Spiritual Vultures. Updated.

The late Thomas Banyacya, Hopi Traditional Spokesman, is seen here in Chaco Canyon. Courtesy Christopher McLeod.

The late Thomas Banyacya, Hopi Traditional Spokesman, is seen here in Chaco Canyon. Courtesy Christopher McLeod.

“This is a very sacred kiva,” says the late Thomas Banyacya, Hopi Traditional Spokesman, pointing to an ancient sacred site at Casa Rinconada in northwest New Mexico. “We are looking at the spirit of our ancestors… they are here. They are watching us. We hope they will help Native people to protect their land and sacred sites,” he says in a frail voice recorded in archival footage.

Over the past three decades, the Sacred Land Film Project (SLFP) has produced films about how mainstream American culture antagonizes Native American sensibilities around spirituality and sacred sites. Casa Rinconada is one quintessential example—a cultural hub of Ancestral Puebloans, where thousands of New Age seekers gathered for the Harmonic Convergence in 1987, littering the sacred kiva with crystals, cremated human remains and one curious looking teddy bear wax candle.

[…]

“While producing films on threats to indigenous sacred sites, I spend a lot of time listening to communities all over the world explain the most urgent threats. I’ve been really struck over the years by the fact that universally, right up there with mining, logging, dams and land grabs, there’s deep concern about New Age appropriation of sacred places, cultural rituals and spiritual traditions,” says Christopher McLeod, Director of SLFP.

In northern California, the Winnemem Wintu Tribe can empathize with the predicament of the Navajo. The Harmonic Convergence also congregated on Mt. Shasta, a mountain deeply sacred to the tribe. “The Harmonic Convergence of 1987 unleashed an overwhelming flood of seekers, hundreds of New Agers leaving crystals and medicine wheels all over the mountain. Later, there were sweat lodges for hire, and now even cremation remains poured into a sacred spring. How do we stop this and redirect this desperate search for meaning and connection?” wonders McLeod.

The Winnemem, known as the Middle Water People, trace their ancestry over millennia along the watershed south of their revered Mt. Shasta. The Winnemem believe they emerged from the spring on Panther Meadow, where New Agers often congregate—drumming and singing and leaving offerings behind, including ashes of the departed.

“We believe this spring is so sacred. We only go there once a year to sing at the doorway of our creation story,” says Chief Caleen Sisk, spiritual leader of the Winnemem Wintu, in Pilgrims and Tourists, a SLFP film that explores the impact of New Age tourism on Native communities in the Russian Altai Republic and Mt. Shasta. “People dumped cremations right into this spring,” she says. “Cremations are a pollutant… everyone downstream is drinking that water. Do you put cremations on the altar in the Vatican?” she asks incredulously.

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Besides cleaning the offerings in the spring, the Winnemem have to contend with thousands of climbers who attempt to summit Mt. Shasta. “On our mountain we have 30,000 visitors,” she says. “Non-indigenous people need to understand that there is a way to be there, a way of walking on that land without destroying it… people can admire the meadow from the edge.”

Ann Marie Sayers, Costanoan Ohlone, believes that contrasting value systems among Natives and non-Natives lead to cultural appropriation. “These places call for humility and respect,” she says.  In another SLFP film clip posted as part of a five-clip playlist on YouTube, a white woman naively claims that in her past life she has been black, Native American, Chinese and Egyptian and should not be denied access to Native sacred sites.

“New Agers look at traditional Native [cultures] for some answers to their spiritual bankruptcy. In an effort to find themselves, they are appropriating a lot of Native belief systems, to plug into for a weekend,” says Chris Peters (Pohlik-lah/Karuk) in a film clip from SLFP’s 2001 film, In the Light of Reverence.

The Winnemem say their ceremony is delayed every year, because the spring has to be cleaned from the offerings left behind. As the Winnemem youth remove bone fragments and cremation ashes from the spring, Chief Sisk remarks, “People can live without oil. They can live without gold, but nothing can live without water.”

It’s perfectly possible for white people to feel all spiritual and connected to nature, the universe, everything, without co-opting what you think is a peoples’ culture, and without invading and fucking up their sacred places. Once again, white people manage to make everything about them. If nothing else, stop thinking you’re honouring your dead by dumping them in places sacred to other people, and polluting while you’re doing it. How in the hell is that spiritual? Isn’t it about time you just left us Indians alone? Go, discover your own roots, there’s nothing wrong in that. A whole lot of cultures have a history of sweating, many of them white cultures, and in many of those cultures, such traditions are carried on. You don’t need to up and decide that the “Native American” way of doing something is so much more golly gosh darn pure and special”. That’s racist crap, perpetuating the noble savage nonsense, so cut it the fuck out.

