And for all of us who never saw a man in the moon, but a hare (or rabbit).
There are eight more wonderful, well worth seeing Indigenous shorts to see here.
Affinity
Art, Fun, & Nonsense.
And for all of us who never saw a man in the moon, but a hare (or rabbit).
There are eight more wonderful, well worth seeing Indigenous shorts to see here.
CREDIT: iStock.
Black Lives Matter (BLM) just launched a database of black businesses to support, with the goal of “[building] long-term economic power for Black communities.”
On Monday, the organization unveiled backingblackbusiness.com, an interactive map and directory of online stores where customers can purchase food, health and beauty supplies, entertainment, and lifestyle goods — all from retailers owned by black people. The site also includes nonprofits, and allows business owners to add themselves to the database.
The full article is at Think Progress.
I clicked over to backingblackbusiness.com, and while I’m not in LA or NY, plenty of business owners have online shops, and after perusing a few (I got completely caught up in Loving Anvil, and am plotting on when I can spend money there) I don’t think I’ll have any problems at all, supporting black businesses. The site is brand new, so a bit rough, but there’s a lot to explore!
Sacred Stone Media/YouTube
Grassroots coalition against DAPL announces December as a month of action, focused on banks.
We, the below stated, are a coalition of grassroots groups living and working in the Dakota Access resistance camps along the Cannon Ball River in Oceti Sakowin treaty lands.
Sacred Stone Camp | Indigenous Environmental Network | International Indigenous Youth Council | Honor the Earth
The following is a coalition statement on the next steps for the #NoDAPL fight:
As we reflect on the decision by the U.S. Army (NOT the U.S. Army Corps) to suspend the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) river crossing easement and conduct a limited Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), the resistance camps at Standing Rock are making plans for the next phase of this movement.
Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Chairman Dave Archambault II has asked people to return home once the weather clears, and many will do so. Others will stay to hold the space, advance our reclamation of unceded territory affirmed in the 1851 Treaty of Ft. Laramie, and continue to build community around the protection of our sacred waters. They will also keep a close eye on the company, which has drilled right up to the last inch it can, and remains poised and ready to finish the project.
[…]
Oren Lyons is a faithkeeper of the Turtle Clan, Onondaga Council of Chiefs, Haudenosaunee (Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy) and a longtime international indigenous rights and sovereignty activist.
Accompanying article at ICTMN.
We’ll start with Joy, a photo from Giliell, Weihnachtsfeier (Christmas Party). Such a wonderful moment, and shows what concern, care, and inclusion can mean to refugees, who are in serious need of all those things, from everyone. Many hugs to Giliell and all her colleagues, who make life better for people. Looking at this photo, I put on A Tribe Called Red and a host of wačipi music, and started dancing.
© Giliell, all rights reserved.
Next up, we move to Poland, and this lovely, poignant ad, which addresses the fact that so very many families are now separated and very far away from one another:
There’s an article about it here.
From there, we go to London, where the owners of a restaurant decided no one should be alone on Christmas day, and they shouldn’t have to pay for a meal, either.
Restaurant manager Irsan Can Genc told CNN that the idea for the free Christmas meal came after a local elderly woman walked into the restaurant in early November asking whether anyone could help her close a window.
The staff obliged, and the woman mentioned afterward while thanking them that she would be alone for Christmas.
For Shish owner Serdar Kigili, the woman reminded him of his mother in Turkey, whom he had not seen in five years, according to the news network.
The staff began planning what they could do for people in similar situations.
“It’s not about religion, language or culture,” Genc told CNN. “It’s about community.”
You can read the full story here.
And we end with the Lonely Night Christmas ad:
You can read about this one here.
Here’s hoping we all find the time to notice those around us, and reach out, not just in Solstice spirit, but in a newfound commitment to community.
Song Peilun is a hermit, an artist, a former professor, and now can be called the father of Yelang Valley.
After spending almost 20 years trying to build a wonderland-like place, Song’s vision has finally materialized.
