My shirt is here! Áta čhó! (very cool). Rick got the hat. Order, wear them all over the place, send the message! :D
You can see our Marcus looking all spiffy in one of the hats here. :D
Affinity
Art, Fun, & Nonsense.
Simon Moya-Smith’s beaded medallion, a anti-R-word button, and other neck wear.
DNC. Day 1. No press credentials. Hot and humid. Sweat on my brow and back. “No hope of a press pass,” the handlers say. To hell with waiting. “Where are the protesters?” I ask. City Hall, they said. I elbow through a parade of middle-aged demonstrators in downtown Philly. Hillary haters. They gum up the sidewalk. Stuck again. Sun barrels down. “Where are you?” a text reads. “I don’t know,” I respond. “But bring a lawyer.” A Hillary fan and a Bernie Bro battle it out on the curb. Newsmen and women scramble to eavesdrop. Mics in faces. Both sides posture. The crowd swells. Everyone dripping sweat. No shade. Just sun. And noise. A raucous noise. An ominous noise. Growling. More marching in the distance. More cops coming in. I take photo after photo after photo after photo. “What’s your medallion mean?” a man asks. “Means a lot to me,” I blurt. No patience at this point. Taking my blazer off. No help. Still hot as hell. Sweet jeezus. Meanwhile, the argument continues: “She deleted emails … She doesn’t release her speeches …” the Hillary head says. “His policy proposals are impractical … Writing is on the wall. … Not voting for Hillary is a vote for Trump!” the man in a ‘Bernie or Bust’ shirt blurts. “Bernie’s busted!” a man blares from somewhere behind me. Jeers erupt. More shouting and clamoring. A rush of photographers take aim behind my head. I turn to look. A man hoists a cut-out of Bernie’s head and hands. A child’s laugh breaks the rising tension in the circle. I feel faint. Who cares? Not me … at least not right now. This is the nucleus of rotten politics in the mosh pit that has become the U.S.A.
[…]
Got a text again. This time from Marlon WhiteEagle, an editor from Wisconsin. We meet at Fatso Foggerty’s, a pub on the south side of Philly. Two older black ladies laugh hysterically at the bar. A dog at their feet barks at anyone leaving the place like an adorable bouncer. Marlon has a Coke. I have two Jack and Cokes. Bartender eyes Marlon and I. “Who the fuck are these two?” I imagined her saying. This is indeed a local pub with a revolving door of regulars. The whole place is clam-baked with cigarette smoke. Makes me want one again. “You have smokes for sale?” I ask the bartender. “Across the street,” she says. Suddenly, Marlon gets a text telling us to zip to the Wells Fargo Center – The DNC. I down my drink, we crawl into an Uber, and get dumped about a mile away from the entry. “This is as far as I can take you,” the driver says. Cops blocked the road. Ten minutes of walking in 93-degree temps and suffocating humidity, and again I’m back in the mad mix of demonstrations. A child is dressed in a suit and tie, walking among the fray, shouting, “Bernie or bust!” A white boy goes around smudging people with sage. Cops here aren’t rushing him like they rushed Josie Valadez Fraire in Denver earlier this month outside of a Trump event. They allegedly told the indigenous woman that “smoke alarms” them.
The full column and photos at ICTMN.
The late Thomas Banyacya, Hopi Traditional Spokesman, is seen here in Chaco Canyon. Courtesy Christopher McLeod.
“This is a very sacred kiva,” says the late Thomas Banyacya, Hopi Traditional Spokesman, pointing to an ancient sacred site at Casa Rinconada in northwest New Mexico. “We are looking at the spirit of our ancestors… they are here. They are watching us. We hope they will help Native people to protect their land and sacred sites,” he says in a frail voice recorded in archival footage.
Over the past three decades, the Sacred Land Film Project (SLFP) has produced films about how mainstream American culture antagonizes Native American sensibilities around spirituality and sacred sites. Casa Rinconada is one quintessential example—a cultural hub of Ancestral Puebloans, where thousands of New Age seekers gathered for the Harmonic Convergence in 1987, littering the sacred kiva with crystals, cremated human remains and one curious looking teddy bear wax candle.
[…]
“While producing films on threats to indigenous sacred sites, I spend a lot of time listening to communities all over the world explain the most urgent threats. I’ve been really struck over the years by the fact that universally, right up there with mining, logging, dams and land grabs, there’s deep concern about New Age appropriation of sacred places, cultural rituals and spiritual traditions,” says Christopher McLeod, Director of SLFP.
