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coridallasmultipass · 3 years

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Native American Remains Found in Montecito, CA

I ranted about this on Insta the other day, but I want to bring it up here where I have more space to vent without text-walling my story.

Sources: https://www.independent.com/2021/06/04/riven-rock-remains-are-native-american/

Follow-Up Article: https://www.independent.com/2021/06/09/mystery-surrounds-human-remains-found-on-montecito-property/

This is an extremely depressing discovery I learned about earlier this week. Made even more depressing by recent circumstances.

Let me start with a bit of backstory for the area… Montecito is known to be the area where Rich People move to retire or get out of LA. It’s basically all multimillion dollar homes (the whole southern area of Santa Barbara County is like that, too) and sits comfortably facing the Channel Islands. Montecito/SB are known for being the homes of celebrities like Katy Perry, Oprah Winfrey, and now the new royal couple Prince Harry and Megan Markle.

Now, if you ask me, there are too many Multimillion Dollar McMansions in our county. I’m from the Chumash tribe (specifically Ineseño, the one inland from Santa Barbara; we have the Reservation.) Just a couple years ago, my tribe purchased a plot of land that was historically ours - as in, part of the original Reservation documents. My tribe made a large contribution to the county along with the purchase. But owning the land was not the same as annexing it into the rez.

I’m a 90s kid so I remember what the rez used to look like before our casino grew in the early 2000s. Multiple generations would have a house, and have to keep adding onto it to make room; each property would have multiple trailers so others could live there too. Space was cramped. Especially pushed up along the Santa Ynez River that used to flood before we got the drought (which made for some fun times swimming in the rain as a kid..) Housing on the rez is a lot safer now, though, but the space is still needed.

Our tribe had planned to use that land, purchased in 2010, for more (badly needed) tribal housing. Then comes along this racist group called “Save The Valley”/“Santa Ynez Valley Coalition” who claimed that our tribe was a leech on the county, and that building (necessary, modest) housing there would “ruin the view”… They, and the county, took the tribe to court over and over - county court, state court, federal court, all because they did not want us to use our land for our people.

I should also mention here that the Chumash Reservation is probably THE GREENEST place in the entire county. The casino and resort are all ~ zero waste, solar energy, whatever. They have won awards for being so eco-friendly. So the new housing was going to follow suit, as well. Certainly nothing I would call a leech with how much business the casino brings to the local shops and wineries around the county.

Things are still up in the air in regards to this issue, but it seems to be moving forward finally.

Source: https://lompocrecord.com/news/local/bureau-of-indian-affairs-makes-final-decision-on-taking-camp-4-into-trust-for-chumash/article_0e798813-1710-5d27-9d2d-5e2618db8da9.html

Conversely, here’s another anecdote about an appropriate way to preserve “the view”: This year (this month!! June 2021), a group planned to permanently alter the landscape of the foothills of the San Marcos mountains in Santa Barbara, by building more multimillion dollar mansions over this historically Chumash land, and keeping it as a private community. Another group, Save The San Marcos Foothills, crowdfunded over 18 million dollars (!!!!) to halt the construction, purchase the land, and work WITH the county AND the Chumash to preserve it and keep it as an open space that the public can go to, to enjoy the natural landscape, without harming the wildlife.

Source: https://www.savesanmarcosfoothills.org/

Let me take a little time to explain a bit of Chumash history. I’m no expert, and might not do it justice, but it’s important to understand the full context of why I’m so upset. The Chumash people originated on the Channel Islands. We grew and prospered and lived happily alongside wildlife, until our islands seemed too small for all of us. Our mother goddess Hutash decided that we were ready to travel to the mainland and grow as humans do. She built us a rainbow bridge and cautioned us not to look down. Those who became scared and looked down, fell, and transformed into dolphins, who we consider family. As we move into the mainland to live, so we return towards the sea when we die. Our spirits venture to Point Conception (near Lompoc, CA) where we begin our trials and journey through the afterlife.

Our lives and spirits are deeply tied to this local area of California, and it’s a damn shame that it’s been branded as the expensive rich white people area to retire or the pricey beachy getaway for celebrities to buy privacy.

Historically, the Chumash have lived here for a long time. We’re a long ways away from Central America, but even our language has a few loanwords from Nahuatl. It’s also theorized that we had (peaceful) contact with the seafaring Polynesians, too. When the Spanish brought native Mexicans with them, we saw them as our bretheren, yet we were treated as a much lower class during the Mission Period. This is where we were hit the hardest. We lost our language in such a way that it is not natively spoken today. (Though there is still hope with many people studying and learning it on their own and with the help of language experts.)

So, back to the original link I posted. Native American remains found in Montecito. It is truly, deeply, filling me with a sorrow I can not come to terms with. It’s depressing. It’s angering. It’s Disturbing. The fact that these remains were found during the construction of a (likely) multimillion dollar mansion is bad enough. And after the decendant/tribe is notified (it’s still not clear if he was Barbareño Chumash or a visitor), they’re going to continue building that mansion.

But to make matters even more disturbing, is that the neighbors within earshot include Prince Harry and Megan Markle’s fancy new estate.

Let that sink in.

A tribe that had no historical contact with British Imperialism, now has a royal couple living (basically/almost) on top of the grave of one of us. One of us that had been left to the elements for so long that the bones found were in fragments.

Not far from Montecito is a street in Santa Barbara that, up until last year, was called Indio Muerto Street (“Dead Indian”) because a dead Chumash man was found there. ((Thankfully, the street was renamed in 2020 to Hutash Street, and a memorial made to all the natives who died alone.))

Source: https://www.independent.com/2020/09/30/santa-barbaras-indio-muerto-street-to-be-changed/

I just can’t get over how much of this county we lived in, like, we Really Lived In and With the land. Our spirits are tethered to this land while we live. And so many of these fancy rich houses are built on soil that was once soaked in our blood. All while our tribe has to fight the legal system that favours racist objectors, just to try and get land that is appropriate to house our tribe.

Words do not bring justice to describing how deeply discoveries like this hurt. I’m still crying about it because there’s nothing I can do. The real battles are long over, and the only way to fight now is with money, so I sit here and mourn and cry for the dusty remains of my long-forgotten cuzin.

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cincinnatusvirtue · 3 years

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Battles of Mackinac Island (1812) & (1814): Fights for control of the Old Northwest of America and Great Lakes during the War of 1812.

The War of 1812 (1812-1815) between the US and UK is sometimes cited as a “forgotten” war. However, that would be an inaccurate description and depends on the participants you ask. Remembered in the United States as a “Second War of Independence” it was treated as sort of a victory due to the lack of territorial change and the major victories such as the Battles of Lake Erie, Baltimore, Plattsburgh and New Orleans. In Canada, at the time a British colony, its remembered for its role in forging an Canadian national identity and the repelling of repeated American invasions. In Britain, its little remembered other than as a sideshow for the Napoleonic Wars. Meanwhile, for the Native American tribes that fought on the side of the British its largely remembered as a devastating loss that lead to permanent displacement and the consolidation of American expansion east of the Mississippi River. The war was in fact a military and political stalemate and had multiple causes and was fought by participants who were ill prepared for the management of executing a war at that time and was marked by repeated blunders and tended to favor a defensive over offensive strategy between both sides.

Background:

-1781 with the American victory at the Battle of Yorktown in Virginia saw an end to major combat in the American Revolution. 1783 saw Britain finally recognize America’s independence. Anticipating America as a major commercial trading partner. It sought to offer generous and lenient terms to the 1783 Treaty of Paris which included granting the US all territory east of the Mississippi River and south of the Great Lakes, an area sparsely populated by Europeans at the time and held a variety of many Native American tribes. This territory was considered the Northwest of the United States at the time and from 1787-1803 was referred to the as the (US) Northwest Territory and encompassed all of the modern US states of Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois & Wisconsin.

-The area was important to the Europeans and later European Americans for its role in the fur trade Great Lakes fishing and geopolitical control over North American continent.

-Following the 1780′s until the time of the War of 1812, American settlement in the area grew but remained sparse and relegated to a few scattered settlements with Native American tribes sometimes friendly and sometimes hostile to the United States residing alongside the new settlers. The fur trade remained dominant in terms of economic interest. The British also maintained a military presence in the area despite the Treaty of Paris handing over the territory to the Americans.

-Tensions with the British backed Native Americans and European American settlers boiled over into the Northwest Indian War (1785-1795) which resulted in an US victory at the 1794 Battle of Fallen Timbers. American settlement into Ohio Country was ascertained after this point and the British withdrew their minimal forces in the area (Ohio). Though tensions remained, due in part to some British presence remaining in the sparsely settled Northwest.

-The other major development of the 1790′s and onward was the French Revolution and later Napoleonic Wars of the early 19th century which grew out of that. The United States had to determine its course of action relative to the greater European conflict between France and the various older monarchies they fought, namely Britain.

-Under President George Washington, the US adopted a stance of neutrality that sought trade with both Britain and France. The Jay Treaty he had signed with Britain was very controversial but Washington saw economic prosperity for America rather than war as its ultimate goal. Neither France nor Britain responded well to neutral American trade with its rival. The French Republic and the US fought a limited low level conflict called the Quasi War (1798-1800) which ultimately ended in no victory for either side and the old Franco-American alliance of the Revolutionary period gave way to a new one based more on free-trade. Coupled with the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 which expanded American owned territory to the Trans-Mississippi, the British saw these developments as undesirable.

-From 1792-1815 aside from a previous 14 month peace Britain and France remained at war. For the most part Britain dominated the seas with the Royal Navy while France under Napoleon Bonaparte dominated the European continent. Britain maintained blockades of France as well as providing mostly subsidies to its Continental partners in Austria, Prussia, Russia and others rather than provide many ground troops since Britain possessed a small but professional army.

-Only after Napoleon’s invasion of Portugal and subsequent betrayal and conquest of Spanish ally did Britain provide a large long term ground troop presence on the continent, fighting in the Iberian theater’s Peninsular War (1807-1814).

-During the course of these events America’s merchant fleet doubled and became the world’s largest neutral merchant fleet. This caused resentment in Britain who felt it might be eclipsed by the US eventually in terms of trade.

-The US was not untested during this time having fought the First Barbary War against Tripoli (Libya) by using a naval bombardment combined with a US Marine and Arab-Greek mercenary force to defeat the Barbary pirates at the Battle of Derna. A treaty was signed freeing all American sailors taken as prisoner and made slaves by the Muslim pirates of Tripoli. The war demonstrated American power projection overseas for the first time and was noted by the European powers of the day.

-However, the French rivalry with Britain drove most events in and around America’s relations with Europe and the practice of impressment by both the French and British navies caused real ire in the US. Impressment was the force pressing into service of sailors to work aboard British or French ships and it included the stopping and seizure of neutral American military and merchant vessels and their crews. The British practiced it more than the French and Britain argued that any trade that benefitted France in war time was not to be permitted. This angered the American government and public at large.

-Additionally, Britain argued they were looking for either runaway British subjects on the ship or refused to recognize British citizenship being renounced in favor of American citizenship and in their eyes were simply fulfilling Admiral Horatio Nelson’s famous quip “England expects that every man will do his duty.”

-America saw this as a clear violation and illegal of the rights of neutral nations. President Thomas Jefferson responded with the Embargo Act to in his mind hurt European trade to the point they would ease up on America and cease impressment. It did not work and in the end hurt American trade more.

-By 1812, under President James Madison, the push for war in the US reached fever pitch in some quarters (outside of New England). The US could no longer stand for British impressment which included taking Americans who were never British subjects along with the continued British support for Native American aggression in the Northwest territory now known as the Michigan & Indiana Territories. Britain had promised to sponsor a Native American buffer state in these territories in the event of a successful war with America. They would also provide weapons, men and goods to support this effort as they had in the past. To answer this support was Tecumseh’s Confederacy, a mix of Native American tribes under the leadership of a Shawnee leader named Tecumseh.

1812: War is declared and the Capture of Fort Mackinac.

-In June 1812, the US declared war and indeed war might have been avoided on Britain’s side had their Prime Minister Spencer Perceval not been assassinated at the same time in May 1812. Perceval had hoped for a diplomatic resolution to tensions with America, knowing Britain could ill afford war in the Americas.

-America declared war but had a small regular army due to a longstanding reliance on the militia system which had existed since colonial times in the 17th century. Their plans involved invading Canada but due to the understanding that militias in some states might only operate locally were not well coordinated and faced many logistical issues to coordinate.

-News of the war’s outbreak reached Britain’s Canadian colonies prior to Britain itself so it required the small number of British troops supported by local Canadian militias Native American auxiliaries to fight the war on Britain’s behalf.

-Issac Brock, a Major General in charge of the defense of Upper Canada (Ontario) sought to make early gains to offset the American plans at the war’s outset, one plan involved capturing Mackinac Island in the Great Lakes due to its strategic location.

-Mackinac Island is a relatively small island located near the Straits of Mackinac where Lakes Michigan and Huron meet in the Great Lakes chain. Today it is located between off the lake shore southeast of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and near the Lower Peninsula.

-Mackinac was a place of spiritual significance to the Ojibwe and other Algonquian speaking peoples of the Great Lakes region. Said to be the home of Gitche Manitou or creator spirit. It also became a vital trading center for the French and later British fur traders in the region. It was ceded to the Americans following the 1783 Treaty of Paris and held a small fur trading outpost and fort by the time of war’s outbreak in 1812.

-Brock dispatched a force of 600 regular British troops, Canadian militiamen, frontiersmen and Native Americans to surprise the American force on Mackinac. Due to Mackinac’s remoteness and other more pressing factors, news of war’s declaration in June 1812 had not yet made it to the island by the following month.

-Fort Mackinac occupied a limestone ridge overlooking the harbor on the southern end of Mackinac Island. It faced several deficiencies despite holding a commanding view. The force was small to begin with and only had seven cannons for its defense with only one capable of reaching attacking ships in the harbor. To make matters worse, they acquired their water supply from a spring fed on higher ground above the fort which meant their water supply was easy to cutoff in the event of siege

-Roberts having captured a fur trader named Michael Dousman who had been dispatched by American commander Porter Hanks to investigate reports of unusual activity at nearby St. Joseph’s Island was able to get valued information from his new captured informant on the condition of Mackinac’s defenses. Having learned the Americans were unaware of war’s declaration and now having a layout of their defenses Roberts implemented a plan.

-On early morning July 17th The British/Native American force would land on the northwest side of the island at a spot to be aptly called later, British Landing, some two miles from the fort. They landed on the shoreline and marched through the small road and woods through the island’s center taking high ground above the fort. Awaking the few villagers on the island they removed them from harms way and placed a cannon on the ridge above the fort at dawn and fired a single shot to warn the Americans of their presence. They sent a flag of truce to Hanks demanding surrender of the fort or face a siege. Hanks complied without firing a single shot and surrendered the whole garrison as he feared resistance would lead to a massacre from the Native American contingent. Having captured the fort without a fight, the British now controlled the whole island and the area around it.

-Roberts released the American garrison on the promise it would not fight for duration of the war. The permanent residents-fur traders and a few farmers were offered the choice to swear an oath of allegiance to the British Crown or they would be allowed to leave, most took up the oath and carried on with their business. The British did not loot any homes, resided in the fort and paid for some food to their Native American allies while the regular soldiers were fed on rations intended for the US garrison kept in government storehouses.

-Most of the Native Americans contingent left, returning to either Wisconsin or to help Tecumseh fight the Americans elsewhere. Meanwhile, the British consolidated their position on the island.

1814: Battle of Mackinac Island

-The British also captured Fort Detroit and it with that fort captured, the Americans could not attempt to retake Mackinac Island. In 1813, the Americans had a change in fortune from the disasters of 1812. They won the definitive naval battle on the Great Lakes, defeating the Royal Navy in the Battle of Lake Erie. They also recaptured Detroit and pursued the retreating British into Canada catching up with them at the Battle of the Thames where they killed Tecumseh and shattered his Native American coalition as a threat once and for all.

-Meanwhile, the British garrison on Mackinac remained in place without event for the next two years since its capture by them but the retaking of Detroit and the victory at Lake Erie and the Thames all in 1813 cut off fresh British supplies. The British garrison was forced to cut rations in half over the winter of 1813-14 to stagger their supplies, they also stored locally grown corn and took to fishing to supplement their food supplies.

-The British decided to open a new supply route from the eastern Great Lakes since the route from Lake Erie was no longer possible. Robert McDouall of the Glengarry Light Infantry, a Canadian raised regiment known for their green jackets was ordered to assist in this in early February 1814. The Glengarries were made of Catholic Scottish emigrants to Canada. Joined by men of the Royal Newfoundland Fencibles who helped serve as marines along with some sailors and artillerymen, McDouall arrived on May 18th with fresh provisions of food, munitions and other supplies to the half-starved garrison. Days later 200 Native American reinforcements came under command of Robert Dickson, a Canadian fur trader and Indian Agent for the British colonial government’s Indian Department.