It all started in 1996 when he quit his teaching position and spent his lifelong investment to buy a 200,000 square meters’ of land in an isolated mountainous forest area in Huaxi, southwest China’s Guizhou Province, and decided to stay there – just to pursue his quest of building a utopia-like community that resembles characteristics from the Middle Ages, or Winterfell from the hit TV series Game of Thrones.
But Yelang Valley’s civilization is believed to be older than the Middle Ages, before the area was part of modern-day China. Here, experts say, multiple ancient cultures were rooted, which have prospered for tens of thousands of years.
Song, now 76, has been studying the colorful minority cultures that have existed in the Guizhou region for years. After visiting the United States, he was particularly touched by the parallels between the ethnic minorities in Guizhou and the Native Americans – he was deeply saddened to see cultural infiltration had contributed to the loss of age-old traditions and heritage.
But the retired professor and cultural enthusiast wanted to restore that heritage in Huaxi, if not entirely then at least a part of it. He was inspired by the Crazy Horse, a mountain monument dedicated to a Native American warrior, in the US state of South Dakota. Song wanted to create something similar in the mountains of Guizhou.
Before he arrived, some of the villagers living in the area were working as masons, mining in the mountain and selling the stones to make a living.
“It is not fun selling them,” Song remembers suggesting them.
“Let’s build blocks,” he told them.
And the villagers agreed. They later became the architects of the valley that Song was visualized.
Through the years, Song trained them to become landscape architects – he had previously tried building an artist community in another area aiming to bring economic benefits to protect their culture but had failed. In Yelang Valley, he was continuing his pursuit. During the years, many locals aged, some died too, but their collective dream only thrived. And when Song ran out of money, the villagers even volunteered to contribute.
After all, Yelang Valley would become their spiritual home.
After two decades, Song says they have attracted visitors. Many locals, including him, now live in wooden houses perched in trees and the place looks like a settled community, but it is still an ongoing project, the creator adds.
However, along these years, Song’s wish of creating, and then retaining a village far from the hustle and bustles of city life has been hit hard by signs of modernization that are slowly seeping into the community.
But Song says he is not worried – if destroyed, he says, he will spend another 20 years to build another community in the other end of the valley.
This is so wonderful. I’d live in such a place, and happily so. We could use communities like this everywhere. Via CCTV News, Alfalfa Studio, and Great Big Story.
Way back in early April, I posted about Standing on Sacred Ground. Some words:
There’s more at Films for Action. * Standing On Sacred Ground.
The Creators Project has an in depth look at Vortex Comics, and the Nigerian comic Strike Guard. Great stuff!
Just in time for Thanksgiving and Christmas, Target is offering a gray and white “Southwestern Teepee” (as described on the Target website) for the low price of $89.99. Daniel Boyko.
November is supposedly Native American Heritage Month. As usual, the majority of Americans don’t have the slightest idea, nor do they care. This is shopping and turkey month! Indians? Are they still alive? Let’s have a look at what Target is doing for NDN Heritage month, shall we? Oh look, a “Southwestern Teepee”. Gosh, that’s so right on the money accurate, you betcha. (If you are sarcasm impaired, that was fair dripping with sarcastic venom.)
Just in time for Native appropriation for Thanksgiving and Christmas, Target is offering a gray and white “Southwestern Teepee” [sic] (as described on the Target website,) for the low price of $89.99.
Target’s website describes the pillowfort teepee [sic] as “perfect for little imaginations during pretend play. The southwestern pattern has a realistic look and the poles are sturdy enough to last through endless rounds of make-believe.”
It’s are part of the Sabrina Soto Explorer Kids Bedding collection at Target. Though not available online, there is also a decorative teepee [sic] pillow for $12.48 on clearance. Soto is a HGTV designer and refers to herself as Cubana and is the popular host of The High/Low Project.
