#which the lumbee are a whole other. thing

[tigwalen]

Also when I've posted about TAAF I've had issues brought up about sourcing them because they take issue with the Lumbee, so exactly what source can I use?

i'm just as wary of pretendians, but that article linked about professor driskill faking being 2s is by a conservative and anti-LGBT publication 😩 they refer to driskill solely as 'he' throughout their article for reasons i think are obvious. there are sources that are not explicitly anti-trans, such as https : // tribalallianceagainstfrauds . org /%22qwo-li%22-driskill (without spaces), which is also like a native source and not just some anti-lib gossip magazine. something tells me that The Publica probably doesn't really give a shit about indigenous people as much as they want excuses to attack liberal institutions u know

Fair. Someone pointed this out in the replies too and ugam responded.

Also the article is specifically abt them stepping down, not just a general thing about them like the TAAF link

[dr-archeville]

INDY Daily: Time for a Durham History Lesson

Everything you need to know this morning

Thank you to this week's INDY Daily sponsor, NC State’s Institute for Advanced Analytics. They are accepting applications for admission to their intensive, immersive, interactive 10-month Master of Science in Analytics (MSA) program whose next cohort will begin studies in June.  

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It’s Thursday, December 10.

Hey y’all,

There was a whoopsie on my part in yesterday’s newsletter — when discussing North Carolina’s COVID vaccine rations from the federal government, I incorrectly stated that 85,000 doses equated to 85,000 vaccinated people. Sadly, since the vaccine requires two doses, that only comes out to 42,500 vaccinated people. Thanks to readers Katelyn, Melissa, and Grady for pointing that out.

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It’s Time for a History Lesson

In this week’s issue of the INDY, we’ve got a great story from Rose Wong, a journalist and senior at Duke University, who took a deep dive into the history of Ninth Street, the Durham drag that was the site of many of her formative experiences. If you live, work, or play in Durham, you should absolutely read her piece — having a working understanding of local history is an integral part of feeling connected to that place. And at a time when travel is limited and we can’t spend all that much time inside of places that we don’t live in, I’m willing to bet that you’d love to start seeing your city in a totally new light. Here are some highlights from her piece:

First off, we’ve always had the Pinhook. Not in a Shining kind of way ("You’ve always been the caretaker," etc.) — I mean that before Ninth Street was Ninth Street, the area was called Pinhook. And even amid the Durham wheat fields of the 1800s, Pinhook offered a place for young people to drink, carouse, and generally carry on.

As the town grew and a local economy developed partially around Erwin Mills, the 9th Street area became unique in that it was one of the few places in the area where mill-adjacent businesses weren’t owned directly by the mills themselves.

As Erwin Mills declined in the 1970s, Ninth Street became a hotspot for radical politics, thanks in part to The Regulator Press, which you might know as Regulator Books.

In those early days, everyone from Margaret Atwood, John Hope Franklin, and Al Gore (back when he was one of the few national politicians sounding the alarm about climate change) visited the store to speak.

Also, you probably guessed this already, but the reason it’s called Ninth Street Bakery even though it’s located on East Chapel Hill Street is because, well, it started out on Ninth Street. Back in the early 1980s, it brought organic and whole wheat bread to Durham and enjoyed a symbiotic relationship with the Regulator crowd. (A crowd which, by the way, included Durham’s future mayor, Steve Schewel.)

Ninth Street has also been where people organized Durham’s first pride parade, and stood up for the Communist Workers Party after four of its members died standing up to the KKK in what’s now known as the Greensboro Massacre.

As Wong points out, Durham is developing, and as it grows and expands, it’s important to hold onto the town’s unique history — without it, we run the risk of not being Durham, and instead becoming just another mid-sized American city full of high-rises.

Inside the Rest of the Issue

One other thing that makes Durham special is that unlike too many other cities in America, we have a beloved alternative weekly newspaper (which itself has a beloved(?) daily newsletter). Here’s what we’ve got for you in the latest edition of INDY Week:

We looked at the movement to extend federal recognition to the Lumbee Indian tribe of North Carolina, which has faced resistance among other officially recognized tribal groups.

In addition to being a big ol’ pork producer, Smithfield represents one of the biggest environmental threats in the state (especially when considered from a quality-of-life perspective). But North Carolina residents have spent years in court fighting back, and a new judicial ruling offers hope that the big bad Smithfield might be… fried. (Sorry for the bad pun; I promise that the headline of the piece I just linked to has a much better one.)

