ayiman:

selchieproductions:

beautifulbiatch:

[blah blah blah blah I’m a racist asshole and I don’t know what I’m talking about]

“Foreign influence is sometimes one of the most powerful promoters of the progression of culture.”

Oh man, am I glad that I’ve been out most of the day. There’s really not a lot to add to the extensive critique others have already aimed at you, but really? Do you ever actually pause to think about what you’re saying before you let your mind lose on your blog?

Foreign influence in the Americas is what created the biggest genocide in history, with more than 90% of all Native Americans being decimated by colonialism. Foreign influence is also the very thing that created the Transatlantic Slave Trade which displaced and brutally murdered millions of Africans over hundreds of years and foreign influence is what to this day forces uncontacted tribes in the Amazon rain-forest to flee for their lives as murderous illegal loggers enter their traditional areas.

If you don’t know what you’re talking about, then don’t talk. 

Anyway, I am sometimes nice, so here’s a book you can and should read before you say anything else about alphabets;

• Jensen, Hans (1970). Sign Symbol and Script. London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd.

And for your education in order for you to realise that you’re wrong when it comes to your belief that ‘foreign influence is sometimes one of the most powerful promoters of the progression of culture’ - here you go;

• Athia, Dr Renato et al (2007). Progress Can Kill: How Imposed Development Destroys the Health of Tribal Peoples. London: Survival International

• Bourne, R. (2003). Invisible Lives. Undercounted, Underrepresented and Underneath: The Socio-Economic Plight of Indigenous Peoples in the Commonwealth. Commonwealth Studies Unit: London.

• Kirmayer, LJ. and Valaskakis, G. (Eds.).The Mental Health of Canadian Aboriginal peoples: Transformations, Identity, and Community.University of British Columbia Press: Vancouver.

• Cook, D.N. (1998). Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 1492-1650. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge. 

• Dion Stout, M. and Kipling, G. (2003). Aboriginal people, Resilience and the Residential School Legacy. The Aboriginal Healing Foundation: Ottawa. 

• Fell, N. (2005). Argentine Tribe Losing Battle Against ‘Silent Genocide’. Sunday Herald: Edinburgh. 

• Hemming, J. (2003). Die if You Must: Brazilian Indians in the Twentieth Century. Macmillan: London.

• IWGIA. (1989). Paraguay. Ethnocide: Mission Accomplished? IWGIA: Copenhagen.

• Jasen, P. (1997). Race, Culture, and the Colonization of Childbirth in Northern Canada. Social History of Medicine 10(3), 383-400.

• Joe, J.R., Young, R. (1994). Diabetes as a Disease of Civilization: The Impact of Culture Change on Indigenous Peoples. Mouton de Gruyter: Berlin.

• Kirmayer, L., Brass, G. and Tait, C. (2000). The Mental Health of Aboriginal Peoples: Transformations of Identity and Community. Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 45, 607-616

• Levang, P., Dounias, E., Sitorus, S. (2005). Out of the Forest, Out of Poverty? Forests, Trees and Livelihoods 15, 211-235.

• Rabben, L. (1998). Unnatural Selection: The Yanomami, the Kayapo and the Onslaughtof Civilisation. Pluto Press: London.

• Salazar, M. (2006). Indigenous People, Ignored Even by the Statistics. IPS News. 10 October 2006.

• Shephard, R.J. and Rode, A. (1996). The Health Consequences of ‘Modernization’: Evidence from Circumpolar Peoples. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.

reblogging for the great big list of stuff to read.

for some reason, white people like to use arguments like, “this kind of thing has been happening throughout history, so why act like this example was so bad?”. 

Usually:

• these other societies had slaves
• Native Americans were all killing each-other anyway

outside of some pretty huge differences between chattel slavery in the US vs the way it happened in varying cultures throughout history, and the difference between warfare in the societies of Indigenous peoples vs the methodical genocide exacted by colonisers, these arguments are essentially, “these other people were assholes, so why are you acting like what I did was so bad?”

