this is my Koda; she is a special cat
Month: August 2017
Climate change could disrupt tribes’ religious practices
The Colorado River, one of the longest rivers in the United States, is gradually shrinking. This is partly a result of overuse by municipalities and seasonal drought. The other reason is global warming.
The decline in the river reservoir will have serious implications for large U.S. cities, such as Los Angeles, that depend on the Colorado River as their water source. In addition, this will also have an impact on the Native American tribes who view the Colorado River as sacred to their religions.
As Ka-Voka Jackson, a member of the Hualapai tribe and a graduate student working to address climate change on the Colorado River and restoring native plant species along its banks, stated, “The Colorado River is so sacred not just to my tribe, but to so many others.”
As a scholar of Native American religions and the environment, I understand how Indigenous people’s religions and sacred places are closely tied to their landscape. For the past 100 years, Indigenous peoples have been forced to adapt to changes in their environments and modify their religious rituals in the United States. The U.S. government made certain Native American religious practices illegal in the 19th and early 20th century. Although these policies have since been rescinded, they led to changes in many Indigenous practices.
Global warming, however, is different. The question is whether Indigenous people will be able to adapt their beliefs all over again due to the impact of global warming on the natural world.
Adapting to change
The Blackfeet tribe in Montana brought changes in their relationship with the natural world as a result of the policies of the U.S. government from the 1880s to the 1930s.
For example, the Blackfeet purposefully moved religious ceremonies from one time on their liturgical calendar to completely different times to avoid the U.S. government penalizing native people for dancing or participating in religious ceremonies.
The Blackfeet moved their annual O’kan, or sundance festival, from late summer (usually held at the end of August) to the Fourth of July celebration. They avoided U.S. government punishment by masking their ceremonies within state-sanctioned public events.
Policies related to the mining of natural resources and damming of rivers on Indigenous lands have also led to changes in Native Americans’ religious practices.
Historian David R. M. Beck interviewed elders and researched how the Menominee tribe in Wisconsin adapted to the loss of their sacred fish, the sturgeon, after a paper mill built a dam across the Wolf River.
The sturgeon disappeared after the dam was built in 1892, because they could no longer swim upstream to spawn. For over 100 years, the Menominee tribal members continued to pray and conduct their annual “returning of the sturgeon” ceremony in the spring – even though there were no more sturgeon in the river. The Menominee ultimately won the right to return the sturgeon to the Wolf River in 1992 and the tribe revitalized the full ceremony and celebration of their sacred fish.
In all these situations, Native American tribes learned to adapt to the challenges placed before them, modify their religious practice and embrace a different relationship with the natural world.
Global warming and religion
When it comes to global climate change, it affects everyone, not just specific groups in specific places. But for many Indigenous peoples, natural resources are closely linked to religious beliefs and practices.
Historically, Indigenous peoples used the natural seasonal cycles of weather, plants and animals as part of their liturgical or religious calendar. The Blackfeet held their annual “beaver bundle ceremony” in the early spring as ice melted off rivers and beavers returned to the open waters. In Blackfeet mythology, a beaver served as a deity who taught humans how to cultivate tobacco, which the tribe used for important religious ceremonies and as a peace offering to their enemies.
There are signs, though, that beavers are now moving north due to global warming. Biologists are currently studying both beavers and the birch and alder shrubs that beavers eat, as both move north into new regions. Scientists worry that as a keystone species, the movement of beavers will change the northern ecosystems as they cut off waterways and build beaver dams. And shrubs will change the local waterways that they grow by. This will affect local animal species.
What will happen when there are no more beaver in Blackfeet territory? Will their religious traditions adapt similar to the Menominee when they faced the loss of their sacred sturgeon?
Religion and resiliency
From the arctic tundra to the American desert Southwest, and places worldwide, Indigenous peoples will be facing the impact of global climate change.
Regarding the shrinking of the Colorado River, researchers Brad Udall and Jonathan Overpeck have concluded that, “Failing to act on climate change means accepting the very high risk that the Colorado River basin will continue to dry up into the future.”
