A very beautiful image of these smiley blackfoot. It seemed everything was alright…
Photograph by Mary T. S. Schaffer in 1907.
I just love how humanizing this is, it’s the first time I’ve seen us not depicted as the stoic archetype of this period
Pictured here are Sampson, Frances Louise, and Leah Beaver who actually were very close friends with the photographer and were regular subjects of her work. It’s amazing what happens when you view us as people rather than museum objects – you capture us as people, as friends, as lovers, as parents rather than the stoic image of genocide and colonialism in-progress.
If you’re interested in learning more about female photographers and how they aided in representing native peoples through positive representation and ethical photography, I would suggest reading “Trading Gazes.” Mary T.S. Schaffer and other influential female photographers, and friends, of native peoples are given some much-needed recognition in this book while also discussing the white woman’s place in our genocide and colonization.
saying “there is no ethical consumption under late capitalism” is a platitude. if you don’t want to at least try to make the world better for workers until “full communism” is established, by keeping an eye on human rights breaches, strikes, and other news, and avoiding the worst of the worst products if you have the ability to do so, it’s hard to believe that you really care about workers.
there is no activism in which doing nothing is the best option. that’s all.
The point isn’t that there’s nothing to be done for it, the point is that pretending you can fix it by *consuming correctly* is a distraction method meant to stop you from ever actually changing it, and it’s a distraction pushed by the exact people who want these sorts of systems to keep going.
The people who want to charge you double for their “ethical” products don’t want the “unethical” version to stop existing. They’d lose half their brand if it did. And they’d also lose their consumers’ classist distaste for the *other* consumers who can’t afford anything *but* the “unethical version”. That distaste keeps people buying their product just as much as any kind of actual ethics.
The unethical version is always cheaper, and so it will always exist as long as it’s *allowed* to exist. You can never boycott it out of existence because there will always be someone priced into buying it anyway.
But they know that we have a finite amount of money, energy, and attention, and that if they keep us busy policing each other for the purity of our purchasing choices, they can exhaust all three and keep us from going after actual solutions like just straight up outlawing sweatshop labor, or raising the minimum wage, or whatever. They can cause movements toward those small, incremental goals to fall apart as everyone involved purity tests each other to death over something that was never going to matter anyway. They can get us to devour each other and never bother them again.
“There is no ethical consumption” is another way of saying “nice try, but we still see you”.
tldr:
it never meant “buy whatever, give up.”
it meant “buy whatever while you do something ACTUALLY useful instead of meaningless ‘voting with your wallet.’”
about a year ago i read that capybaras can briefly run as fast as horses and no revelation since has shaken me as much. i can’t get rid of the thought of the world’s largest rodent barreling at you at the speed of a horse. it’s so sinister
in all seriousness I read this and thought “good thing capybaras aren’t real” before realizing that I was, in fact, thinking of chupacabras
I attempted suicide about 2 months ago. unfortunately, I wasn’t successful. I say unfortunate because now i’m being faced with $4k in medical bills. one for the ambulance and another for the hospital stay. I wasn’t the one who called 911, my friend stopped me. i wish i could be optimistic and say I’m grateful for being given this second chance, but honestly I feel like I’m being punished for living.
so to help combat this, I’m asking my followers or anyone else who sees this to maybe, if you have the means to, commission me or donate. My commission prices are fairly cheap, and I’ll draw just about anything except mechas and furries. Oh and pedophillia. I’m not against furries, I just can’t draw animals. Like at all.
my commission prices are in the neat little graphic below:
AND SO…. that’s all I’m gonna say on the matter. If you’d just straight up like to make a donation, you can do so to my paypal at sadivnyk@yahoo.com
thank you for reading. if you could boost I would appreciate. ;v; ❤
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 