said, "she's a dumb Mexican c--t."

An investigator with the RCMP's professional standards unit detailed those allegations and many more in a search warrant sworn to obtain evidence now being used to call for the firing of three Coquitlam Mounties for violating the force's code of conduct.

The CBC has obtained a copy of the search warrant — which recounts behaviour which led the officer who sparked the investigation to complain to RCMP brass about what he saw as "atrocious" and "racist and horrible" activity in a private group operating on the Signal messaging app.

Full article

Tagging: @allthecanadianpolitics

More from this article below the cut, because I think it's important to understand just how much fucked up shit they were saying:

(tw misogyny, domestic violence, racial profiling, anti-Indigenous racism, racism)

The documents reveal that investigators also reviewed 600,000 messages posted to the RCMP's internal mobile data chat logs — finding evidence of "frequently offensive" usage by the three officers facing termination of "homophobic and racist slurs."

"The reviewers had identified a variety of comments that were 'chauvinist in nature, with a strong air of superiority, and include flippant or insulting remarks about clients (including objectifying women), supervisors, colleagues, policy and the RCMP as a whole,'" the warrant says.

Code of conduct hearings against Const. Philip Dick, Const. Ian Solven and Const. Mersad Mesbah had been slated to begin in Surrey this week but have been adjourned until March of next year. All three officers have been suspended since June 2021.

Although Dick, Solven and Mesbah appear to be the only Mounties currently facing code-of-conduct hearings, the court documents say seven other officers were also part of the private chat group — including two supervisors.

Among the details contained in the search warrant are allegations one of the officers facing discipline joked about a domestic violence victim, calling the victim "a dumb f--king bitch, should've worn a mouth guard."

The whistleblower — Const. Sam Sodhi — claimed that outside of the private chat group, members of the group also "belittled Indigenous people, talking about how they were 'stupid' or 'drunk' and saying they have 'unfortunate bodies' and all have fetal alcohol syndrome."

"They would say, 'We're not going to the reserve,'" the search warrant claims Sodhi told investigators.

"We're not going there because we're not going to help those people."

According to the court documents, Sodhi was posted to Coquitlam in 2019.

"As part of that process, he wrote a letter about wanting to work in an urban centre and help at-risk youth that didn't have role models," the warrant claims.

But Sodhi claimed that on his second day at work, Dick — his trainer — asked him: "Are you a cool brown guy, or are you a Surrey brown guy? Because in that letter, you're whiny, like, 'Ooh, I want to help brown people.'"

Sodhi claimed there were two chat groups for members of the Coquitlam detachment assigned to Port Coquitlam — one for all members of the watch and a second private group that began on WhatsApp but then moved to Signal. He said he was told once he was "worthy" of the private chat group, "we'll add you to it."

The officer claimed he was admitted to the private chat group in March 2021 but left after a few days because of the "constant negativity." He said he was then accused of "not being a team member" and encouraged to return.

According to the search warrant, Sodhi complained to his superiors in May 2021, and a chief superintendent mandated an investigation into five Mounties — including a corporal who was accused of failing to take measures to prevent misconduct.

The probe initially focused on text communications between the RCMP's own laptops — known as Mobile Data Terminals. Investigators reviewed messages between the five men from January 2019 until May 2021.

"When members of the [Signal] chat group realized there was an investigation, they opined that the investigation was probably about 'MDT chats' ... since the private chat group was kept 'amongst the trusted' and 'there's no way this got out,'" the warrant says.

Examples cited from the RCMP computers include statements like, "Why do brown guys have unusually high pitched voices." "As an idiot woman would say ... 'toxic,'" and, "I just racially profile pulled over a car."

A review of the chat logs also allegedly found the three officers facing termination "appeared to use 'goldfish' as a slur for Asian people."

"For example, they talked about how 'goldfish' have 'bulging eyes' that 'can't see anything,' how a Korean church in the detachment was a 'goldfish church' and how 'goldfish' were bad drivers (a common Asian stereotype)," the warrant says.

[thehealingsystem]

Hey, can we talk about the violence against queer natives for a second?

