colonization wasn't started by the europeans in the 1500s.

so stop trying to demonize Europe and America for what they have don't that MANY cultures around the world have already done.

and yes using the term "colonizer" is a racial slur and stop suing it.

Everything the United States does is an investment.

The cultural genocide of Native Americans is within living memory. They have asked for #landback and have been told it would be too difficult, and it has been taken as a joke.

Palestinians converted to Islam 1,000+ years ago. Jewish imperialists and anti-Semites alike were given billions to violently impose an anachronistic Israeli regime, no complaints, no questions asked. The project has been called an "investment" in the United States' interests the region.

In the ancient world, the Islamic nations were the crown jewel. You don't have to look very hard to find ornate extravagances of the ancient Islamic world, wherever they have been permitted to be preserved. In ancient religions, the most effective way to convert peoples to a group's own faith is to be prosperous and attribute this to their faith. And following suit, many nations of Africa converted. [I learned these things in my history classes in uni, so I don't have sources. I may direct you to these professors upon request.]

But everywhere in the world there is any economic prosperity, the United States and the general anglosphere strongly feels an entitlement to having their fingers in that pie. The colonial partitioning of Africa, the South African colony, the colonies in what is today called the US, colonial Australia....

Meanwhile citizens in the US are fixated on oil prices and vote based only on their wallets, perpetuating the state of affairs. The class warfare goes deep in itself but is entirely inextricable.

It's clear to me that Israel as a construct is opportunistic, disingenuous, hypocritical, cynical. And Native Americans will never bribe the US enough to get their/our land back on the US's terms. (Whether I am one of them is subjective.)

People are being terrorised in their homes simply for daring to exist on their own land and guess who this headline centers? 'loyalists blamed' cop on- that's how you want to present this story??? The PSNI will do nothing, as they are designed to do, the DUP will continue to rob us of democracy with no criticism let alone concequences and the media will centre the alleged aggressors as we descend into the violence we hoped would never ever come back.

NO ONE WANTS YOU TO TALK ABOUT NORTHERN IRELAND. NO ONE WANTS TO ADMIT THE BRITISH EMPIRE IS STILL ALIVE. NO ONE CARES ABOUT WHAT HAPPENS TO US. REBLOG THIS SHIT AND EDUCATE YOURSELF.

Honestly its pretty fucked up how children are taught about how Thanksgiving is a fun and happy holiday about celebrating how the pilgrims made friends with the native Americans and learned how to farm and shit. Like the quizzes and activities kids do around thanksgiving about how it was all about making friends and how it was this wonderful thing that wasn’t bad at all. On some level I can understand not teaching kindergarteners about violent genocide, but I feel like there should be a better alternative than what schools went with.

In our very flesh, [the flesh of the mestiza] (r)evolution works out the clash of cultures. It makes us crazy constantly, but if the center holds, we've made some kind of evolutionary step forward. Nuestra alma el trabajo, the opus, the great alchemical work: spiritual mestizaje, a "morphogenesis," an inevitable unfolding.

— Gloria Anzaldúa, "La conciencia de la mestiza: Towards a new consciousness."

Follow Diary of A Philosopher for more quotes!

THE BEAUTIFUL ONES

Skin bleaching, anyone? Congratulations to Queer Eye's fashion maven Tan France for taking on this unpleasant topic in his compelling one-hour BBC documentary Beauty and the Bleach. France opens up about bleaching himself, first somewhat experimentally when he was seven, and then more purposefully when he was seventeen.

The documentary is framed around France's journey to his hometown Doncaster, UK, where he was the victim of a racial assault at the age of five, an event that shattered his sense of self and brings him to tears even when he recounts it today. The camera follows him as he chooses separates from his (impressive) closets in Los Angeles, packs his Rimowa suitcase, dines with friends from fashion school in London, and drives through Leeds. In each place he collects stories from others. There's singer Kelly Rowland, who's told that she's too dark for the first time as a teen by a boyfriend's mother and, with admirable aplomb, shrugs it off. There's a 27-year old black British influencer who is so addicted to bleaching that his skin literally starts to fall off. And there's the successful black British actress Bunmi Mojekwu, who reads the barbaric racist tweets she's received -- some comparing her to an ape -- without flinching.