If this river faces a drier future, it will likely affect the Mojave, a people indigenous to the Colorado River basin, who believe the river was created by their ancient deity Mastamho as part of their sacred landscape.
As the G-20 convenes in Germany this week to discuss global issues including climate change, Indigenous scholars, such as myself, are wondering what the future holds for Indigenous peoples, their environments and their religions.
Indigenous communities can be resilient and adapt their internal religious beliefs to outside challenges, as Native American tribes from the turn of the 20th century have proven. Climate change presents yet another challenge.
Yep, I’ll admit it: I self-diagnosed some broken ribs! Among other really obvious things.
(And you can feel the lumps where they healed up at a slightly different angle, too.)
Kenguru is a tiny electric hatchback for wheelchair users
By Ellis Hamburger, theverge.comKenguru’s electric car has no seats, and you drive it by putting your hands on motorcycle-style handlebars. It’s built for wheelchair users, who can roll right through the rear hatch of the car into the driver’s area. The Austin-based…
THIS IS SO COOL.
fucking amazing wow
NO BUT DO YOU UNDERSTAND HOW GREAT THIS IS? DO YOU REALLY? PEOPLE IN WHEELCHAIRS CAN HAVE SMALL CARS NOW, THEY DON’T HAVE TO RELY ON EXPENSIVE LIFTS TO HELP GET THEM INTO CARS, THEY DON’T HAVE TO MODIFY THEIR CARS FOR THEIR NEEDS BECAUSE THE CAR IS ALREADY DESIGNED SPECIFICALLY FOR THEM. THIS IS ACTUALLY SO GREAT AND IT GIVES SO MANY PEOPLE THE OPPORTUNITY TO BE MORE INDEPENDENT AND IT MAKES ME SO HAPPY!
Have I reblogged this already? Don’t care.
Also for those worried about prices: it’s about $25,000 when it comes out, so about the price of a mid-sized car. And there might be grants for it.
Not to be a downer about this… because it’s a step in the right direction but I already see 2 major issues with a vehicle like this.
1. There is absolutely no cargo space… like for anything at all. On their website, they reference that something like this would be great for trips to the grocery store. Okay great… except where do the groceries go? I mean there isn’t even space for a small shop let alone a weekly or monthly shop at the grocery store.
2. There isn’t any room for a passenger, even just 1 passenger. People in wheelchairs have friends, family, etc.
For a vehicle that will cost approx 25 grand and only go about 25 mph, so you’re limited to surface streets – again okay for a quick trip to the grocery store or your local doctor but… I’m not sure how much it would be worth the investment, especially on a fixed income.
That’s actually some indication of how disturbing the ankle situation was looking yesterday. Especially given previous experiences with our local A&E/ER? I have decided not to go in over the years with celiac fractures, a couple of other injuries probably 98% of other people would for, a really terrible skin abscess, one bad tooth abscess flare that had me scared, or suspected pneumonia. Probably forgetting some. I don’t trust them not to do more harm than good, much less take any pain seriously.
But, that had me concerned enough to seriously consider it anyway. Especially with the animals to look out for, and otherwise on my own for a while with nobody else to get help if things turned bad enough fast. In the end? It still seemed much safer not to, as a sick autistic person with no backup. Seen as a woman, to boot.
Besides getting the HMS diagnosis (fitting hEDS criteria) when I was 14 and then not having it get treated as relevant to even other joint problems? One reblog reminded me of more fun when I was younger.
Unlike that writer, I really did develop a restrictive ED. Especially on top of the unrecognized celiac, that was not great for the general state of my health for a while. To put it rather mildly. (And yeah, I think some damage done then has been continuing to catch up with me, which is a slightly different story.)
The ED did get diagnosed. But, besides basically getting some kind of recovery going eventually in spite of the treatment? The classic health problems from starvation got put off on depression and anxiety. Not even kidding. They knew I was dealing with an ED, and obvious complications from that were still all in my head. Because silly teen girl.
