#ali nahdee

ONE SCENE FOR FORGIVENESS (aka The Twilight Saga Is Racist)

BUY ME A KO-FI: https://ko-fi.com/alinahdee

For the sake of this specific project, I am looking for NATIVE AMERICAN volunteers. Specifically Natives from tribes/communities in the United States.

This is in response to the Trump administration's DEI purge of their military websites that honor the BIPOC and women in military history, including the Navajo Code Talkers, Ira Hayes, and all the non-white men and women at Arlington Cemetery.

If you are interested in being in my video please let me know.

Please send me a picture or a video of you holding a sign or saying aloud "MY _____ IS A VETERAN" or "I AM A VETERAN".

An excerpt from ONE SCENE FOR FORGIVENESS: THE TWILIGHT SAGA IS RACIST.

A montage of anti-native racism that is prevalent in mainstream media.

she was personally racist to me.

back when all of the marketing around the princesses being in wreck it ralph 2, she had gone to the disney store to “critique” the pocahontas merchandise (totally normal behavior for someone who’s not even powhatan….) and had made a comment that a pocahontas doll was “paler than she was” (and provided an image in poor lighting—I would grab the tweet in question but not only did she block me, but she also nuked the whole thread after blocking me)

now, I didn’t follow her, and I actually had found the tweet in question in early 2019 when I was searching for reference images of disney’s pocahontas (as I had been commissioned to draw all of the disney princesses for someone) and her tweet came up in the results, because i specifically had been looking for the version from that movie (commissioner wanted me to draw those versions of the princesses in specific)

anyways I pointed out that not only was pocahontas not actually that dark skinned in the movie (providing a direct screenshot from the film as proof), but that historically she wouldn’t have been that dark skinned either (because get this, I’m actually part powhatan—and while I am admittedly white passing due to being mixed race, my maternal grandfather, who is native american, isn’t that dark either. he does have copper colored skin, and does tan rather than burn, but he isn’t like. super dark like ali was complaining pocahontas wasn’t on that specific toy.) anywho i prefaced my tweet with my heritage (I’m actually related to the real pocahontas’s family, funfact. not a direct descendant, more like…a distant cousin??? though in the past I have remarked on how in the portraits of her that exist, I look fairly similar in certain facial features, mainly my nose, eyes, hairline, and overall head shape)

anyways, after i pointed this out, and made it clear I didn’t think she was saying this maliciously, I just think she might have had a warped view of how pocahontas is meant to look…she blocked me, and then started subtweeting me…

first, she accused me of using a “poorly photoshopped image” of pocahontas to prove my point (I didn’t, I screenshotted directly from the movie off a cartoon website, so likely the source was a DVD since there was no logo in the corner, and from what I could tell the colors of other characters and scenes looked correct)

THEN she accused me of lying about my heritage—and mind you this was AFTER she blocked me so I couldn’t reply to defend myself or further expand on my native heritage—which anyone who has EVER talked to me for an extended period of time knows I am HAPPY to infodump about. Because both I and my mother have done tons of research about our family tree—and that part of our family in particular (since its one of the few parts of my mothers family thats well documented and in a language we both natively know.) I mean I even know the specific name of a shawnee chief I am directly descended from! (Cornstalk—funfact, the mothman mythos is closely tied with Cornstalk’s curse, which is an alternate belief about the strange events associated with mothman sightings)

Now, again, anyone who knows me knows there are THREE things that really really tick me off in regards to my native heritage—and that is 1) calling me, or any other woman of native descent “pocahontas” (because first of all, her name was actually Matoaka, AND she’s not event the only significant native american woman in history), 2) being asked if I am related to Pocahontas/Matoaka (I actually punched a kid over this once when i was little. ironically I then later found out I actually am distantly related to her. what a small world!), and 3) being accused of lying about my heritage for “oppression points”. (well, there’s more than three, but that would just be getting into a whole other tangent, and I’ve already gone on like, four tangents in this post alone)

This last one makes me absolutely furious because I’ve had people (all white) say I can’t be native because “don’t look native” to them. when like. that’s not even fucking true??? other native american people (specifically other cherokee people—which is one of the tribes I am descended from) have recognized me as looking native american, and like other members of their tribe. I literally have the facial features, I just happen to have fair skin, and lighter hair. I mean hell, if you looked at my baby pictures (which I don’t have any on my device right this moment unfortunately) I did not look like a “white baby”. I didn’t start “looking white” (as in my hair lightening) until I was older. I’ve had white people try to gatekeep and erase my heritage from me because of their own perceptions of my appearance (based solely on my skin-tone).

So yeah, the bitch accused me of lying about a significant part of my heritage, a part that’s very VERY important to me, a part that I refuse to let others erase (especially since I’m SURE the colonists who murdered Cornstalk and his son—both my ancestors—would love to erase that misdeed and bury it).

I mean, imagine claiming to be all about the rights of indigenous women, and then smearing and making sweeping accusations about another queer, indigenous woman! Could never be me.