Right now, as fashion and cosmetics companies in the United States address sizeism, ableism, racism, and gender identity in their product lines and marketing, there's been little discussion of colorism. Why is this such a charged issue, a final frontier in these beauty wars?

Tan France does a great service raising the topic. I grew up in a South Asian family also, and fair skin is crazily prized within the community and the family. Beauty and the Bleach is bright and bold, but the narrative remains too personal, returning again and again to France's feelings. Colorism is so devastating in its costs -- social, professional, and emotional -- that many of us can't afford to have feelings about it. How can we go deeper, and blow it up?

not your founding father (mouthpiece)

My thoughts on Louis Riel being named first premier of Manitoba.

Taanshi kiyawow, Riel dishinikashoon. I descend maternally from seven Métis families from the historic Red River Settlement in Manitoba and Batoche, Saskatchewan. Notably, my Berthelett ancestors worked for the North West Company and were community leaders in the Métis settlement of Pointe a Grouette before it was systemically overtaken by French settlers who claim we formed no roots in the area (St. Onge). My Caron ancestors from Batoche fought in the North West Resistance alongside Louis Riel and Gabriel Dumont. My fifth-great-uncle Jean Caron Sr. fought alongside his sons at the age of 52; his house still stands in Batoche to this day, where thousands of Métis make pilgrimages every year to remember the events of 1885. 

What do you know about Louis Riel?

I can only read his words and imagine what guidance he would have provided had he lived longer than 41 years. Or imagine myself in his place as he walked to the gallows on November 16th, 1885. As a child when I visited Manitoba my grandpa and my kokum would take me to visit his grave, just as they did with my mother, who named me ‘Riel’.

We are inextricably linked through time and across our homelands. What’s in a name? Unasked for? Not yet earned? I do not yet know who I am to my people but I carry an important name and the trickster’s spirit, and with these comes the responsibility of understanding and revealing cultural and societal truths (Stimson).

I am still growing into my name

Today I am a mouthpiece

An interpreter of the past

What do you know about the trial of Louis Riel?

July 31st, 1885, Riel gives his final speech. Historical weather data shows that it was a hot day in Regina. Cooler than the days before but still hot with the swelter of the plains. He spoke long, in English, not the language of his birth.

“The day of my birth I was helpless and my mother took care of me although she was not able to do it alone; there was someone to help her to take care of me and I lived. Today, although a man, I am as helpless before this court, in the Dominion of Canada and in this world, as I was helpless on the knees of my mother the day of my birth. The Northwest is also my mother; it is my mother country and although my mother country is sick and confirmed in a certain way, there are some from Lower Canada who came to help her to take care of me during her sickness and I am sure that my mother country will not kill me more than my mother did forty years ago when I came into the world, because a mother is always a mother, and even if I have my faults, if she can see I am true, she will be full of love for me.”

“When I came into the Northwest in July, the 1st of July 1884, I found the Indians suffering. I found the half-breeds eating the rotten pork of the Hudson Bay Company and getting sick and weak every day. Although a half-breed, and having no pretension to help the whites, I also paid attention to them. [...] We have made petitions, I have made petitions with others to the Canadian government asking to relieve the condition of this country.”

“We have taken time; we have tried to unite all classes, even may speak, all parties.”

“During my life I have aimed at practical results. I have writings, and after my death I hope that my spirit will bring practical results.”

“When we sent petitions to the Government, they used to answer us by sending police [...] There are papers which the Crown has in its hands, and which show that demoralisation exists among the police, if you will allow me to say it in the court, as I have said it in writing.”

“If I am blessed without measure I can see something into the future, we all see into the future more or less.”