It just didn’t get treated like a physically dangerous problem at all. Presumably because my BMI never dipped under 20 or so, but who the hell knows. ETA: That also still looks pretty scary with my frame, which was what got my family flipping out.
(Basically the same thing also happened later, after I finally got the celiac dx at around 30. With the guaranteed malnutrition complications to go along with that. I’ve had literally zero followup under the NHS, and consistently got predictable complications brushed off. Some of them pretty alarming and, yes, dangerous as hell.)
But yeah, that’s just one of the reasons I do not feel safe even mentioning the ED in medical settings. Not even to try to get them to back the fuck off with triggering it. I have been shown plenty of reason not to trust them around any perceived mental health problems. And I know good and well that I’m far from the only person with experiences like that.
I work at a daycare with infants.
One of our baby girls is fat, in the 99th percentile for her age. She is super cute and sweet. Lately, she has been sick with various breathing issues, so she has been reluctant to take her bottles. Normally, she’ll take 4 ounces of formula at lunch and 8 ounces in the afternoon. Today, I was lucky to get to her take 5 all day.
There was a substitute covering a lunch break in my classroom today. We emphasized to her that we need to keep trying to get the baby to drink her bottle until she finished it. She said, “Why are you guys so worried about taking her bottle?”
My coworker replied, “That’s where all her nutrients are. She needs the nutrients and the water.”
To which the substitute replied, “But she’s so fat. She doesn’t need it.”
Thin privilege is a small, pretty baby getting better childcare because the caretaker doesn’t think she’s too fat to be allowed to eat.
This reminds me of a cousin of mine who ended up with her kids being taken away from her by social services for a number of reasons but mostly for nearly killing her baby daughter. How?
By starving her. She insisted that her baby was ‘too fat’ and had an aim to remove any and all ‘chubbyness’ so her baby would be thin. She’d already been warned by her doctor about the baby not getting enough food, but insisted she knew best.
After several months of this her baby passed out cold one day and was rushed into hospital where the doctors found her to have severe malnutrition, a low body temperature and low pulse rate. They asked my cousin what she’d been feeding her daughter and she said “one bottle of skimmed milk a day. I don’t want her growing up fat.”
Even after nearly killing her daughter my cousin maintained her view that fat = bad and ended up with all her kids taken from her because she was starving them and neglecting them.
When your fatphobia leads you to starving your own children then you’ve got serious problems.
(Note. She still, to this day, maintains the view that she was right and the doctors were wrong. “They just want fat kids so they can keep employed treating them for all those diseases that being fat causes.” = her actual words.)
My mom had me dieting with her when I was eleven. She had me eating less than 600 calories a day because she was worried I was going to “get huge.” She even grounded me once because she found out my friends were bringing me lunches! I ended up passing out, going to the ER, and getting two IVs at once BC I was so goddamn dehydrated. Soooooo surprised they didn’t call child services… And looking back, this was the root of my anorexia. I’m nearly 22 and still fighting it. Please don’t starve your fucking children.
For fucks sake babies are SUPPOSED to be fat, what is wrong with people? It’s just stored energy, and growing children need stored energy – an 11 year old is just about to hit some major growing years. Damn.
Fatphobia
Is
Real
and it kills
This is no joke. people will literally starve their own babies cause they don’t want them getting fat. A parent brought in their six month old baby who was having breathing issues and kept getting sick. the parent was asked if the baby was eating regularly and the parent straight up told the doctor that they only feed the baby once a day. ONCE A DAY. A FUCKING BABY. they even had the nerve to say because they didn’t want the baby to get fat. people like this are real. they would rather have a dead baby than a fat one.
My youngest son is a very big boy and has been since he was born. When he was 10 months old I took him for his well-baby check and vaccinations. The nurse noted his weight and said, quite casually, “He is in the 99th percentile for weight so he is at risk for obesity. You may want to keep an eye on that.” I said, “He is exclusively breastfed. He refuses to eat any solids yet.” What did she expect me to do? What would it mean to “keep an eye on” an exclusively breastfed baby’s weight?