-McDouall immediately took charge and ordered a stockade and blockhouse be built on the ridge above the current fort, they named it Fort George, it gave a more commanding view of the island’s harbor and placed them more out of reach from ship cannons from any attacking force. The British force that summer numbered 150-200 Native American warriors, 125-150 British regulars and 25-30 militiamen.

-Meanwhile, America aware of the resupply of Mackinac sought to retake the island for its strategic location. The plan called for leaving from Detroit for the island and to attack it with a superior force just as the British had down.

-McDouall also built breastworks and entrenchments along a ridgeline overlooking a farm to the north of the fort in the center of the island. This was in the line of the British advance two years before.

-The American force consisted of five ships under Arthur Sinclair and 700 ground troops under George Croghan. The American squadron did not have detailed knowledge of the island or region and attacked and burnt the old British post on St. Joseph island in their search for Mackinac.

-Due to their delay, McDouall was aware of their approach and upped his defenses calling in nearby British companies for support and finalizing his defenses.

-July 26th saw the Americans bombard the island from the harbor on its southern shore but the guns missed their mark as Fort George stood too high for their guns to do damage. Famously, the cannonballs only landed in the vegetable gardens below the fort. After two days they called off the attack

-Faced with developing heavy fog, the Americans withdrew from the island for almost a week. They decided to rethink their plan and approach from the northwest of the island as the British had two years before. In fact landing right at the same spot (British Landing).

-The American landing force would follow the same route as the British up the center of the island and storm the fort from the high ground on the north.

-However, unlike the British the American force gave no element of surprise. They would attack in the middle of day after having bombarded the woods near British Landing in the misguided belief Native Americans were in the area waiting to ambush. All this did was alert the British to inevitable American approach. McDouall left 25 men to man Fort Mackinac and another 25 Fort George on the high ground. The rest of his British/Canadian/Native American force would man the earthworks to the north, lining the crest of the ridge facing north where the Americans would be approaching. The Americans would have to approach through a farm in the island’s center giving a clear line of their approach.

-Though outnumbered, the British defenses, holding the high ground and the clear line of shot gave them considerable advantages to the Americans. Not to mention the crucial loss of surprise the Americans had foregone in favor of superior numbers.

-Both sides maintained two cannons each to start the battle (afternoon August 4th) with an inaccurate artillery duel firing at each other, neither doing any real damage. The American force consisted of some regulars and large number of Ohio volunteer militia which Croghan used to outflank the British left while some regulars would flank their right but found the dense woods to slow their advance.

-Meanwhile, McDouall dispatched a number of troops to island’s west on the false report that another American landing was taking place.

-American regulars were ambushed by Native Americans in the woods leading to the death of their immediate commanding officer Major Andrew Holmes.

-in the confusion of the ambush the American troops lost heart and retreated, this in turn

-Croghan’s main force did advance toward the British line but just as some Americans reached the top of the ridge, the British line was reinforced by the British regulars who went to investigate the false report of the 2nd American landing. This combined with the Native force’s ambush demoralized the Americans and Croghan called a retreat, falling back through the woods they reached the shore and rowed back to their ships. The British had won the day but just barely.

-Casualties were light with only member of the British force dead and another wounded. The Americans suffered 13 dead mostly from the ambush of Holmes’ men in the woods, they also had 51-55 wounded to varying degrees, two of the wounded were taken prisoner.

Aftermath:

-The War of 1812 was a back and forth affair with early upsets for the Americans in 1812, then numerous victories in 1813 such as Lake Erie, Thames and even the burning of York (Toronto) provincial capital of Upper Canada.

-1814 was a in turn a disaster for both sides, the British extended a blockade of the American Atlantic seaboard which hurt the economy. They also managed to defeat American efforts in the Northwest Territory, winning not only Mackinac Island but another small victory on the Mississippi River at Prairie du Chien in Wisconsin. They also most famously invaded and captured Washington DC, burning both the US Capitol building and the White House. However, their attempt to take Baltimore, Maryland ended in sound defeat as was a major defeat at Plattsburgh in land-naval battle on Lake Champlain in upstate New York. These American victories frustrated the British invasions just as American invasions into Canada had been repelled.

-Combined failures on both sides, strained economies and the seeming end of Napoleonic Wars by late 1814 dropped the need for impressment by the Royal Navy, ending an American cause for war. Additionally, the British sponsored Native American confederacy was irrevocably shattered following Tecumseh’s death. So negotiations began on both sides taking place in Ghent (modern Belgium) then part of the Netherlands. The Treaty of Ghent was signed on December 24th, 1814 marking a stalemate. Neither side would gain or lose territory and peace would be made. The British would drop their support for a Native American buffer state, abandoning almost once and for all any hope of slowing American permanent settlement into area south of the Great Lakes.

-Since news took weeks to travel by sea from Europe to America the treaty’s signing did not yet reach the US and a British invasion force of New Orleans was under way in December 1814 in the hopes of using the city as a bargaining chip for negotiations. However, like Baltimore & Plattsburgh, it turned into a disaster when in January 1815. A then relatively unknown Andrew Jackson, lead a successful defense against the British invasion in the Battle of New Orleans, the victory was the most one sided of the war and its infamy propelled Andrew Jackson to nationwide fame to later become 7th President of the United States. The US Congress ratified the peace treaty less than two months later.

-Mackinac Island was returned the Americans peacefully in 1815 and has remained part of the United States ever since. The fortifications still stand, the island is a Michigan state park, the island is a major tourist destination, artist colony and resort location with the Governor of Michigan maintaining a summer residence there. The battlefield today is mostly a golf course in the center of the island.

-The Battles of Mackinac Island are not the best known events of the War of 1812 and the two battles that took place there were relatively small in scale with light casualties and numbers of troops involved but they serve to show the importance the Great Lakes and then Northwest Territory held for the Americans, British and the Native Americans at the time. They also serve as a microcosm of the war’s frustrating character, a mix of all its combatants: Americans, Canadians, British & Native Americans all with vested interest in the war’s outcome and a location changing hands but by war’s end going right back to its start.

#military history #war of 1812 #michigan #mackinac island #usa #british empire #canada #1814 #native americans #lake huron #lake michigan #great lakes #wisconsin #upper peninsula #fort mackinac

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kuramirocket · 3 years

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Created by Elizabeth Ito, the animated series City of Ghosts explores the history of different neighborhoods in Los Angeles through friendly ghosts that make the past of this metropolis real. Our guides into these adventures, created in documentary style, are a diverse group of children, the Ghost Club, who navigate each encounter with curiosity and compassion.

For episode six, focused on Koreatown, the creators recruited professor Felipe H. Lopez, a Zapotec scholar to help them portray the Oaxacan community of L.A. With Ito and producer Joanne Shen’s support, Lopez brought authenticity to the depiction of certain visual elements, such as the grecas de Mitla, geometrical designs specific to the Indigenous people of Oaxaca. More importantly, he voices an animated version of himself, as well as Chepe, a lovable alebrije ghost at the center of the story. Lopez’s dialogue is both in English and Zapotec.

A native of the small Oaxacan community of San Lucas Quiaviní, where the vast majority of the population speaks Zapotec, Lopez has become a binational bastion in the preservation of this Indigenous language and the culture it gives voice to. He came to the United States when he was 16 years old speaking mostly Zapotec. He learned English first and then he worked on improving his Spanish while at Santa Monica Community College.

In 1992, Lopez got accepted into University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in the Latin American studies program; he has restlessly devoted himself to preserving the identity of the Zapotec diaspora, which has been present in the United States since the days of the Bracero program. Lopez first found support in linguist Pamela Monroe with whom he created the first trilingual Zapotec dictionary, which was published in 1999 via the Chicano studies department at UCLA. Today he is a postdoctoral scholar at Haverford College.

Below, he expands on his life’s work and the significance of the positive mainstream representation of Indigenous peoples.

What was the impulse or situation that made you realize you wanted to dedicate your professional life to preserve the Zapotec language and culture?

There’s always this relationship between economic gains with language. I saw how a lot of families in the Oaxacan community were raising their kids. Even if they didn’t speak Spanish fluently, they wanted to teach their kids Spanish rather than Zapotec. In a sense, they didn’t see a lot of usefulness in teaching their kids Zapotec. Interestingly, some of them actually were teaching their children the little English they knew. They even skipped teaching them Spanish. The parents would speak with each other in Zapotec but then would talk to the kids in English.

Being a college student back then and thinking about those things made me realize that the language was being lost and being substituted by either Spanish or English. At that moment I thought, ‘Maybe my language is going to be lost. I’ve got to do something about it. Even if it is just to leave a record. I want it to at least be known that we spoke this language at one time.’ That’s what really drove me to seek out somebody to help me because I’m not a linguist. Ever since then, we’ve been creating a lot of open source materials in Zapotec for people to use. We now have dictionaries. We’ve really used the technology in order to make our language, our culture, and how we are visible. City of Ghosts is another component that continues the work we started in 1992.

One of the interesting things about Indigenous languages is that sometimes they are not seen as real languages. You have this battle against the established ideology that Indigenous languages are not really languages. It’s almost like being salmon going against the current, if you’re trying to preserve your language because there are very few spaces for you to use your language and it’s not being taught in public schools in Mexico. But I was fortunate to be able to teach one of the very first courses in Zapotec. In 2005, UCSD [University of California, San Diego] asked me to teach a course in Zapotec. We needed to create all the materials from scratch because unlike Spanish or English or French, which are the dominant languages, you have tons of materials. If you want to teach Spanish you can go to the library and you have tons of materials to teach. But for us as Indigenous teachers we really need to create materials.

Language is deeply connected to how a culture sees the world. In that regard, why do you think it’s necessary to protect and teach Zapotec and other Indigenous languages in Mexico?

A lot of our Indigenous knowledge is embedded in the language. For example, when I think about how we’re being taught math in school from a Western point of view, we have the decimal system of counting: 10, 20, so on. But in Zapotec we have a different counting system, which is a base 20. We do 20, 40, and 80. Sadly, in Mexico something people say, ‘Why do you want to preserve the language? It’s not even a language. It’s a dialect.’

Fortunately, last year, I think if I’m not mistaken, Mexico changed the constitution to recognize more than 68 languages spoken in Mexico as national languages. There has been a long struggle. I’ve been doing work both in the U.S. and Mexico. Currently I’m teaching a free course on Zapotec in one of the universities in Mexico, because I want to contribute. Indigenous languages are important because they represent our history. They represent our identity and the ways in which we see our surroundings. There are even words in Zapotec that I can’t even translate into Spanish because there are no concepts that are equivalent. They need to be explained.

With the constitutional changes that you mention and someone like actress Yalitza Aparicio inspiring conversations about racism in Mexico and across Latin America, do you believe we are on the brink of a deeper appreciation of Indigenous culture and language?

It’s interesting that you mentioned Yalitza because when she first came out people attacked her. They would say, ‘She’s an Indian. She doesn’t deserve to be there.’ It is the sentiment that has endured in Mexico and Latin America. It’s a colonial mentality. If you look at the soap operas and Mexican TV shows just about every single actor or actress is white. There has been a push historically for Mexico to aspire, to be white. We, as Indigenous people, have been perceived to be a problem for modernity. They feel like, ‘How can Indigenous people be modern?’

We tend to be very fluid and move into different cultures, into different eras. I can speak my language in my pueblo, but at the same time I can use the Internet and I can speak English.Being Indigenous is never a detriment.In Mexico, the dominant culture, the politicians and the [non-Indigneous] intellectuals, see us as something less than Mexican. They speak about Mexicans versus Indigenous people. I’ve always questioned that because they like to talk about Mexico’s Indigenous roots, yet ostracize and put us on the margin. When they speak about Indigenous communities, they tend to think of us in a museum because once you put us in a museum it means that we no longer exist. There is this contradiction in terms of where we are, where we fit in Mexican society. That’s why we’re pushing so hard to make ourselves visible.

Specifically speaking about Zapotec people, and other immigrants from Indigenous communities, in the United States, what are the major obstacles in resettling?

Indigenous immigrants go through two steps of assimilation, because a lot of us who move into the States, we bring our indigenous language and culture. But the dominant culture that exists in LA is a Mexican or Mexican American culture. It’s a mestizo culture and there’s Spanish. So we as Indigenous people first need to assimilate into that culture and then assimilate into the mainstream culture. We need to speak English, but we also need to speak Spanish. There are two steps of assimilation for us to even try to situate ourselves in mainstream American society.

Tell me about your experience working on such a unique show as City of Ghosts, which really digs deep into the cultural fabric of Los Angeles. What convinced you that this could be positive for Indigenous communities?

One of the things that I asked Joanne [Shen] was, ‘How much say do I have?’ Because I didn’t want to be there if they already had an idea and they just want me to emulate something. So she said, “No, we want to sit down with you and talk about what are some of the important aspects of Zapotec society and what is it that really impacts you guys? How do you see the world?” That was one of the most important things for me in order to agree to do the project.

We had several meetings in terms where they asked me questions. Once I looked at the whole script, not just mine but also those for the alebrije ghost Chepe and Lena who is voiced by Gala Porras-Kim, I made some changes according to how I felt it represented Zapotec culture. For example, tying the idea of the ghost with the idea of the nahual orthe alter ego in Zapotec and Mesoamerican culture, as well as the use of alebrijes and the colors, which properly represented Zapotec culture on the screen.

They were very sensitive and they wanted to get it right. I really commend them for that, because I’ve worked in projects where they don’t really care. They have an agenda. But for this project they were so attuned with me.I think that’s what makes City of Ghosts such an important program for kids and just for the public at large to understand who the Zapotec are, because when we think about the Mexican community we assume that everybody speaks Spanish. This program, and specifically episode six, will help people to at least begin to rethink Mexican society and that not all Mexicans speak Spanish. Not all of them are mestizo, but rather that we are a multilingual and multicultural society, and we are bringing that to the States. I hope it makes people at least curious.

One aspect prominently mentioned in your episode is how certain Oaxacan communities use a whistling language. Why was this a significant element?

To be honest with you, I have no idea where it came from, but as far back as I remember when I was a kid we would just whistle to communicate basic phrases to each other. Also when we go to work on the field and you see somebody far away, you whistle at that person just to get some information like, ‘How are you doing? What’s going on?’ Since, we didn’t have any phones back home then, we whistled to communicate, but it’s not entirely just Zapotec communities. There are other Indigenous communities in Oaxaca and Mesoamerica that use whistling as a means of communication. So when I was asked to be part of the show, I did a lot of whistling in the episode just demonstrating how we communicate and that we don’t need words. Whistling is another expression of language.

When you think about Angelenos you think about Mexicans or mestizos at the pueblo of Los Angeles. But we rarely talk about the Indigenous people in LA. By having the Zapotec people in this sho2, we begin to have this conversation go beyond thinking about this land only having Latinos, African Americans, and whites. There are these hidden multicultural societies here that have been fighting and resisting against all these forces.

One thing that is so interesting to me is that when we are on the margins, we tend to fight and resist at the margin to maintain our language and culture. So then by bringing us into the light and being visible, even by asking, ‘Where do you guys come from?’ We can say, ‘Well, we’ve been here all along. You just haven’t seen us.’ With these particular episodes on the Zapotec, all of a sudden some people might learn something. I’ve seen on Twitter the young Indigenous people express they feel so proud of the fact that Indigenous people are represented in this show. There’s something unique about this show, because it really brings some of the historical aspects of the composition of LA, specifically of the Pico-Union area.

The most important thing people should take out of those two episodes that talk about Indigenous communities, it’s the very first time that we see Indigenous communities well represented and not objectified, but just as human and what they do in everyday life. And also how we bring our traditions and cultures to some of the megacities in the world, coming from small communities, such as mine where we have about 1700 people, yet we are being represented in such an incredible episode.

City of Ghosts is streaming on Netflix.

#usa #united states #indigenous #zapotec #mexico #los angeles #netflix #city of ghosts #🇲🇽

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hms-chill · 4 years

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Today’s @rwrb-social-isolation prompt is to talk about something from history we love, so I did a deep, deep dive into a near-utopian colony headed by a man who was, truly, an icon. A Byronic hero two hundred years before Byron himself. It got rambly, but at this point, who’s surprised. Please enjoy.

All us good little American drones know the story of how white people came to America. They settled at Plymouth, and they struggled and struggled for years, but with the help of friendly natives, they finally succeeded and murdered millions with biowarfare and also guns built the great country we live in today.

