#native issues

Lakota children at Oceti Sakowin Community Academy offer hand-written letters to the Forest Service in opposition to Pete Lien & Sons drilling the sacred site Pe’sla.

May 16th (TOMORROW) is your last day to offer a public comment in opposition of Pete Lien & Sons proposed mining project! Relatives from anywhere can submit.

Join the OSCA children and submit your comment: ndnco.cc/ProtectPesla

Learn more about the Oceti Sakowin Community Academy: ndncollective.org/oceti-sakowin-community-academy/ Donate to our For The People Fund to allow them to continue doing this critical work: ndnco.cc/ftpcdonate

Mining Pe’sla = no sacred sites are safe Mining Pe’sla = no lands are safe

Sarah-Tai Black confirms that this film is unjustifiably shallow, and a poor representation of Indigenous cultures:

One thing I was really thinking about, as someone who is completely new to the series, is … the violence and the language of the film — not that there's a lot, but there's enough to signify that these films are directed for adults, for teenagers, for mature tweens. But if that is that, why is it that its story world, its characters, the relations to one another are all so lacking in depth and impact? ... I was thinking a lot about Killers of the Flower Moon while I was watching Fire and Ash, and how, in my opinion as a Martin Scorsese lover, he should not have directed that film. I think there's a lot of colonial violence being reenacted by that film. But there's also a few moments in that film here and there where Indigenous being and Indigenous spirit kind of breaks through…. There's none of that in the Avatar movies. Cameron doesn't even care to give us those moments of lived life. ... I just felt there was no heart. There was no spirit. There was no soul to this film. I felt nothing. I didn't even feel anger. I didn't even feel, like, contrived sadness — and I am … an easy cry. I love the cinematic emotional manipulation. And since I got out of the screening of Fire and Ash last night, I've just been thinking about, like, what is the political function of all of that?

Jesse Wente confirms that these films aren't actually anti-colonialist, but are rather colonial fantasy:

But if his intent is to have some sort of reckoning with colonial history, I mean, these films are an utter failure. And I don't actually think that is the intent. To bring about language I used in my original review 16 years ago, these films are colonial fantasy. These are movies where non-Indigenous people embody Indigenous people, and become the heroes of the story. This film is not about Indigenous people. All of the central characters, save for the women — which is an interesting thing that one might really want to think about, in terms of how Indigenous women are so often the targets of colonial violence, and yet they're the only Indigenous folks really at the heart of this story…. The hero men in the story are not Indigenous. They're all non-Indigenous people in costumes. That is a fantasy. And not only are they in costumes, they're our leaders….

So yeah.

Posting this on Tumblr to make it have more attention! Between June 5 and 6 the Alabama-Coushatta Tribe of Texas will be hosting their annual powwow!

Alongside this, Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana will be hosting their annual powwow between June 12 to 13!

reminder that it was actually illegal to teach native languages in the states until 1990 and that there was a deliberate effort by colonizers to kill off our languages.

mocking indigenous languages as 'gibberish' is racist and harmful.

native culture was - and still is - targeted by colonizers as uncivilized and 'savage' and taken by hollywood and made into monolith, stripping tribes of their individual traditions for consumption of the very people trying to force native people to give up their culture.

(It may also re-designate the term "Indian" in the bill to mean a racial classification rather than political, reversing precedent with regard to tribal sovereignty. Native tribes must remain independent entities in the law rather than just a race to protect their rights to self-governance.)

The Lakota People's Law Project is asking US citizens to ask their state lawmakers to enact similar legislation at the state level which codifies the rights and protections ICWA gives to Native children should it be weakened in the Supreme Court. This is not protection for the ICWA itself, although they do have action you can take for that on their website as well. In the link is a pre-written email which you can personalize and easily send to your state lawmakers.

Thanks for your time. :)

This is really scary