She backed off saying, ‘Well he looks fine!” – proving once again that weight bias is not truly about health – But I know many other parents who are not as informed as I am about weight science and size diversity would react to this interaction by policing their child’s food intake, if not as an infant, then when he was an older child. This is exactly the type of seemingly-inconsequential interaction that starts the ball rolling on a lifetime of dieting, disordered eating, negative body image, and weight-based abuse for too many fat people.
Years later when he was five, another doctor measured his weight and height and commented that he is off the charts on both, but “at least he is in proportion.” And if he was not “in proportion,” I am sure I would have been advised once again to “watch his weight.”
I no longer allow healthcare providers to weight my children unless it is absolutely medically necessary. They are unable to control their weight talk, which is a known harm for children.
We need to completely eliminate weight talk from medicine, especially when it comes to children. Even the smallest exposure can have terrible consequences.
Wtf…
A friend from college had been going to the doctor because she was having trouble breathing. She was told to lose weight.
Over the course of several years, she went back to the doctors time and time again, telling them that she’d been sticking to the diet but because of her breathing problems she had been unable to even walk for more than 20 minutes at a time.
The doctor got her into an exercise programme and told her that she just needed to really try to lose weight because that was clearly the reason for her breathing problems.
By the time they found the tumour on her lungs, it was inoperable. She only lived three months after diagnosis. She was 25.
She’d had the tumour for over five years.
The doctor was so focused on the fact that my friend was “fat”, that they refused to look for any underlying cause.
They killed her.
Weight-first treatment KILLS. Fatphobia KILLS.
I have 2 scary stories to share about fatphobic doctors & parents harming their childs/patients’ health:
1. The 4 years old daughter of a friend of mine came to our house to spend the weekend. She gave me a letter from her mom that said that the child was in a glutenfree diet because she was getting ‘awfully fat’ when eating cookies or bread (my celiac ass; who gets dhiarrea and loses a scary amount of weight whenever I eat something with gluten was like ’???’).
You can bet that I went to the supermarket with the kid and told her ‘go & take whatever you feel like eating’ and the poor child came back smiling with her arms full of biscuits and cupcakes.
She didn’t got sick (as a celiac would get) and told me later that she hated the diet her mother made her follow; because her cousins didn’t had to pass through that.
And what’s the scariest thing about this story? Her mother was a NURSE. A fucking nurse who didn’t have a clue of the harm that she was doing to her daughter’s body!
2. My little sister started to feel fatigued and dizzy at 9 years old. She felt nauseated at the sight of food and had abdominal pain that increased with physical activity.
Mom got her to the ER and the doctor dismissed it saying: ‘she’s fat and probably is feeling ill after eating too much burgers, get her to make some exercise and she will be better in no time’.My mom didn’t felt ok with the diagnosis and took my sister with a second doctor who also told her that ‘the child was just fat’.
My sister’s skin was starting to get yellow as the days passed and the abdominal pain was getting awful so my mom (heaven bless her!) got her to the ER for the third time:
SHE HAD STAGE 4 HEPATITIS AND WAS ABOUT TO DIE.
She survived after a long and painful recovery who involved being in bed for a whole year (remember that we’re speaking of a 9 years old child). Luckily they saved her liver and she didn’t went through a transplant… but let this sink:
If it weren’t for my mother, fatphobia would have killed her. Fatphobia kills kids and teenagers, fatphobia kills inocent people everyday. It treats human beings as lesser than others and hurts them in their most vulnerable times.
It’s a real shame that we all have so much stories to share about this issue. A REAL SHAME.
Future doctors, interns, and residents following me:
FUCKING TAKE NOTE OF THIS!
Don’t let bias against your fat patients kill them!
there’s a rock formation in norway officially called the Troll Dick
earlier this year it fell victim to vandalism, it was broken in half, and every norwegian newspaper saw the opportunity and put “the erection of the troll dick” on every front page
TIL that when a hamster wheel is placed outside wild mice will come run on it.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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