Were there other, non-Plymouth colonies? Jamestown, of course, the Macho Dream that men who are really into WWII love to talk about. Boring. Let’s talk about a fun colony.

Let’s talk about Merrymount, a town founded on a distrust of Christian Puritanism, the abolition of slavery, popular revolt, equality with natives, a pagan beliefs. Sound fake? See attached bibliography.

History, huh? Let’s get into it.

To talk about Merrymount, we have to talk about Thomas Morton, the Lord of Misrule. He was born in 1579 in Devon, England, a region despised by the more religious parts of the country for still hanging onto some of England’s traditional pagan practices. It was particularly known for celebrating the land and its guiding principles of neighborliness and quietness (the belief that keeping peace was more important than nearly anything else). We don’t know much about his family, but we’re pretty sure he was the second son to a middle-class family, largely because he went to law school in London (something that wouldn’t have been affordable for lower class folks, but that an older son wouldn’t have had to do under the laws of primogeniture).

The London Morton arrived in was overcrowded, and bouts of plague were not uncommon. The population was booming, and tensions were rising between the deeply Christian Reform movement and the more Pagan Renaissance. In particular, we saw the rise of Puritanism and Separatism, both of which were extreme versions of Christianity (a la those pilgrims we all cosplayed every Thanksgiving in elementary school), and both of which Morton hated. From what we can tell, he was first an observer, and his coursework would have taught him to question what he was told and to argue his own points and beliefs.

Following his time in school and his general disillusionment with established Christian society, he became a traveling lawyer for a time. In his late 30s, Morton began working for Sir Ferdinando Gorges, a major investor in Plymouth, founder of Maine, and “Father of English Colonization in North America”. He first traveled to America in 1622, and in his book, he declared “The more I looked, the more I liked it. And when I had more seriously considered of the beauty of the place, with all her fair endowments, I did not think that in all the known world it could be paralleled”. However, he was back in England in 1623, complaining of Puritan intolerance.

Following a dissolved engagement, Morton once again set sail for America in 1624, aboard the ship Unity under command of his friend Captain Richard Wollaston and accompanied by 30 indentured servants. They eventually were given land by and began trading with the Algonquin tribes, who were native to the region and whom Morton found more civilized than the Puritans in Plymouth. They named their town, which is now Quincy, MA, “Mount Wollaston”.

From Morton’s book, we can see that he got to know native culture relatively well. He attended Algonquin dinners and funerals. He learned at least some of the language, and he celebrated their respect for their elders and general family structure. During this time he also had his first interaction with Plymouth, which went much less well than his interactions with Algonquin tribes. He declared that he “found the Massachusetts Indians more full of humanity than the Christians”, and it is after this meeting that he began to furnish native tribes with powder and shot for their guns, often when English colonists couldn’t get any. Needless to say, he doesn’t come off particularly well in Plymouth’s writing about him.

By 1626, Mount Wollaston was booming. Colonists tired of Plymouth’s harsh rules were flocking to the more liberal town when Morton found out that Wollaston had been selling indentured servants as slaves. Outraged, he encouraged them to rebel, and Wollaston fled, leaving Morton the sole leader (or “host”, the term he prefered) of the newly renamed Merrymount (or “Ma-re Mount, which is a pun on the Latin for “ocean”).

(That’s right, this man got control of a town, declared himself just a host, and then renamed it based on a nerdy pun. an icon.)

Merrymount was, generally, from most sources I can find, a pretty chill place to be. People were declared equal, and there was a pretty high degree of integration with Algonquin tribes. Though Morton did do what he could to encourage the Algonquin peoples to settle into a more English lifestyle, he did so not by force, but by providing them with free salt to use in preserving food, therefore negating the need for a nomadic lifestyle. Which... pressuring people to give up their way of life isn’t great. But doing it this way is a lot better than the way that pretty much every other colonizer was doing it.

The real pinacle of the integration of English and Algonquin peoples was a May Day Celebration. Pretty much everyone celebrated the start of spring, as it meant that you’d survived the winter and life in general would likely start to improve with the warmer weather. May Day was both a celebration of springtime and a unifying holiday, a time when the different cultures came together and often a time when English men would begin to woo Algonquin women. The Puritans of Plymouth called it Bacchic and evil, so I can only assume it was a generally good time.

However, by 1628, it was all too much for Plymouth. Morton’s general chill vibe, his trading with natives (and the threat it posed to Plymouth’s monopoly), Merrymount’s integration with Algonquin tribes, and just generally the disregard for Puritan ways all exploded when, in celebration of May Day, Merrymount erected an eighty-foot maypole.

Now, I know eighty feet is hard to visualize. Especially if you’re from somewhere that uses the metric system. But an average story of a building is about ten feet. So just... think of an eight story building. This thing was MASSIVE. It’s as tall as my freshman year dorm. It was clearly visible from Plymouth, and it was the final straw. Morton was arrested and left to die on a rock that could only generously be called an island.

He was back by fall of 1629, but found Merrymount in ruins and a particularly harsh winter greeted him that year, and he was shipped back to England in 1630, a voyage that almost killed him.

By 1631, he was back in the game suing the Massachusetts Bay Company, the political and financial backers of the Plymouth Puritans. He won in 1635, cutting off much of Plymouth’s English support and causing many to leave it for settlements in Connecticut.

His book, New English Canaan published in 1637, launched him into celebrity. In 1643, he tried to return to Massachusetts, but was turned away upon arrival. He was exiled to Maine, where he passed away at the age of 71.

And that’s Thomas Morton! I first heard about his story in A Queer History of the United States by Michael Bronski, but I couldn’t remember enough/didn’t find anything in other sources to establish the queer context for Merrymount other than its rejection of Puritanism.

Attached bibliography (not formatted correctly, because fuck the MLA and the APA).

General overview of his life

Morton’s book, New English Canaan

Spunky bio largely focused on Merrymount/the maypole

Spunky bio two: Maypole boogaloo

His wikipedia, which is just nice and readable

#rwrb social isolation #not fic #history huh?#Hannah's History Lessons

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billiesanderson · 4 years

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✰ ––– jade willoughby (ellyn jade). two-spirit. she/her and they/them. // you don’t know ? that’s BILLIE ANDERSON ! they’re a TWENTY EIGHT year old supermodel from SAINT PAUL, MINNESOTA. as part of manhattan’s elite, the recalcitrant is known to be STRONG-WILLED & CONTRARIAN. most people recognize them by takeaway coffee cups, ignored alarms, lipstick stains, half-used bottles of perfume.

hey everyone! i’m natalie! native (feel like i should always throw that out there to explain why i only play native muses jhgfghj), 23, she/her pronouns, and live in pennsylvania. and i suck at intros and unlike brenda, billie is an absolutely new character to me so uh ... starting from scratch here people! anyways let’s just get into it:

tw: medical mention, cigarettes mention.

born on august 20th, 1991, billie is the youngest child born to her parents. they have two older brothers, jesse and cameron. something that billie would only appreciate later in life, as they explored their gender identity and found two-spirit to best describe herself, was that her parents gave all their children gender-neutral names.

from a young age, billie was always incredibly sick. at the time, their condition wasn’t well known and her parents didn’t know the exact questions to ask to get to the point. it took until she was 9 years old and almost to the point that she would need a kidney transplant if the doctors couldn’t find the cause and treat it soon before they would finally be diagnosed. it was nephrotic syndrome. soon thereafter, her parents started the entire family on a vegetarian diet as the doctors told them there were promising results in managing nephrotic syndrome’s symptoms with a vegetarian diet.

later in life, billie would also learn they had celiac’s disease as well and became gluten free.

both of their parents worked in the government (which was how they would pay for their younger’s numerous doctors appointments). her mother, an ojibwe woman, worked for the federal government as she worked for the bureau of indian affairs’ minnesota branch. and her father, a jamaican-american man, worked for the state government as he worked for the minnesota department of human rights.

despite the fact that billie knew of their health condition, she started going to high school parties at 15 where she drank, but mostly smoked cigarettes. she would never ever have a pack on her, she didn’t smoke except at parties (she would argue to others that that excused smoking with her health condition). she would later learn the term that described her best was a social smoker. they would reason to themselves, and others, that social smoking wasn’t too bad and wouldn’t affect their health condition too much though the doctors would try to prove to them otherwise.

at the same time, she was falling more and more in love with her favorite tv show -- america’s next top model. she’d been a loyal watcher since it premiered when she was 11 years old. but they were starting to more and more see themselves as someone who could also do that. at the age of 17, they played hooky from school one day because elite model management was in minneapolis and scouting new models and she just HAD TO TRY. (something their parents would just not understand.)

and billie actually did get a contract with elite model management!! but it would involve moving to the nyc, something they didn’t know how they’d break to their parents. but once they did, and after they had a huge fight about billie going behind their backs, they came up with a method. they couldn’t move out with her to new york, nor could they afford to, but her eldest brother (jesse) was living in jersey city, new jersey and working as a child therapist. billie could finish their senior year there, whilst living with their brother, and take a train into nyc as needed.

billie ended up staying quite a few years longer than just her senior year with jesse, even was still living with him as he got married and had her niece, but would move out at 26 years old into a manhattan penthouse. finally that top model dream they always had.

okay i’m even shittier at talking to the personality section but she’s an esfp. and yeah, contrarian as they are, she will argue with you over something silly. and their natal chart:

FAST FACTS SECTION!

billie is two-spirit, and in terms of sexuality identifies as queer with preferences towards women and non-binary folk.

they follow the anglican church (for the most part, they do disagree with the church on quite a number of things).

she can speak fluent english and french (the language she took in high school and continued to learn as she saw paris as important in the fashion modeling world), and is currently trying to learn mandarin (as shanghai and beijing are both also very important in the fashion modeling world).

ALCOHOL: YES / CIGARETTES: SOMETIMES (social smoker) / WEED: YES

i’m open to basically any sort of plot, so yeah like this. or message me (here or on discord, though discord is preferred) if you wanna plot. sry this is so short.

#mhqs:intro

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eldunea · 5 years

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buckle up, kids, let me tell you a bit of history.

[TW: Mentions of racism + racial violence, politics, murder and body horror.]

there is an urban legend in the united states about a native american man who tried to assassinate andrew jackson—the man responsible for the trail of tears, who built his political career on taking indigenous lives. the story goes that while andrew jackson was giving a speech, he threw a dagger at him from his vantage point, perched on top of a tree; the dagger just barely missed, nicking jackson’s ear and embedding itself in the stage wall behind him. suddenly, all eyes were on him, a dark-skinned man dressed in european clothes—including the eyes of the guard. some say he had yellow eyes with catlike slits for pupils. others say he had a tail, and that when he opened his mouth they saw glistening fangs. in any case, it was time for him to make his escape.

according to the story, he let out a yowl like a cat. he then leaped out of the tree and hit the ground running despite being shot two times. he sprinted down the city road, pursued by men shooting at him on horseback, but he managed to outrun them all, not even slowing his pace as the holes in his back continued to bleed. finally he ran into a residential area, leaped the fence into a backyard, and disappeared into the woods. dogs were sent to track him, and spurred by his scent they did so with an unusual ferocity—but they lost the trail in an open clearing.

the dagger remained with the u.s. government, where it was inspected by officials. they assumed that the hilt was made of some sort of bone, and the blade was made of iron. they also assumed that the creature carved into the hilt was a being from native mythology. but there were several things wrong with this picture: for one thing, the carving was too intricate and detailed to have been done by human hands. for another, the feathers that dangled from the hilt were not identified as the feathers of any known bird species. moreover, no native american identified the dagger as one of theirs, nor could they identify the creature or the feathers as belonging to their mythology. lastly, soon enough, the government realized that the blackness coating the outside of the bone was not paint at all. rather, the bone itself was black on the outside and white on the inside (which had allowed the carving to look so striking)—a feature not found in the bone of any species on earth.

the dagger also showed a downright magical stubbornness to never remain with one person for longer than a day. anyone whose hands it passed into would find it lost the next morning, and if they took it back, it would display the same result. mysteriously, no matter how far away it was moved, it always seemed to be trying to get closer to the white house—where andrew jackson lived. and when jackson’s second term was up, the dagger immediately switched course, doggedly pursuing him to his new home.

those who were still loyal to him panicked. they insisted that some sort of “indian curse” was trying to kill their beloved former president. they tracked down the dagger’s location, seized it, locked it in a lead box, sailed out as far as they could go and dumped it in the ocean. and there it lay, allowing itself to become lost and forgotten, ready for the day when it could once again emerge and fulfill its purpose.

earthlings say that america’s seventh president fell victim to lead poisoning from the two bullets that remained embedded in them. but a more apocryphal addition to the legend of the man and his dagger suggests a different end. they say that jackson did not succumb to poisoning symptoms, but met a more grisly fate. instead of peacefully asleep in his bed, they say he was found there on june 8, 1845 with a stab wound in his chest, his face twisted into a scream of agony and fear—after decades of being moved from place to place, the dagger had finally found its mark. chillingly, however, the tale does not stop there: it also adds the detail that his body looked desiccated, dried out, as though the very life essence had been sucked from him. his hands, which reached out for a help that would never come, looked leathery and tough like the hands of the pharaohs laid to rest in egyptian tombs.

here is where the story ends. and here is where my story begins.

the dagger’s magical properties, for its part, had long since been passed off as an idle myth. several decades after it had disposed of the ex-president, it allowed itself to resurface in a collection of indigenous artifacts. those who rediscovered it faced the same problem as those who had initially attempted to pry into its mysteries. if this belonged to a native american nation, then why could no actual native people identify its imagery or its craftsmanship? what sort of animal had bones that were black without and white within, and what sort of bird had originally carried the feathers in its hilt? however, the ignorant americans paid these issues no mind. they classified it as “native american; unknown origin,” when they stuck it in a museum.

for decades more, the dagger did nothing. its purpose had been fulfilled, so all it had to do was wait for its master to show up and recollect it. silently, tamely, it sat there behind the glass, the dried blood of the fallen president long since wiped off its blade. it sent out messages that it knew its original owner would be able to pick up on; humans who looked at it often got the feeling that it was calling to them. it became the most popular item in the exhibit due to the supernatural experience that one received just by looking at it—until one evening in 1945, when the object began to beep.

the security guards alerted the curator, who was just about to go home for the night. curiously, he took the dagger from its encasing and stole into a back room. once there, he tugged at it and figured there must be some way to open it, as the beeping was probably created by something inside. he thought he would have a struggle, but surprisingly, as soon as he pulled on the blade it came out into his hand.

attached to the knife blade was a panel of intricate circuitry in need of repair. and attached to that panel was a vial of a bright blue-white liquid—the drained quintessence of president andrew jackson.

the curator gave it to one of his scientist friends, who immediately recognized the technology for what it was: the invention of a civilization advanced beyond human comprehension. the scientist, who was well aware of all the myths surrounding the dagger, felt as though everything had been made clear. the feathers and bone hilt must have come from extraterrestrial species. the carving must depict either a real species somewhere on a distant planet or a creature from an alien mythos. the dagger’s repeated pursuit of its target must be the result of some sort of artificial intelligence. and the “native” man with catlike eyes who had thrown the dagger, then managed to outrun horses and avoid dogs even after being shot twice--he was obviously an alien in disguise.

immediately he contacted the united states government, which took lotor’s dagger into its possession. everything the government did to test the blade confirmed the scientist’s theory. but what the government was most intrigued by was the quintessence sample; they easily deduced that the quintessence powered the blade, and they wanted to see if it could have any application for humans. they soon discovered its miraculously energy efficient properties: simple machines could run on just a few drops for years on end with no decline in functioning. when NASA was created, its scientists were thrilled to hear the government secret that they had found a miracle substance that far surpassed the capabilities of fossil fuels: this was just what they needed to power their proposed rocket ships, just what they needed to get ahead of the russians. naturally, it wasn’t long before russian spies found out about this secret. the galaxy garrison was founded and started developing quintessence-based weapons and technology, and the russians made their own equivalent soon after. the race was on.

this is the story, my friends, of how lotor sincline attempted to assassinate andrew jackson—which then launched humanity into the space age.

he was indeed the man who perched in that tree and threw the dagger—if he walked around dark-skinned in the united states, most people mistook him for native, black or latino. galra instinct had driven him to climb that tree to get a better view. he already loathed the man in front of him, but hearing the way jackson spoke about native americans pushed him to the brink—it reminded lotor of how his father spoke about his own people, the moon elves, and it didn’t help that he felt that moon elves and native americans had a lot in common. violently triggered, struggling to even think or act with the force of his lived experience and his blood memory coursing through him, he took the concealed “smart dagger” from under his sleeve and snarled, “kill president andrew jackson.” once commanded, the blade would not miss its mark—nor would it rest until its objective was fulfilled.