In northern California, the Winnemem Wintu Tribe can empathize with the predicament of the Navajo. The Harmonic Convergence also congregated on Mt. Shasta, a mountain deeply sacred to the tribe. “The Harmonic Convergence of 1987 unleashed an overwhelming flood of seekers, hundreds of New Agers leaving crystals and medicine wheels all over the mountain. Later, there were sweat lodges for hire, and now even cremation remains poured into a sacred spring. How do we stop this and redirect this desperate search for meaning and connection?” wonders McLeod.
The Winnemem, known as the Middle Water People, trace their ancestry over millennia along the watershed south of their revered Mt. Shasta. The Winnemem believe they emerged from the spring on Panther Meadow, where New Agers often congregate—drumming and singing and leaving offerings behind, including ashes of the departed.
“We believe this spring is so sacred. We only go there once a year to sing at the doorway of our creation story,” says Chief Caleen Sisk, spiritual leader of the Winnemem Wintu, in Pilgrims and Tourists, a SLFP film that explores the impact of New Age tourism on Native communities in the Russian Altai Republic and Mt. Shasta. “People dumped cremations right into this spring,” she says. “Cremations are a pollutant… everyone downstream is drinking that water. Do you put cremations on the altar in the Vatican?” she asks incredulously.
Besides cleaning the offerings in the spring, the Winnemem have to contend with thousands of climbers who attempt to summit Mt. Shasta. “On our mountain we have 30,000 visitors,” she says. “Non-indigenous people need to understand that there is a way to be there, a way of walking on that land without destroying it… people can admire the meadow from the edge.”
Ann Marie Sayers, Costanoan Ohlone, believes that contrasting value systems among Natives and non-Natives lead to cultural appropriation. “These places call for humility and respect,” she says. In another SLFP film clip posted as part of a five-clip playlist on YouTube, a white woman naively claims that in her past life she has been black, Native American, Chinese and Egyptian and should not be denied access to Native sacred sites.
“New Agers look at traditional Native [cultures] for some answers to their spiritual bankruptcy. In an effort to find themselves, they are appropriating a lot of Native belief systems, to plug into for a weekend,” says Chris Peters (Pohlik-lah/Karuk) in a film clip from SLFP’s 2001 film, In the Light of Reverence.
The Winnemem say their ceremony is delayed every year, because the spring has to be cleaned from the offerings left behind. As the Winnemem youth remove bone fragments and cremation ashes from the spring, Chief Sisk remarks, “People can live without oil. They can live without gold, but nothing can live without water.”
It’s perfectly possible for white people to feel all spiritual and connected to nature, the universe, everything, without co-opting what you think is a peoples’ culture, and without invading and fucking up their sacred places. Once again, white people manage to make everything about them. If nothing else, stop thinking you’re honouring your dead by dumping them in places sacred to other people, and polluting while you’re doing it. How in the hell is that spiritual? Isn’t it about time you just left us Indians alone? Go, discover your own roots, there’s nothing wrong in that. A whole lot of cultures have a history of sweating, many of them white cultures, and in many of those cultures, such traditions are carried on. You don’t need to up and decide that the “Native American” way of doing something is so much more golly gosh darn pure and special”. That’s racist crap, perpetuating the noble savage nonsense, so cut it the fuck out.
No, there isn’t a place for you in various Indigenous ceremonies. You’ll live. Go and discover those ancient, traditional ceremonies you are a part of, learn about your own self instead.
Just reported, Pokémon Go players are getting in on the disrespect, too. Play your games, people, but pay the fuck attention to where you are, yeah?
According to CBC News, Gouchie was paying respects at her father’s gravesite on Sunday when she noticed dozens of Pokémon Go players searching the sacred First Nations burial ground.
“It’s sacred there,” Gouchie told CBC. “This land was once my ancestral land. This is the only little piece of land inside Prince George that is ours, and you are disrespecting it. My dad, my uncles, my cousin, my great grandmother are all buried there.”
The burial ground is open to the public within the Lheidli T’enneh Memorial Park, but Gouchie says the presence of a Pokéstop — a virtual location in the game where Pokémon Go players gather supplies to catch monsters — is disrespectful.
“This has to stop,” said Gouchie. “This game has only been live in Canada for one week. It’s only a matter of time before that burial site is filled with Pokémon Go people.
