what you'll find here: pictures of awesome people, fashion, social justice, history, art, quotes i like, articles i found interesting, fannish stuff, and other random miscellany.
warning: i post a lot of gifs. also, some content may possibly be triggering. i will put a trigger warning on some posts.
i co-mod queerautistics with tal9000, marikunin and gifoverit. you can check it out at http://queerautistics.tumblr.com
thing is though, i’m annoyed because i’m only ever nice to people and people get all bitchy to for absolutely no reason i might like, delete tumblr and stuff because i only use it for a laugh and to keep in touch with friends but i have them all on facebook anyway, hmm might just stick to real blogging, tumblr is pretty cringy as it is
Pop quiz time!
You have a transmisogynistic username and engage in cultural appropriation. Someone calls you out on both of those things. Do you:
a. Apologize, change your username, and educate yourself so you don’t mess up again
b. Make passive-aggressive posts about how everyone’s being mean to you and refuse to learn anything.
i can’t be bothered to reblog the post and start a whole thing about it but someone on the internet definitely just called me a racist, as if i don’t blog about my mixed-race boyfriend enough…
You guise.
You guise.
She has a mixed-race boyfriend.
She can’t be racist.
Keep on digging yourself deeper, OP. You’re just proving that you’re a nasty, bigoted person.
What’s that? No honey, the fact that the okimâwastotin (that headdress worn by clueless hipster girls all the time) is generally reserved for males in Plains cultures is not sexist or patriarchal. You can stop trying to ‘save us from sexism’ thanks.
In fact, we were centuries ahead of you in the gender equality department. There are of course a great diversity of socio-political traditions in our various nations, but one thing comes through loud and clear…our women held positions of power. Not merely over hearth and home, but politically as well. In some nations, women run the roost, and this without denigrating or subjugating men (in case you were worried).
Centuries of racist and sexist interference by European powers has taken its toll. We do indeed face sexism in our communities, to an extent unthinkable before Contact. It is sadly the case that the oppressed often internalise their oppressor, and the oppressor for us has always been racist, and sexist.
To combat this, we look to our traditions, which are egalitarian. Where men and women are respected and venerated. We do not fumble towards equality as sameness, as so many settler feminists insist we should (in our context only, as they often recognise this is a ridiculous approach otherwise). We revive equity. We acknowledge different gender roles, and recognise that the female is not subservient in our cultures.
When we discuss ‘women’s power’ and ‘women’s roles’, you hear echoes of your history. But your history is not ours. Our history speaks proudly of the strength of our women and our men. Gender roles were not created in our societies to elevate men and turn women into chattel.
You settler women have much to overcome. Your history is fraught with inequality and abuses. I am sorry that you come from such twisted traditions.
Do not attempt to transplant your historical circumstances into our Nations. You have no idea what the headdress means in our cultures. To claim that the restrictions on who can wear it are ‘sexist’ merely highlights this ignorance…your inability to see outside your own cultural norms, outside your own sad, sexist cultural history.
Colonisers always believe they have the right to define reality, particularly for those they have colonised. What kind of feminist are you, when you take part in these inequalities of power, and proclaim for us the meaning of our own symbols and traditions?
In case you’re not sure, it makes you a racist feminist.
a comic about menstruation
Adopting “tribal” face paint to make a statement about being warrior-like is appropriative and exocticizing. Do not do this. Do not do this with cosmetics. Do not do this with menstrual blood. Do not do this at all.
There are plenty of ways to employ your bodily secretions as a statement that don’t contribute to hurtful depictions of indigenous peoples. Use it to paint a picture of horrifying cthonic beasts eating the patriarchy. Water your plants with it and forge yourself a salad built of feminine pain. Fill squirt-guns with it and perpetrate drive buys on anti-choice protestors desperate to involve themselves with your uterine contents. Just don’t do this shit.
really glad to see good commentary on this image. i’ve seen it on my dash like 50 times and nobody, including myself, has said a word about that last panel there.
also, specifying menstruation as something female-specific is transphobic and cissexist as hell. this is gross.
Reblogging for commentary.
When is it appropriate to tag things #Native American:
Are you posting in an NDN language(ᏣᎳᎩ ᎦᏬᏂᎯᏍᏗ, etc)?
(I’d have examples here but I cant find any posts near the top of tags I follow and google’s being made of fail about searching. Anyhow…)
THE MOST APPROPRIATE. CARRY ON.
Are you, the poster, NDN - and posting something pertaining to your life or your family?
Examples:
Nakkyy posts about a summer program called “Math and Science for Minority Students”
Stuffmayalikes posts a family photo
Moniquill posts beadwork in progress and snark
Nativeamericansdoingstuff posts exactly what it says on the tin.
SUPER APPROPRIATE! In fact, you probably don’t have to read further since anything you post becomes relevant to #Native American by default!
