heya

sequoyah was the man who created the tsalagi syllabary before it was ever a tree

if i try to look for apparel or crafts to show off my chickasaw pride, i get results for chickasaw plums which is just a specific species of plum before i get results about human beings

others have mentioned if they google their nations name they get boot companies before their nations website!

theres a tweet that still haunts me that was about a Quirky Quasi American Restaurant in europe or somewhere that was being funny by being cowboy themed and their steaks were named after native american nations. even outside the usa we are nothing but literal dead meat for others consumption

"blackhawk" "apache" - fuck theres a whole wikipedia page for the way weve had our names used for weapons used to colonize and kill us and others!

like. we can defy the christian god, in a way, because we can choose to not do what he says we ought to. sure. but we cannot defy greek gods in the same way, because the god is not just an entity that commands you but the very thing you are doing. apollo does not just send plagues, he is plague. you know apollo is real because there is plague. plague is not apollo acting in the world, it is an instance of apollo, in the same way that insight is athena, love is aphrodite, harvest is demeter, storms are zeus. gods are not commanding nature and sending signs and acting upon the world, because signs and nature and human nature are themselves the gods. the gods cannot be absent, because we still get ideas, and harvest, and go to war, and feel desire, and hunt. the gods cannot be defied because you cannot defy "getting ideas" or "harvesting" or "having sex" or "dying." to attempt to is entirely futile. like you cannot defy poseidon because you cannot defy the sea. you cannot defy aphrodite because you cannot defy love and reproduction. nature and human nature are unbeatable, and so the gods are unbeatable, because they are nature and human nature.