Making Native Sense of Disney’s ‘Moana’.

The Maui skin-suit.

Anne Keala Kelly has an excellent column up about Disney’s Moana, and the Thanksgiving release date. A brief excerpt:

…If the promotional trailer is anything like the film, Disney’s about to get even richer by exploiting and mocking us in deeply genealogical and spiritual ways—turning Tutu Pele into an ugly lava monster and Maui into a ridiculous, clowning sidekick. The noted psychiatrist, philosopher, revolutionary and writer Frantz Fanon was so on the mark when he said, “…Colonialism is not satisfied merely with holding a people in its grip and emptying the native’s brain of all form and content. By a kind of perverted logic, it turns to the past of the oppressed people, and distorts, disfigures, and destroys it.”

Disney has reduced us and our world to a cartoon at a time when our political future is hanging in the balance, when Hawaiians absolutely need to be heard and taken seriously, not distracted by or silenced for entertainment. Disney is trying to do to our culture and identity what America is doing to our land and nationhood: we are being carved up, sold off, and drained of our mana.

Since the Maui-Skin-Suit debacle, Disney’s 21st century iteration of the white supremacist ideology that informed people like British Major General Horatio Gordon Robley, a proud collector of Maori heads, and the guy who tried to sell a Hawaiian kupuna skull on eBay, I’ve been thinking in metaphors. I’m looking at what’s happening right now, but looking, too, at the horizon, at what’s coming toward us, imagining what might follow, hoping that whatever it is Hawaiians and all Pacific Islanders can face it together instead of letting it further divide us.

I have no doubt that Disney’s “Moana” will materially and psychologically aid and abet the colonial project of Indigenous erasure and removal. …

Anne Keala Kelly is the Native Hawaiian award-winning filmmaker of “Noho Hewa: The Wrongful Occupation of Hawai’i. She is also a journalist whose work has appeared in The Nation and on Pacifica Network and Al Jazeera. www.annekealakelly.com www.nohohewa.com

The full article is at ICTMN.

The Daily Bird #161.

A crow was met by rq: This crow. Got its wings and tail chewed off as a fledgling, now lives in a sort of refuge with a pair of pheasants. They built it a ladder up the tree and apparently its favourite game is to carry a tin can up and drop it to the ground. Click for full size.

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© rq, all rights reserved.

Being used as costumes just got worse…

Every year, there’s always a slew of  “Indian” costumes, and plenty of thoughtless, ignorant people to use us and our cultures as a shallow dress up day. Social media on Halloween is especially bad for Indians, as you see one asshole after another, most often white, tweeting or facebooking their oh so cool gonna be an Indian for a day costumes, bristling with defensiveness over their right to appropriation, and how awful us damn Indians are for speaking out about it, that’s just bullying poor white people who aren’t doing anything wrong!

This year sees yet another celebrity who thinks Indian dress up is cool and fun:

Hillary Duff and Boyfriend Jason Walsh Dress as Pilgrim and Native American ‘Chief’ - MICHAEL KOVAC/GETTY IMAGES.

Hillary Duff and Boyfriend Jason Walsh Dress as Pilgrim and Native American ‘Chief’ – MICHAEL KOVAC/GETTY IMAGES.

UPDATE: Apologies proffered by Duff and Walsh. Walsh’s, um, apology, trotted out the standard “I meant no disrespect, I have nothing but admiration!” yada, yada, yada. No, you don’t have admiration, and that’s not wanted anyway. There are, of course, a number of people who are upset any apology was offered, tweets at the link. Some non-native people have also posted photos of themselves dressed up as “Indian” and have posted to #NoDAPL. As for Natives who play dress up, Dr. Keene addresses that at Native Appropriations.

This year, 2016, sees a new twist on the bigotry and appropriation. It seems some people think it’s really cool to depict those NoDAPL water protectors for what they are – lazy, shiftless, drunken injuns living on handouts from all those hard working white people:

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These are Ndakotans, people we are surrounded by. I can’t say anything right now, this is one lousy way to start the day. You can read more here.

