#ndn problems

Honestly the fact that this is the only booth so far that I’ve seen all the day at the fair tells me that there is some progress being made with white people not profiting off of us….

"Up until now, it had been thought humans entered North America across the Bering Strait around 14,000 years ago. Now, new evidence has shown beyond a doubt that it was in fact 10,000 years earlier than that." -IFLScience.com 

I hate how completely uninformed and unresearched people are comfortable making themselves look. I've seen National Geographic say the same shit. It's not hard to open a book, it's not hard to Google it. I'm sorry you last learned any damn thing about natives in 1980 or some shit. Honestly, public schools today are just as bad. I've even met other NDNs who didn't know better. If you didn't know, the land bridge/circa 14000 thing is a timeworn and unsubstantiated claim about Native origin. It has three main roots, none of which are logical or scientific. 

1. The earliest colonizers repeatedly concluded that some natives they found couldn't possibly be the same breed of savages they had heard about and/or just fled from. So, clearly, these natives must be descendants of the lost tribe of Israel. They must have walked on over at some point, and that's how they got lost. I guess this theory had some romantic poetic fashion to it or something. 

2. The continent was consistently described as "empty" all through the 18th to 19th centuries in a desperate and nonsensical attempt to cover up or make palatable the legacy of horrific genocide. You saw all sorts of this shit: paintings that just ignore native towns or roads or infrastructure, poems and stories published at that time that emphasize the unspoiled nature of the interior despite all the evidence of human interference and manipulation. So clearly natives had to be here only "recently." 

3. Up until pretty recently (like the 1980s I think) the white scientific community believed that humans originated in Europe for some reason... I dunno. It's called “the Out of Europe Theory," and it's almost impossible to research anymore without getting Nazi stuff. It's probably not racism, right? Add to that the land bridge would only really have been passable about 14000 years ago or 40+000 years ago... So clearly humans didn't hoof it from Europe that long ago, had to be 14000. 

I would at this point like to say that the length of time a people were somewhere is not the measure by which their presence or identity is validated, at least in these terms. It's totally okay that Europe is the last continent to be meaningfully settled by modern humans other than Antarctica. It doesn't say anything about Europeans that their land is the youngest and most recently untamed. 

America as a whole has been populated for at least ~40000 years. There is conclusive evidence from as far back as 50,000 from North Carolina of all places. Not multiple migrations, the haplogroup diversity is too low, and other genetic factors are too consistent. And Language groups and families are too diverse the shorter timelines and too concentrated to be wildly shifted by odd extra migrations without lasting and obvious evidence.

I just read a series of tweets from a native (if this is not the best term, I apologize: please, if you belong to this group, inform me of the right one) woman, detailing her experience at the women’s march. White women were busting into a prayer circle, acting like entitled assholes, refusing to take fliers about DAPL and just generally treating these WOC like less. Like a group of curiosities to have their pictures made with. 

And reading it, I just felt sick. And angry. And sad. And disheartened.

I probably have enough Cherokee blood in me to disqualify me for the Arian brotherhood, but not enough that I would ever be considered anything but white by anyone else. I certainly never had to experience the struggles those women have been facing since Asshat Columbus first stepped his bastard boot onto the soil, but maybe that tiny bit of non-white blood is what makes me so angry for these women. 

You cannot disregard the struggles of WOC and call yourself a feminist. As women of any color, we are all carrying around large boxes labeled “Sexism” on our backs. And we have to fight against that box of shit everyday. But if we don’t acknowledge that other women may be carrying additional boxes, we fail at feminism. Some women may have a second box called “Transphobia.” Another might be struggling to carry a second marked “Racism/Xenophobia.” Some women may be carrying all three. And some women may be carrying all three plus a box labeled “Genocide,” and/or a box labeled “Loss of Sacred Lands,” and/or a box labeled “Cultural Appropriation,” and/or so many other boxes. Some men don’t have the sexism box, but they have many or all of the others.

IF YOU ARE ONLY CARRYING ONE BOX THERE IS NO EXCUSE NOT TO HELP SOMEONE WHO IS CARRYING MORE THAN ONE (unless your excuse is “I’m an asshole,” in which case, STOP BEING AN ASSHOLE).

If you are against intersectional feminism, it is the same as saying “No, sorry, I only want to get the box off my back. I see it as most important, so that’s what we are going to focus on. You talking about your boxes takes away from the message about my one box, so we are going to ignore your other boxes.”