Nex Benedict was a 16 year old nonbinary student who was brutally murdered by three of their female classmates. Not only that, they were a Native American living on a Cherokee reservation, though not enrolled in the tribe, and their actual heritage is that of Choctaw.

Their death was not properly reported on until the blog post that genderkoolaid shared was made. Their nonbinary identity had remained unacknowledged, and it took even longer for their native one to be.

They were a victim of the rising anti-trans rhetoric spreading throughout places like the US. They were beaten in a bathroom after Oklahoma had banned trans people from restrooms, designating them to only use that of their assigned sex. Nex was attacked in the girls bathroom.

A native, two-sprit, nonbinary teenager. Whose identity and the actual circumstances behind the incident, a hate crime, wasn't even published beforehand. They died tragically, a death that could've been easily prevented.

Do you know how scary that is? I'm just like them. A native, two-spirit, nonbinary teenager. I have to keep on hearing stories of people my age, who live in the same country, who share my identity, getting murdered. Not even just murdered, but erased.

I know for an absolute fact that if I died tragically, who I am will not be remembered. My deadname will be on everything. I would not be counted in trans statistics, nonetheless statistics on transmascs. My identity would not be respected. My native heritage wouldn't matter. I didn't get to be enrolled. And Nex had supportive family and friends, people who stood up for them. Not all trans kids get to have that.

I've had to think about this before many times. From the other trans youth deaths I've seen. From nearly becoming one of them. When is it enough? Why do the people in power do nothing to stop kids like me from being killed? Why do they only want to make our lives worse?

I'm very lucky to live in a state that has not wavered on it's protections on LGBTQ+ residents. Though I am reminded often that that can easily change, if things keep going like this.

I could've easily been them. I can still easily be them. There are many other kids who can be them. Everyone should be doing more to protect trans youth, and protect queer natives. We're so often forgotten about. I'm part of small tribes, and tribes who barely even exist anymore. My elders desperately trying to keep it alive. Please do not erase us. I'm queer, I'm native. Nex Benedict should have been protected, youth like me should be protected. I wish the best for their family and I hope their memory is never forgotten.

[princess-nobody]

"The na'vi look too human to be believable as an alien species"

This criticism has been something I've always felt pretty blasé about; as in, I personally see no issue with their designs (love them in fact) but I can see why some people don't like them and I've never been bothered by fanmade redesigns (I find some to be rather cool actually).

However, since the release of TWOW, I've been rolling my eyes at this "critique" (nitpick imo) as well as redesigns because the movie actually provides a non-humanoid race of alien people: the Tulkun. In the film, as well as supplementary material, the Tulkun are described as being a group of people with their own culture, language, belief system, art, music, poetry and law. Sure, they're a whaling metaphor, but as opposed to portraying them as really smart whales, they're actually a native community of people.

Yet, let the people who watched the movie – fandom or otherwise – tell it, and they're just really smart big fish the Metkayina bonded with 😭 people talk about Payakan like he's a wild animal Lo'ak tamed and not a person he befriended, I've even seen fanwork where they humanize Avatar and have Payakan be a pet he adopts or a feral animal he tames and not a guy he forms a friendship with. I remember reading a oneshot where the writer claimed Lo'ak named him and I was like? No, Payakan introduced himself to him!

People claim that Ronal losing Ro'a is some sort of parallel to Neytiri losing Seze, but – not to downplay Seze's death btw – based on Ro'a being an actual person and a familial bond to Ronal, wouldn't it be more of a parallel to Neytiri losing Sylwanin? You know, her actual sister? Or her son Neteyam? It's like saying a character losing their pet hamster is the same as a another character losing their twin sister. 💀

Idk, I just wonder if the people who claim the na'vi look "too human" would have actually empathized with them if they looked more alien and less humanoid, because if the Tulkun are anything to go by, it was a great decision to anthropomorphize them because people would have dehumanized them if they hadn't been (at least, more than they already do). Audiences seem to struggle to empathize with or humanize characters that don't look anthropomorphic in any way.

Sorry for this long ass yap session 😭 this is just something that has bothered me for a while and I needed to get it off my chest.