Hopefully, you can see how flawed that sort of defense is, but an example: if I stab you in the liver & watch you bleed out, then try the defense, “Your Honour, there have been gory murderers throughout history! Why is my act considered so heinous!?” I would still be culpable for my actions & the related repercussions.

And so it is.

racismfreeontario:

trigger warning

“The report says church officials killed children by beating, poisoning, electric shock, starvation, prolonged exposure to sub-zero cold while naked, and medical experimentation, including the removal of organs and radiation exposure.” […] Children also suffered forced sterilization, medical experimentation, starvation, rape as well as various other forms of sexual abuse, and murder….. Some spoke of young girls becoming pregnant as a result of rape, or nuns becoming pregnant after sexually abusing boys…’”

In British Columbia, the first Indian Residential School was established in 1861 at Mission and was operated by the Roman Catholic Church. It would also become the last operating school in the province, finally closing in 1984.

Elsewhere in Canada, Indian Residential Schools dotted the nation. Around 130 residential schools herded aboriginal children like cattle to teach them how to become productive members of “white society.” The former Grand Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, Matthew Coon Come, calls this system genocide.

“Basically, the goal was to take the Indian out of the Indian,” he says.

This bold state-funded enterprise was for the most part carried out in western Canada with tremendous bureaucratic and missionary zeal for over a century. Christian ideology insisted it was acceptable to “obliterate” indigenous peoples’ distinct cultural “habits and associations” while simultaneously fostering the colonial “process of nation building.”

[…]

“After a lifetime of beatings, going hungry, standing in a corridor on one leg, and walking in the snow with no shoes for speaking Inuvialuktun, and having a heavy, stinging paste rubbed on my face, which they did to stop us from expressing our Eskimo custom of raising our eyebrows for ‘yes’ and wrinkling our noses for ‘no’, I soon lost the ability to speak my mother tongue. When a language dies, the world it was generated from is broken down too.”

Mary Carpenter  1995

---

Department of Indian Affairs’ policy that aboriginal children must not be educated “above the possibilities of their station”, were upheld. As such, the schools’ curriculum included moral training (through physical labour), academic training (although many teachers were insufficiently educated) and industrial training (for farming and menial jobs). Engaged in the classroom for only half a day, the children were responsible for the complete maintenance (cooking, cleaning, laundry, grounds keeping, farming, etc.) of the school for the remainder of their day. Grade three was the acceptable standard of education.

Psychological and emotional abuses were constant: shaming by public beatings of naked children, vilification of native culture, constant racism, public strip and genital searches, withholding presents and letters from family, locking children in closets and cages, segregation of sexes, separation of brothers and sisters, proscription of native languages and spirituality. In addition, the schools were places of profound physical and sexual violence: sexual assaults, forced abortions of staff-impregnated girls, needles inserted into tongues for speaking a native language, burning, scalding, beating until unconscious and/or inflicting permanent injury.

They also endured electrical shock, force-feeding of their own vomit when sick, exposure to freezing outside temperatures, withholding of medical attention, shaved heads (a cultural and social violation), starvation (as punishment), forced labour in unsafe work situations, intentional contamination with diseased blankets, insufficient food for basic nutrition and/or spoiled food. Estimates suggest that as many as 60% of the students died (due to illness, beatings, attempts to escape, or suicide) while in the schools.

---

“The Sisters didn’t treat me good. They gave me rotten food to eat and punished me for not eating it. I was locked in a room, fed bread and water and beaten with a strap, sometimes on the face, and sometimes [they] took my clothes off and beat me. This is the reason I ran away.”

Christine Haines, St. Joseph’s  1995

Despite having signed the United Nations genocide convention 40 years before the last residential school closed, Canada continued to commit acts of genocide:

“with the intent to destroy in whole or part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: … (e) forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.” (United Nations Convention on Genocide, 1946)

In 1948, despite a joint (House of Commons and Senate) committee recommendation that the schools be abolished, the churches’ vigourous lobbying for the system to continue and the fact that it was being used as a social welfare placement kept the schools alive for 40 more years. By the 1970s, when the Native Indian Brotherhood called for native control of native education, the federal government had begun to wind down the residential school system.