there was only a one in a million chance of the blade malfunctioning.

somehow, jackson still lived.

in the end, though, lotor’s weapon gave him the death it thought he deserved. when it finally found him in his home, it not only stabbed him, it drained him of quintessence—it had been running low on battery and needed a brand new dose of energy, and the quintessence in jackson’s body would power it for the next 7,000 years. with the new energy, it then consumed him with visions of its master’s intensely traumatic life. moon elvish smart daggers take on their master’s feelings and even their memories, and lotor had bonded with his strongly enough that it was aware of the many traumas he had suffered. as andrew jackson felt the sensations of lotor’s life wrack his body and watched the scenes of the alien’s ordeals flash by, he learned what it was to experience the sort of oppression that he had inflicted on the native americans--and he experienced ten thousand years of it within the span of a mere thirty seconds. the shock of it killed him before the blood loss did.

fast forward to the mid-1900s. the american government kept many secrets from its people. the existence of extraterrestrial life was one of them. the existence of quintessence was not—but they certainly lied about their method for harvesting it. for a time, they were satisfied in taking it from animals—there was a farm outside washington d.c. that raised livestock specifically for quintessence draining. but they soon realized that the quality of the energy drained from the livestock was not as good as the quality of the quintessence within the blade itself. once more recalling the story about how andrew jackson had been found dead and seemingly “drained,” they quickly deduced that the purest source of quintessence available to them was from human beings.

and so it was. the american government got their quintessence fix from people sentenced to the death penalty. capital criminals were told they would get the noose or the electric chair, but instead, they were violently stabbed to death so that the life energy could be drained from them. the united states would never have invented the level of technology depicted in the voltron series if not for the discovery of jackson’s quintessence inside lotor’s dagger; humanity’s incredible progress was thus forged in the blood of the guilty. NASA had no idea that any of this was happening, that the technology they used was being powered by murder--but the galaxy garrison, whose scientists had come to the conclusion that human quintessence was superior to that of animals, did.

spacefaring aliens across the universe have had mixed reactions to this, especially because it’s a common cultural practice for them when they encounter non-spacefaring races to leave no trace of their presence. some of them praise lotor for indirectly getting revenge on an oppressor, and point to how the decades-later result of that helped the human species attain greater technological advancement; these people also tend to be pro-contact. the opposite side points to the fact that the humans harvested criminals for their quintessence, and say that lotor should have been more careful with the use of advanced technology on a “primitive” planet. these people are among the sort who believe that leaving behind even the most seemingly inconsequential of materials can change the course of another species’ history. either way, after being separated from his weapon, lotor figured it was time to go get it back.

when the paladins returned to earth during the events of my canon divergent season 7, lotor told galaxy garrison officials that they had something that belonged to him. he asked to be shown to area 51, where his dagger was giving off the last of its weak calls to be found by him—many of its systems including its system of communication had malfunctioned and were slowly breaking down, which had caused the beeping back in 1945. he was easily able to track it; he took it out of its box, smiling down at it gently. pressing the flat part of the blade to his cheek, he was granted a vision telling him that the item had completed its mission.

“well done,” he murmured. “welcome back, old friend.”

#word of god™. || tian speaks #politics*#racism*#body horror*#death*#murder*#alma te anul; the history of self. || HEADCANON

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apexart-journal · 4 years

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Derek Tumala in NYC, Day 9

Something different for today, I went to Gibney for the Movement Research class. I met up with Rawya El Chab, a Lebanese who now lives in New York, to do the class. The class is a bit eccentric I must say, the instructor started with a setup of an altar, where every element is represented, earth, fire, water, wind. The Body Research class is supported by astrological premise, in which one corresponds to zodiac sign, where it rises, its moon. This all can be known by the date and time of your birth. Me for example, my sign is Aquarius, and my moon is in Cancer which is according to charts, are people who are progressive yet cautious, has loopy sense of humor but empathetic. I think it’s accurate. We then discuss on how the planets move affects our lives. Just recently Mercury Retrograde is in effect that made life a bit harder, it is the period when Mercury looks like it's doing a slow zigzag in the sky. It's an optical illusion as a faster planet passes us or as we pass a slower planet. It is advisable not to do important life decisions at this time. While I am cautious about it, it is only a guide and it does not control my life. With the Body Research class, we apply movements into the space to create new paradigms of our entity. Guided by astrology, we were asked to move freely or mindful. It was a release of energy and letting go of inhibitions. The body is in trance trying to let go of all constructive thinking. We move as if the gravity is heavy, as if the body is weightless. It’s a dancing meditation in which we transported ourselves into trance. For me, it helps me in terms of letting go of inhibitions, of creating unexpected movements. The body became a vessel in which we poured ourselves into it.

After class, Rawya and I had lunch and chat. In the past, I’ve been interested about the Middle East, particularly in Lebanon and its culture. Rawya discussed the current revolution that is happening in Beirut. Much of it is about the resistance against bad governance and the result of the civil war. We compared our countries and how governments are failing its people. There is a need for a new revolution, a change in which society benefits from good governance and infrastructure, people should shift thinking and learn to see what is best for our futures.

Photos of remains found in the African Burial site, Lower Manhattan

We then went to the African Burial Ground National Monument, where thousands of enslaved Africans were buried in a mass grave. It’s depressing how the legacy of Black slavery happened and its effect. Museums are places in which we are reminded of the past and learn from it. The slave trade and the indignation of Black people was so destructive that racism is still happening until now. Racism rooted from the idea that another person is less worthy based on their ethnicity, which again came from the colonial rule that has lasting effects. This also raises questions on how do we change the culture of hate. Black slavery is one of the most horrific part of American history that shaped what it is now. The question in me is - how America is treating this problem and how do they move forward from it? Relearning the Black slavery and remembering the horrors of it is one way of resolving it, but how do we change the culture that started it? At the lobby of the Federal Building was the Native American’s presentation. It was entertaining and informative as they were dressed in traditional Native American clothes and musical instruments. Each movement signifies a part of their culture and was derived in nature. At the end, all the audience participated in a circle line dance, which was amazing.

I then headed to apexart to check in with Abbie on how Week 1 has passed. I think it was quite overwhelming, but as the week passed I adjusted and tried to cope with sleep and rest.

In the evening, I headed to the Upper East Side to visit Paul Rudolph’s duplex building, he is one of New York’s underrated 20th century architects. I met with Linda Shrank in this visit, an artist who is also an apexart fellow. I pointed out her pin that says “We are all immigrants” Rudolph’s apartment building was modular and geometric, using a lot of white paint, diffused lighting and plant accents. It was refreshing to see it amidst New York’s grey and neutral palette. While I’m not familiar with his work, I am fascinated by the use of cheap materials and how he elevated the brutalist aesthetics into a more comfortable look. While the space is very small, he was able to make use of the space and have fun with it. A lot of movements on the details and eccentric ideas on how materials are being used but still familiar. The Modulightor is championing his work and considering that he is one of the important modernist architect in America.

After Modulightor, Linda and I had dinner at a nearby Indian restaurant. Linda was very chill and enthusiastic as she describes her experience as an apexart fellow in Melbourne. She said that she learned a lot from the fellowship, by being aware of her behavior and how she thinks. She also pointed out the temporal experience of meeting people. For her, meeting people and spending time with them is important and not just once, she suggested that maybe there should be a connection even after the fellowship, which I agree as well. Her stories about Soho and its current commercialization has affected much of what it was, an artist “village” but now, she can’t even go to the shops because it has changed much of Soho’s creative vibe. New York has changed so much that not much artist choose to stay in Manhattan to live, considering the high cost of living. We also discussed the role of the artist now, of being involved in socio-political struggles and extending the artist’s capabilities or responding to needs. Thinking about the artist as a person in the world is another paradigm. How we move and think is what also make us as artists/creators. The Indian food was so good and spending an evening with a real New Yorker was a treat.

#derek tumala #inbound from Manila

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red-stick-progressive · 5 years

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A response to that racist responding repeatedly to my additions to the post on Colonial Genocide

1: “La Hispaniola, in where most if not all of the indigenous population dissapeared. I’m only agreeing partially with you, Spanish colonization was devastating, BUT that just isn’t ALL (as you dare to put, in a kinda of cospirazy-theory way): There were a lot of other factors, in were DID play a part the illnesses and the war the own indians had agaisnt others.”

(Then you talk about the Aztec, unrelated to Hispaniola)

2: “The book you provided to me has taken, unsurprisingly, the highest balance of people (8 million) it supposed to exist in the island of La Hispainola before 1492 (of course, the bigger deads, the better! gets easier to acuse of holocaust and genocide).”

(You misread Stannard, I assume in a preview or something. He mentions the population estimate considered standard by most academia for most of the history of the research of the indigenous peoples of the new world, which was the laughable 8 million in the entire western hemisphere. This is obviously an example of academia being a tool of propaganda, colonialist and yes genocidal propaganda. By diminishing the population they reduce the weight of the colonial crimes and reduce the legitimacy of contemporary peoples to the identities of their ancestors. All which benefits colonial power structures. Currently, the most conservative and still legitimate estimate of populations in Mexico before contact is 25 million. That is just in the region of Mexico. The most current and reasonable estimate for the population of Hispaniola before contact is 1.8 to 2.9 million. That many Taino people may have lived on that island when the Spanish arrived. Less than 1 generation later there were no Taino left on the island. All that survived, less than 50 thousand did so as slaves elsewhere or as refugees in other native nations.

American Holocaust by David E Stannard

https://gsp.yale.edu/case-studies/colonial-genocides-project/hispaniola

http://www.wou.edu/history/files/2015/08/Cain-Stoneking-HST-499.pdf )

3: “There you have the ciphers of people other specialist gives that goes from 60.000 (how they dare!) to 8 million, and the problems actual historians have to put a real number, because, as I’ve been saying, de las Casas simply exagerated the number of deads and the ways spaniards killed indians to make his point (spaniards bad, indians good). You know, census didn’t exist that time in 1492. But of course, that’s not a problem for those who’re appealed to lie. Just put the higher, albeit surreal, cypher to make it more proper to accuse of “genocide”, call you book something as “Genocide in America” or “Holocaust”, and you’ve got it.”

(This is mostly incomprehensible. First of all, no contemporary estimates are done exclusively based on personal accounts. Most population estimates are done by testable evidence like residence numbers in archeological sites compared to a standard model for what local populations looked like. This is still a flawed system constantly producing unreasonably small estimates but even this system far dwarfs what you argue. Cuz you’re a racist who is divorced from reality so much so that you are still using decades-old estimates based on nothing but propaganda.

The second point I have to address is that holocaust is a title, and genocide is a defined term. According to Google, Genocide: “the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular ethnic group or nation.” There is no conceivable argument against the fact that what the Dutch, the English, the Portuguese, and the Spanish did in the new world is genocide. Every single European power has dirtied hands. They stole land, erased languages and profited from other people doing the killing even if they didn’t explicitly do so at first.

https://www.google.com/search?q=genocide+define&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS750US750&oq=genocide+define&aqs=chrome..69i57.4815j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 )

4: “how in 1492-1502 spaniards AND indigenous people were both attacked by a same illness, the supposed illness spanish were “using” to kill indians (like 8 hundreds of millions of tHroUsAnDs of hundreds), per your lasts reviews… They were so smart that you know, “used” the same illness to being killed.”

(As for the idea that the same diseases killing millions of Natives were also killing the Spanish, that is very specifically not true. The diseases that the colonizers and conquistadors brought and then weaponized were more or less experientially harmless to them in context. Things like measles and the flu or malaria and typhus. Even the common cold and chickenpox killed and spread like plagues. The things that were periodic plagues in Europe such as cholera, bubonic plague, and smallpox were instantly devastating. Describing how and why is its own post and maybe I will make that post soon but I’ll just say here that Europe was a fucking dumpster fire in terms of sanitation where most cultures in the New World were so socially organized that every early encounter with any given tribe is usually followed with the Europeans marveling at how often Natives bathe and how much soap they use. Another important factor is the fact that Europe had dozens of different livestock animals that lived in immediate proximity to people often sharing water sources to defecate into and drink from. This meant diseases leaped from chickens and pigs and cows and horses to people much more frequently in the thousands of years since domestication. Native Agriculture developed along different paths and so the numerous livestock animals throughout the western hemisphere were fewer and more sanitarily maintained than in the eastern hemisphere. The only disease spread back to Europe during the Columbian exchange was syphilis, though not a plague still terrified Europe. Important detail: it also did not nearly exterminate the entire population of the entire Old World.

The specific example in the first section of American Holocaust was the first such plague event, that made many Spaniards sick and killed thousands of Natives almost immediately. The first plague, unexpected and abrupt, the Spanish took note and it informed the numerous following invasions. It was swine flu, the kind Columbus deliberately spread ahead of himself later on in his return invasions.

As for the argument that the Spanish didn’t know that spread disease and plagues was possible or that they did so accidentally… I mean, to think this you just have to deny or ignore the insurmountable volume of personal; and first-hand accounts of people saying that’s what they were doing. The compilation of accounts and historical sources that Stannard uses often is Harvest of Violence, but Robert Cormack, it is a hard read of historians primarily from Guatemala and Mexico. As opposed to the pure Spanish propaganda you seem to subscribe to, it prioritizes our own voices and is also filled with the accounts from the colonizers themselves which need no special framing to be transparent and genocidal as they discuss leaving the plagued and dead in fields to prevent healthy harvest and piling the dead and debris in the aqueducts and canals of Tenochtitlan to starve and pollute and trap civilians. Just to be clear and definitive though, Europeans definitely knew about plague bodies spreading plague, obviously, they did not understand how or why, but they did. The Spanish had weaponized blood infected with leprosy to poison wine in Naples in 1495, and there were incidents of biological warfare all throughout the Reconquista, which pointedly ended in 1492 before Columbus left Seville.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1200679/ : examples of Europeans using infected cadavers to poison arrows and wells and so on many times throughout history and recorded by contemporaries.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1198743X14641744 : the Spanish blood in wine thing, as well as a long list of other biological attacks in Europe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconquista : this is just a link to the Reconquista from Wikipedia in case you were unaware of the very recent and relevant Spanish relationship with ethnic cleansing and genocide.)

5: “In this article, of course, if you could read spanish,”

(I can read Spanish, and speak it. I used to be pretty fluent but now mi español es limitado y lento, pero es mejor que otras personas, ¿no?)

6: “there were indians that just went to the forest and lived there outside from the cities, and like, nobody had a problem with that. Why they didn’t dissapear? Maybe, because, you know, conquest was not a genocide?or in other words: If it can be considered a genocide, is the worst and most inneficient genocide made ever.”

(I’m going to begin with the weird racist part about living in the forest. I, honest to god, don’t know what to say to explain why that's a laughably dumb claim and fundamentally racist thing to say at all. I was shouted at by some dumb racist in a town hall for my local representative, a Republican who hates immigrants etc. One of the things the racist yelled at me was “Go back to the woods.” I don’t know, figured I’d just mention that. Also, you know, it also just didn’t work either. Natives did flee from persecution and attack, and there are many individual accounts of being hunted down by dogs and soldiers and being brutally killed for it. One of the chiefs of the Hispaniola Natives fled with the few survivors of his people to another island where he identified the wealth and valuables that the Spanish sought and threw them in a river in a desperate attempt to make the Spanish leave them alone. He was known by Hatuey, and the “ good christian” Spaniards crucified him and burned him alive.

Also, I would argue that the relative efficiency of a genocide is not super relevant when measuring its moral value. Odd metric btw.)

7: “You can accuse of spanish colonialism of sclavitude, clasism, racism (even race wasn’t a part in the idea of conquering the indians, was a religious thing) and a lot of other things, really, I’m not even doubting about that, but “Genocide” it’s not one of them.”

(The Spanish are actually the best case for inventing the notion of race, they applied a lense that mirrors the way American white supremacists measured race and how Nazi’s determined whether someone was Jewish regardless of identity or practice. The Spanish invented “Limpieza de Sangre” during the Reconquista while expelling Jews from Spain and hunting remaining Moors. And we know that Columbus brought it to the New World during colonization.

Again just google the word genocide. https://dornsife.usc.edu/news/stories/659/tracing-the-roots-of-discrimination/ )

8: “even in the ancient spanish colonies there still a lot of indigenous people that survived and thanks to the own spanish colonial politics, instead of being killed in the moment for being considered as “sub-humans” or put in indian reservations and being killed of drunkness or surviving by putting casinos, but it is what it seems when some anglo-american just accuse other countries of doing the same and it shows.”

(Whew boy. Where to start?

“Ancient” Spanish colonies? Ancient?

Indigenous people survived despite colonial politics.

Literally, every account dehumanizes the Natives. Every single one, even the patronizing friars and supposed benefactors who just so happened to still not do anything to help Natives.