“The only things I would like to call your attention to before you retire to deliberate are: 

1st That the House of Commons, Senate and Ministers of the Dominion, and who make laws for this land and govern it, are no representation whatever of the people of the North-West.

2nd That the North-West Council generated by the Federal Government has the great defect of its parent.

3rd The number of members elected for the Council by the people make it only a sham representative legislature and no representative government at all.”

“I have never had any pay. It has always been my hope to have a fair living one day. It will be for you to pronounce - if you say I was right, you can conscientiously acquit me, as I hope through the help of God you will. You will console those who have been fifteen years around me only partaking in my sufferings. What you will do in justice to me, in justice to my family, in justice to my friends, in justice to the North-West, will be rendered a hundred times to you in this world, and to use a sacred expression, life everlasting in the other.”

What do you know about Louis Riel?

I have done this walk in my mind so many times that I have lost count. Historical accounts of the day note that it was a chill, clear, autumn morning. The prairies stretched out, silver frost bathed in sunlight. He faced it all and was brave until the end. Despite reports of it being destroyed, former premier of Manitoba Duff Roblin and his family, and the RCMP gloat over the supposed fragments of the rope that hanged the traitor, and I wonder how long the rope would be if you lined up every single scrap of twine rumoured to be the noose that killed Riel?

Does it make you feel less guilty to call him a founding father? Canadians are only able to remember him through his murder and not through his words that can still animate his presence. Written words and objects once owned are ghosts, extensions of our bodies and spirits. When I read his letters and journals I see the urgency in his penmanship, and I think about the sweat and invisible oils of his skin becoming a part of each page as he wrote and wrote and wrote. I wonder where each journal travelled with him during his exile, and why he chose each book. There is one with an illustration of a guardian angel watching over two children, and I wonder if he thought of himself as one of them being shepherded through life by his ancestors. 

Canadians argue about whether or not Riel should have been hanged instead of talking about what he had believed and said and accomplished, and what he wanted to do with the rest of his life had it not been cut short. 

No one talks about his dreams or his fears, and he did not live long enough to answer the question of if he would have wanted to be revered as the first premier of Manitoba. Or, in response would he ask for clean water for all, to stop the sweeps, and starlight tours? Would he ask for the Winnipeg police to search the landfills for our murdered women instead of brutalizing and killing us? Would he call for an end to all colonialism and genocide? Or would he simply ask for a place to smudge and be in peace for a while?

When we send petitions to the government they still answer us by sending the police, before turning around and calling Louis Riel a founding father (Riel).

Canada cannot answer these questions for him by giving him that title posthumously, only sit with the discomfort of blood-soaked hands, and wonder how different things would have been had that sacred fire not been snuffed out in 1885.

I cannot answer these questions for him either

And I am still growing into our name.

Works Cited

Riel, Louis. Excerpts from his final statement in court on trial, July 31st, 1885

Stimson, Adrian, “Buffalo Boy: Then and Now.” Fuse Magazine, vol. 32, no. 2, 2009, pp. 18-25. 

St-Onge, Nicole J.M. “The Dissolution of a Métis Community: Pointe à Grouette, 1860–1885.” Studies in Political Economy 18.1 (1985): 149–172. Web. 

Maybe death is such a taboo topic in America and the west because we can't acknowledge the thousands of deaths done in our name.

one thing about me is everything I say online I will say in real life I don't have a persona or anything

I FORGOT I NAMED MYSELF ALEXANDER FUCKING MONTAGUE VOID AFTER RHYS DARBY I WANNA CRY

steven w. thrasher writing for mondoweiss on november 6, 2023:

As I recently heard Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique author Sa’ed Atshan say in a talk, pinkwashing falsely presumes not only that LGBTQ life doesn’t exist in Palestine but that LGBTQ Palestinians aren’t ever affirmed by their families or each other. And much as feminism is necessary, Atshan argues, queerness is fundamental to imagining a free Palestine into being. Perhaps most relevant to the ceasefire the Queer Bloc marched for this weekend, pinkwashing obscures how LGBTQ people are being tortured, starved, and killed daily by the Israeli Occupation Forces. If just five percent of the 2.3 million people in Gaza are LGBTQ, that means at least 115,000 of queer Palestinians are being directly terrorized right now and about 500 have been killed (to say nothing of their families). This has been most heartbreakingly documented by people in Gaza using Queering the Map,  a community-generated platform that “provides an interface to collaboratively record the cartography of queer life—from park benches to the middle of the ocean—in order to preserve our histories and unfolding realities, which continue to be invalidated, contested, and erased.” In Gaza, queer people have been using it to honor their dead, post what they imagine to be their final messages before their own deaths, and make promises to find each other in the afterlife. Queer theory and contemporary gay life were formed in the shadow of death caused by AIDS in 1980s; now, queer people in Gaza are living in a far more urgent shadow of death—one in which the grim reaper won’t come in the form of HIV killing them over years, but in an instant, when a bomb is dropped from one of the American made jets or drones constantly flying over Gaza. However, because they are Palestinians, pinkwashing tries to erase the need for their safety from the global LGBTQ community. 

more resources on israel's pinkwashing and queer palestinian liberation

pinkwashing at decolonize palestine

a liberatory demand from queers in palestine at mizna

beyond propaganda: pinkwashing as colonial violence at alQaws

"i'd rather die in the west bank": lgbtq palestinians find no safety in israel by tamar ben david and lilach ben david at +972 magazine

a palestinian trans woman's story peels away israel's pinkwashing veil by sharona weiss at +972 magazine

palestinian liberation is queer liberation by kayla kumari upadhyaya at autostraddle

say no to pinkwashing at bds movement

palestine as a queer struggle at the u.s. campaign for palestinian rights

pinkwashing settler colonialsm: how settler-colonial states co-opt gay rights to legitimize occupation by emily zak at briar patch magazine

pinkwashing exposed: seattle fights back! an hour-long documentary directed by dean spade and edited by amy mahardy

filmmaker pledge at queer cinema for palestine

Since you mentioned the North and South comic, I've been meaning to ask you how do you feel about pre-contact vs post-colonialism fiction about natives?

The one reason I like atla is because the mixture of fantasy with ancient cultures and seeing glimpses of how people lived in the past. The water tribes had little accurate representation and presence, so I was always up for more in-depth stuff about the tribes after the war.

But with this comic, the tribe faces foreign influences and loss of culture becomes the theme of the comic without really showing it (before the war). Sometimes, I'm left frustrated with a lot of post-colonialism fiction as it defines natives by their oppression and not how they live.

However, like you mentioned, the comic tried to tackle complex topics such as loss of culture, disagreements within the tribe, and exploitation of land and resources. I know that it's a reality for many native people today and that it's good to shed light on these issues from their perspective, not from an outsider's (which is typically what I've seen). Yet, I feel I would have a greater understanding of issues like the loss of culture, if I actually got to know it.

So specifically, I want to ask what comes to mind about these two approaches about natives in fiction? If there's some things you're drawn to, some you aren't, and what you'd like to be considered.

I think a post-colonialism take on Native stories isn't a bad thing, but, as with any story involving or inspired by a marginalized people, it requires an understanding of the culture it's trying to portray. Look at how avatar handles Water Tribe characters, now look at Smoke Signals, Reservation Dogs, Molly of Denali, even Anne with an E did a better job. It's the same as a pre-colonialsm take on stories. Look at Disney's Pocahontas and Brother Bear vs Prey or Atanarjuat: the Fast Runner.

You've framed this as pre-contact vs post-colonialism, but the problems of native fiction written by non-natives are not so neatly folded into a dichotemy like this. It all stems from writing what one doesn't know without questioning one's perception.

