NERDY, INDIGENOUS, DECOLONIZING

Ogimaa Mikana. Don’t be shy to speak Anishinaabemowin when it’s time. Bayfield St., Barrie, Ontario; Biskaabiiyang. North Bay, Ontario; Untitled (All Walls Crumble). Ottawa, Ontario; Anishinaabe manoomin inaakonigewin gosha. Peterborough, Ontario.

Ogimaa Mikana is an artist collective founded by Susan Blight (Anishinaabe, Couchiching) and Hayden King (Anishinaabe, Gchi’mnissing) in January 2013. Through public art, site-specific intervention, and social practice, we assert Anishinaabe self-determination on the land and in the public sphere.

The Ogimaa Mikana Project is an effort to restore Anishinaabemowin place-names to the streets, avenues, roads, paths, and trails of Gichi Kiiwenging (Toronto) - transforming a landscape that often obscures or makes invisible the presence of Indigenous peoples. Starting with a small section of Queen St., re-naming it Ogimaa Mikana (Leader’s Trail) in tribute to all the strong women leaders of the Idle No More movement, the project hopes to expand throughout downtown and beyond.

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‘Learning Ojibwe in college and pursuing learning the language and teaching the language, I hadn't really thought about babies speaking it as their first language,’ Erdrich said.

‘It seemed like this impossible thing because of how much work it would be, how hard it would be to have a whole community and other babies to be speaking Ojibwe, but it's happening! And it's amazing because it's the peer language here so the kids are speaking Ojibwe to each other,’ she said.

…Grandma’s House is not like other college language programs. Learning a Native language in an academic setting is beneficial for language revitalization, but academic learning does not usually include learning the traditions, heritage or spirit within a Native community.

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Although it’s common to refer to a language no longer commonly spoken as a ‘dead language,’ some people in the language revitalization movement instead refer to them as ‘asleep.’ The idea is that sleeping languages can be awakened through family and community efforts.

Waking up Native languages can also bring intergenerational healing.”

December 17 2023 -

Motaz Azaiza, Gazan Journalist who has been covering the occupation and genocide in Palestine, is calling for another Global Strike on Monday, December 18 2023.

PLEASE SHOW SOLIDARITY WITH THE PEOPLE AND VICTIMS OF PALESTINE AND COMMIT TO THE WEEK LONG GLOBAL STRIKE!

WITHDRAW WHATEVER YOU CAN FROM THE BANKS

ORGANIZE YOUR COMMUNITY TO STRIKE IN PERSON

PAY IN CASH ONLY, AND SHOP LOCALLY IF YOU CAN

DO NOT USE CREDIT OR DEBIT

DO NOT BUY GAS (FILL UP NOW OR FIND ALTERNATIVE MODES OF TRANSPORT)

PLEASE REBLOG AND SPREAD AROUND! GET THE WORD OUT! THE PEOPLE OF PALESTINE ARE COUNTING ON US TO DO WHAT WE CAN!

People (by which I mean actual scientists who are qualified to do this) did studies on how people’s brains are formed/shaped. Male and female brains show various slight differences. They are distinguishable. 

Now here’s where it gets interesting. They looked at scans of transgender people’s brains. What do you think they found? 

They found that their brains most closely followed the patterns of the gender that they said they were rather than the gender they were assigned.  

Get that? 

So if a woman was assigned male at birth because she had a penis and they scanned her brain, they found her to have the brain shape expected in a woman. It wasn’t exactly the same but it was clearly much closer to female than to male. 

Once those people started hormone therapy and everything, the brain shape grew even closer to the gender they said they were (the gender that they ARE) until it was pretty much identical. You couldn’t tell the difference except yep, that’s a female brain now regardless of whether she was assigned male at birth. 

It is thought to be this that causes dysphoria in the transgender people who suffer it: since their brain is a female brain (or vice versa) making them female it causes a disconnect between that and what their eyes see when they look at their body. 

So there ya are. Science proves transgender people are the damn gender they say they are.