I guess exploiting that Cubana heritage was out of the question. Thanks ever for being yet another thoughtless dipshit, Ms. Soto, and ensuring that more Americans will have incredibly fucked up ideas about Indians, because there just isn’t enough of that going around, no, not at all. As bad as this isht is, it pales in comparison to the never ending racism of NDSU. We move on to Indians suck, as in Indians suck dick:
WDAY.com News – Screen Capture.
A North Dakota State University supporter was spotted at a football game Nov. 5 with an obscene T-shirt, modified with the University of North Dakota’s new Fighting Hawks logo altered with a single-feathered Native figure on its knees before a phallus extending from the Bison logo.
A North Dakota State University supporter was spotted at a football game Nov. 5 with an obscene T-shirt, modified with the University of North Dakota’s new Fighting Hawks logo altered with a single-feathered Native figure on its knees before a phallus extending from the Bison logo. It was meant to represent the “Sioux suck” chant NDSU students developed when arch rival UND’s name was “Fighting Sioux,” a moniker it was forced to abandon by the NCAA. The Fighting Hawk logo debuted this year.
The confounding aspect of the recently spotted T-shirt that caused the minor uproar is that NDSU was not even playing against UND. The opposing team was Ohio’s Youngstown State Penguins.
[…]
The obnoxious shirt, reported on by the Grand Forks Herald, is an unfortunate way to kick of Native American Heritage Month at NDSU, but it did not surprise two of the 188 Native students attending the university, which has a total enrollment of more than 14,400.
James Henry, Turtle Mountain Chippewa, and Tyrel Iron Eyes, Standing Rock Lakota Sioux, knew of the overt slurs. Iron Eyes is a member of NDSU’s Native American Student Association, and Henry is its former president.
Henry, a mechanical engineering student, encountered the chant four years ago during his first year at the university when he joined his non-Native roommates at a football game. The people beside him started doing the “Sioux suck” chant.
“They kind of looked at me, and they wondered why I wasn’t chanting with them,” he said. Henry bluntly told them why. They were taken aback that he found it racist; to them, “Sioux” was just another sports team and the chant has a long campus history. After he confronted them he says, “They felt ashamed, in a sense.”
An offensive t-shirt labeled ‘Buck the Bison Under’ – Screen capture.
Henry stopped attending NDSU sporting events. Iron Eyes, who plans to study anthropology, also declines to attend.
It was during his freshman year while walking on campus that he first overheard a conversation with one NDSU fan explaining that his favorite part of the games was the “Sioux suck” chant.
“I get that it’s their mascot, but at the same time, it upset me. I used to call people out on it,” Iron Eyes said. Often his fellow non-Native students would stammer through an explanation of why they liked the chant.
“They don’t understand. A lot of people don’t realize that Native Americans still exist today. All they know is the Battle of Little Big Horn. They think we all died on the reservations, or that we never leave the reservations now.”
Both Henry and Iron Eyes agree that leaving their reservations to attend the university in Fargo, a city of about 114,000, has been a stressful transition.
“I am very much in the minority,” Iron Eyes said. “For the first, probably two or three months … I was unaware of other Natives on campus.”
In addition, he says, he went from a high school with a graduating class of 25 and classrooms of 35 students maximum to university classes with 300-plus attending.
“There’s a lot of helpful people on campus, but it’s still very much predominately white. It’s very nerve-wracking,” Henry agreed. “It’s one of the things I struggle with. … I’ve been asked multiple times if I live in a tipi.”
A ‘Blow Us’ T-Shirt from the fan site Bisonville.com – Screen Capture.
A student, Erik Jonasson II, penned an Oct. 6 opinion piece, “The Herd’s Chant: Racism Inside the Dome” for the NDSU Spectrum, the semi-weekly student newspaper, writing “As we sit in the stands cheering on our truly dominant football team, it is hard to not be sickened by this chant.”
The above is pointed to as a hopeful sign, and perhaps it is a bit of one. If you really want to see just how hopeful though, click over and read the comments. “Sioux Sucks Shit” retains its popularity.
Full story here.
Oh yes, lest I forget, the mighty Google did a doodle, and it speaks volumes, just how grateful so many Natives are for such a tiny notice. ASK N NDN: Was a Native Google Doodle Enough? Indian Country Responds.