No, there isn’t a place for you in various Indigenous ceremonies. You’ll live. Go and discover those ancient, traditional ceremonies you are a part of, learn about your own self instead.

Just reported, Pokémon Go players are getting in on the disrespect, too. Play your games, people, but pay the fuck attention to where you are, yeah?

According to CBC News, Gouchie was paying respects at her father’s gravesite on Sunday when she noticed dozens of Pokémon Go players searching the sacred First Nations burial ground.

“It’s sacred there,” Gouchie told CBC. “This land was once my ancestral land. This is the only little piece of land inside Prince George that is ours, and you are disrespecting it. My dad, my uncles, my cousin, my great grandmother are all buried there.”

The burial ground is open to the public within the Lheidli T’enneh Memorial Park, but Gouchie says the presence of a Pokéstop — a virtual location in the game where Pokémon Go players gather supplies to catch monsters — is disrespectful.

“This has to stop,” said Gouchie. “This game has only been live in Canada for one week. It’s only a matter of time before that burial site is filled with Pokémon Go people.

“I was thinking, I need our K’san [traditional] drummers out here so we can block both these gates and … stop this,” she said.

Gouchie does not blame the players, but does blame the game creator Niantic. She has submitted a request to the game developers to have the Pokéstop removed and reported the incident to her tribal council.

Full Story here.

30.

John Calvin Coolidge granted automatic citizenship to all Native Americans born in the United States in June 1924, but he also began desecration of Mount Rushmore in August 1927.

John Calvin Coolidge granted automatic citizenship to all Native Americans born in the United States in June 1924, but he also began desecration of Mount Rushmore in August 1927.

With a sweep of his pen in June 1924, John Calvin Coolidge granted automatic citizenship to all Native Americans born in the United States.

Afterward, Coolidge, wearing a dark suit and grasping a hat in his hands, posed for a photo outside the White House with four tribal leaders—three of whom were dressed in traditional attire. Although the photograph likely was taken several months after Coolidge signed the Indian Citizenship Act it came to symbolize a new era in federal-Indian relations.

President Calvin Coolidge with four Osage Indians after Coolidge signed the bill granting Indians full citizenship. (Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C.)

President Calvin Coolidge with four Osage Indians after Coolidge signed the bill granting Indians full citizenship. (Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C.)

Also known as the Snyder Act, the Indian Citizenship Act, sought to reward Indians for service to their country while also assimilating them into mainstream American society. Because two-thirds of the indigenous population had already gained citizenship through marriage, military service or land allotments, the act simply extended citizenship to “all noncitizen Indians born within the territorial limits of the United States.”

Passage of the act came partly in response to Indians’ overwhelming service during World War I. About 10,000 Indians enlisted in the military and served during the war, despite not being recognized as U.S. citizens.

[Read more…]

Takumi Kama.

I’m a at a bit of a loss as to where to start with this most wonderful artist, who has a pointed and humorous take on many subjects. Okay, I have to start with the McD’s Fries:

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This wonderful work is one of many which can be seen here. Takumi Kama also has two pieces which are what I would refer to as Turtle Island, and they are delightful.

“I am terrified of high school girls,” admits artist Takumi Kama. “If I encounter a group of them on a train there is a high possibility I will escape to another car.” And Kama surely isn’t alone in his fears.

In Japan, this adolescent subset of beings known as joshi kōsei (女子高生) are fetishized and eroticized to the extreme in all types of media. But instead of hiding from his fears, like he normally would do, Kama has decided to confront them head on in the only way he knows how: by creating intriguing anthropomorphic portraits of schoolgirl animals.

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More of these portraits can be seen here.

Then, it’s the leaf insects.

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To avoid becoming prey, leaf insects use mimicry to blend into their surroundings. But in Takumi Kama’s imagined future, when the insect’s natural environment has been completely destroyed, these masters of camouflage will have no choice but to move in with those who took away their home.

They may not look it, by Takumi Kama’s insects are 2D, and you can see more here.

Bestiary of Improbable Beasts.

Mateo Pizarro is wildly beyond talented. He does absolutely amazing work, some of which is incredibly detailed miniature work, the Micro-Barroque. He also has an amazing series of drawings done on the pages of On the Origin of the Species.

It’s Pizarro’s Bestiary though, that I chose to focus on today. I have a great love of bestiaries, illuminated manuscripts of all kinds, and cabinets of curiosities. When reading old bestiaries, the descriptors are often much more amazing than the resultant illustration, even when those illustrations are wonderfully improbable. Working with a colleague, Pizarro worked from the descriptions alone, without knowing what animal was being described until he was done drawing. The results are truly fantastical!