Bonus point: It becomes more horrifying when you acknowledge that historically, indigenous and native populations having their body parts/organs harvested by colonizers and invaders for medicinal and ritualistic purposes is actually a terrifyingly common phenomenon. Indigenous people having their skulls, scalps and organs harvested by settlers, mummified egyptian people having their bodies stolen and consumed, and many more examples of this happening make it so claiming the Tulkun to be "just a whaling metaphor" feels deeply reductive. Yes, they are a whaling metaphor, but it's a lot deeper than that, yet no one acknowledges it because they look like whales I suppose.

[wheelie-sick]

i’m NATIVE AMERICAN and ICE came to my house insisting that my family were “illegal aliens” and needed to get out and come with them, completely ignoring us when we said we were legal citizens.

so sick of this shit. stealing OUR LAND and then demanding we get off of it

I've been hearing about this happening :(

it's so fucked, I'm sorry you had to deal with/are dealing with this

[psychabolition]

I think the purpose of a diagnosis is most obvious when youre misdiagnosed*.

When I was diagnosed with schizophrenia it was very obvious that it didnt describe my experiences at all. I also know why I got this diagnosis - a psychologist didnt believe that my "friends" had actually betrayed me. Also my perceptual changes that I experienced because of alienation from others (=dissociation) just wasnt something he could relate to.

The treatment that was justified with this diagnosis all revolved about denying me my own reality. Any experiences I talked about were questioned. No matter what I was saying I was always repeatedly asked if "other people in my life perceived it in the same way". If other people in my life had a different perception of a situation than I did ,they where always right and I was always wrong.

This diagnosis was there to deny me so much agency ;not only in what I was literally allowed to do (like they monitored really closely what I was doing all the time +I had worse restrictions than others in where Im allowed to go) but also simply in my own perception. (Like what is true and what is not - like that certain people in my life dont like me)

I can only vaguely imagine what kind of horrific violence gets justified with this. Years of incarceration in forensic psych wards ,extreme isolation and physical violence, drugging people involuntarily,literally tying people down for hours, complete ostracization from your community, police brutality, making people legally dependent on others, homelessness ....It makes sense that its one of the many ways that the violence of racism/colonialism/poverty is somehow covered up with this diagnosis... although I only have an extremely superficial understanding of how exactly it is done.

*even when the diagnosis fits you its an act of discrimination to label your mental distress as "ill/dysfunctional/sick/crazy"

[allthecanadianpolitics]

The Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs says a second feasibility study assessing the scope of a landfill search for the remains of two First Nations women has been completed and is set to be forwarded to the federal government. The organization says in a statement that the report is being reviewed by the families of Morgan Harris and Marcedes Myran, as well as legal counsel, before it is sent to the department of Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada. Police said just over a year ago that they believe the remains of Harris, 39, and Myran, 26, were taken to the Prairie Green landfill, just north of Winnipeg, in May 2022. Since then, the families of the women have been fighting to have the landfill searched. 

Continue Reading

Tagging @politicsofcanada

[ignatius-pennyfeather-ix]

holy shit if you think that a marginalized population having not that many members means that they’re not important & we shouldn’t care about them i will fucking kill you with knives

[wc-confessions]

mods dont have to post this, i am just very angry right now. id understand if this is controversial. i just want someone to hear this.

i just got off of wcue. i was a spectating. there was someone in the clan named w//ndigowisp. i am not good at confrontation, but being a native who sees ca like this every day of my life (literally.) i had an urge to actually say something. this has been something that has bothered me for a very, very long time. it is extremely personal to me.

my friend and i approached them as kindly as possible to inform them about the issue with their name. i was gentle with my wording- i know not everyone knows about the weight behind it. i know some people do not do well with being confronted.

and instantly we were told that they "knew what they were doing," and that we were making them uncomfortable. my friend pointed out that i, a native, have to be uncomfortable with this almost all the time. we were told that it did not matter because it was fictional, even though cultural appropriation extends beyond warrior cats.

after they were told that i am a native, they started going on about how rude and mean i was being. it was at this point they were prioritizing their own comfort over respect for native culture.

the person with the name asked their friends if they could serverhop because they were getting anxious. one of their friends told me to die (through the euphemism "go to starclan") right before they left.