“I was thinking, I need our K’san [traditional] drummers out here so we can block both these gates and … stop this,” she said.
Gouchie does not blame the players, but does blame the game creator Niantic. She has submitted a request to the game developers to have the Pokéstop removed and reported the incident to her tribal council.
Full Story here.
John Calvin Coolidge granted automatic citizenship to all Native Americans born in the United States in June 1924, but he also began desecration of Mount Rushmore in August 1927.
With a sweep of his pen in June 1924, John Calvin Coolidge granted automatic citizenship to all Native Americans born in the United States.
Afterward, Coolidge, wearing a dark suit and grasping a hat in his hands, posed for a photo outside the White House with four tribal leaders—three of whom were dressed in traditional attire. Although the photograph likely was taken several months after Coolidge signed the Indian Citizenship Act it came to symbolize a new era in federal-Indian relations.
President Calvin Coolidge with four Osage Indians after Coolidge signed the bill granting Indians full citizenship. (Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C.)
Also known as the Snyder Act, the Indian Citizenship Act, sought to reward Indians for service to their country while also assimilating them into mainstream American society. Because two-thirds of the indigenous population had already gained citizenship through marriage, military service or land allotments, the act simply extended citizenship to “all noncitizen Indians born within the territorial limits of the United States.”
Passage of the act came partly in response to Indians’ overwhelming service during World War I. About 10,000 Indians enlisted in the military and served during the war, despite not being recognized as U.S. citizens.
Six great books for kids to read over summer, when learning is definitely not on their minds. If you can request these books at your local library, that would be great because a lot of books by Native authors don’t make it in library reviews, and librarians can only respond to what readers want. If you want these, librarians will make the magic happen.
Joseph Marshall III’s In the Footsteps of Crazy Horse (Harry N. Abrams, 2015) has a lot going for it. First off, it’s set in the present day. The main character, Jimmy, is Lakota. But, he has blue eyes and light brown hair because his lineage includes people who aren’t Native. That means he gets teased for his looks. In steps his grandpa, who takes him on a road trip. As they drive, Jimmy learns about Crazy Horse, but he also learns that Native people have different names for places. One example is the Oregon Trail. Jimmy’s grandpa tells him that Native people call it Shell River Road. Marshall’s storytelling is vibrant and engaging, and the perfect tone for kids in middle school.
You can’t miss with Arigon Starr’s Super Indian (Wacky Productions Unlimited) stories. She’s got the inside track on telling it like it is. Or, could be, if eating commodity cheese could give you super powers. In other words, every panel of Starr’s comics is a reflection of Native life, and she brilliantly pokes at the uber popular Twilight books and movies, and testy issues like blood quantum. There’s a ka-pow to this super power series (two volumes at this point) that will have you and your kids laughing out loud.
Richard Van Camp’s A Blanket of Butterflies (HighWater Press, 2015) is riveting. This graphic novel opens with a boy who looks to be in his early teens, standing in front of a samurai suit of armor in a display case in his tribe’s museum. That suit is going to be returned to its original owner, but the sword is missing. That launches this fast-paced story in which Van Camp provides us with an opportunity to think about museums and who owns items in them.
29th President Warren Harding promised Indians he would look out for their indigenous rights, but did little to that end. Whitehouse.gov
Less than three months before Warren Gamaliel Harding was elected 29th president of the United States, he stood on his front porch in Marion, Ohio, and promised Indians he would look out for their indigenous rights.
Harding, then a U.S. senator, announced his bid for president in June 1920 and subsequently gave hundreds of official and off-the-cuff speeches to audiences numbering in the tens of thousands—all from the comfort of his front porch.
This “front porch campaign” reached a total of 600,000 visitors who traveled to Harding’s crushed-gravel lawn “by car or chartered trains, representing Republican state delegations or farmers or veterans or businessmen or blacks or women or first voters, or, even, traveling salesmen,” David Pietrusza wrote in his 2007 book, 1920: The Year of the Six Presidents. “Each contingent, properly escorted by a brass band, would march up ‘Victory Way,’ festooned every twenty feet by white columns surmounted by gilt eagles.”
On August 19, Harding met on that porch with about 20 delegates of the Society of American Indians who, “arrayed in tribal feathers and beadwork,” attended the speech to plead “for extension of their racial rights,” the Lancaster Eagle reported. Harding, who would inherit a country still recovering from World War I, replied that the United States “might do well to bestow ‘democracy and humanity and idealism’ on the continent’s native race rather than to ‘waste American lives trying to make sure of that bestowal thousands of miles across the sea.’”