Kali Holloway has an excellent article up at Raw Story: Stop asking me to empathize with the white working class. Here’s just a bit of it:
[…] Trump stoked racial hatred, but he didn’t invent it, so stop acting like he did because it makes you feel good. The irony of this whole thing is that Trump knew better than a lot of “good” white folks—even recognized as well as folks of color did—how much white power and supremacy means to white people. From day one, he bet that it would be enough to get him elected. He ran a brilliant campaign, in a country where a brilliant campaign can almost solely consist of telling white people they might not be on top forever. He called it. Credit where it’s due.
The only surprise to come out of this election is how many, and how quickly, white people want us to empathize with the people who voted against our humanity, our right to exist in this place. Even before the election, the Washington Post actually had the audacity to berate us for not crying for the white working class. In the days since Trump won, the number of articles urging everybody to be cool to Trump’s America, to understand what they are facing, to hear their grievances, has added insult to injury. Bernie Sanders issued a statement saying Trump “tapped into the anger of a declining middle class that is sick and tired of establishment economics, establishment politics and the establishment media.” I read it at least three times and couldn’t find the words “white supremacy” anywhere in it.
Please miss me with all this nonsense. I’m not even going to get into how this is based on an easily refutable economic lie, especially since others have already spent precious time they’ll never get back breaking this down. But even if it was true—and I am well aware of what’s plaguing the white working class, from substance abuse to suicide to a loss of manufacturing jobs—I refuse to take part in the endless privileging of white pain above all others. (Martin Gilens, who has studied this stuff going way back, notes that when the media face of poverty is white, this country suddenly gets a lot more compassionate.) Latinos and African Americans remain worse off than the white working class—which is still the “largest demographic bloc in the workforce”—by pretty much every measurable outcome, from home ownership to life expectancy. Where are these appeals for us when we protest or riot against the systemic inequality we live with? Where are all the calls to recognize and understand our anger?
For hundreds of years, white people have controlled everything in this country: the executive office, Congress, the Supreme Court, the criminal justice system, Wall Street, the lending institutions, the history textbook industry, the false narrative that America cares about liberty and justice for all. But I need to understand white feelings of marginalization because a black man was in the White House for eight years? Because political correctness—a general plea for white people not to be as awful as they have been in the past— asked that white people put more effort into being decent than they felt up to? Because white folks didn’t like that feeling when politicians aren’t singularly focused on the hard times and struggles of their communities? Audre Lorde said (I wonder if that woman ever got sick of being right), “oppressors always expect the oppressed to extend to them the understanding so lacking in themselves.” For a people who have shamed black folks for supposedly always wanting a hand out, for being a problem of the entitlement state, I have never seen people who so firmly believe they are owed something.
Let me pass along some advice black folks have been given for a long time: stop being so angry and seeing yourself as a victim, and try pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. That’s really all I have for you right now, this re-gifting of wisdom. […]
I’ll stand with Ms. Holloway here, and I stand by Iris, too. Over at Death to Squirrels, I said that my days of empathizing with cons of any stripe are over, and they are. White people have gone full court whiny now, wanting everyone to pat them on the head and say, yes, yes, you have it so bad, darling. No. Even liberal white people are getting in on the Whine Wagon. “But you have to be nice to them! They’re just misunderstood!” My response to that? The fuck I do, and the fuck they are.
Before I go on, the standard disclaimer: no, all white people aren’t awful. No, all white people aren’t unrepentant bigots. No, all white people are not willfully ignorant assholes. Yes, lots of white people get it.