my friend left, but i did not. someone had politely asked for a little more elaboration after overhearing our conversation.

after that, someone brought their gaggle of friends over. 3-4 of them. they were telling me that they were cherokee, and that it was chronically online to be uncomfortable with this. all i had asked for was for them to respect native culture. i was told that i am stupid and sad for caring about this. i was told to 'let people enjoy things.' it is not just the name i am upset with. as i said before, cultural appropriation extends beyond warrior cats. ca is the last step of colonization.

you could argue that there are bigger issues. i agree. but there is nothing wrong with being uncomfortable with cultural appropriation (i cannot believe i have to say that), and you should not go after other natives for it. i did everything i could to be kind, but i am still painted as awful and mean.

i wish i could say wcue is not always like this. in my own personal experience, anti-indigenous racism runs rampant there. i have blocked most racists i see. my blocklist is almost full- roblox has a limit of 100 users. only about 10-20 are from before i started blocking them.

again, mods don't have to post this, but i am still very hurt and very angry. sorry for the long post. if, by any chance, any of those people see this- i am sorry, but i'm not going to swallow my discomfort and hurt for the sake of white comfort.

as someone who was raised to believe in the spirit in question, it IS disrespectful to be using the name - i was told from a young age to never speak the name of it due to its nature and how it will bring misfortune to both myself and my people (and because of this, i go out of my way to avoid using its name, even if censored)

i dont think these people realize that not all native americans share the same beliefs, either. there are very specific groups who believe in this spirit, primarily those of us who are from canada, the great lakes, and the appalachians (i don't believe the cherokee nation is a part of this particularly grouping, but correct me if im wrong!). that name should not have been used or even encouraged to be used. it reeks of a lack of respect for many native american cultures and cultural appropriation

having a complaint about that spirit's name being used is not "chronically online" - there is a very real and genuine belief that usage of the name will bring evil to you, and this belief has been around since before chr*st*pher c*lumbus even came to the americas. it feels like most people think "chronically online" means "bipoc bringing up racism" nowadays because they feel entitled to speak over us (as always)

i'm very sorry you had to deal with those people, anon. i myself would've been extremely paranoid about the encounter, and you have every right to be upset over what happened. i hope you are well

-mod ashensky

[indigenous-gender]

I was just told I “need to be medicated” by someone claiming to be Native and two spirit. They refused to tell me who their people are which is basic indigenous protocol. I introduced myself and who claims me as a sign of respect and good faith. I am literally telling y’all straight up people who invalidate and police how queers of color identify are literally white supremacists and eugenicists. If you say that an indigenous person needs to be medicated because they are practicing their indigenous culture, you are a white supremacist and ableist. You are doing exactly what our colonizers did, medicalizing Indigeneity and claiming that an indigenous person must have a disabilityand needs to be treated with colonial medicine to “fix the problem”. What you’re really saying is you want me to assimilate into whiteness and white gender, sexual, racial and cultural constructs

[areawest]

this is ironically how some of you on here talk about australia. which is not a good thing btw.

[autistic-ben-tennyson]

In case you haven’t forgotten, conservatives on this hellsite get off on being POS and mocking people who come here for safety. Mocking trans people, POC and indigenous people’s trauma. People like them like to portray us as over sensitive and spoiled to dismiss the issues we face.

Many of us have had the displeasure of seeing these two transphobic racist Zionists, but they often pull the “I don’t hate anyone, I just disagree with their lifestyle”. So here they are going mask off as garbage human beings who get off putting down LGBTQ. Theconstitutionisgayculture is an example of gay conservatives who have a “fuck you I got mine” attitude towards trans and nonbinary people. People like Anamericangirl claim to understand “basic biology” while being homeschooled young earth creationists.

[crystalsandbubbletea]

What should have been

(CW: Anti-Indigenous themes mention, racism, genocide)

This is basically a ramble about the effects of how my grandmother did not grow up in the Ponca Tribe of Oklahoma

We're doing a weaving project in my art class and I'm feeling this emotion that I can't describe-

It's a positive emotion, I know that, it comes whenever I'm beading, smudging, learning Ponca, or at Pow-Wow's.

I can only describe this emotion as a mix of euphoria and feeling like I'm floating.