For everyone else:
Are you posting photos, videos, or legitimate quotes of/by NDN people (even if they are not you)?
This kid flipping a skateboard
This popular indigenous musician
This vintage shot of a Skokomish woman
APPROPRIATE!
Are you posting photos of art or works of fiction created by NDN people?
These beaded, quilled earrings
This pottery, and the Yuma woman who made it
APPROPRIATE!
Are you posting about events in the tumblr/larger online NDN tags/community?
This discussion of a person who had an NDN skull as a curio
This blog about shit people say to NDNs
The post you are reading right now
APPROPRIATE!
Are you posting about events/facts concerning the NDN community offline?
This post about a gay NDN woman elected to state legislature
This post about the appropriation of Lakota spirituality
This post about the housing crisis in Wasagamack
This post about teen suicide on the rez
APPROPRIATE!
Are you posting legitimate quotes ABOUT NDN people or communities, even if they are not BY NDN people, because they’re relevant to historical record and ongoing conversation (microagressions and discussions of racism qualify here)?
This post about the appropriation of War Bonnets
This 1830’s quote about manifest destiny
This De-Occupy Rattlesnake Island post
This post about the problematic language of the Occupy movement at large
APPROPRIATE!
All of the above is totally legit for #Native American! This list is not exhaustive, but you should get the idea.
Now on the other hand….
Are you posting pictures of dreamcatchers that were probably made in china (also applies to all other ‘native art’ not made by natives) because you bought it?
It’s four baby pink dreamcatchers strung together with chicken feathers, for fuck’s sake.
A really shitty chicken feather ‘war bonnet’
NOT APPROPRIATE.
Are you posting shit clearly made up by white people that’s attributed falsely to NDN people that you found on google and are SO DEEPLY MOVED BY?
That ‘two wolves’ bullshit (Why it’s bullshit)
This ‘Native American Proverb’
This asspull assertion about Native American Shamans
NOT APPROPRIATE.
Are you posting art clearly made by non-NDNs which depicts Hollywood Indians or Appropriators? I AM LOOKING RIGHT AT YOU, CECILY.
The OP who thought she looked Native American because she’s with a wolf
White-haired chick in Hollywood Indian attire has animals in her hair.
Screencap from Disney’s Peter Pan
NOT APPROPRIATE*
Are you posting shit with pendleton patterns or random geometric patterns on it? How about random items made of leather, fur, or feathers? And this stuff is not specifically identified as being made by NDN people?
This machine-printed felt blanket
NOT APPROPRIATE
Are you posting photos of yourself/your friends wearing busted-ass stereotype clothing/dressed as 50’s style Hollywood Indians? Or reblogging others’ photos of the same? HINT: IF SOMEONE IS WEARING A WAR BONNET OR OTHER HEADDRESS AND IT ISN’T AT A FORMAL, REVERENT OCCASION (POWWOW COUNT), IT IS PROBABLY THIS.
These two girls in war bonnets sitting on the floor
These hipsters sitting on a wood pile
This girl squatting in a riverbed
These little children at a ‘Thanksgiving’ event
This naked white woman in a chicken feather war bonnet on a horse
These photos of a woman and her child in ‘war paint’
NOT REMOTELY APPROPRIATE. CUT THIS SHIT OUT. THIS IS BAD AND YOU SHOULD FEEL BAD.
*Can be totally appropriate if you’re posting for the sake of discussing the problematic portrayal of Native Americans in the piece. Yes, this includes snarking the fuck out of it.
This list is also not exhaustive, but you should get the idea.
#NATIVE AMERICAN IS FOR THINGS PERTAINING TO ACTUAL NATIVE AMERICANS.
I can’t get over the ribbons and pompoms.
And then there’s this piece of crap. They’re dragging the Mayans into their culturally appropriating fuckery as well. >_<
The photos above were all taken by Edward Sheriff Curtis, a man who by a large number of white ethnographers has been described as something of a super hero, but who, in reality, was a terrible contributor to the tired, old-fashioned idea of Native Americans as homogenous, history-less people, stuck in the past.
Hipster chicks wearing war bonnets? Blame Curtis.
Topshop selling ‘Native inspired clothes’ that have little or nothing to do with real, native fashion? Blame Curtis.
Curtis’s photos are great examples of how indigenous people have been and continue to be othered by the West, through a discourse where they’re turned into objects, rather than subjects and I believe the photos above are rather telling examples of how Edward S. Curtis documentation of ‘dying cultures’ had fuck all to do with reality and everything to do with a romantic idea of Native Americans as the proverbial noble savages that had to be saved by the white man.
Just have a look at the shirt worn by the four different men in the photos above. Two of these men come from the same tribe, the other two are members of different branches of the Sioux Očhéthi Šakówiŋ.
Yes, you’re right, it is indeed the same hide shirt, because Curtis was a wanker who staged all his photos and deliberately made people look like his idea of what a Native American would look like, rather than actually depicting the reality of Native Americans’ lives.