[…]
Eight months after taking office, Harding dedicated the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery, a monument for service members who died without their remains being identified. Crow Chief Plenty Coos (or Plenty Coups) was invited to participate in the ceremony and, “attired in full war regalia, feathered bonnet, furs and skins of variegated colors,” was seated on the platform with Harding and military leaders from Europe, the Associated Press reported on November 14, 1921.
“Thus the uniform of the first American took its place with those of its Allied Powers in the last war,” the AP reported. “A group of Indian braves appeared in the audience, tiptoeing in their beaded moccasins down the aisle to their seats.”
Warren Harding meets with Indian chiefs in Washington D.C., the day before he dedicated the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington, Va., in November 1921. (Courtesy Library of Congress)
After the burial ceremony, Plenty Coos laid a coup stick and the war bonnet from his head on the tomb. Although organizers had insisted that Plenty Coos remain silent during the ceremony, the chief addressed a crowd of about 100,000 spectators in his Native language.
“I am glad to represent all the Indians of the United States in placing on the grave of this noble warrior this coup stick and war bonnet, every eagle feather of which represents a deed of valor by my race,” he said. “I hope that the Great Spirit will grant that these noble warriors have not given up their lives in vain and that there will be peace to all men hereafter.”
There is Hope: Time to Follow an Indigenous Model for Peace in America.
Gyasi Ross has an excellent article up at ICTMN about these troubled times we find ourselves in. I’m just going to do a bit here.
[…] We’re progressing as a society, becoming more compassionate as a society. Some folks call that “political correctness,” but I don’t think so. Instead, it seems like it’s just a heightened humanity that holds certain behavior accountable. Bullying. The stuff that is making news today would not make news 100 years ago. Heck, it may not have even made news 50 years ago. The “tiny” little daily assaults against the dignity and bodies of so many people who were not white men—Natives, black folks, gay and lesbian folks, Mexicans, women—would not even be an issue some years ago. That’s one of the reasons why Donald Trump’s Trumponian use of hateful rhetoric is so interesting; Donald Trump’s campaign really seems to be is the last stand of those white men who wish for the days when they could commit those assaults against all of those groups with impunity.
That’s not political correctness. That’s fixing inhumanity. And the stories that accompany them, whether “black man got shot by the police” or “Native man shot by the police” are no longer taken for granted. And the subsequent protests and social media outrage over those shootings are likewise no longer taken for granted.
That’s good. We’re evolving.
However, there is a genuine divide between different generations of people. Amongst those generations, let’s be clear, none of them are bad. Even Donald Trump. But many of us simply have fundamentally different worldviews and perspectives depending on how we grew up and the entanglements into which we were born. Currently, there is an old guard oftentimes represented by those in power. Police. Law enforcement in this nation was constructed to protect property and not people; as such, it inherently favors the wealthy. Certain communities have historically been intentionally and systematically kept out of wealth structurally because of many reasons (that’s a different conversation and I’d love to have that conversation with all of you someday; still that’s not the point now); those communities include pretty much all of the communities—black, Native, LGBTQ—who are catching hell from law enforcement today.
A genuine divide.
INDIGENOUS MODEL FOR PEACEKEEPING
I’m a disciple of John Mohawk, a dearly departed Seneca philosopher and professor. He introduced me to the Great Law, a model for peacemaking and peacekeeping amongst warring nations—communities where there is a genuine divide. I’m simply going to quote his 2004 take on the Great Law from “The Warriors Who Turned To Peace” and hopefully start a conversation about how we can heal some intergenerational wounds and provide our children a new start.
In an effort to keep that momentum going with a new Indigenous host each week covering a variety of topics, and due to her diligence in bringing awareness to Indigenous issues, ICTMN’s UK-based correspondent Lisa J. Ellwood (Nanticoke-Lenape) has been invited to host its Canadian version, @IndigenousXca, July 14th – starting at 7pm ET – through July 21st.
[…]
Ellwood’s week as host kicks off with a look at her “Comprehensive Report on MMIW: The Curiously Different Tales of Violence against Indigenous Women On Both Sides of Turtle Island” story.
Follow ICTMN Correspondent Lisa J. Ellwood on Twitter at @IconicImagery and on her week-long account at @IndigenousXca.
Full Story at ICTMN.