Just gonna put this here “put in indian reservations and being killed of drunkness or surviving by putting casinos,” Jesus.

And, ding ding ding, ya fucking idiot; can’t even read. I’m not “anglo-american” I’m Lumbee/Nanticoke, an indigenous eastern woodlands Native American. The Spanish colonized the Lumbee predecessors; idiot.)

@imanopinionatedadult @givemeyourtired @roxas-has-the-stick @givemeamomentortwo @thatmidstea @padawan-thunderairborne

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drtanstravels · 5 years

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When I finished my previous post we had wrapped up the Midwest Ocular Angiography Conference at the Four Seasons Resort and Residences in Jackson, Wyoming the previous night and were just about to begin the holiday leg of our trip through the Pacific Northwest of the USA.

Wednesday, July 10, 2019 We had our lunch at the Four Seasons with Tony, the pharmaceutical representative from Chicago we had met at the conference, and now it was time for us to hit the road. We got in our white, rental Toyota Corolla and it needs to be said, Anna does a great job of driving on the opposite side of the road and there were some confusing roads and intersections to deal with in this area. Wifi was almost nonexistent so we had to either try and make the most of the one bar of connection we had while in a town to find our destination on Google Maps or simply resort to paper maps, something I would have to do a lot over the coming days in order to navigate, making me sometimes feel more than a little carsick. In fact things were so remote we couldn’t even get a radio reception and it looked like we’d just be listening to static for the next couple of hours until I was finally able to get my phone to pair with the car’s stereo via bluetooth, allowing us to listen to the music I had saved on iTunes. If we had to rely on Spotify, we would’ve been screwed. It really didn’t take that long to make our way deeper into Grand Teton National Park, where we would be spending that night:

Grand Teton National Park is an American national park in northwestern Wyoming. At approximately 310,000 acres (480 sq mi; 130,000 ha; 1,300 km2), the park includes the major peaks of the 40-mile-long (64 km) Teton Range as well as most of the northern sections of the valley known as Jackson Hole. Along with surrounding national forests, these three protected areas constitute the almost 18,000,000-acre (7,300,000 ha) Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, one of the world’s largest intact mid-latitude temperate ecosystems.

The human history of the Grand Teton region dates back at least 11,000 years, when the first nomadic hunter-gatherer Paleo-Indians began migrating into the region during warmer months pursuing food and supplies. In the early 19th century, the first white explorers encountered the eastern Shoshone natives.

Grand Teton National Park is an almost pristine ecosystem and the same species of flora and fauna that have existed since prehistoric times can still be found there. More than 1,000 species of vascular plants, dozens of species of mammals, 300 species of birds, more than a dozen fish species and a few species of reptiles and amphibians inhabit the park.

One of many meese in the area

To be honest, neither Anna nor myself is particularly interested in fly-fishing, which is extremely popular there, but we do like the outdoors, hiking, and checking out the wildlife so we would be doing plenty of that over the coming days. In fact, we learnt an easy way for spotting animals almost immediately; if you see a whole heap of cars pulled over on the side of the road and a bunch of people staring and pointing into the distance, there is usually something worth pulling over and seeing. On the first occasion it was a female moose (above, right) grazing in a small body of water. It was obviously female, because it didn’t have antlers, but this got us immediately wondering if there might be more moose around, particularly male ones. Then I got a little irritated when it occured to me that the moose is a member of the deer family so the name is an invariant, the plural form still being “moose”, not “meese.” It seemed like such a wasted opportunity, but never mind, that wouldn’t stop me from referring to them as “meese.” Nothing could.

Another stop en route to our destination would be Jenny Lake, a popular hiking area through some of the tallest peaks in the Teton Range, in order to trek a portion of the Cascade Canyon Trail. We would take a boat, the humorously named “Beaver Dick Leigh” (which I later discovered was named after Richard “Beaver Dick” Leigh), from South Jenny Lake across to the the entrance of Cascade Canyon and hike up to the well-signposted Hidden Falls, then past the Jaw and the Rock of Ages, down to Lake Solitude, along the way passing that family from Oregon with whom we went whitewater rafting the previous day and Anna having to keep the sole attached to a busted hiking shoe with a hair-tie, before finally making our way back down to Jenny Lake and catching the “Beaver Dick Leigh” back across to our car. Besides squirrels, we didn’t really see any wildlife, but the scenery was pretty spectacular. See for yourself:

Entering Grand Teton National Park

Token panoramic shot

Our ride across the lake

And we’re off

It looks cold but it surprisingly wasn’t

I guess that’s one way to stop lake pirates

Almost there

following the river

Hidden Falls isn’t all that hidden

I’m dressed like I work there

The beginning of the trail

Still going

Anna getting a bit ahead of me

Not a bad way of spending an afternoon

One of many squirrels we would see

Looking down on some trees

Teton Range

We didn’t encounter any bears… yet!

To say the water is clear would be like saying it is also damp

Now that we were done with the hiking we had to find our way to the ranch where we were staying. That’s right, ranch. We were staying at the Heart Six Guest Ranch, which claims to be “One of the oldest dude ranches in America,” located just outside Grand Teton National Park and right near the south gate of Yellowstone National Park. Another fact to add was that the ranch stunk strongly of horse manure, an odour that you could almost taste, one that never disappeared, but also one that permeated everything until you just became acclimatised to it. One good thing about staying in this region is that it stays light until about 9:30pm each night so we didn’t have to worry about locating the ranch in the dark, but when we eventually found it, we were surprised to also see covered wagons and teepees on the grounds. We would definitely have to explore them a bit more in the morning, because I want to know how Native Americans could tolerate the cold nights here in just a teepee! When we arrived we checked in, noting the wildly swinging ceiling fan in the ranch’s reception, along with the multitude of mosquitoes and other insects in the general vicinity. Once done we didn’t go to our room, instead opting to drive down to a nearby river in the hope of seeing some animals, as dusk is apparently the prime time for spotting wildlife. Unfortunately, we didn’t encounter a whole lot, just a couple of female deer enthusiastically spotted in the distance by some fellow tourists, a large, slowly moving mound on the opposite bank of the river that was apparently a beaver (but realistically it could’ve been almost anything), and some spiders. I did, however, manage to snap the photo of the mountains with the purple sky that I used for the featured image for this post while we were there.

We returned to the “Dude Ranch” and asked the guy working in reception where there was to eat. There were apparently two options, one of which the receptionist said in no uncertain terms was “shit.” We walked outside and there was a man in a cowboy hat passing us so we asked him for his recommendation, to which he replied the other option out of the two was “shit.” We weren’t expecting to find ourselves in a culinary hotspot, but in our experience there people were more willing to tell you which was the worst out of the two restaurants, as opposed to which one they preferred, and thus far the consensus was split 50/50. Not a good sign so we opted for the closest which was on the grounds of the ranch — It was shit. There was probably only about 15 minutes until the kitchen closed and there was a family on a table behind us where the mother, similar in appearance to what you see in ‘Karen’ memes, was going to snap. She was constantly complaining to our waiter and bitching at her kids, but it was the waiter that I felt bad for. This tall, gangly guy with long, blonde hair in a ponytail with a fringe, a curly moustache, and suspenders over a t-shirt was frazzled — It can’t be easy being the only hipster in a tiny town, as well as the only employee in the town’s restaurant. When the family was ordering, the mother asked if there were any gluten-free options, to which the waiter replied that nothing they serve would be truly gluten-free, because they cook everything on the same grill and don’t really clean it. She just let out an audible, dissatisfied sigh and ordered a random dish. I’m not sure if he was cooking the food too, but it took quite a while to come out and it most likely wasn’t because they were busy cleaning in the kitchen. That family were there first so their food arrived before ours and the mother still wasn’t happy, going on a rant about the poor quality of their dinner. Ours eventually arrived and it was pretty bad too; a tough steak each and french fries that weren’t just crunchy, but hard as if they had kept all of the leftover, uneaten fries aside over the course of the evening and then refried them all at the end for our meals — It’s pretty hard to screw up fries, but they managed somehow. Still, we just smiled and gnawed on our steaks and crunched our fries, because we didn’t want to ruin the waiter’s night any further, he seemed close to tears.

Once we had got through the bulk of our dinner we decided to have a look around this part of the ranch, including the lounge area and the bar. As had been the case in Jackson and is probably a theme running through all ranches, there was a heap more taxidermy within those walls. Inside the lounge there was a kid being shown how to play pool by an older man, people sitting around reading books, and a stoned-looking guy admiring a stuffed animal head mounted on the wall, looking at it in the same way that a person takes in a renaissance masterpiece in a European museum. He giggled and pointed out to me that it had a weird horn in the middle of its head that would block its vision when it looked to the side. I mentioned that its eyes were on the sides of it head so it probably wouldn’t have had true peripheral vision anyway and the horn could just be the result of poor taxidermy. He seemed to take this onboard and continued to study this felled beast. Anna and I decided to take in other areas of the building such as the small bar with incredibly uncomfortable looking saddles on top of the barstools, when the guy staring at the head came running up, appearing relieved to have finally located me. “It’s a caribou!” he yelled while laughing hysterically, obviously having asked someone else, because he wouldn’t have been able to Google it unless he could get on one of the two occupied computers in the lounge.

We weren’t going to be staying in a teepee or a covered wagon, we just went up to our ugly room and hit the sack for the night. We were told when we checked in that the rooms in the part we were staying had only just been completed and when we got up there we saw that it was really basic; the walls were just plywood and everything appeared to be unfinished and really cheaply done so we could hear everything happening in the neighbouring rooms, all the while trying to make contact with as few surfaces as possible in order to avoid getting splinters. It also smelled of turpentine and there wasn’t a TV or wifi for a distraction so we just showered and went to sleep. A look around the ranch and our room:

Part of the outside area of our ranch at dusk

Me in the ranch’s restaurant with the angry mum behind me

Anna from the other side of the restaurant

Inside the lounge area

Some heads on the wall

The caribou with its weird centre horn

Inside the bar

Those stools don’t look comfortable at all

Our bed for the night

Thursday, July 11, 2019 Maybe it was just the jet-lag catching up with me, but I had a mild epileptic seizure that morning in my sleep. It wasn’t anything major, I still remember waking up immediately afterward and snoring heavily while trying to get back to sleep, but it would leave me feeling kind of lethargic, however, I wasn’t going to let it prevent me from making the most of the day. We also couldn’t sleep much, because there was construction going on outside our room from the early morning onward, as well as people speaking loudly just outside.

We knew that the restaurant in the ranch was terrible and we hadn’t heard sparkling reviews about our only other option so we didn’t bother with breakfast, we just went down to a convenience store, breathing in the fragrance of horse shit the entire way and passing our waiter from the previous night, a defeated-looking man now hanging out towels. We just hoped for better results than the last time we were in a convenience store and we didn’t do too badly, just a couple of average cups of coffee and I grabbed a Hunter’s Reserve Roadkill meat stick. It may sound like a bad double entendre and due to the word “roadkill” being a registered trademark, I have my doubts that it did contain any actual roadkill, however, “meat from feral swine” was one of the listed ingredients. Anyway, I ate the roadkill stick and stuck the wrapper in my pocket, because there were no bins around. We did one last look around, taking in the covered wagons and teepees around Heart Six Ranch and was surprised to see that they were actually quite modern on the inside, almost to the extent of our room, except for the fact that the people staying in them needed to use a communal toilet, something that is kind of a dealbreaker for Anna and I. A better look around the ranch in the light of day:

This doesn’t just apply to cowboys, there is crap EVERYWHERE!

The wagon accommodation

That’s where the smell is coming from

Some of the teepees

I don’t think it would be big enough in one of those for the both of us

So long, poop ranch

About to gnaw on some “Roadkill”

Before long we were back in the car, bound for the world famous Yellowstone National Park (no, not Jellystone):

Yellowstone National Park is an American national park located in Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho. It was established by the U.S. Congress and signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant on March 1, 1872. Yellowstone was the first national park in the U.S. and is also widely held to be the first national park in the world. The park is known for its wildlife and its many geothermal features, especially Old Faithful geyser, one of its most popular features. It has many types of ecosystems, but the subalpine forest is the most abundant. It is part of the South Central Rockies forests ecoregion.

Yellowstone National Park spans an area of 3,468.4 square miles (8,983 km2), comprising lakes, canyons, rivers and mountain ranges. Yellowstone Lake is one of the largest high-elevation lakes in North America and is centered over the Yellowstone Caldera, the largest supervolcano on the continent. The caldera is considered an active volcano. It has erupted with tremendous force several times in the last two million years. Half of the world’s geysers and hydrothermal features are in Yellowstone, fueled by this ongoing volcanism. Lava flows and rocks from volcanic eruptions cover most of the land area of Yellowstone.

Hundreds of species of mammals, birds, fish, and reptiles have been documented, including several that are either endangered or threatened. The vast forests and grasslands also include unique species of plants. Yellowstone Park is the largest and most famous megafauna location in the contiguous United States. Grizzly bears, wolves, and free-ranging herds of bison and elk live in this park. The Yellowstone Park bison herd is the oldest and largest public bison herd in the United States.

That all sounds pretty cool and if you took the time to read that Yellowstone background information, you would have seen that it mentioned a geyser called Old Faithful, the eruption of which we wanted to witness that day:

Old Faithful is a cone geyser located in Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, United States. It is a highly predictable geothermal feature, and has erupted every 44 to 125 minutes since 2000.

Eruptions can shoot 3,700 to 8,400 US gallons (14,000 to 32,000 L) of boiling water to a height of 106 to 185 feet (32 to 56 m) lasting from 11⁄2 to 5 minutes. The average height of an eruption is 145 feet (44 m).

The time between eruptions has a bimodal distribution, with the mean interval being either 65 or 91 minutes, and is dependent on the length of the prior eruption. Within a margin of error of ±10 minutes, Old Faithful will erupt either 65 minutes after an eruption lasting less than 21⁄2 minutes, or 91 minutes after an eruption lasting more than 21⁄2 minutes.

The drive to Yellowstone took us through some gorgeous scenery, bringing us within six miles (10 km) of the Idaho state line, through mountains and alongside rivers until we were finally where we needed to be. Old Faithful wasn’t due to erupt for another 30 minutes or so when we arrived, but remember there is a ±10 minute margin of error, meaning it could be anywhere between 20 and 40 minutes. We had a look around the stores nearby, used the bathroom and grabbed a drink, then we went outside and pulled up a seat on the wooden, colosseum-like benches and waited for the show to begin:

Anna killing time

A lot of people show up to see this thing erupt

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Once the geyser had finished doing its thing the bulk of people watching began applauding for some reason, however, a lot of people here do that when their plane lands as well and you know for a fact that that pilot has successfully landed every single flight he’s flown. Others complained that the geyser was three minutes early which was kind of amusing, mainly because it doesn’t follow a set schedule, rather people make educated guesses with reasonable accuracy as to when it will erupt and within three minutes is a pretty decent guess.

We then spent the bulk of the day hiking around the grounds, although this left me a little breathless at times, probably a combination of the altitude and the seizure that morning, but we saw some incredible sights. Photos don’t do justice to hydrothermal features so before I post the pictures from around the park, I’ll add some more videos of individual ones we came across:

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Anna and a pool

Me on a pathway

A closeup of the pool

Looking over the general vicinity

Another closeup

Something erupting

Overlooking some of the pathways

That’s a really bright flower!

Once we were done in Yellowstone National Park it was time to start driving toward the state of Montana, our home for the next couple of nights, and twice along the way we saw a bunch of cars pulled over to the side and people staring out at something. As I mentioned, that means there is something worth seeing and we wouldn’t be disappointed on either occasion.

First we would be stopping by one of the numerous geyser basins that follow Firehole River to see yet more hydrothermal spots. This area was crowded and the features there were incredible yet again. On this occasion I had a middle-aged guy with a big beard start laughing at my “Let’s Summon Demons” t-shirt, asking his 14-year-old daughter over to admire it. As it would turn out, she and a group of friends had recently got in a bit of trouble with both teachers and police for conducting satanic rituals and dad was more than proud, both him and his daughter wanting to find where they could get the shirt as well. Ultimately just settling for a picture with me.