When is it appropriate to tag things #Native American:
Are you posting in an NDN language(ᏣᎳᎩ ᎦᏬᏂᎯᏍᏗ, etc)?
(I’d have examples here but I cant find any posts near the top of tags I follow and google’s being made of fail about searching. Anyhow…)
THE MOST APPROPRIATE. CARRY ON.
Are you, the poster, NDN - and posting something pertaining to your life or your family?
Examples:
Nakkyy posts about a summer program called “Math and Science for Minority Students”
Stuffmayalikes posts a family photo
Moniquill posts beadwork in progress and snark
Nativeamericansdoingstuff posts exactly what it says on the tin.
SUPER APPROPRIATE! In fact, you probably don’t have to read further since anything you post becomes relevant to #Native American by default!
For everyone else:
Are you posting photos, videos, or legitimate quotes of/by NDN people (even if they are not you)?
This kid flipping a skateboard
This popular indigenous musician
This vintage shot of a Skokomish woman
APPROPRIATE!
Are you posting photos of art or works of fiction created by NDN people?
These beaded, quilled earrings
This pottery, and the Yuma woman who made it
APPROPRIATE!
Are you posting about events in the tumblr/larger online NDN tags/community?
This discussion of a person who had an NDN skull as a curio
This blog about shit people say to NDNs
The post you are reading right now
APPROPRIATE!
Are you posting about events/facts concerning the NDN community offline?
This post about a gay NDN woman elected to state legislature
This post about the appropriation of Lakota spirituality
This post about the housing crisis in Wasagamack
This post about teen suicide on the rez
APPROPRIATE!
Are you posting legitimate quotes ABOUT NDN people or communities, even if they are not BY NDN people, because they’re relevant to historical record and ongoing conversation (microagressions and discussions of racism qualify here)?
This post about the appropriation of War Bonnets
This 1830’s quote about manifest destiny
This De-Occupy Rattlesnake Island post
This post about the problematic language of the Occupy movement at large
APPROPRIATE!
All of the above is totally legit for #Native American! This list is not exhaustive, but you should get the idea.
Now on the other hand….
Are you posting pictures of dreamcatchers that were probably made in china (also applies to all other ‘native art’ not made by natives) because you bought it?
It’s four baby pink dreamcatchers strung together with chicken feathers, for fuck’s sake.
A really shitty chicken feather ‘war bonnet’
NOT APPROPRIATE.
Are you posting shit clearly made up by white people that’s attributed falsely to NDN people that you found on google and are SO DEEPLY MOVED BY?
This ‘Native American Proverb’
This asspull assertion about Native American Shamans
NOT APPROPRIATE.
Are you posting art clearly made by non-NDNs which depicts Hollywood Indians or Appropriators? I AM LOOKING RIGHT AT YOU, CECILY.
The OP who thought she looked Native American because she’s with a wolf
White-haired chick in Hollywood Indian attire has animals in her hair.
Screencap from Disney’s Peter Pan
NOT APPROPRIATE*
Are you posting shit with pendleton patterns or random geometric patterns on it? How about random items made of leather, fur, or feathers? And this stuff is not specifically identified as being made by NDN people?
This machine-printed felt blanket
NOT APPROPRIATE
Are you posting photos of yourself/your friends wearing busted-ass stereotype clothing/dressed as 50’s style Hollywood Indians? Or reblogging others’ photos of the same? HINT: IF SOMEONE IS WEARING A WAR BONNET OR OTHER HEADDRESS AND IT ISN’T AT A FORMAL, REVERENT OCCASION (POWWOW COUNT), IT IS PROBABLY THIS.
These two girls in war bonnets sitting on the floor
These hipsters sitting on a wood pile
This girl squatting in a riverbed
These little children at a ‘Thanksgiving’ event
This naked white woman in a chicken feather war bonnet on a horse
These photos of a woman and her child in ‘war paint’
NOT REMOTELY APPROPRIATE. CUT THIS SHIT OUT. THIS IS BAD AND YOU SHOULD FEEL BAD.
*Can be totally appropriate if you’re posting for the sake of discussing the problematic portrayal of Native Americans in the piece. Yes, this includes snarking the fuck out of it.
This list is also not exhaustive, but you should get the idea.
#NATIVE AMERICAN IS FOR THINGS PERTAINING TO ACTUAL NATIVE AMERICANS.
I updated the links; they should all go to posts that actually exist now. I also made them more descriptive and differentiated from one another as per someone’s ability request below.
I am working 24/7 at the moment and thus have little or no time to partake in this discussion, otherwise I’d be writing rather pissed-off replies to certain citywitches and other people who think that their religious practices excuse racism, cultural appropriation and the rest of the shit they’re…
Bless this post.
Not only is this a perfect example of cultural appropriation, but the lighting makes my eyes hurt.