Is this emotion positivity? Joy? Or happiness that I'm reconnecting with something that was stolen from me.

My grandmother and her brother, my uncle, could have grown up in the Ponca Tribe, could have been adopted by a family in the tribe, yet my grandmother was born a year before ICWA was passed, and my uncle two years before ICWA was passed, so they were adopted by a white family. They were a good family from what I heard, but that doesn't change that we were robbed from growing up in the Ponca Tribe, our tribe, our family.

My grandmother and uncle wouldn't know about their biological family until around 2018, when I was eleven.

My grandmother and my mother took DNA tests, and that's how we found out.

My grandmother had a Ponca father, and a white mother, and many siblings and cousins, all of whom were still alive.

We would be able to meet up with them, although my uncle only met them via video call.

At first, I thought this was normal, didn't think anything of it.

I realize now exactly how much was stolen from me.

I should have grown up with my culture. I should have been beading, and weaving, and learning the language, and attending Sundance, and going to Pow-Wow's, yet I didn't.

When I attended Sundance last year, I ended up crying. How couldn't I cry? After all, I was doing something I should have been doing my whole life.

I should be able to enroll in the Tribe, yet I can't, neither can my mother, because of blood quantums. My grandfather is a white man, so is my father. Although the elders are discussing letting people of lineal descent enroll.

... Then there's this other side of me.

Every time I wear my ribbon skirt, or smudge, I have this voice in my head, it says to me "You will never be indigenous enough. Look at your skin, you're too white, Rian. Your name is also too white. And look at your hair! You have your father's hair, and he's white! And that ribbon skirt, it's just cosplay! And you only bead because you just like the colors and textures!"

Would I still have that voice if I had grown up with my culture? Definitely not, this voice is the result of having the life I could have lived stolen from me.

The white people, the land stealers, they wanted the Indigenous Americans gone, so they took our children and tried to force us to be like them.

Of course, they failed.

... They can try to apologize for the things they done, but no amount of apologizing will change the fact that they stole from us, and how we are still digging up the bodies of children at residential schools.

When they say "America is the land of the free!" Don't forget the Indigenous Americans, and how we're still being oppressed, and never forget how what the white people did still affects the children that didn't grow up in their culture, and how it affects their children, and their grandchildren.

And don't forget, the genocide of Indigenous Americans is still going on.

[dandyshucks]

waking up to see someone left a semi-self-demeaning reply on a post of mine and i go to their blog just to make sure they're not someone nasty before i reply encouragingly to them, only to see theyre very into the racist white man youtuber profiting off of Algonquian culture that obviously doesnt belong to him 😵‍💫😵‍💫

[allthecanadianpolitics]

After a delay called unacceptable by the province's racism commissioner, the New Brunswick government has announced its first steps to rid the provincial map of places named with a slur against Indigenous women.

Tourism, Heritage and Culture Minister Tammy Scott-Wallace said in a statement this week that the government is launching a 28-day consultation seeking proposals to rename a mountain in northern New Brunswick. The mountain, along with a nearby community and a protected natural area, is named with a derogatory term for an Indigenous woman.

"There has been a lot of discussion with respect to the derogatory names in the province and why it has taken so long to have new names considered," Scott-Wallace said. Provincial officials said Tuesday the initiative deals with two of the eight locations named with the slur that are under provincial jurisdiction, "and separate processes will follow for the remaining six."

Full article

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

[justanisabelakinnie]

I saw one of ur posts saying how firebender!katara was racist. I’m just kinda curious and I don’t really understand but how?

Basically it's racist because the firebenders were imperialist who terrorized, colonized, and committed genocide against the water tribe and the rest of the world. So making Katara a firebender, or, worse yet, Fire Lady(through marriage to Zuko ofc 🤮) is stripping of her beautiful water tribe culture and making her a part of the culture that tried to wipe out hers. This is the same reason I'm against shipping Katara or Sokka with Zuko or Azula.

The same also applies to making Sokka a firebender, like doesn't it just make sense for him to be a waterbender if he was a bender? Why strip him of his culture in favor of the one that literally oppressed his own and that considers him a "filthy peasant"?

Hope this helps!