We ended up stopping further along the river, this time to stop and watch and entire herd of elk that were making their way upstream. At this point we hadn’t seen a whole lot of wildlife so it was a sight for us to behold:

At the geyser basin

Flowing into the river

This shirt got me a bit of love

A panoramic shot of the area

Another part upriver

Just a small portion of the elk from a distance

Some of them feeding

The next stop would be our last one for the day, we would be traveling to Bar N Ranch, but we wouldn’t be staying in their regular accommodation, not by a long shot. From Memorial Day to Labor Day, or May 23 until September 8, when there isn’t too much snow, the ranch opens Under Canvas and Anna had booked for us to go glamping in a tent in the middle of nowhere. That’s no typo, for those unaware of the term, “glamping” is a conjunction of “Glamorous Camping.” I mentioned earlier that Anna doesn’t tend to like roughing it and despite the fact we were going to be staying a tent, she would by no means be getting in touch with nature. We were going to be staying in a Stargazer tent, described on their website as:

Stargazer

The Stargazer has its own viewing window above the king bed to stargaze at night. The ensuite bathroom in your tent includes a shower, sink and toilet. A wood stove keeps the tent warm at night and a private deck allows you to enjoy the outdoors.

Sleeps up to 4

Private bathroom

Key Features

Superior view with night sky viewing window

King size bed with luxurious linens

Private bathroom complete with shower, sink & flushing toilet

Additional camp cots and bedding can be provided for up to 2 people

Definitely an upgrade from staying in a sleeping bag under a tarpaulin, the type of camping that I was used to. Hell, it turned out our tent even had its own indoor fireplace with a sealed flue going outdoors. We drove down there, but there are a lot of cattle surrounding the entrance due to a cattlegrid stopping them exiting the premises so we couldn’t enter until a woman coaxed all of the cows away from the road. Once down the path we checked in and were chauffeur-driven in a golf cart, along with our luggage, to our super-luxurious tent and this wasn’t like anything I was expecting. We got everything arranged, then went to the main area of Bar N Ranch to have dinner, which turned out to be a great meal, and then it was back to our tent. It was a cold night and our shower had hot water, but it took a little while to kick in. Also, the only way to keep the hot water running was to be continually pulling down on a handle, otherwise it it would just cut off, leaving you standing there naked and wet on a freezing night. Anna discovered the best approach was to put soap on the sponge and toothpaste on the brush before getting in, that way you never had to release your grip on that handle. While I was in the shower, she also thought she had found some biscuits on the fireplace, but wasn’t really hungry — It was a good thing, because they turned out to be firelighters. I was pretty tired by the time I got into bed, our tent had a clear panel above the pillow area so I put on an eye-mask and we both went to sleep. This is where we would be spending the next two nights:

Waiting for the cattle to move

Anna out the front of Bar N Ranch

The view from our tent

Inside the restaurant

Another area of the restaurant

…and another

Glamp Montana

Inside our tent

Looking toward the bathroom

Anna ready for bed

Our shower

Pretty luxurious for a tent

Another part of the bathroom

Anna’s biscuits

Friday, July 12, 2019 Anna was already awake and reading by the time I awoke, which was still quite early. She hadn’t worn her eye-mask to sleep so she woke as soon as the sun rose over the clear panel above us in our tent, but no mask could block out the glare, waking me not long after and helping me avoid getting sunburnt. Factor in the jet-lag that was still affecting us and it becomes clear we yet again weren’t really destined for a long sleep.

The plan for the day was to do a little backtracking from Montana into Wyoming to Gallatin National Forest, an area near where we were the previous day, first stopping off at Gibbon Falls and then making our way down into the Mammoth Hot Springs area of Yellowstone National Park for some hiking, hopefully encountering something a little bigger than an elk this time. Before we left we took a look around where we were staying, this time in the broad daylight, me realising as we were walking that the previous day I hadn’t discarded of the wrapper of my roadkill jerky, instead just stuffing it in my pocket. This wasn’t a particularly bright move because, although we were hoping to see some bears from a reasonable distance, I didn’t want the smell of meat attracting any to me directly. I’ve never even really been in a fight before so I don’t like my chances of fending off a grizzly bear, I’d more than likely just instinctively play dead. Probably should pop that wrapper in a bin. The place where we were staying felt bad about some of the food we had been served in the area so far so they allowed us to buy packed lunches from their really good restaurant and we were off. We drove down to Gibbon Falls, a waterfall currently with a drop of approximately 84 feet (26 m) and constantly growing as it erodes the rock below, and we noticed what we had seen time and time again not only the day before, but had also noticed on several previous trips spent exploring the outdoors — That a lot of women traveling from a country that shares its name with the material from which fine teacups and saucers are made choose fashion over function. We particularly noticed it in Turkey where these women would be walking around caves and other geological features wearing high end dresses and heels when hiking attire is far more appropriate, preventing injuries and allowing you to access more areas. Now a lot of them had been wandering around Yellowstone, some even rocking a pair of stilettos, and we hadn’t seen the last of them. Anyway, Gibbon Falls was really nice, here’s a look at our morning up until that point:

Anna waiting outside our tent

Some of the other tents in Under Canvas

An area for outdoor dining

Not the worst heels we saw, but still not appropriate outdoors footware

Gibbon Falls from the side

Looking over the falls

Gibbon Falls from the front

Next we were going to make our way to a kind of unnamed town in the Mammoth Hot Springs Historic District, first to eat our packed lunches, then to go to the Horace Albright Visitor Center to get us some information about where we could go hiking and potentially see some big furry things. A little more about the Mammoth Hot Springs Historic District, an area that looks a hell of a lot like a town, operates like a town, but apparently isn’t a town:

The Mammoth Hot Springs Historic District in Yellowstone National Park comprises the administrative center for the park. It is composed of two major parts: Fort Yellowstone, the military administrative center between 1886-1918, and now a National Historic Landmark, and a concessions district which provides food, shopping, services, and lodging for park visitors and employees.

Fort Yellowstone is a carefully ordered district of substantial buildings that clearly indicate their military origins. The U.S. Army administered the park from 1886 to 1918 when administration was transferred to National Park Service. The park headquarters is now housed in the original double cavalry barracks (constructed in 1909). The Horace Albright Visitor Center is located in the old bachelors’ officers quarters (constructed in 1909).

The concessions district contrasts with the military district, with a less formal arrangement and style and includes the Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel and Dining Room, a gas station, and retail stores. The Yellowstone Main Post Office, itself on the National Register of Historic Places sits just north of Fort Yellowstone. The residential area includes houses designed by architect Robert Reamer.

So despite having a residential area, retail stores, and even a post office, it still doesn’t qualify as a town, just a “Concessions District.” That explains why I was so confused trying to figure out the location when I first started writing this part of this post, even the locations on the photos I took aren’t accurate.

Anyway, as we were driving into the town concessions district our path to the main parking area was obstructed by a couple of deer making their way across in front of us, which was not a bad start. We ate our packed lunches from Under Canvas then, as we were making our way to the Visitor Center we had to walk pass the town concessions district square, a patch of grass between the two main streets that was teeming with female elk, all just hanging around, some laying down, others eating. I took some pictures, but as I went in to get a slightly closer shot I was accosted by a park ranger. “You must remain 25 yards or 22.8 metres away from all wildlife at all times!” he screamed in a well-rehearsed fashion, but you would think that if it were really that important they would put up at least one sign in the town concessions district. In fact, the only place it was even mentioned was on a flyer from the Visitor Center, however, you needed to walk past the animals to get the flyer. Once in the Visitor Center we stocked up on some supplies such as sunblock and insect repellent as the mosquitoes and horseflies in this area are awful! Anna wondered whether we should get some bear spray, but to me it all seemed like a bit of a scam; the stuff is US$50.00 (currently about AU$72.50) per can and we hadn’t even seen any bears! It was also possible to rent bear spray from some places, but the stuff doesn’t act as a repellent, more like a form of mace for use on bears, and I figured if a grizzly bear was intent on attacking you, spraying mace in its face would only piss it off more so we opted against it.

We got ourselves some maps and were soon on our way, hiking on an uphill path, walking for about 15 minutes when we were approached by an excited looking tourist from New Zealand and her two young children coming the opposite direction. She told us that just a bit further up the hill was a female grizzly bear with two young cubs and it was a bit angry, scaring her kids. We asked her if she thought it was safe for us to continue and she replied, “Oh, sure, you’ll be fine as long as you have your bear spray.” Shit. We walked back down into the town concessions district, forked out the US$50.00 and got us some bear spray.

Take two. We started to make our way uphill again, this time equipped with our bear spray in a hip holster, a liquid with its ingredients listed as 2% capsaicin and 98% “Other ingredients”. This stuff must be pretty strong, possibly even working on the power of suggestion, because after over an hour of anticipating encountering a defensive grizzly bear and its cubs we came to the conclusion that there were now three possibilities:

The bears were substantially further away than the woman had led us to believe,

The bears were gone, or

The woman was working for the bear spray company

I even began to wish I had now kept the Roadkill wrapper in my pocket in the hopes of attracting one. Still, we kept going, hiking for about five hours, covering over 15 km (9.3 miles) of rugged terrain, getting caught in the rain and mauled by mosquitoes, just to see a couple of does, which quite possibly could’ve been the same one multiple times, one male deer, plus a couple of squirrels here and there. As our hike continued, I became more and more annoyed at how anticlimactic it had been; I was now exhausted, wet, and extremely itchy, yet we had seen hardly anything, encountering not only more wildlife, but cooler-looking animals in the town concessions district! We stopped off briefly to have a look at the Mammoth Hot Springs and then decided to head back. To add insult to injury, there was a female elk sitting right next to our car, but screw that 25 yard rule, I wasn’t in the mood to let this thing stop me from getting in our car. If I needed to be 25 yards away from the wildlife, it could do its part on this occasion and move away from me. Some scenes from the town concessions district centre and the little we saw on a disappointing, albeit trying, hike:

Parking the car

Interesting name

The centre of the “Concessions District”

A closeup of some elk

Looking over the concessions district as we begin our hike

Heading back to the store

Now equipped with bear spray

Seems like there’s some around

It’s all good, I’ve got bear spray

2% capsaicin, 98% other ingredients

Safety first

How to use our spray

A small portion of the area we hiked

A doe we saw

Possibly the same doe later

Mammoth Hot Springs

A nearby deer

Mammoth Hot Springs from a distance

She can get 25 yards away from me

That night we went into a real town, West Yellowstone, Montana for dinner with the intent of eating a bison or bear steak out of spite, because we sure didn’t encounter any on our hike. Instead, we settled for a ribeye and some damn good devilled eggs, all of which we shared between us, and then we headed back to our tent for a final night before moving on to the next stop.

Initially I was going to try and tell the story of this trip in two parts, but it turns out I will need a third and final post in order to tell it properly. Where would we be staying next? Would we encounter any wildlife worth writing about? And would I have to wear that hideous cowboy shirt again to a rodeo? Stay tuned for the conclusion of our journey through cowboy country!

Embarking on the vacation leg of our trip through Wyoming and Montana When I finished my previous post we had wrapped up the Midwest Ocular Angiography Conference at the Four Seasons Resort and Residences in Jackson, Wyoming the previous night and were just about to begin the holiday leg of our trip through the Pacific Northwest of the USA.

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progressivemillennial · 5 years

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MAGA Hat Teens and Perspective: A Final Thought

I agree with people who have said that the reaction to the MAGA teens incident at the Lincoln Memorial was overblown. Too often, cable media loses perspective and lacks any sort of historical perpsective or nuance. They are also prone to sensationalism, speculation, and hyperbole. I agree, too, that talk about a racist-tomahawk-chop-school-chant leveled at a handful of indgenous folks--while important to note--distracts us from greater injustices.

At this point in the discussion, I've seen others direct the conversation to the Covington Catholic students. And it's true that the teens were exposed to verbal abuse and harassment and that some people called for physical violence against them. I do not support any of that, and I do not mean to trivialize threats of any kind. These high schoolers should not be threatened for their ignorance and/or racism and/or youthful stupidity and/or testosterone.

If the conversation about injustice stops, though, at a bunch of mostly white high schoolers donning support for a sitting president, who come from a mostly white private high school on an out-of-state trip to D.C., how depthful is this discussion about perspective and injustice? Young, white, Christian males who appear to hail from the middle class have had it pretty good in this country. Coming to their support is not some amazing defense of the downtrodden or a brave gesture of advocacy in the name of justice. These teens have been given a platform throughout the media, they have been shown public support from the White House, many writers and pundits at well-funded media outlets have rallied to them, and they have become celebrated victims in the latest round of the culture wars. Their voices and stories will be neither ignored nor forgotten.

So, in the spirit of addressing injustice and perspective-seeking, let's consider a group of people who are associated with this incident who have been ignored and forgotten and who have faced centuries of violence at the hands of, fittingly enough, white males.

I am, of course, speaking about American Indians. We could start with massacres like the one at Bear River and Sand Creek, the Trail of Tears, the murder of Sitting Bull, the purposeful spread of measles to weaken or extermimate native communities, repeated attempts at forced assimilation, and the kidnapping of indigenous children. This is, to be clear, a woefully incomplete list.

At a time when proposing to remove Mr. Trail of Tears himself, Andrew Jackson, from the 20 dollar bill sparks outrage, when American Indian youth are three times more likely to commit suicide than their white American counterparts, when President Obama could barely lift a finger to support the protests at Standing Rock while the media largely neglected them, when it's known that the American government has sterilized thousands of Native American women in the past 40 years, we have no shortage of injustice to discuss.

But why stop there, even?

Let's go a step further and talk about financial and land reparations for all American Indians. I don't think it takes a geographer to conclude that Native Americans have had over 99.99% of their land and resources taken from them while being forced to relocate to less desirable lands. White settlers, colonists, and the federal government committed genocide in America, and we have yet to come to terms with that dark reality. Instead, we collectively ignore it or, worse, forget it, or--worst--justify it.

On top of reparations, President Trump should issue an apology to all indigenous peoples in America, too. The fact that many American Indians not only persist but even thrive within America's borders today in spite of centuries of ethnic cleansing and historical erasure should not just be acknowledged but rewarded. What better way to Make America Great than to honor and reimburse the survivors of literal hunger games?

Let's truly look at the situation in full perspective and do what no previous generation did in this country: seek reconciliation and reparation with our country's indigenous people. We owe them. Literally.

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wardoftheedgeloaves · 5 years

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BLATERATIO SIOVANA (I)

In the year 1500 or so, prior to European contact, the Siouan languages were spoken over a very wide range of North America east of the Rocky Mountains. Wikipedia gives the following map, which is a faithful reproduction of Ives Goddard’s map from Handbook of North American Indians Vol. 17: Languages.

The map itself is a massive, and gorgeous, wallpiece, with different language families marked in different colors and separated into the individual languages, but they’re not shown here.

When we think of Siouan, we generally think of the Lakota/Dakota/Nakoda Sioux, or perhaps the Osage, who live in the modern era on the Great Plains. It therefore comes as something of a surprise to learn that Siouan is actually an Eastern family, not a Plains one. The Proto-Siouan Urheimat was probably in the Kentucky-West Virginia area; Catawba, its closest relative, was spoken in upstate South Carolina until the early 20th century; and we know that most of the Siouan languages spoken on the Plains got there relatively recently as white expansion pushed Native tribes westward. (For example, when we first meet the Dakota, in the 17th century, they live in the Chicago area--not South Dakota).

I don’t have a scan of the full map, but if you look at the map you’ll find that we have a pretty good idea of who lived where when they were contacted by Europeans in most of the continent (though that’s, of course, not always the same date everywhere, so the map doesn’t represent the linguistic situation at any given point of time. In the Southeast, however, there are vast swaths of “unknown”. We have a suspicion, for example, that the Carolinas were one of the most linguistically diverse areas in the world before contact. But what’s left? Cherokee, Tuscarora, Catawba (no longer around, but documented), a few words of Pamlico (Carolina Algonquian) and Woccon (a close relative of Catawba), and a couple words of Saponi. That’s it, for an area that probably had at least twenty languages split across several families if not thirty.

Obviously this lack of data speaks to countless humanitarian atrocities, but for the linguist, and especially the Siouanist, it presents another, though obviously less serious, problem. Our suspicions are that the majority of Siouan’s diversity resided in the Southeast at contact, but it’s all gone and nobody wrote it down, barring a lucky manuscript finding. And we don’t really have earlier stages of Siouan to check either. It’s rather as if we were trying to reconstruct Indo-European, but only possessed Romance, modern Irish and Welsh, Slavic and maybe Armenian or a modern Germanic language. (Luckily, Proto-Siouan is not as old as PIE, but, well, PIE is not really that old, either; if break-up was 4000-3500 BC, our earliest attestations of Hittite are 1500 BC, so we’re in the dark for only about two to two and a half thousand years.)

The following MSPaint diagram gives a relatively decent overview of the...current consensus regarding the internal divisions of Siouan.

Catawba (spoken in upstate South Carolina until the 1940s or ‘50s) and Woccon (attested in a badly-written wordlist from the 17th century) represent a single subfamily that play the Anatolian to the rest of Siouan’s Latin/Greek/Sanskrit/Slavic/Baltic. This much is for certain. Catawba is well-documented, but unfortunately the High Priest of Catawba passed away unexpectedly just before his three-volume magnum opus was set to be published, which magnum opus now lingers in an archive in Philadelphia. So it goes.

