Tag: indigenous

This is something a white person asked me and i wasnt sure what to say but what do you think of people saying “if natives hate this country so much why do so many of them fight in the military?” Im really dumbfoundead at that logic i guess?

bannock-and-biopolitics-deactiv:

Natives ain’t a monolith, kemosabe. There are conservative, patriotic, USA-lovin NDNs who fly the stars and stripes at powwows and make sure there are veterans honor songs and dances there and who vote Republican and shit like that. 

But there are Natives, some who are my own kin, who hate this country and yea, they enroll in the military, because they’ve been kept by colonial capitalism in some of the shittiest conditions in the world, and want an out, and the benefits provided by VA and the GI Bill are one of the most accessible ways “out”. When I lived in Montana, half of the NDNs I knew were either in the military off-duty, or had served in the past, including cousins of mine, and they hated it with every fibre of their being, but contrary to popular belief, universities and tribal councils aren’t pulling strings to shower Native Americans with free money to go to school or learn a trade, so sometimes a trip around the world in Uncle Sam’s murder machine is the only way they can find to make sure they don’t get stuck in permanent poverty (I don’t have enough time to elaborate on this but I’m sure you know that this doesn’t always work and the cycle of poverty continues, plus with an added dose of extra PTSD and frustration dealing with the VA bureaucracy) 

Plus there’s a multigenerational situation going on here of people who had uncles and fathers and mothers and aunts and grandparents who served in Vietnam, WWII, etc, and you’re usually guaranteed to get a few veteran honours if you do a stint in the military, so there’s that pressure too, a lack of knowledge about different options, opportunistic military recruiters knowing that reservations and towns with high native populations are a good quota filler, basically a toxic brew of circumstances that, if you could distill it into a picture, would make an excellent cover image for The Wretched of the Earth. 

Also in Canada (not sure about in the maritimes where the military is more prolific than where I live in Western Canada, but bear with me here) every single Native I know is about 100x more vocally contemptuous of Canada, and they don’t generally serve in the Canadian military. My armchair sociologist anthropologist observation notes that, unlike in the U.S, many First Nations have band funding so students can go to school or learn a trade with financial support, almost every single large Canadian university has an Aboriginal Services branch that’s meant to help students adjust to university life, and there is not an active culture of military recruitment present on reserves or at Native friendship centres or powwows or cultural gatherings. Hmmm! 

Louisiana Community Convulses as Climate Policy Shifts

rjzimmerman:

This story tells us about the first community in the lower 48 that is relocated because of climate-caused changes to their little community. I’m fairly certain that some small towns in coastal Alaska have either moved, or are considering moving, or are in the process, and I’ll bet that some of the issues raised in this story affecting Isle de Jean Charles, Louisiana apply to those towns in Alaska.

Here’s a summary of the story from Dino Grandoni of the Washington Post:

Isle de Jean Charles is the first town to get government funding to move as a result of global warming. The Obama administration awarded the state of Louisiana $48 million to move fewer than 40 families in the small town that includes many members of the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw tribe.

The story describes a weekend meeting to talk through three possible locations for the new community, and runs through some of the dilemmas the community is facing:

“Build too close to Isle de Jean Charles, and residents would remain exposed. Build too far north, and fewer would move. Compromise meant a relatively flood-prone site that could nonetheless cost $30 million.”

Louisiana Community Convulses as Climate Policy Shifts

jagiya-kitten:

indigkid:

theravenfortheeagle:

unfriendlyindigenoushottie:

my grandfather is a residential school survivor. he literally has a BRAND of a number on his shoulder. he was a 6 year old child who was branded like a cow. he was given a new last name (he doesn’t even know his real last name) and was essentially brain washed into being white. the man, a full oglala lakota, doesn’t even call himself native anymore because he was beaten into being ashamed of it.  

do yall wanna tell me why it’s okay for you to dress up and play “indian” whenever less than 70 years ago, we were literally beaten and killed for being indian?

Reminder that I (A 38 year old) was in high school while residential schools were still active in Canada. Even natives who did not get taken from their family and put in residential schools have lost their identity because of this practice. Many families chose to give up everything they had to keep their children from having to go to residential schools.

Our people survived genocide while white kids dressed up as people who weren’t allowed to dress as themselves. That’s why it’s fucked up.

reminder that the last residential school to close down in canada was in 1996, just a few months before I was born.

My grandmother burned everything of hers so they could not link her to her heritage. I have no Status because that’s exactly how she wanted it to be.She didn’t want her family to be tortured.

When I was a manager at one of my old jobs and they wanted me to put a Tipi out and a Headdress on the Manny in our window for ‘Festival Season’ I flat out refused and wouldn’t let any of my girls do it either.