Seen in the window at Gulf of Maine Books in Brunswick, Maine.
Photo: Bill Roorbach
Except America wasn’t an endless expanse of forest with no certain borders. At least not while human beings inhabited it. The idea that native peoples did not cultivate or shape our land and that we had no borders is white propaganda meant to dehumanize and de-legitimize native peoples.
This illustration here show Apalachee people using slash and burn methods for agriculture. Fires were set regularly to intention burn down forests and plains. Why would we do this? Well because an unregulated forest isn’t that great for people, actually. We set fires to destroy new forest growth and undergrowth, and to remove trees, allowing for easier game hunting, nutrient enriched soil, and better growth rates for crops and herbs we used in food and medicine.
Pre-Colonial New England, where my tribe the Abenaki are from, looked more like an extensive meadow or savannah with trees growing in pockets and groves. Enough woodland to support birds, deer, and moose, but not too much to make hunting difficult. We carefully shaped the land around us to suit our needs as a thriving and successful people. Slash and burn agriculture was practiced virtually everywhere in the new world, from the pacific coast to chesapeake bay, from panama to quebec. It was a highly successful way of revitalizing the land and promoting crop growth, as well as preventing massive forest fires that thrive in unregulated forests. Berries were the major source of fruit for my tribe, and we needed to burn the undergrowth so they could grow.
That changed when white people invaded, and brought with them disease. In my tribe, up to 9 in 10 people died. 90% of our people perished not from violence starvation, but from disease. Entire villages would be decimated, struck down by small pox. Suddenly, we couldn’t care for the land anymore. There weren’t enough of us to maintain a vast, carefully structured ecological system like we had for thousands of years. We didn’t have the numbers, or strength. So the trees grew back and unregulated. We couldn’t set fires anymore, and we couldn’t cultivate the land. And white people would make certain we never could again. Timber, after all, was the most important export from New England.
Endless trees and untamed wilderness is a nice fantasy. But it’s a very white fantasy, one that erases the history of my people and of my land. One that paints native peoples are merely parasites leeching off the land, not masters of the earth who new the right balance of hunting and agriculture. It robs us of our agency as people, and takes our accomplishments from us. Moreover, it implies that only white people ever discovered the power to shape the world around them, and that mere brown people can’t possibly have had anything to do with changing our environment.
Don’t bring back untamed wilderness. Bring back my fire setters, my tree sappers, my farmers and my fishers. Bring back my people who were here first.
South Italian painted rhyton in the shape of a goat’s head. Artist unknown; 4th cent. BCE. Now in the Burrell Collection, Glasgow. Photo credit: Dalbera/Wikimedia Commons.
i hate when businesses post little “only use this if you absolutely have to” signs above the buttons that open doors or on elevators
i understand wanting to save electricity but the result is that many people are going to make decisions like “i guess i can push this door open or use the stairs, even if it will contribute to my pain flare-up” and feel really shitty about pushing the button or using the elevator even if they do absolutely need it.
i hate the idea of “only use the elevator / mobility aid / medication if you absolutely must.” use the thing if it improves your quality of life. you don’t need to prove that you deserve it by needlessly suffering.
I doubt its about conserving electricity. The amount of power used by an elevator or electric door seems inconsequential and probably isn’t going to be enough to hurt your business.
It’s almost always about some able-bodied know-it-all thinking that anybody who isn’t in a wheelchair or otherwise visibly disabled doesn’t need the thing and is just being lazy.
I mean, it’s both.
One as excuse for the other, but any penny they don’t have to spend they won’t. A lot of building owners and business owners begrudge having to “spend more money than they have to”. It’s less about cutting down on electricity to be green and more cutting electricity and required maintenance to help their bottom line as much as possible.
They are saying “if we didn’t have to have this, by law, we wouldn’t.”
It is an active disregard for disabled folks as well as a shame tactic for everyone to “enjoy” because building owners are stingy and ableist.
there’s an elevator at mit marked “for people with disabilities only, do NOT use this to transport Heavy Items on carts”, and i use it a lot (not always on bad knee days) and felt pretty bad about it until the first time i saw someone use it to transport a Heavy Item on a cart.
because, like, this elevator is at a choke point connecting the main group buildings to half the other buildings on campus, and any other elevator by which one could transport a cart is so far out of the way it might double your total walking distance.
and mit is not poor! they can definitely afford to take down this sign, they can definitely afford to let everyone take this elevator if they think it might be convenient, they just…….. presumably had some kind of reason but the net effect is that they’re pointlessly being dicks.
i hate when businesses post little “only use this if you absolutely have to” signs above the buttons that open doors or on elevators
i understand wanting to save electricity but the result is that many people are going to make decisions like “i guess i can push this door open or use the stairs, even if it will contribute to my pain flare-up” and feel really shitty about pushing the button or using the elevator even if they do absolutely need it.
i hate the idea of “only use the elevator / mobility aid / medication if you absolutely must.” use the thing if it improves your quality of life. you don’t need to prove that you deserve it by needlessly suffering.
I doubt its about conserving electricity. The amount of power used by an elevator or electric door seems inconsequential and probably isn’t going to be enough to hurt your business.
It’s almost always about some able-bodied know-it-all thinking that anybody who isn’t in a wheelchair or otherwise visibly disabled doesn’t need the thing and is just being lazy.
I mean, it’s both.
One as excuse for the other, but any penny they don’t have to spend they won’t. A lot of building owners and business owners begrudge having to “spend more money than they have to”. It’s less about cutting down on electricity to be green and more cutting electricity and required maintenance to help their bottom line as much as possible.
They are saying “if we didn’t have to have this, by law, we wouldn’t.”
It is an active disregard for disabled folks as well as a shame tactic for everyone to “enjoy” because building owners are stingy and ableist.
Marco always smiles when he gets a treat from www.treatmeright.org. There are only FOUR DAYS left in our partnership with Treat Me Right, so order now so you don’t miss out at www.treatmeright.org.
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AAVSL (African American Venacular Sign Language) is wild because you really see the culture in it and if you are Black and hearing/don’t know ASL, you still understand it because so much of black communicatiom is nonverbal
Reblogging again because I didn’t know AAVE had a sign language equivalent even though now it makes so much sense.
After the ban on photographing the Tashkent metro in Uzbekistan was lifted this summer, Amos Chapple, RFE/RL’s photographer went underground to reveal the art, architecture and nuclear-blast protection in Central Asia’s oldest subway system
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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