The following animals are based on descriptions found in classical sources, or those written by naturalists in their travels. The process we followed involved Maria del Mar searching (in a wide range of books) for passages in which animals are described in peculiar ways, then editing those texts so the animal’s names are excluded from the description. This is central to the project: I don’t know what animal is being described. So the drawings are based solely on the written accounts. The idea is to try to reproduce the experience of a person who reads about some beast he has never seen before (say a hyena or a shark). Before photography and google, this was not an uncommon experience.One of the things we find to be interesting is how wildly different the imagined animal can be to the real one. If you were so inclined, you might spend a little time thinking how many possible versions of the elephant existed in the imagination of Europeans between the Ist and the XIVth centuries, several of whom had heard about them but most had never seen a pachyderm in their lives. You add that to the fact that maps still had vast blank areas in them, and you end up with a version of the world that has a certain kind of infinity to it.

This is going to be a book. The first chapter we did was: https://www.behance.net/gallery/18558221/Beastiary-of-Improbable-animals
Note: you will find the names of the actual animals being described next to each drawing. It should be said that at the time of the writing of most of these texts, many mythological creatures were just as real as cats, wolves, or giraffes. Also, I am of the opinion a giraffe, for example, is just as improbable as any sciapod or unicorn.
Finaly: ahí ustedes disculparán el espanglish.

Armenian Horned Chicken.

Armenian Horned Chicken.

 

Leaf-Nosed Vampire Bat.

Leaf-Nosed Vampire Bat.

 

Camel Ostrich.

Camel Ostrich.

 

Apis.

Apis.

You need to see everything. It is all pure amazement, wonder, joy. Bestiary One. Bestiary Two. Bestiary with some original descriptors.

Canadians, So Gosh Darn Nice!

When Valerie Taylor spotted a family of newcomers looking lost in the hustle and bustle of rush hour at Toronto's Union Station on Wednesday, she offered to help them find their train. (Charlsie Agro/CBC)

When Valerie Taylor spotted a family of newcomers looking lost in the hustle and bustle of rush hour at Toronto’s Union Station on Wednesday, she offered to help them find their train. (Charlsie Agro/CBC)

We could all use more nice, and here’s a heaping helping of nice.

When Valerie Taylor spotted a family of newcomers looking lost in the hustle and bustle of rush hour at Toronto’s main Union Station on Wednesday, she offered to help them find their train. What she didn’t know was that some 50 people would do the same, on a day that would turn out to be one of her most memorable trips home ever.

Taylor, a psychiatrist at Toronto’s Women’s College Hospital, said she was heading home on Wednesday after what had been a hectic few days. The heat was blazing, she was tired and looking forward to getting home, when she spotted a large family with two baby strollers and several heavy bags.

They looked confused, she said, and a young woman was trying to help them.

Taylor went over to see if she could lend a hand.

“Are you new here?” she asked. Only one of the children, who said he was 11, could speak much English.

“Yes,” he said. They had just arrived from Syria four months ago, he told her, and were looking to get to Ancaster, about 85 kilometres southwest of Toronto, to spend a few days with family there.

Taylor was headed in the same direction and offered to take them to the right train. To their surprise, strangers began to take notice and to help carry the family’s bags up the stairs and onto the train, some riders even making room to give the family a place to sit, Taylor said.

But once they’d boarded and the 11-year-old showed Taylor the address they were headed to, she realized they were on the wrong train. It was London they were headed to, another 100 kilometres past Ancaster, and the Lakeshore West line they were on wouldn’t get them there.

“Right away people started trying to problem-solve,” Taylor said, some looking on their phones for the best way to get the family to London. “It was just: ‘We have a goal, we have to get these people there.'”

[…]

She’d also decided she would pay for their train tickets and helped them to enter their information into the self-serve kiosk.

“The 11-year-old was a little bit suspicious, like, ‘Okay, we’ve been in this country four months … I don’t know why everyone’s trying to be so helpful,'” Taylor said.

But together he and Taylor entered the necessary details into the computer so that they could buy the tickets.

That’s when a woman came running across the station and yelled, “Stop, stop! Don’t pay for anything!”

It was a staff member. “I just got a call from the head office,” she said. “GO is sending a bus.”

In the end, though, Metrolinx, the agency in charge of regional transit, sent the family to London in two cabs, spokesperson Anne Marie Aikins told CBC News. The next train and bus weren’t expected for some time so it was decided that was the best way to transport mom, dad and all six kids, one of whom was disabled and had a special stroller, she said.