It's not controversal to say anti-native racists consider native cultures to be invalid as human cultures. We are not like the Ancient Greeks or Romans to them, but backwater savages. The Greeks and Romans had cultures suited to be aspirational, their philosophies solid, their religions fit for artistic depiction and study, and most compelling of all, their histories were recorded in the written word. Many who held them up as the pinnacle of civilization in the past, and many who still do today, considered our philosophies quaint and primitive, our religions savage and godless, and our histories mere stories for children. It may be a touch controversal to say the common perceptions of us still follow that belief, but that doesn't make it untrue. When writing about us, the non-native tends to consider our cultures too unimportant to "get right" or even try depicting. And when we point this out, they may get defensive and say their story is not a documentary and how could they possibly write characters meant to be one of us as belonging to a people with its own culture.

The thing is, there are many ways to show culture through setting up a scene or character actions, it's just hard to understand when you don't understand things like a cross on the wall or a pumpkin carved into a lantern or buying a sausage on white bread with tomato ketchup, yellow mustard, and occasionally sweet pickle rellish and onions from a vendor cart is a cultural experience and not a universal one. A character having football gear and a job at a burger joint at age 16 tells us about the culture they live in, not just about the character. One of the reasons i keep saying Legend of Korra was a step is that we actually see Water Tribe interiors with stuff.

Take, for example, the opening scene of Legend of Korra:

Look at the background! There's a line to hang things up to dry, a ladder that might be used to get into a cellar space, and what look to be storage containers everywhere. It's so clearly lived in.

And for another example, this shot of Tonraq discussing with the tribe

The walls are lined with tools, decorations, storage and possibly a stack of bedding? Tonraq and his family sitting close to the doorway is a nice cultural touch, though the implications of humility on their parts may have been unintended

Meanwhile, the closest the original series got to this with in terms of domestic Water Tribe spaces was the room Bato was staying it with decorative skins on the walls, shown below.

On that topic, i think it's more than fair to say this episode is more remembered for the introduction of June and Aang feeling like an outsider than Bato and how he tried to feel more at home. This wouldn't be bad in a vacuum. I don't fault anyone for finding a hot, snarky badass with a neat steed that is also her hound and a whip and skull hair accessory more memorable than the characters' dad's friend, and having an episode revolve around a character feeling insecure in their importance with their friends belonging to a culture and family that they've never really been a part of or have a history with is a good call for a children's cartoon, especially in the political climate it aired in. The problem lies in the fact that they don't get to meet anyone from the Water Tribes again until the North Pole, and at that point, culture is treated as an obstacle rather than a source of identity. When Zuko can succeed as a firebender, a leader, and a morally decent person it's because the Fire Nation was good before suddenly deciding to be an imperial power a century ago and can still be redeemed. When Katara succeeds as a waterbender and a warrior in her own right it's because she called out her own people for bullshit cultural standards that apparently no one before her questioned. That doesn't feel fair to the cultures the creative team took so much aesthetic influence from.

Alright, that's enough zeroing in on avatar and its meh approach to Water Tribe worldbuilding.

Even outside of material things, culture is displayed by living. A quiet smile and nod instead of a wave is a display of culture. Choosing not to whistle at night is a display of culture. Jokes like "as in the feather not the dot" are displays of culture. The act of cooking up frybread for the potlatch is a display of culture. If you can make less direct references to a character being queer, you can do it for characters being native too.

I think another thing non-native creators should keep in mind is why. Why is the character native or native coded? This isn't an attack, nor is it to say you need to justify having a native OC. Natives are a marginalized people and being perceived in odd and othering ways, even subconsciously and sometimes even by oneself, comes with the territory. For a fandom example of why you should probably ask why: I'm in the Homestuck fandom and I came upon a post about headcanon ethnicities for the characters and among them the only one the op considered could be Native American (and only "Native American" while others got to be French and German and the like) was Equius. Now, you can't make accurate assumptions and especially shouldn't circulate rumors based on subjective fandom contributions, but if you're making such a contribution to fandom, you really should ask yourself why the only character you can see as native is an uncomfortably sexual, controlling young man with long hair, a racist sense of superiority, a need to beat things up, and an affinity for archery and horses.