The North Dakota DOT is replacing the old Highway Signs, as pictured on the right. Being that this is happening in ND, it will take half of forever, and the old signs will still be seen for some time, unless people start stealing them all, which might happen. Out in my part of the wilds, the old signs are still all over the place.
I’ve been conflicted about writing this up, it’s a bit more complex than it seems on the surface. It seems that most people feel replacing these signs is erasing Native people, and their presence here in Indian Country; that it’s a mark of disrespect and whitewashing. A lot of people are unaware of the history behind the sign, and who it honours. No, it’s not a generic Indian profile. It’s a specific honour to Red Tomahawk, later known as Marcellus Red Tomahawk. The Red Tomahawk family is a large one here in ND, and as far as I know, they are all good people.
The reason Marcellus Red Tomahawk was chosen to be honoured on the road markers was because white people felt he brought peace to the Plains by executing Sitting Bull. Marcellus Red Tomahawk was not in the least shy about recounting the event, but other peoples’ versions disagree with his account. Almost all of the accounts narrated by people other than Red Tomahawk place Bull Head as shooting first, striking Sitting Bull in the torso, whereupon Red Tomahawk pulled out a pistol and shot Sitting Bull in the head.
At this time, the Ghost Dance was spreading, and the white government and military feared it greatly. I don’t think it would be unfair to say that the white people at the time believed in it more than Natives did. The 7th Cavalry carried out their massacre at Wounded Knee, citing the Ghost Dance as the justification. Sitting Bull did not take part in the Ghost Dance, however, he did not forbid his people from dancing. White authorities feared this meant the Indians would regains strength and continue to fight, rather than settle down into assimilation. The order was given to arrest Sitting Bull. The federal government had started instituting police on reservations, and Marcellus Red Tomahawk was one who joined the police force at Standing Rock rez. He had also embraced Christianity and was devout in that regard. Marcellus Red Tomahawk never disavowed his heritage, but it became terribly twisted by a desire to not only assimilate, but to be an important person among those he sought to be a part of, that of white men. While he himself often stayed dressed in regalia and traditional clothing, photos of his family show his wife and children dressed in the Western white manner. He sent his own children to the Carlisle Indian School:
One of Red Tomahawk’s sons came home in 1909 and committed suicide. I look upon what happened to Red Tomahawk as a tragedy, a by product of genocide and the demands of assimilation. It makes me feel so sad and wounded. Sitting Bull would never have survived arrest, he would have been murdered anyway, as Crazy Horse was, but it’s a hard thing to face that he died at the hands of his own. Personally, I’m glad the signs are being replaced, because they were never meant to honour Indigenous people at all. They were honour to a murder, an honour to the white way of doing things, a paean to how colonialism works.
Here are five reasons the diversity of Star Trek is great for Native people:
Star Trek was a leader in the world of science fiction. It was also a leader in the world of civil rights.
The cast was incredibly diverse at a time when the American Indian movement was facing opposition from the federal government and civil rights leaders were being attacked by police dogs.
I ask you to take a good look at the world around us. We are not a world that wants to accept diversity or genuinely work on improving our planet.
Star Trek taught us that all types can be empowered.
From the Native side of things, we are still looked upon as a defeated people. We see our likenesses and images used as racist caricatures for sports teams and university mascots. Items that our people deem culturally significant and sacred are used as “hip” props.
Star Trek taught us no matter how seemingly insignificant a creature, they could all be empowered. Take a look at the Tribbles. The crew thought they were just cute little fuzzy animals, but they nearly took over the Enterprise. In numbers, all together, we are strong.
Star Trek taught us that all races could work together.
One step onto the bridge of the Starship Enterprise would convince anyone that many races can work together to overcome any odds.
These are injustices we face as Native Americans today. If you asked our ethnic brothers and sisters who share this land with us, they would likely same the same. We all live in a reality of hatred and racism that shows its ugly face in the form of mass shootings and unchecked violence that is scars the heart of our nation.
It is the same type of social division that the 60’s are best known for, the very same decade that birthed Star Trek are still prominent today.
Star Trek taught us there is hope.
There is always hope when we have people stand up for what is right. There is hope when people who go against the accepted norms and say enough. There is hope when individuals choose what is morally right in the face of persecution. There is hope when we choose decency and recognize diversity for the gift it is. There is hope when people behave like Kirk and Picard say enough, and chose to solve problems instead of making them.
Star Trek is a promise that things can be better.