Today, approximately 90,000 survivors in their thirties and older are trying to understand, heal from, and move beyond this devastating experience. About 14% are involved in some form of litigation while the other 86% are living out their lives as best they can.

---

“What I remember of that time was passing Muncho Lake on the trip up north, [to residential school] and imagining I was drowning. That is where I left my life; I drowned in Muncho Lake. I haven’t forgiven my parents to this day because…they weren’t there to protect me.”

Survivor, Kamloops School 2000

---

It is generally accepted that the forced removal of children from their families was devastating for Aboriginal individuals, families, communities and cultures. This is regularly being confirmed by researchers today.

First Nation communities experience higher rates of violence: physical, domestic abuse (3x higher than mainstream society); sexual abuse: rape, incest, etc. (4-6x higher); lack of family and community cohesion; suicide (6x higher); addictions: drugs, alcohol, food; health problems: diabetes (3x higher), heart disease, obesity; poverty; unemployment; illiteracy; high school dropout (63% do not graduate); despair; hopelessness; and more.

via History.

(via esprit-follet)

ayiman:

selchieproductions:

• In Ethiopia, the Gibe III Dam is a proposed, gigantic hydroelectric dam that will flood the Lower Omo Valley area and displace thousands of indigenous groups, while destroying several unique cultures. This dam is funded by European companies and the Ethiopian government as well. Read more about it here and write an upset letter to the Ethiopian PM here

• On the 5th of March, members of the Oglala formed a human road block and refused to let trucks with material for the Canadian tar sands pass through their lands on the Pine Ridge Reserve, asking for the companies to respect the treaties and stop contaminating the planet. The protest was led by two Lakota grandmothers called Renabelle Bad Cob Standing Bear and Marie Randal. Read more about it here.

• Ranchers in Rondônia and other parts of the Amazon have used gunmen and still continue to use gunmen to attack indigenous peoples in the areas where they have their farms. Today, Brazil is home to the largest numbers of uncontacted tribes, many descendants of indigenous people who were enslaved and later escaped during the Brazilian rubber boom.  Today these people risk being wiped out entirely as farmers use pesticides to kill the trees in the area and don’t mind attacking indigenous peoples and killing them in order to set an example. You can read more about a number of uncontacted indigenous groups here.

• Although India’s Supreme Court in 2002 ordered that the highway through the Jarawa’s reserve on the Andaman Isles should be closed, it remains open – and tourists use it for ‘human safaris’ to the Jarawa. Recently it was revealed that the local police accepted bribes and forced Jarawa women to dance seductively in front of tourists who treated them as little more than exotic animals. Poachers also enter the reserve. In 1999 and 2006, the Jarawa suffered outbreaks of measles – a disease that has wiped out many tribes worldwide following contact with outsiders. Read more here.

Johan, on point as always.

jhameia:

moniquill:

jalwhite:

TW: MAJOR TRIGGER WARNING FOR PRO-INDIGENOUS GENOCIDE COMMENTS

ieithoedd:

Person:

As humans develop as a species, becoming largely more technologically advanced, the needs to preserve existing indigenous populations diminish. Efforts to preserve such indigenous populations actually come at the cost of world prestige. As tragic as the death of rich cultures and indigenous populations is, it is essential for humans to continue progressing both technologically, but also evolve into smarter beings. The expense of barbaric indigenous populations is the price of progress.