We previewed the North Carolina Museum of Art’s new exhibit, Front Burner: Highlights in Contemporary North Carolina Painting, which features work from Durham artist Bonnie Melton.

We spoke to Omisade Burney-Scott, the Durham artist and activist who’s helping guide Black women through menopause.

And we spent 15 minutes with Steve Hill, the manager of Trosa’s Christmas tree lot.

Statewide COVID-19 by the numbers: Wednesday, December 9

6,495 New lab-confirmed new cases (410,527 total; seven-day average trending up)

42,555 Completed tests (5.73 million total; most recent positive rate was 11.7 percent)

2,440 Current hospitalizations reported (seven-day average trending up; 5,661 total deaths)  

Quick Hits

If I were in charge of reopening schools, I would simply not reopen them until the people who teach at them told me they felt that both they and their students would be safe while inside of them. Yet that’s not what’s happening in Orange County, and so teachers there, understandably, are protesting. [INDY Week]

And as if to prove those teachers’ point, the news broke yesterday that two attendees of a meeting of North Carolina school superintendents last week have tested positive for COVID. [WRAL]

Let’s be clear: North Carolina’s COVID curfew does not equate to martial law, no matter what your angrist Facebook friend is probably saying. [News & Observer]

Morrisville is getting a new ABC store, which is great, because lots of people could use a drink right now. The new location won’t be open until 2023, though, so you’ll have to wait a while (or drive to another ABC store). [INDY Week]

Meanwhile, in good news, the FTC and dozens of state Attorneys General have sued to break up Facebook. [WUNC]

Here’s a fascinating piece by the British journalist John Lancaster about the day-to-day lives of Neanderthals. I highly recommend reading it if you have 20 minutes to kill. [London Review of Books]

Today’s weather: I hope you like sunny skies and temperatures in the 50s, because that’s what we’re getting today. Tonight, there’s an 11 percent chance of rain and a low of 34.

Song of the day: "Cambodia" by Kim Wilde Though you might know her from her mega-hit "Kids in America," Kim Wilde has a ridiculously deep catalog that’s just sitting there, wishing you — specifically you — listened to all of it. It’s crazy that this song is 40 years old yet still manages to feel modern and mysterious. Maybe it’s because the internet makes it so we want new versions of old things rather than genuinely new things, but there are dozens of songs from the past few years that sound like less-good versions of this one.

— Drew Millard — Send me an email | Find me on Twitter

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[clatterbane]

There was also a LOT of extremely complicated political shit involved, and happening all up and down the coast there during that time period. IIRC those particular colonists were the third group of English people to stay on Roanoke Island for some period of time, and the previous groups had a very bad habit of starting shit with surrounding Native peoples. While being the only handful of English people anywhere in the vicinity.

A little bit more context, coming from one perspective too rarely brought up:

(The Lumbee themselves, per se, basically developed from a federation of area Native peoples and an assortment of other allied folks. Which was a common pattern throughout the Southeast.)

Shit was complicated enough even before considering some other context there. Yeah, about some of that fighting with Spain...

The Spanish and English governments devoted amazing amounts of time and effort to sending people to squabble with each other up and down the coast, for colonial control over trade in other folks' resources. That's why they were so hot on plopping this group of colonists down onto an island where their predecessors had made themselves pretty unpopular with some locals. (How much did most of the colonists know about any of this themselves, going in? Hmm.)

The whole Roanoke Colony endeavor was an absolute shitshow from the beginning, and there were SO MANY things that could have plausibly happened to those particular missing colonists.

It certainly seems very plausible that they did just go and live with some of the Native people who had already been showing interest in strategic alliances/trade agreements--very much with their own sets of goals in mind, I (unfortunately) must add, as rarely as this gets acknowledged for popular consumption. Or they could have been dragged off somewhere on some Spanish ship, likely for forced labor--to make some dubious political point and a few extra real at the same time. Or, or...

We really just don't know, and it's supremely unlikely that we ever will. It is a shame how simplistically pretty much all of this colonial history often gets presented, not least to schoolkids. There are SO many more interesting stories to be told, just from what we do know about still.

Not all of those stories are particularly flattering or politically convenient, of course.

not to be a history fucker on main but the whole mystery of the lost colony of roanoke is so fucking funny