Is the character native just because you felt like having a native character, or do you perhaps feel obligated to fulfill a diversity quota without seeing the need to diversify charcters deeper than just in skintone? Is the character's identity as a native person important, or do you just need a character to be nigh fantastically part of the land they live on? Are you wanting to depict a rich, underrepresented culture with a lot of history behind it and love in the struggle to keep it alive when so many want to tear it from its people and destroy it, or is the outsider's understanding built on stereotypes and exotified to hell and back just too alluring to pass up? Basically, if you are a non-native creator with a native character, how much do they read like the observations of media made in Sherman Alexie's poem "How to Write the Great American Indian Novel"? And what are you, as a non-native creator with a native character, doing to understand why you may be writing them that way?

Stories about natives pre-assimilation can be good, but there's no use if the native characters are needlessly exotified and/or blatant racist caricatures, regardless of if they have a non-native (who isn't the assumed audience) to be compared to. Similarly, post-assimilation native stories don't have to be bad or even racist merely by virtue of having non-natives in a position of privilege. If people weren't so horny for our aesthetics, otherness, and sometimes frankly our bodies, and simultaneously so willing to give into the cultural conditioning to see us as lesser peoples, we wouldn't even need to have this conversation. Unfortunately that's not the world we live in. It really shouldn't be too much to ask writers do their due diligence in an era where most people of almost every imaginable walk of life has a device connected to the internet in their home or at their workplace or on their person. Sending an email or a dm or posting about asking for sources, academic or more personal, is not that fucking hard. With how wide the internet, hell even just tumblr, is you're bound to get at least three possible leads. When everyone understands that, maybe all native stories written by non-natives can be okay. I'd love to live to see that day.

rb with your religious upbringing/status (believing/deconstructing/ex etc) if u want; genuinely this is for science and curiosity

"This is a Greek Royal level of delusion they’re showing lmaooooo" BEST COMMENT EVER

All jokes aside, I could overlook the Oprah interview because maybe they were upset at the time or Charles is in fact now backtracking some previous claims he made about his grandchildren titles BUT I don't understand why would they want their children to have such a strong link with the institution (because let's be clear, titles have value in the system they escaped from, not within the family they're trying to allegedly forgive) they trashed in the documentary. They produced a documentary to accuse the royal family of being the legacy of colonialsm and an appendix of a toxic past, just to make their children part of it as well.

Lmaooo one time I called the Dane of Thrones “as interesting as a plate of spaghetti without salt” so I’m know for my catchphrases sksksks and I agree

anon from earlier re famine: I’m both Irish on one side of my family and German-Jewish on the other - and yet still somehow just can’t see it? Because by that token I could be asking for reparations from the Italians for what happened at Masada (just thought to clarify my background and why I think like that- but equally your opinion is also valid). again, I am very genuinely just trying to understand so I really sorry if I’m offending/upsetting you, that’s absolutely not the intention

I'm sorry but that is a total false equivalence.

Firstly: Italy did not do that, the Roman Empire did. Italy is a nation state that exists on the same land as the former Roman Empire. The institution that marched on Masada has been functionally dead for hundreds of years. The institution that starved Ireland is still making laws today.

Secondly: Masada happened 2000 years ago. Now, I do genuinely believe that there isn't a time limit on justice for war crimes, but I also believe that time makes it much more complicated. And personally, I think that prioritization should be given to the living, which leads me to my third point:

Masada, to my knowledge, is no longer home to anyone. Ireland is. There are people in Ireland suffering as a direct result of British colonialsm, today. The people who got rich because of British colonialism are still rich today. They're also still in political power in the UK, making laws that affect Ireland. I genuinely don't want to get into this particular issue because I'm in no way educated on it but are the Jewish people living in Israel right now still economically disadvantaged because Rome marched on Masada 2000 years ago?

If you consider yourself Irish and you do not feel that the Britain that exists today can or should take responsibility for the Famine, then that's totally fine. That's your belief, and I'm really not here to challenge it. But I do, and I know a lot of Irish people who do as well.