Core Siouan (we could also just call this Siouan and call Siouan + Catawba Siouan-Catawba, but we’ll use the term Core Siouan) breaks up into four main branches (most of this is taken from Rory Larson’s 2016 article):

-Ohio Valley (or Southeastern Siouan). There are three decently-documented members of this branch (Biloxi, Ofo and Tutelo) and one attested by two words (Saponi, which must have been very close to Tutelo). There are only a couple of known shared sound changes that characterize Ohio Valley; one is the merger of the original Proto-Siouan glottalized fricatives *sˀ *šˀ *xˀ to their unglottalized counterparts, and another may have been the fortition of (the now merged, from *š and *šˀ) *š to /č/, but there were perhaps exceptions here.

Ohio Valley then splits into Tutelo-Saponi (fairly conservative barring a possible merger of *s and some instances of *š that didn’t change to /č/) and Ofo-Biloxi (characterized by a shared loss of word-initial *w and *h before a vowel).

Were there more members of Ohio Valley? Almost certainly. We know Ohio Valley was fairly conservative, but it’s not that well-documented--only Biloxi really got the full treatment; we have large gaps in our understanding of the morphology of the others. There may have been other Ohio Valleys; if we had them we’d know a heck of a lot more about Proto-Siouan. Unfortunately, we don’t.

--Crow-Hidatsa (also known as Missouri Valley)--wouldn’t Corvic be a snappier name? if we’re going to go down that route then the Meskwaki-Sauk-Kickapoo group of Algonquian should be Vulpic, but the Meskwaki generally prefer not being called the Fox anymore--seems to be strangely conservative and yet highly innovtive. Its two members, Crow and Hidatsa, split off from each other very recently. Corvic is characterized by a number of very unusual proposed changes, such as a metathesis change whereby the first two vowels of a word swap, *CV₁CV₂ > CV₂CV₁. Crow-Hidatsa (and Mandan) also undid “Carter’s Law.” This is worthy of a bit more discussion.

Proto-Siouan, you see, had a strong second-syllable stress rule. I have a suspicion that this probably got passed along to Great Lakes-area Algonquian--cf. Nishnaabemwin’s syncope rule [e.g. standard Ojibwe makkwa ‘bear’ > Nishnaabemwin mkkwa], or the second-syllable vowel-lengthening rule in Menominee [e.g. *aθemwa > anɛ:m]--Northern Algonquian is reported to have a strong first-syllable stress rule and, as this is also found in Arapaho (I think?) and maybe elsewhere, this is thought to be original, at least by Ives Goddard (p.c.). In any case, when a pre-Proto-Siouan stop *p *t or *k formed the onset of the second syllable of a word, it got preaspirated. There are surely Catawba cognates that can attest to this, but the point is that we basically only ever see preaspirates in second syllables. (This is somewhat obscured by the fact that the vowels of word-initial syllables often drops in the daughters, yielding clusters or, if there was no onset consonant, nothing at all)

But Mandan and Corvic appear to have undone Carter’s Law. This, combined with their odd-man-out nature (it’s just not really clear at all how they fit into things--Mandan may or may not be a wayward member of Mississippi Valley, but I think the consensus these days is “separate branch”--I need to send another email or two), suggests to me that maybe Carter’s Law wasn’t a Proto-Siouan rule at all and may have developed a bit later on, affecting Mississippi Valley and Ohio Valley but skipping Corvic and Mandan, so that no sound change needs to be proposed for those branches at all. Corvic and Mandan also have a change whereby *y and *r merge as /r/. This change is also found in Hocąk, so it might have been areal. (C.f. the change of *y to /čʰ/, which is found in Dakotan and...Ofo, spoken in Mississippi and Louisiana.)

(then again that could also be areal, since we first meet the Ofo in the Cincinnati area by the name of the Mosopelea, and that’s not that far from the Dakota who, as we’ve seen, were in Illinois at first contact)

I don’t think anybody’s tried to a study in shared lexical innovation in Siouan, but somebody should (maybe me), because there’s a lot of weird lexical innovation in Siouan and it would probably clear up questions like “what’s going on with Mandan?” A major source of this lexical innovation--and a major reason for Siouan being so frickin’ difficult to reconstruct--is the fact that Proto-Siouan had a lot of derivational prefixes, that a lot of basic lexical items ended up with different derivational prefixes in different daughters, and that because these derivational prefixes were now word-initial their vowels usually dropped and formed difficult-to-untangle clusters. (Doesn’t comparative Sino-Tibetan suffer from similar issues?)

Mandan, as noted, probably forms its own branch. It is most notable for having undergone a “swap” shift whereby PS *š becomes /s/ and *s becomes /š/.

Mississippi Valley forms the core of attested Siouan. It has three branches: Dakotan, Hongan (the Chiwere-Winnebago/Hocąk-Ioway-Oto group), and Dhegiha (Osage, Omaha-Ponca, etc.).

Mississippi Valley Siouan is characterized by the development of a very large number of onset clusters, but no coda consonants (except in a couple of daughters that deleted final vowels). Except for the preaspirates /hp ht hk/, their provenance is shakily understood other than that most of them seem to derive from initial-syllable syncope. E.g, if you attach the 1sg prefix *wa- onto a verb stem in h-, you get *wăh-, then *wh-, and then fortition of the *w to /p/, giving a postaspirate *pʰ.

Within Mississippi Valley Siouan we have some evidence that Dhegiha and Hongan form a subgroup (Dhegihongan?). I pushed a friend of mine into writing a term paper on this, possibly for reasons of selfish curiosity. The main phonological isogloss is the merger of *wR with *R (where *R is “funny *r,” a sound that appears to have been *r but which shows unusual reflexes)--Dakotan merges *wR with *wr. There’s also a debuccalization of *p to /h/ before *t, and an innovated 1pl inclusive patient prefix *wa-.

This is already getting to be rather long, so I think I’ll cut it here and go further in-depth into phonology in Part II...

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eng2100 · 5 years

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blog 04 - avatar (the one with the blue people not the last airbender)

preface

I went into this with absolutely no feelings about this movie beyond the absurdity of how many sequels it’s apparently going to get. As an artist, I find the visual effects extremely impressive even to this day, but as a storyteller, I thought this story was almost so inoffensive that it’s offensive.

However, I think that engaging with things in good faith is a good way to find ways to expand your horizons and thoughts, and I like to enjoy things despite my dad’s insistence that I like to not enjoy things. (It’s not that I like to not like things, it’s that it’s easier to entertain people when it’s a bad review. Tough crowd.) I’m a firm believer in the idea that cerebral analysis of media adds to the joy of consumption rather than takes away from it, so let’s dive right in.

I like structure, so we’re gonna layer it like a delicious theme cake.

1. the elephant in the room

Everyone has seen Pocohontas. Everyone has seen Dancing With Wolves. I’m not really here to rehash arguments, but I think getting into this movie without addressing what first comes to everyone’s mind when they think about it is pretty much impossible. The “White Savior” trope is more or less a narrative cliche in which a noble white person will take a stand against the Bad White People on the side of a sympathetic oppressed people-- Native Americans see this plotline probably the most, but black people still see it today every now and then (Green Book got nominated for a lot of Oscars, after all. The hunger is there for easily digestible feel-good race relation drama.) Wikipedia sums up the White Savior trope better than I could, so here it is:

“At the cinema, the white savior narrative occupies a psychological niche for most white people, as an expression of their latent desire for interracial goodwill and reconciliation. By presenting stories of racial redemption, involving black people and white people professing to reach across racial barriers, Hollywood is catering to a mostly white audience who believe themselves unfairly victimized by non-white ethnic groups, because they are culturally exhausted with the unfinished national discourse about race and ethnicity in the society of the United States. Hence, films featuring the narrative trope of the white savior have notably similar storylines, which present an ostensibly nobler approach to race relations, but offer psychological refuge and escapism for white Americans seeking to avoid substantive conversations about race, racism, and racial identity. In this way, the narrative trope of the white savior is an important cultural artifact, a device to realize the desire to repair the social and cultural damage wrought by the myths of white supremacy and paternalism, regardless of the inherently racist overtones of the white-savior narrative trope.“

Native Americans factor into this most significantly in the case of Avatar-- aliens in movies are hardly ever just aliens. Whether they represent an oppressed underclass (District 9), childhood innocence (E.T.), or fear of foreign invasion (War of the Worlds), aliens are an easy vessel to carry almost any idea you want them to. So if the Na’vi are more or less an ideological stand-in for Native Americans during the conquest of America, our protagonist Jake is the future space cowboy to the Cowboys and Indians In Space.

Both Jake and Grace sort of fall in and out of the White Savior space-- ultimately Grace condescends to the Na’vi a little more and she has a more complete character arc that ends with her transcending this trope, but Jake is whole hog in it. He’s like, the legendary prophecy warrior. He’s The Guy.

(Pictured above: The Guy)

James Cameron grapples pretty hard with the White Savior trope-- he never truly goes one way or another about it and the concept of Avatars-- as in the Na’vi bodies that Jake and company jump into-- significantly...well, complicates the idea of race relations in this movie. There are certainly some uncomfortable ideas about identity wrapped up in the concept of body swaps (if this idea interests you, Altered Carbon is a really good read), but re: the readings and lectures, the concept kind of works towards what is ultimately the broad takeaway of the movie.

In summary: no, we’re not doing this whole review about White Guilt in Space. Now that that’s out of the way...

2. james cameron predicted late stage capitalism

Imperialism

"The policy of extending the rule or authority of an empire or nation over foreign countries or of acquiring and holding colonies and dependencies."

Avatar is about imperialism. This is as broad and pointed a theme as you can get from a movie that draws such heavy inspiration from Native American and Aboriginal cultures. Interestingly enough, the movie’s futuristic setting goes hand in hand with the commentary about the military and Western Imperialism.

The company in Avatar, and all the almost comedically evil military men, are very brazen about their lack of ideological purpose. They are on Pandora for money. They are being paid to go to Pandora to take its resources-- the delightfully named “Unobtanium” in specific. As mentioned in the reading, Unobtanium is valuable for its properties as a superconductor, and I’m not a STEM kid, so I’ll leave it at that for simplicity’s sake.

That the mercenary force on Pandora is so open about their exploitative intentions draws an interesting parallel to the world of today that’s maybe a touch haunting, considering that Avatar came out some years ago. In politics, at least up until now, you notice the use of a few common euphemisms as smokescreens for more extreme ideas-- for example, the Right’s: “protecting American jobs”.

Protecting American jobs is a euphemism for racism against Mexicans-- it was the most common smokescreen reasoning for the border wall pre-Trumpian politics. Trump and company have since dropped the euphemism all together. The death of a euphemism usually means that the euphemism is no longer culturally or socially required-- you can just come out and say whatever horrible thing you mean. In Avatar’s universe, it’s clear that the political-economic climate has come to a point where they can just say that they’re there to steal the Na’vi’s resources whether they like it or not.

The movie and the lecture both draw specific attention to the parallels the film draws explicitly between military tactics used in the movie, and real-world events. “Shock and Awe”, a tactic coined by the Bush era, is referenced in exact terms-- it being a display of overwhelming force intended to break the fighting spirit of the enemy. The commander character whose name I just read but I can’t remember now says that he is a veteran of both Venezuela and Nigeria-- both real world locations in which the U.S. has invaded and destabilized for material interests under the guise of American ideology.

In Avatar, we see the thin veneer of “freedom and democracy” as the driving forces of U.S. intervention stripped away explicitly. The opening narration of Jake’s arrival to Pandora has him say that “on Earth, these men were soldiers fighting for freedom...but here, they’re mercenaries”, however, the line between a supposed freedom fighter and a mercenary is borderline nonexistent.

3. western scientific objectivism sucks

Another current running through Avatar is the juxtaposition of what is “real” with what is “unreal-- aka Western objectivity science versus belief systems. This is embodied in the character of Grace, a scientist and anthropologist who has been researching Na’vi culture for some time. The reading characterizes her as “the happy face of liberalism” that tries to put a nice coat of paint over the same imperialist ideas that the more blunt military types embody-- she is kinder to the Na’vi and sees their culture and planet as worth preserving, but she is ultimately dismissive of their beliefs and of Eywa (”pagan voodoo”) the same as the other mercenaries.

We’re gonna put on tinfoil hats for a little bit here to make a relation between Western culture (imperialism and colonialism) and capitalism and paganism. Are you ready?

Okay.

So you know how they burned witches at the stake at the onset of the Industrial Age in America and the pagan practices of “hedge magic” were pretty much obliterated? I don’t think that’s a coincidence. Capitalism is a system that can only operate materialistically-- people aren’t “people” but “workers”, and the concept of magic and belief exists in terms that capitalism can’t define, and more importantly, can’t exploit. So witches were burned and women were placed with great reinforcement back into domesticity, where their function in capitalism was to give birth to and rear new workers.

You can see this dichotomy between the science of objectivity (what is “real”) and belief systems (what is “unprovable”, “unobservable”) in the way Grace uses scientific terms to justify the Na’vi’s spirituality. A very powerful through-line can be seen in the way that imperialism, capitalism, materialism, and objective science intersect. Their interconnected natural collective consciousness is like the raw function of a brain to her, likened to a network. It isn’t until Grace is mortally wounded and experiences the Na’vi’s healing ceremony that she is able to transcend the capitalistic, materialistic terms for definition for Eywa to have a spiritual experience, and to become one with Eywa herself (”she’s real.”)

In a plot that hinges on the material (Unobtainium) interests of a capitalist mercenary force, the ultimate refutation of this is the Na’vi’s spiritual values.

4. avatar: endgame

So what is this all working towards? Well, the idea of an interconnected spirituality like Eywa. The idea takes root in geomantic ideas, more commonly known as “feng shui”-- it’s sort of the concept of an earthly energy, a flow that moves through and connects the Earth and its people and creatures. The strange braid cord things that allow the Na’vi to interface with certain points and other creatures is a very straightforward metaphor for that concept of feng shui and geomancy.

Here we come back around to the concept of Jake as the White Savior/chosen one/The Guy. It’s kind of obtuse, but the general theory is that Eywa chose Jake as a sign that all peoples must needs transcend their boundaries and become one with the larger concept that Eywa represents. This of course comes packaged with an urgent environmental message-- our life is that of the planet, and to exploit and sacrifice one is to sacrifice the other.

Pandora, Eywa, and the Na’vi represent the polar opposite of everything that capitalist imperialism is. Thus, James Cameron, ironically, used a huge budget Hollywood endeavor to refute everything that Hollywood is. Now he’s making Alita: Battle Angel.

Funny how that works. Oh, I made myself sad.

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makochosena · 6 years

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Writing Chicago

okay, so i saw this reference post a long time ago that was all about new york city to help people who write about it but don’t really know about it. and i haven’t seen one about chicago, my home city, so i thought i’d make one!!

you are allowed to like this, reblog this, etc. this is for everyone to use as a reference!! i might add more information if i missed something!! if you think something is wrong or should be changed, please let me know!! this is just some general knowledge you should have about chicago from a native that you can’t really get from wikipedia. i hope you find this useful!

Linguistics

No, we do not talk like Mike Ditka. At all.

Soda is called pop.

People say “you guys.” “Y’all” is used more in southern Illinois.

Chicagoland area = Chicago + the surrounding suburbs + Northwest Indiana

The Lake Effect: a term often used, especially on the weather report. This term describes the effects the lake, Lake Michigan, have on the weather. Basically, it keeps it cool during the summer and warmer during the winter. But it’s not like you notice it in the winter because temperatures easily remain under 20 degrees from November to April.

Chicagoans will always and forever call the Willis Tower the Sears Tower. If you hear somebody say that, they either work there or they’re not from around there. And if you say it to somebody from Chicago, you’re going to get a funny look.

“The Lake” = Lake Michigan. Referenced often.

While this may not come up in writing, we say caramel like “car-mel” not “car-a-mel.”

When people say “the city,” they mean Chicago. You often hear this in the suburbs.

CTA = Chicago Transit Authority. It is comprised of train lines and bus lines.

Transportation

Sometimes you might hear something called the “skyway.” It’s Interstate 90 and it connects Chicago to Indiana. What’s noticeable about it is that it’s this giant, tollway on a giant bridge over the Calumet River. And there’s a McDonald’s right smack dab in the middle of it.

O’Hare is one of the biggest airports in the country and pretty much the primary airport of Chicago. However, there is also Chicago Midway International Airport (just called Midway). O’Hare is in northwest Chicago and Midway is closer to the Loop and Chicago’s south side.

