☽All Welcome☾

I’m back from my break just to say this: if you’re not aware of the atrocities happening to innocent people at the border right now, then please read this. Even if you are already aware READ THIS.

The effort to eradicate bison specifically to starve the Sioux

The trail of tears

Residential schools

Bounties for scalped Native Americans in Pennsylvania

The multiple broken treaties to respect Native Land

He also said people would try to hit his brothers and him with a car while they were walking to school.

His dad was allowed to die over appendicitis in a hospital. He suffered for days while the staff did NOTHING.

His uncles disappeared and the police did NOTHING. Their car was later found in a canyon, full of bullet holes. The bullets were military issue.

His eldest brother also died under mysterious circumstances.

My great grandmother, the last of our tribe to be born traditionally, outside, owned 5000 acres in northern California. Active imminent domain left her with 1 ACRE. Which they later took to build a post office.

That same grandma, who I’m named after, was kidnapped as a child and held as a slave in a white mans house. She had a wire put through her ear that tethered her so she could only go from her bedroom to the kitchen. Her dad found her and rescued her, ripping the thing out of her ear. My dad said her earlobe was forever split in two pieces.

In church when I was a kid people alienated my family and my dad got jokey death threats all the time. My mom, who was white, was told she was too good for my dad. I was told I was dark but I would hopefully lighten up if I stayed out of the sun. At school we read a story about a “drunken injun” and I cried in class while my classmates mockingly did a raindance and chanted. My first boyfriend said he wished he wasn’t a white guy because Indians get free college.

This shit was recent and current. Go look up suicide, sexual assault, and drug addiction statistics within Native American communities.

White people came to this country and slaughtered us. Your white ancestors did this. Maybe even your grandparents.

America wasn’t won, it was stolen. Native Americans aren’t better off because we have electricity. I’d rather have my people back.

Rebecca Nagle on Twitter: https://twitter.com/rebeccanagle/status/1113535249617526784

Source: https://twitter.com/aviciouskoala/status/1113534682824474624

If you’re an active member in your tribe, it should be fine. I see other Native American witches on here combining cultural practices and their craft, but if you aren’t like connecting with your tribe than I would suggest doing that and perhaps asking someone from your tribe how you could go about doing so respectfully. 

Off the bad, I do have a list of practitioners of color here, some of the Native American, who might be able to help you. But if anyone else can offer input, that would probably help too! 

I’m nakota Sioux (stoney)/ cree from alberta!

I think when combining practices it’s good to be aware that though they may seem similar in some forms they are both very different practices and cultures with its own rights and rules! Being respectful of both is a good way to practice! And as OP has said there are other witches out there who do practice both! I think what you mean by that it’s ‘frowned’ upon because of backlash from non indigenous/native folks who tried to enter and apple pick and practice from our own closed traditions.

It can make you feel very isolated, and disconnected, and feel as if you don’t have a right to express your own culture. 

But you do.

It doesn’t matter what family you were raised in, many of us (2.7 times more than proportioned in the gen population) are, or were, in the foster care system, more than most groups in the US. It can be confusing growing up that way but kids should know that they have a right to express their culture no matter their circumstances, however awful. And that they’re not alone. 

Which is why I’m hyper-aware of people who AREN’T actually doing that work and are instead only using their supposed heritage as a weapon or tool, something that they only bring up when it’s fun or convenient.

Native identity is not something that you can wear when you want to and take off when you don’t. It’s not a cute outfit that helps you get roles or a fun roleplay game that you can stop playing when it loses its novelty. It is love and pain and family and fear and so many amazing and terrifying things all wrapped up in a beautiful community. It’s blood and life and heritage and culture and connection, tragedy in your family history and a sunrise on the horizon. It’s a conscious decision to fight for your people, to fight for your heritage and your family even when the world is telling you to lay down and accept that you’ve lost. It’s an act of defiance against the world but also an act of simply existing.

Agreed on the DNA test thing ofc, but I think the situation is more complicated than you’re making it out to be, anon. 

First of all, mod Mal is talking about celebrities who have provided absolutely no proof that they even have “Native American ancestry” when just a simple DNA test could help them get started on that. Second of all, while they haven’t made it as clear as I would’ve liked, they’ve talked about how important DNA tests can be for people who don’t have anywhere else to start, who know they’re indigenous but don’t have any other paths they can follow to help with that for whatever reason.