It is a spirit of evolution that guides us to a wonderful tomorrow, filled the same principle that Gene Roddenberry spoke of when he coined the concept of Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations. Star Trek is a call for us all to be more than we are, becoming ambassadors of hope to a world in need.
In closing I would like to offer both congratulations and my gratitude to all who have contributed in the past 50 years of Star Trek, you have made my life better with your shows, films, books and toys. You helped provide a safe retreat a young S’Klallam growing up on his reservation 30 years ago and continue to inspire me today.
To quote my favorite Vulcan, “May you continue to live long and prosper in the years ahead.”
Vincent Schilling at ICTMN would like to see eight native style characters in Pokémon Go.
Native Land Take Backer-FrumU.
Well, it is safe to say the ‘Native Land Take Backer-FrumU’ is my favorite character. I don’t think an explanation is necessary. (iStock)
He may look like the original Pikachu, but don’t be fooled, this character has the power to reclaim any former Native land (essentially all land) and have it become Native land once again… bye-bye tall building behind him in that photo!
FryBread Thrower-Oopa.
Oh look, its a FryBread Thrower-Oopa. Watch out for the flying fry..OUCH..bread. (iStock)
Not to be confused with the ‘Hoopa” character, this is FryBread Thrower-Oopa – who can only be found on the Rez, hiding among Bluebird flour bags. He can take down an army of Pokémon Go turtles by flinging his frybread that was left out a little too long. Even a quick microwave doesn’t soften these circular discs of carnage. Although they can still be eaten with a bit of maple syrup.
You can see and read about the remaining Native style characters at ICTMN. Unlike the rest of the world, I haven’t played this, but these characters could change that.
Starcasm.net – TLC Promo Photos
Earlier, Vincent Schilling had a column up at ICTMN about Native headdress showing up on a reality show. A short while later, Vincent Schilling was able to talk with the designer about this, um, travesty. There’s nothing quite so rabidly defensive as a white person busy appropriating another peoples’ culture and traditions, all while getting it spectacularly fucking wrong in every possible respect.
Before we get to the spectacular fucking up, a word about traditional Cherokee clothing. (The groom in the show claims Cherokee ancestry. If that’s so, I’d think he’d want Cherokee clothing, but I guess “Native American” will do.) Cherokee people were never big on feathers, and they certainly never had anything even close to Plains Indians’ headdresses. There were a few various ways that men chose to style their hair and decorations, but when a headdress was worn, it was in the style of a turban, as in the painting of Sequoyah.
You can read up on traditional Cherokee dress here, here, and here. On to the monumental ignorance and stupidity.
Gypsy dress designer Sondra Celli created a Cherokee-themed dress and a Native American-influenced headdress for Hunter and Dalton Smith on the reality series My Big Fat American Gypsy Wedding.
In an exclusive interview with ICTMN, Celli said that the ‘Native-inspired’ headdress was made by her design team, and the headdress for the groom — who claims Native ancestry — was purchased from a Native American company over the internet.
Celli told ICTMN because the groom was Native American, she did not alter any of the groom’s outfit and that he approved of the bride’s outfit.
“Because he is Native American we made sure we bought a true Native American headpiece made by Native Americans. We bought him a true Native American shirt made by Native Americans. I made sure it came from an authentic Native American company.”
*Resists impulse to pound head into wall* If there is one thing to get into your skull if you are not an indigenous person, it’s this: there is no such fucking thing as “Native American” anything. Repeat over and over until you get it. Indigenous peoples (many of whom are not American) can not be conveniently dumped into a pail of whitewash so we come out with every nation believing the same, having the same traditions, the same clothing, the same housing, and so forth. We are all different. There just isn’t enough eyeroll in the universe for this shit.
What about the bride’s wedding outfit?
She is a gypsy. Hunter is a cowgirl and would not give up her boots. I told her, ‘I am going to Sondra Celli you up’ and I made her a Native American-inspired dress … and [the groom] was real cool with her being her. I am very respectful of the fact he is Native American. This is what they told me — please understand that I am just the designer.
I made sure we did not touch his headpiece and it stayed exactly the way we bought it. The shirt is exactly the way we bought it. We ordered it on the Internet from a Native American company.
I made her headpiece, and the girl who works for me studies Native Americans. She put all of those feathers on. Like we say on television, it is native-inspired. We do not say this is a Native American costume. This is a Sondra Celli gypsy rhinestone costume that is inspired by Native Americans.
Emphasis mine. I’m just going to wander off and scream for a moment.