It was yet another act of kindness in a string of so many Taylor witnessed that day. In total, she estimated about 50 people had helped in some way or another to get the family to London.

“It really was quite amazing,” she said. “It was really just groups of random strangers coming together to just do the right thing and help this family connect with their relatives for the weekend.”

There’s a whole lot more at CBCnews. Thanks to rq for this sorely needed dose of nice.

Twitter, Oh Twitter II.

Megan-Olson-Facebook-800x430

Megan Olson, Facebook.

Perhaps the title of this post should be What Trump Hath Wrought. Trump’s open embracing of racism has people all over the place cutting loose with what they really think about all those others. It’s not as if race relations were all wondrous rainbows and unicorn farts, but they have gotten remarkably worse in a very short amount of time.

A Colorado waitress reacted to customers leaving an unsatisfactory tip by fantasizing on social media about killing Mexicans in a “purge” — and then she lost her job.

Megan Olson, who goes by the name “megatron” on Twitter, posted the violent message referring to to movie “The Purge: Election Year” earlier this month on her personal account, reported KMGH-TV.

Megan-Olson-tweet

“If we had a real life purge I would kill as many Mexicans as I could in one night,” Olson tweeted, followed by the hashtag “learn how to tip you fucking twats.”

Olson apologized on her Facebook page and promised she would never say something like that again.

“I wrote hurtful, inconsiderate, insensitive and careless words and I understand the amount of people I have offended by that,” she posted. “There are no excuses for what I have done. I sincerely, from the bottom of my heart, apologize to everyone for my momentary lack of judgment. I want you all to know that I do not actually feel this way.”

Maybe I shouldn’t, but I’m inclined to believe her. About a hundred years ago, I waited tables, and it’s hard work, and often thankless, and more often than that, badly tipped. Some days, your temper gets the better of you. Anyroad, Ms. Olson lost her job, and I think that’s for the best. It might be better to lay off the whole working with the public for a while, that’s insanely stressful.

Back when I waited tables, it was known that the worst tippers were the Sunday church crowd, and from what I hear these days, that hasn’t changed. Somehow, I imagine anyone who had an unglued moment and wrote “If we had a real life purge I would kill as many Christians as I could in one night,” would probably be under arrest with people baying for blood, because that would be seen as much more terrible than racism. And that leads to the massive problem hanging over all our heads:

One activist said Olson’s tweet was part of a growing trend of anti-Latino violence and rhetoric inspired by Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

“We have seen a fear-mongering campaign that has legitimized racist comments like this across all social media networks,” said Maria Handley, executive director of Generation Latino. “This hateful racist comment from a Greeley waitress is not unique. We are seeing it acted out in public, at schools and in our neighborhoods. This vitriol and hate that we are seeing in our communities is real and the man leading that is running for president.”

I read this morning that Trump has gained the lead in a current poll. If you aren’t fucking terrified yet, get that way. We’re halfway down the path to total destruction here.

Via Raw Story.

Fort Myers, Florida: Night Club Shooting.

AP_16207381618975-1024x546

A gunman opened fire in a Fort Myers, Florida nightclub early Monday morning, killing two and wounding at least 16 others. Many of the victims were teenagers.

According to local reports, an unidentified person started shooting at Club Blu around midnight, when the venue was shutting down. Police arrived at the scene shortly after. Sixteen people, aged 12 to 27, were brought to the Lee Memorial Hospital, where at least one person perished.

A woman who watched the shooting unfold and tried to help the victims told ABC News that the venue was full of young people.

“It was a young teen event. There were kids. The kid I was holding in my lap, he was 14 years old that got shot,” Tatianna Nouhaioi said. “And then there was a little girl who also got shot and she was 13. One of the security guard’s daughter got shot, so I mean there was kids 13, 14, 15, 16. It was a young kids event.”

A second woman who lives in the area of the night club reported that she heard multiple guns fired at once.

Club Blu responded to the shooting on Facebook, saying the gunman was not a young person at the event.

“We are deeply sorry for all involved. We tried to give the teens WHAT WE THOUGHT WAS A SAFE PLACE TO HAVE A GOOD TIME. Ages 12-17. There was armed security as well as full security, inside and out,” the club said. “As the club was closing and parents were picking their children up…..that’s when all this took place. There was nothing more we could of done az you see it was not kids at the party that did this despicable act.”

Most of the victims have been released from the hospital, but two remain in critical condition. No arrests have been made, however police detained three people of interest.

More despair. How much more has to happen before people in this country wake the fuck up? Another awful thing? I find myself assuming the two young people who died were persons of colour, because they are being described as men, not teenagers, not young men, not kids.

Via ThinkProgress.