Chicago does not have a “subway system.” Like, trains that run underground. Instead, Chicago’s subway is above ground and goes above traffic. It’s called the “L” which is short for elevated. There are 8 lines, each one named by color (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, brown, and pink). The Red Line is the longest one, going from north to south. And it is the only one that does actually go underground in downtown Chicago. Nobody uses the Yellow Line because it only goes from Northern Chicago to Skokie, one of the northwest suburbs of Chicago. People who use the Yellow Line are commuters between Chicago and Skokie. The only other Line that goes outside of Chicago is the Purple Line, which goes to Wilmett and Evanston, two suburbs literally right outside of Chicago.

The Loop is Chicago’s downtown. It’s called the loop because majority of the CTA lines have stations that circle around the downtown. So it’s called the loop because of it. People say “the Loop” when they’re talking about downtown or taking the CTA. Some lines of the CTA only circle the loop.

Metra vs. Amtrak. The Metra is a train that connects Chicago to the suburbs. The L is more like a subway that arrives at every station in ten-minute intervals. The Metra is more like a train with more scheduled times. The L takes you around Chicago. The Metra takes you out of it. The Amtrak takes you out of Chicago to the rest of the country. Some stops are in the suburbs. But if you’re taking the Amtrak to the suburbs, chances are, Chicago was not your starting point. You’d be coming from another city, such as Springfield, and stopping in Chicago before going out to the suburbs. The Metra is for commuters.There are two stations for the Metra and Amtrak, Union Station and Ogilvie Transportation Center (OTC), both located a block apart from each other, both in downtown.

You don’t drive in the city. It’s a nightmare. Road rage is everywhere. Most people take the L, the bus, cabs, or Uber. People only drive in the city if they’re coming from outside or going outside of the city.

Here is the CTA map just for shits and giggles.

Weather

It’s so unpredictable. It will be 50 degrees in the morning and snow by 3 pm.

Also, 50 degrees is considered warm in Chicago. People are wearing shorts even at 40 degrees tbh. Also, it is always colder in Chicago than in the suburbs. And the suburbs are colder than central Illinois. You can tell the difference when you are traveling.

Chicago is a very windy city. And there is a big difference in temperature with the wind chill.

Schools will not close, even if there is a foot of snow on the ground and/or it is below zero degrees.

Likewise, it can be extremely hot in Chicago. Like, summers are usually well over 80 degrees. There just is no in-between.

Natural disasters? Uncommon. There are occasional earthquakes that happen like once every other year and they’re usually so little that people just sleep right through them. Tornadoes are the most common, but even those are infrequent and only really occur in rural Illinois.

Attractions

Some popular sites in Chicago, even for natives, are Navy Pier, Millennium Park, Shedd Aquarium, Adler Planetarium, Brookfield Zoo, Sears Tower, Museum of Science and Industry, Field Museum, The Art Institute, Lake Michigan, the Chicago River, and Wrigley Field.

Millennium Park is extremely popular. It’s located inside the loop and every year, there’s a special Christmas tree lighting. People ice skate there all the time in the winter and there’s the Bean. The Bean is officially called the “Cloud Gate” but everybody calls it “the Bean.” It’s this giant, stainless steel sculpture that’s like looking into a mirror. This is prime selfie spot here.

The Field Museum is home of Sue, the most complete T-Rex skeleton in the world. She’s pretty cool. People love swimming in Lake Michigan or going to the beaches, even if it is 50 degrees out. The Polar Plunge is popular. Wrigley Field is kind of a major attraction because of the Cubs but also because it is the second oldest baseball park in America. Except for the giant screens and a brand new bullpen, the field pretty much is the same as when it opened in 1912. You can go to the top of the Sears Tower, to the 110th floor, and go on the “Sky Deck.” There are glass boxes attached to the outside of the building where you can walk on and view the city. It’s the best view in the whole city.

You can also get the world’s largest ice cream sundae at Margie’s Candies, or so they say. I’ve had it, it is absolutely enormous, and it tastes incredible.

Lollapalooza. This is the biggest event in Chicago every single year. It is this giant music festival. It is filled with young adults, drugs, cops, and booze. It’s the Coachella of Chicago. Tickets sell out within hours of going on sale. When I was in high school, people honestly skipped school so they can stay home and buy their Lolla tickets. People do not fuck around when it comes to this.

Population

Very Polish. You see it in the street names.

Very democratic. Illinois is a democratic state because of Chicago’s population. Rural Illinois is way more Republican.

The main ethnic groups of Chicago are Irish, German, Latinx (especially Mexican), Assyrian, Arab, Jewish, English, Black, Korean, Chinese, Filipino, Puerto Rican, Indian, Italian, Cuban, and Polish. The suburbs tend to have a higher population of white people with low populations of people of color.

Sports

It’s a major thing in Chicago. Home of the Bulls (basketball), Bears (football), Blackhawks (hockey), Cubs (baseball), and White Sox (baseball).

The Bulls and the Blackhawks are Chicago’s most successful teams and the most popular.

Everyone is a Bears fan and everyone hates the Bears. They have been extremely unsuccessful the past like 7 seasons. People care a lot about the Bears. Most Bears fans really hate the Green Bay Packers.

The north side of Chicago belongs to the Cubs. The south side belongs to the White Sox. The city is very divided on this one and fans of either team don’t really get along with fans from the other team. However, everyone can agree that the Cubs winning the World Series was amazing. The Cubs have an intense rivalry with the St. Louis Cardinals, and the fans hate the Cardinals like the Bears hate the Packers.

Food

So you’ll mostly find your average food chains around Chicago. McDonald’s, Starbucks, etc. However, Chicago is also known for its Chicago-style hot dogs, Maxwell Street Polishes, and the deep dish pizza. Chicagoans will always tell you that their pizza is better than New York’s.

However, the most popular food chains are local ones: Portillo’s, Giordano’s, Oberweis, Steak ‘n Shake. Portillo’s is famous for their beef (hot dogs, Italian beef, burgers) and their chocolate cake shakes. Portillo’s is Chicago’s In-N-Out Burger. If you are looking for the most Chicago pizza ever, Giordano’s is the place to go. Oberweis sells ice cream, milkshakes, and milk. And Steak ‘n Shake is crazy popular because of their steakburgers, shakes, and for their ridiculously low prices.

Other Notes

Illinois south of Bloomington is like a whole different state. Northern Illinois is dominated by Chicago. Outside of the Chicagoland area, it’s more rural--save for smaller cities like Freeport, Rockford, Springfield, Bloomington, Peoria, Urbana-Champaign--and extremely different. People even talk differently in some places!

The Chicago River is dyed green every St. Patrick’s Day. Like, it is legit green. St. Patrick’s Day is one of the biggest celebrations in Chicago, even if you aren’t Irish. There’s the huge parade and people just like to see a bright green river. People get so lit for this.

Ferris Bueller’s Day off was known as “John Hughes’ love letter to Chicago.” Regardless of your opinions on the plot, characters, actors, director, etc., this film really is all about Chicago and will give you great insight on what it’s like.

Ever since, like 2014-2015ish, Chicago has banned plastic bags. So if you go to the grocery store, chances are, you’ll be charged to use plastic bags or you wil have to bring your own or you will use paper. Depends on the store, really. Here’s a useful wesbite on the ban that tells you what you need to know.

If you have any questions, comments, concerns, feel free to ask me!! Happy writing!!!

#long post for ts #long post tw #reference post #chicago #writing help #[ idk what else to tag this as oops #PLEASE REBLOG THIS #USE THIS ]#OUTOFWATER.#REFERENCE.

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kuskkusk14 · 2 years

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serwis informatyczny dla firm The Benefits of Outsourcing THIS Supports Outsourcing IT moreover transaction sort out happens to be moderately standard and this also acceptance is just not at all scare. You can find loads of benefits hip outsourcing and many everyone is very well mindful of that will. Although what exactly? natives is probably not mindful of ends up being really precisely how uncomplicated the item could be designed for guests toward subcontract these motions. For example, just about the most well-known farm out activities inside IT afterward BPO earth becomes credit. Tally is really a crucial part of any dealings and it is so exact essential. The truth is, the accountants necessitate all the rage outsourcing have to be remarkably became certified as well as knowledgeable as a way to meet up with client's hopes. With the expand here outsourcing, loads of corporations suffer reached the huge benefits it offers to offer. 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St. Thomas the Apostle Church in Abiquiú, N.M., a village settled by former Indian slaves, or Genízaros, in the 18th century.

Lenny Trujillo made a startling discovery when he began researching his descent from one of New Mexico’s pioneering Hispanic families: One of his ancestors was a slave.

“I didn’t know about New Mexico’s slave trade, so I was just stunned,” said Mr. Trujillo, 66, a retired postal worker who lives in Los Angeles. “Then I discovered how slavery was a defining feature of my family’s history.”

Mr. Trujillo is one of many Latinos who are finding ancestral connections to a flourishing slave trade on the blood-soaked frontier now known as the American Southwest. Their captive forebears were Native Americans — slaves frequently known as Genízaros (pronounced heh-NEE-sah-ros) who were sold to Hispanic families when the region was under Spanish control from the 16th to 19th centuries. Many Indian slaves remained in bondage when Mexico and later the United States governed New Mexico.

The revelations have prompted some painful personal reckonings over identity and heritage. But they have also fueled a larger, politically charged debate on what it means to be Hispanic and Native American.

A growing number of Latinos who have made such discoveries are embracing their indigenous backgrounds, challenging a long tradition in New Mexico in which families prize Spanish ancestry. Some are starting to identify as Genízaros. Historians estimate that Genízaros accounted for as much as one-third of New Mexico’s population of 29,000 in the late 18th century.

“We’re discovering things that complicate the hell out of our history, demanding that we reject the myths we’ve been taught,” said Gregorio Gonzáles, 29, an anthropologist and self-described Genízaro who writes about the legacies of Indian enslavement.

Those legacies were born of a tortuous story of colonial conquest and forced assimilation.

New Mexico, which had the largest number of sedentary Indians north of central Mexico, emerged as a coveted domain for slavers almost as soon as the Spanish began settling here in the 16th century, according to Andrés Reséndez, a historian who details the trade in his 2016 book, “The Other Slavery.” Colonists initially took local Pueblo Indians as slaves, leading to an uprising in 1680 that temporarily pushed the Spanish out of New Mexico.

Floyd E. Trujillo, 83, right, swabbed the inside of his mouth for a DNA sample as his son Virgil spoke with Miguel A. Tórrez, a genealogist.

The trade then evolved to include not just Hispanic traffickers but horse-mounted Comanche and Ute warriors, who raided the settlements of Apache, Kiowa, Jumano, Pawnee and other peoples. They took captives, many of them children plucked from their homes, and sold them at auctions in village plazas.

The Spanish crown tried to prohibit slavery in its colonies, but traffickers often circumvented the ban by labeling their captives in parish records as criados, or servants. The trade endured even decades after the Mexican-American War, when the United States took control of much of the Southwest in the 1840s.

Seeking to strengthen the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery in 1865, Congress passed the Peonage Act of 1867 after learning of propertied New Mexicans owning hundreds and perhaps thousands of Indian slaves, mainly Navajo women and children. But scholars say the measure, which specifically targeted New Mexico, did little for many slaves in the territory.

Many Hispanic families in New Mexico have long known that they had indigenous ancestry, even though some here still call themselves “Spanish” to emphasize their Iberian ties and to differentiate themselves from the state’s 23 federally recognized tribes, as well as from Mexican and other Latin American immigrants.

But genetic testing is offering a glimpse into a more complex story. The DNA of Hispanic people from New Mexico is often in the range of 30 to 40 percent Native American, according to Miguel A. Tórrez, 42, a research technologist at Los Alamos National Laboratory and one of New Mexico’s most prominent genealogists.

He and other researchers cross-reference DNA tests with baptismal records, marriage certificates, census reports, oral histories, ethnomusicology findings, land titles and other archival documents.

Mr. Tórrez’s own look into his origins shows how these searches can produce unexpected results. He found one ancestor who was probably Ojibwe, from lands around the Great Lakes, roughly a thousand miles away, and another of Greek origin among the early colonizers claiming New Mexico for Spain.

“I have Navajo, Chippewa, Greek and Spanish blood lines,” said Mr. Tórrez, who calls himself a mestizo, a term referring to mixed ancestry. “I can’t say I’m indigenous any more than I can say I’m Greek, but it’s both fascinating and disturbing to see how various cultures came together in New Mexico.”

Brienna Martinez performed the Matachines dance in Alcalde, N.M.

Revelations about how Indian enslavement was a defining feature of colonial New Mexico can be unsettling for some in the state, where the authorities have often tried to perpetuate a narrative of relatively peaceful coexistence between Hispanics, Indians and Anglos, as non-Hispanic whites are generally called here.

Pointing to their history, some descendants of Genízaros are coming together to argue that they deserve the same recognition as Native tribes in the United States. One such group in Colorado, the 200-member Genízaro Affiliated Nations, organizes annual dances to commemorate their heritage.

“It’s not about blood quantum or DNA testing for us, since those things can be inaccurate measuring sticks,” said David Atekpatzin Young, 62, the organization’s tribal chairman, who traces his ancestry to Apache and Pueblo peoples. “We know who we are, and what we want is sovereignty and our land back.”

Some here object to calling Genízaros slaves, arguing that the authorities in New Mexico were relatively flexible in absorbing Indian captives. In an important distinction with African slavery in parts of the Americas, Genízaros could sometimes attain economic independence and even assimilate into the dominant Hispanic classes, taking the surnames of their masters and embracing Roman Catholicism.

Genízaros and their offspring sometimes escaped or served out their terms of service, then banded together to forge buffer settlements against Comanche raids. Offering insight into how Indian captives sought to escape their debased status, linguists trace the origins of the word Genízaro to the Ottoman Empire’s janissaries, the special soldier class of Christians from the Balkans who converted to Islam, and were sometimes referred to as slaves.

Moisés Gonzáles, a Genízaro professor of architecture at the University of New Mexico, has identified an array of Genízaro outposts that endure in the state, including the villages Las Trampas and San Miguel del Vado. Some preserve traditions that reflect their Genízaro origins, and like other products of colonialism, many are cultural amalgams of customs and motifs from sharply disparate worlds.

Each December in the village of Alcalde, for instance, performers in headdresses stage the Matachines dance, thought by scholars to fuse the theme of Moorish-Christian conflict in medieval Spain with indigenous symbolism evoking the Spanish conquest of the New World.

In Abiquiú, settled by Genízaros in the 18th century, people don face paint and feathers every November to perform a “captive dance” about the village’s Indian origins — on a day honoring a Catholic saint.

Miguel A. Tórrez conducts the El Pueblo de Abiquiú DNA and Ethnographic Study, which examines the backgrounds of people who either identify as Genízaros or are descendants of Genízaros in Abiquiú.

“Some Natives say those in Abiquiú are pretend Indians,” said Mr. Tórrez, the genealogist. “But who’s to say that the descendants of Genízaros, of people who were once slaves, can’t reclaim their culture?”

Efforts by some Genízaro descendants to call themselves Indians instead of Latinos point to a broader debate over how Native Americans are identified, involving often contentious factors like tribal membership, what constitutes indigenous cultural practices and the light skin color of some Hispanics with Native ancestry. Some Native Americans also chafe at the gains some Hispanics here have sought by prioritizing their ancestral ties to European colonizers.

Pointing to the breadth of the Southwest’s slave trade, some historians have also documented how Hispanic settlers were captured and enslaved by Native American traffickers, and sometimes went on to embrace the cultures of their Comanche, Pueblo or Navajo masters.

Kim TallBear, an anthropologist at the University of Alberta, cautioned against using DNA testing alone to determine indigenous identity. She emphasized that such tests can point generally to Native ancestry somewhere in the Americas while failing to pinpoint specific tribal origins.

“There’s a conflation of race and tribe that’s infuriating, really,” said Ms. TallBear, a member of the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate tribe of South Dakota who writes about tribal belonging and genetic testing. “I don’t think ancestry alone is sufficient to define someone as indigenous.”

The discovery of indigenous slave ancestry can be anything but straightforward, as Mr. Trujillo, the former postal worker, learned.

First, he found his connection to a Genízaro man in the village of Abiquiú. Delving further into 18th century baptismal records, he then found that his ancestor somehow broke away from forced servitude to purchase three slaves of his own.

“I was just blown away to find that I had a slaver and slaves in my family tree,” Mr. Trujillo said. “That level of complexity is too much for some people, but it’s part of the story of who I am.”

#history #historia #new mexico #mexico #native american #first nations #indian #slavery #Genízaro #hispanic #Genízaros #puebloans #puebloan #colorado #apache #camanche #navajo

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