What is your response to Native people that say this is appropriating Native culture?
I think the fact that their clothing is so beautiful and the detail is so beautiful, they should be accepting of the fact that we borrowed from their clothing. I said “inspired” through the whole show. I never said it was authentic Native American clothing, not once.
Um…Yes, you did say that. You wouldn’t shut up about all the authentic “Native American” clothes. Right up there ^.
I don’t find a problem with putting something inspired from the beauty of Native American clothes on someone who is not Native American. They should be honored that we think their clothing is so beautiful, that we took some of the colors from it.
Honoured. Right. Oh, all you did was borrow colours! Well, that makes it okay.
This is a TV show, so you have to take it for what it is. I do not believe this dishonors people. I would never do that.
That’s convenient. You don’t believe this dishonours anyone, so of course, it doesn’t. White magic.
I’ve taken the idea of kimonos from Japan and they are rhinestoned. I never say they are Japanese kimonos. I say they are inspired.
Every designer from all over the world has taken ideas from Native Americans.
Oddly enough, we notice things like that.
The PBS Museum just had an exhibit, Native American designers that have come into the modern world made Native American inspired clothing with plastic metal who are getting ideas in a way from our world and made really cool clothes with beading. I was blown away.
I think they were inspired by what we do in the modern [world].
Fuuuuuck me. I really do have to scream now. Yeah, just a few of us Indians are crossing the bridge into the modern white world, where of course, we’re stealing ideas from white modernity, while the rest of us are back home in primitive Indian land, everyone dressed the same, all in a tipi, of course. It’s absurd to think that Indians are a part of the world. Christ, she makes it sound like we live in Faerie or something.
As much as I admire their craft, I think they should admire the fact that I took the ideas that they have and turn it into something modern for someone who is not Native American.
Um…oh hell, I give up. White people, please get a fucking clue. In the comments, Beatrice pointed out something I should have noted in the first place:
As if distilling all the variety of different heritages of Roma people into “over the top trashy clown show” wasn’t offensive enough…
This isn’t just spectacularly fucking up Indigenous peoples’ cultures, it’s spectacularly fucking up that of Roma culture as well. I guess all is fair game for a white designer. If you can call pasting rhinestones all over something design.
Vincent Schilling’s article is here. TLC’s ‘Gypsy’ Wedding Is Offensive to Romani, Too.
Shortly after taking office in 1913, President Thomas Woodrow Wilson delivered a phonograph address signaling a change in the relationship between the federal government and Indian tribes. Whitehouse.gov
Shortly after taking office in 1913, President Thomas Woodrow Wilson delivered a phonograph address signaling a change in the relationship between the federal government and Indian tribes.
This “message to all the Indians,” played on a phonograph donated by Thomas Edison, was part of a traveling expedition to each of the nation’s 169 recognized Indian reservations. Wilson’s voice echoed from the phonograph during ceremonies held beneath the American flag.
In his speech, Wilson quoted Thomas Jefferson’s words from a century earlier, predicting that a day would come when the red men would “become truly one people with us.” One hundred years later, America was “nearer these great things than hoped for, much nearer than we were then,” Wilson said as he boasted about the successes of assimilation policies like land allotments, agricultural training and the more than 30,000 Indian children enrolled in government, state and mission schools.
“The Great White Father now calls you his brothers, not his children,” Wilson said. “You have shown in your education and in your settled ways of life staunch, manly, worthy qualities of sound character.”
Wilson acknowledged “some dark pages in the history of the white man’s dealings with the Indians,” but he claimed the “remarkable progress” of the Indians was proof of the government’s good intentions.
“Many parts of the record are stained with the greed and avarice of those who have thought only of their own profit,” he said. “But it is also true that purposes and motives of this great government and of our nation as a whole toward the red man have been wise, just and beneficent.”
The message, part of an “Expedition of Citizenship to the North American Indian” organized by Philadelphia department store magnate Rodman Wanamaker, was played on every Indian reservation. Joseph Dixon, education director at the Wanamaker department store, led the six-month, cross-country expedition, which left Philadelphia in June 1913.
Dixon sought to “obtain a pledge of allegiance to the government from all the North American Indian tribes,” the New York Times reported at the conclusion of the journey, in December 1913. Dixon had traveled 25,000 miles and visited 189 tribes in an expedition he said “had planted new ideals in the lives of the Indians, and would give great impetus to education, industry and Christianity among them.”