はじめましげ！

Contact Your Representative and Tell Them To Fight Against Trump’s Camps

Additionally, if you can see if you can donate money to these organizations

Lawyersforgoodgoverment.com

fairfightbondfund.org

lgbtqfund.org

communitybondproject.org

immigrantfamilies.org

This illustration here show Apalachee people using slash and burn methods for agriculture. Fires were set regularly to intention burn down forests and plains. Why would we do this? Well because an unregulated forest isn’t that great for people, actually. We set fires to destroy new forest growth and undergrowth, and to remove trees, allowing for easier game hunting, nutrient enriched soil, and better growth rates for crops and herbs we used in food and medicine.

Pre-Colonial New England, where my tribe the Abenaki are from, looked more like an extensive meadow or savannah with trees growing in pockets and groves. Enough woodland to support birds, deer, and moose, but not too much to make hunting difficult. We carefully shaped the land around us to suit our needs as a thriving and successful people. Slash and burn agriculture was practiced virtually everywhere in the new world, from the pacific coast to chesapeake bay, from panama to quebec. It was a highly successful way of revitalizing the land and promoting crop growth, as well as preventing massive forest fires that thrive in unregulated forests. Berries were the major source of fruit for my tribe, and we needed to burn the undergrowth so they could grow.

That changed when white people invaded, and brought with them disease. In my tribe, up to 9 in 10 people died. 90% of our people perished not from violence starvation, but from disease. Entire villages would be decimated, struck down by small pox. Suddenly, we couldn’t care for the land anymore. There weren’t enough of us to maintain a vast, carefully structured ecological system like we had for thousands of years. We didn’t have the numbers, or strength. So the trees grew back and unregulated. We couldn’t set fires anymore, and we couldn’t cultivate the land. And white people would make certain we never could again. Timber, after all, was the most important export from New England. 

Endless trees and untamed wilderness is a nice fantasy. But it’s a very white fantasy, one that erases the history of my people and of my land. One that paints native peoples are merely parasites leeching off the land, not masters of the earth who new the right balance of hunting and agriculture. It robs us of our agency as people, and takes our accomplishments from us. Moreover, it implies that only white people ever discovered the power to shape the world around them, and that mere brown people can’t possibly have had anything to do with changing our environment.

Don’t bring back untamed wilderness. Bring back my fire setters, my tree sappers, my farmers and my fishers. Bring back my people who were here first. 

Sources:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_use_of_fire#Role_of_fire_by_natives

https://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/fsbdev3_000385.pdf

http://www.sidalc.net/repdoc/A11604i/A11604i.pdf

If you like to play The Last of Us, then try Rot & Ruin by Jonathan Maberry

If you like to play Beyond: Two Souls, then try The Girl With All the Gifts by M.R. Carey

If you like to play Call of Duty: Black Ops (Zombies), then try World War Z by Max Brooks

If you like playing Grand Theft Auto, then try American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis

If you like playing Sid Meier’s Civilization, then try A Game Of Thrones by George R. R. Martin

If you like playing Final Fantasy, try playing Fullmetal Alchemist by Hiromu Arakawa

If you like playing Mass Effect, then try Illuminae by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff

If you like playing Alice: Madness Returns, then try Madness So Discreet by Mindy McGinnis

If you like playing Halo, then try Starship Troopers by Robert A Heinlein

If you like playing Portal, then try House Of Stairs by William Sleator

If you like playing Mario Kart, then try The Lovely Reckless by Kami Garcia 

If you like playing Dark Souls, then try Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake

If you like playing Life Is Strange, then try We Are Okay by Nina Lacour

If you like playing Stardew Valley, then try How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff

If you like playing Fable, then try Young Elites by Marie Lu

If you like playing Borderlands, then try Velocity by Chris Wooding

If you like playing Dishonored, then try Airman by Eoin Colfer

If you like playing The Oregon Trail, then try Under a Painted Sky by Stacey Lee

If you like playing the Elder Scrolls series, then try The Naming by Alison Croggon

If you like playing Red Dead Redemption, then try Vengeance Road by Erin Bowman

If you like playing Bioshock, then try  Dark Life by Kat Falls

If you like playing Fallout, then try Razorland by Ann Aguirre 

If you like playing Assasin’s Creed, then try The Way of Shadows Night by Brent Weeks

If you like playing Dragonage, then try Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir

If you like playing The Legend of Zelda, then try Graceling by Kristin Cashore

If you like playing Until Dawn, then try Ten by Gretchen McNeil

If you like playing Sonic, then try Maximum Ride by James Patterson

If you like playing Overwatch, then try Bluescreen by Dan Wells

If you like playing Uncharted, then try Passenger by Alexandra Bracken

If you like playing Pokemon, then try Fantastic Beasts & Where to Find Them by JK Rowling, and Newt Scamander

1)This is actually a good way to get people into reading.

by me, a fool who doesnt wanna die anymore 

never make a suicide joke again. yes this includes “i wanna die” as a figure of speech. swear off of it. actually make an effort to change how you think about things.

find something to compliment someone for at least 4 times a day. notice the little things about the world that make you happy, and use that to make other people happy.

talk to people. initiate conversation as often as you possibly can. keep your mind busy and you wont have to worry anymore

picture the bad intrusive thoughts in youe head as an edgy 13 year old and tell them to go be emo somewhere else

by me, a fool who doesnt wanna die anymore 

never make a suicide joke again. yes this includes “i wanna die” as a figure of speech. swear off of it. actually make an effort to change how you think about things.

find something to compliment someone for at least 4 times a day. notice the little things about the world that make you happy, and use that to make other people happy.

talk to people. initiate conversation as often as you possibly can. keep your mind busy and you wont have to worry anymore

picture the bad intrusive thoughts in youe head as an edgy 13 year old and tell them to go be emo somewhere else