No DAPL and Indigenous News Roundup.

Unicorn Riot/Vimeo Officers liberally douse water protectors with pepper spray at the front lines of the resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Unicorn Riot/Vimeo
Officers liberally douse water protectors with pepper spray at the front lines of the resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Trigger Warning: Disturbing Video of DAPL Confrontation.

This video, taken directly from the front lines of the October 27 police crackdown on the camp established in the pipeline’s path on treaty-protected indigenous land, contains disturbing images. Police douse protectors with mace as if squirting water from a hose, shoot them with tasers and throw them to the ground, all in the name of building a pipeline. Those against the project say they are there solely to protect the water.

[Read more…]

Praise the Lord and Pass the Bleach.

g2c_logo_with_flags-july2014

The title should probably be “Praise Mankind and Pass the Bleach”, as Genesis II is quite the scam, and goes to some length to explain that they aren’t really a god type church, but a to serve mankind church. They do this via MMS, Master Mineral Solution, and yes, of course it cures every possible ill. You can read about mixing a basic dose here, and yes, chlorine dioxide gas. So healthy, that. They’ve made the news once again, for selling Autism miracle cure kits. As if kids with autism don’t have enough to deal with, here, drink this bleach.

By playing off the fears of parishioners looking for an answer to autism, which may have impacted them or a loved one, the church was able to sell millions of its “miracle cure” kits worldwide.

“This is a high-strength industrial bleach. It really scares me that people would give this to their kids because it is a poison,” Dr. Paul Wang, the senior president of Autism Speaks, an advocacy organization in the United States that has been a source of funding directed towards the causes and treatment of autism, told ABC News. “You can’t blame any parent for wanting to help their child. In this case, we just want to make sure that everybody understands MMS (the Church’s chemical solution) is not a cure.”

[…]

Its [Genesis II / MMS] creator Jim Humble, a man who calls himself an archbishop and claims to have come to Earth from another galaxy, introduced his first of four books about the supposed healing solution titled “Master Mineral Solution of the Third Millennium” and published in 2010.

[…]

Because it is illegal to sell similar false cures under federal law, Humble moved to Mexico to avoid being convicted like other officials from the objectively eccentric church have been already.

Louis Daniel Smith sold bottles of the same “cure” online for $9.99 in Spokane, Washington under a company called “Project Greenlife” from 2007-2011. He was found guilty on five federal counts, including “introducing misbranded drugs into interstate commerce with intent to defraud or mislead,” and sentenced to 51 months in prison in October 2015, according to the United States Department of Justice.

Though Smith was not a member of the church, Genesis II supporters came to his aid by providing emotional support and raising money for his legal defense online.

Full story here.

Sunday Facepalm.

Grant Stinchfield.

Grant Stinchfield.

NRA TV. There’s something that is unneeded as an extra hole in the head. The host of NRA TV is Grant Stinchfield, pro-Trump, and quite the conspiracy fan. There are times I miss television, and there are times I’m very grateful I decided I could live without it. This is definitely the latter.

Grant Stinchfield, the host of a new venture from the National Rifle Association called NRATV, has written on social media that minorities should be blamed for gun violence and promoted conspiracy theories that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was murdered and that “maybe Israelis” shot down a Russian passenger aircraft.

Launched earlier this month, NRATV plays material from the NRA’s video archive 24 hours a day, with Stinchfield breaking in to give live updates. Many of the updates involve promoting the candidacy of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and are branded with a graphic that says, “ELECTION COUNTDOWN: SAVE THE 2ND.” (Though Stinchfield, a conservative Texas-based radio host and former Republican candidate for Congress, previously authored a column in which he said he regretted voting for Trump during the GOP primary.)

Media Matters has the full story, along with an assortment of Stinchfield’s conspiracy tweets.