Angry Steve:

So, you want to support the continuing genocide of hundreds of different tribes throughout the Americas, Africa, Scandinavia, Australia, Siberia, India, Oceania, among other regions with high indigenous populations? Why is it that our technological “superiority” gives us the right to steal their land, destroy the environment and KILL (and rape, mind you) millions of innocent people? Instead of abusing our privileges, why don’t Western minds figure out ways to both advance technologically without the destruction of lands and cultures? These cultures (traditions, langauges, practices) often hold knowledge of things that Western sciences haven’t documented. Do you realize how many plants are undocuments by Western sciences, yet many do have medicinal qualities only known to indigenous groups in the Amazon and elsewhere in the world? There are also many animals that biologists haven’t documented that are known to indigenous groups.

Since when is science and technology the be-all-end-all anyway? Isn’t humanity (and I’m not just talking about to other humans, but all of nature as well) a desired goal?

I am deeply hurt and offended that you refer to indigenous populations as ‘barbaric’. Tell that to several my friends, who are of Cherokee, Lenape, Saami, Gael, Basque and Quechua descent, most of whom still have their traditions and culture. They’re just as much people as you and I. This first-world mindset is very harmful to everyone, as it creates a rift in humanity saying that people are “less fit for living” just because of their ethnicity and race.

Now, I hate to pull this card, but dictators like Hitler, Franco and Stalin (but more so the first) had your ideology that the price of progress is human life of people they viewed as lesser.

Wow.

As tragic as the death of rich cultures and indigenous populations is, it is essential for humans to continue progressing both technologically, but also evolve into smarter beings. The expense of barbaric indigenous populations is the price of progress.

Things like this make me nauseous. Folks wonder why we’re so protective of our cultures and our right to be self-determining peoples… this is what we’re up against. Even people that think our situations are ‘tragic’ believe that Indigenous people not as evolved. Not as human. That we are less worthy of life. Doesn’t matter how “rich” our cultures are. By existing - by surviving - we become obstacles in the way of progress. We are the price that folks like this are willing to pay for their own ideas of ‘progress’. Ideas firmly rooted in racism and greed.

To some, this might seem far removed from the realities of Indigenous people in the US and Canada but that’s only if you don’t know about the rhetoric used to promote and justify expansion, removal, and of course Manifest Destiny. This is the rhetoric that sent thousands upon thousands of Indian children to boarding schools to ‘civilize’ them. The same words that made it so folks don’t flinch when they hear the rates of violence against Native women. It only seem unrelated if you don’t know what’s happening in the Black Hills, the San Francisco Peaks, the XL Pipeline, and tribal lands all over the continent.

Our lives are still for sale in the name of progress.

I stopped at “Efforts to preserve such indigenous populations actually come at the cost of world prestige.”

Prestige.

Guys, it’s okay to commit genocide, if it’s for prestige. 

Goodness knows glory is more important than humanity.

queerfury:

BIA Livestock Impoundment crews are confiscating sheep, goats, horses, cattle belonging to the Dine People of Big Mountain/Black Mesa, Arizona right now. Human rights violations against traditional Dine (Navajo) taking away one of their major food sources as well as wool essential to their livelihood.

Please flood the office of Robert Carolin and tell him the elders need to eat during the winter and these confiscations are WRONG! Slow motion genocide in action. This must be stopped!
… 
Mae Tso, Bessie Begay and Pauline Whitesinger are those whose names i have been given who are being impacted. We can’t let them get away with this!

Hopi Agency
Bureau of Indian Affairs
P.O. Box 158
Keams Canyon, AZ 86034
P: 928/738-2228
F: 928/738-5522
Robert Carolin

#dine #genocide #hopi agency #navajo #news #call out

(via note-a-bear)

super-eklectic1:

don’t try to step into any argument about slavery (of any kind) or genocide (of any kind) when your only resources are watered down and half assed “facts” from a default “american” history class you had to take in school…you’ll lose I can guarantee it. Read some outside literature, outside resourced and use critical thinking and reading skills before you open your mouth or type some bullshit because you were “upset” or  felt “uncomfortable” with what was said or written that countered what those classes taught you.

Have a seat before you have to eat crow. It’s the internet folks we keeps those receipts.