This nonsense of “you must have empathy for them, you must!” needs to stop, right now. The people who voted Trump into the position of president-elect did so for specific reasons, but the primary one is exactly what Ms. Holloway said: power. White people are all about power, and they love their privilege. Of course they listened to a fucking gold-plated idiot who told them their power as Mighty Whitey was slipping. They’ve already felt that, and yep, they’ve been very upset about it, and grabbed onto Trump with a death grip in order to get firmly ensconced on top of the people pile once more. I have no idea why white liberals have latched onto the tone argument; Trumpoids have no interest in anyone being nice and understanding, they want obeisance and submission. They want to be what they always have been in this country – lords of the manor. They want to be able to spit, sneer, and be in a position of authoritative judgment of all others. White cons have no use whatsoever for white liberals, either, so that makes the tone argument even more inexplicable.
I’ll be 59 in a matter of days. I grew up in the ’60s and ’70s. Tumultuous times, rife with change, change for the better. There was such hope in the ’70s, people had such faith in the future. This is not what we were dreaming about. The 80s saw the serious rise of conservatism once again, especially Christian conservatism. I’ve been around for the whole thing, and decade by decade, cons have gotten worse, more extreme, more hateful, more spiteful, more poisonous. It’s not a surprise the white wall of conservative xianity took their one chance to power, nor is it surprising that white supremacists have wrapped themselves around Trump like a cloak. All that, I understand. I don’t like it at all, but I understand it.
What I don’t understand is this hand-wringing call for sympathy, tea and cookies. No. No, no, no. When have Christian Cons every had empathy for anyone except themselves? When have white supremacists ever had empathy for anyone except themselves? Christian Cons and white supremacists are evil people, perfectly willing commit themselves to evil to gain their goals. We’re dealing with one of those acts of evil right now. They did the proverbial deal with the devil in order to get closer to all the things they want, and what they want, more than anything, is to stomp people into submission, one way or another. They want to stomp all those feminist sluts into the ground, removing any sort of bodily autonomy, unless it happens to be their bodily autonomy on the line, natch. “No More Uppity” might as well be their battle cry, along with the requisite god, guns, and bible business.
I haven’t recovered quite yet, but to anyone who thinks that “you gotta be nice to them” is some sort of strategy or argument, I have one response: Fuck No.
Kali Holloway’s full article is here, highly recommended. Also recommended: https://twitter.com/drskyskull/status/796916965956874241
Happy Native American Heritage Month #NoDAPL pic.twitter.com/CTfxayT2tC
— Joe D. Horse Capture (@NativeCurator) November 7, 2016
Speaking of, Alysa Landry has an excellent article up at ICTMN, about spending the last forty-five weeks writing about all the U.S. presidents, and their impact on Indigenous peoples: Indians Are Invisible: What I Learned Researching US Presidents. Highly recommended reading. The whitewash goes deeper than anyone thought.
Esther Mahlangu.
Stunning, beautiful, wonderful, vibrant work here! The Creators Project has a feature on Esther Mahlangu, lots to read and see, click on over!
My name is David Archambault II, and I’m the chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, which has long opposed the Dakota Access Pipeline project. This proposed pipeline presents a threat to our lands, our sacred sites, and our water. Current and future generations depend on our rivers and aquifer to live.
Yesterday, militarized law enforcement agencies moved in with tanks and riot gear on water protectors who stand in opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline—a massive pipeline project that would cut through four states, impact the water to the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, and violate sacred sites and ancient grounds. While native elders prayed in peace, they were attacked with pepper spray, rubber bullets, as well as sound and concussion cannons. By the end of the day, more than 140 people were arrested.1 Please, add your name and demand that President Obama reject this pipeline once and for all.
[…]
While we engage in the long legal process to curtail construction of the pipeline, Dakota Access is still poised to begin construction. Halting the construction was an unprecedented step in response to our powerful movement—and now President Obama must reject the pipeline’s permit outright.
Current and future generations depend on our rivers and aquifer to live. The Dakota Access pipeline jeopardizes the heath of our water and could affect our people, as well as countless communities who live downstream, as the pipeline would cross four states. The pipeline, as designed, would destroy ancient burial grounds, which is a violation of federal law.
Please, please, sign, and pass this on to as many people as possible. Lila wopila to all you who do so (very great thanks). If enough people do, we can get millions on this petition.