![[image description: a three-color (sky-blue, earth-brown and blood-red on white) poster, in a style reminiscent of wood-block or woodcut printmaking.
The outer margin, and the human figure in the center of the poster — a kneeling Native North American elder, wearing a single eagle feather in their hair, braided (or beaded or bound) side-locks, a bone choker and what appears to be a long robe- or dress-type garment decorated with embroidery, and holding a tomahawk in their left hand / resting in their lap — are rendered in brown.
All of the block-print, ALL CAPS text (see below) is rendered in blue, as are:
at left, a stylized eagle on a prickly-pear cactus, the sign that in Aztec / Mexica belief was foretold by the god Huitzilopochtli as indicating the place where Tenochtitlan (modern Mexico City) should be founded, and which has been a symbol of Mexico since pre-Columbian times;
at right, a stylized turtle, representing the Turtle Island which appears in the traditional belief systems of several First Nations who lived at or near the east coast of the modern United States when they first encountered European colonizers, and which has for decades been adopted by members of those and other Native American and Native Canadian peoples as a term for the North American continent as a whole;
at bottom left, what appears to be a stylized mountain range or series of hills;
at bottom right, what appears to be a council circle, with four seated human figures and what may be the arm of a fifth visible as silhouettes, at least one of whom is also wearing a single feather.
The blue turtle and brown human figure are superimposed on one another, so that the turtle’s left front flipper is a series of lines across the human’s otherwise-white face, and the turtle’s left side and left rear flipper are discernible in the white stitching decorating the human’s otherwise-brown clothing. There is a slight overlap of the brown human figure and the blue eagle-on-cactus, but those two elements appear more to border one another than to share space.
The blood-red element is somewhat like a Western-cartooning-style “speech bubble,” having a point which is aimed as if emerging from the brown human figure’s mouth, but which is mostly filled in with dark red, aside from numerous short, thin, pale lines suggestive of flowing water or woodgrain (or breath) and which curve inwards into a spiral at the end furthest from the human’s mouth. The word being spoken is also written along the top of the spiral/bubble, rather than inside; it is rendered in cursive script, all lowercase, the single word “libertad” (Spanish for “liberty”) with no punctuation.
The first, fourth and fifth lines of block-letter text are sky-blue on earth-brown, as the bottom margin of the poster has a wider band of brown to accommodate the text, while the brown background of the first line is in the form of a thin banner near, but not at, the top margin and slanting slightly downwards to the right. The text reads as follows (rendered in mixed Caps for readability):
From Anahuac to Anishinaabewaki indigenous sovereignty means immigrant rights decolonize immigration through indigenous and migrant solidarity on Turtle Island
—end of image description—]
Image credit: Poster created by visual artist and Michigan State University assistant professor Dylan Miner.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/ea44485a9a2a1bf863fb14ecdfb76556/tumblr_ml1zfnBtNz1qap9gno1_500.jpg)
[image description: a three-color (sky-blue, earth-brown and blood-red on white) poster, in a style reminiscent of wood-block or woodcut printmaking.
The outer margin, and the human figure in the center of the poster — a kneeling Native North American elder, wearing a single eagle feather in their hair, braided (or beaded or bound) side-locks, a bone choker and what appears to be a long robe- or dress-type garment decorated with embroidery, and holding a tomahawk in their left hand / resting in their lap — are rendered in brown.
All of the block-print, ALL CAPS text (see below) is rendered in blue, as are:
- at left, a stylized eagle on a prickly-pear cactus, the sign that in Aztec / Mexica belief was foretold by the god Huitzilopochtli as indicating the place where Tenochtitlan (modern Mexico City) should be founded, and which has been a symbol of Mexico since pre-Columbian times;
- at right, a stylized turtle, representing the Turtle Island which appears in the traditional belief systems of several First Nations who lived at or near the east coast of the modern United States when they first encountered European colonizers, and which has for decades been adopted by members of those and other Native American and Native Canadian peoples as a term for the North American continent as a whole;
- at bottom left, what appears to be a stylized mountain range or series of hills;
- at bottom right, what appears to be a council circle, with four seated human figures and what may be the arm of a fifth visible as silhouettes, at least one of whom is also wearing a single feather.
The blue turtle and brown human figure are superimposed on one another, so that the turtle’s left front flipper is a series of lines across the human’s otherwise-white face, and the turtle’s left side and left rear flipper are discernible in the white stitching decorating the human’s otherwise-brown clothing. There is a slight overlap of the brown human figure and the blue eagle-on-cactus, but those two elements appear more to border one another than to share space.
The blood-red element is somewhat like a Western-cartooning-style “speech bubble,” having a point which is aimed as if emerging from the brown human figure’s mouth, but which is mostly filled in with dark red, aside from numerous short, thin, pale lines suggestive of flowing water or woodgrain (or breath) and which curve inwards into a spiral at the end furthest from the human’s mouth. The word being spoken is also written along the top of the spiral/bubble, rather than inside; it is rendered in cursive script, all lowercase, the single word “libertad” (Spanish for “liberty”) with no punctuation.
The first, fourth and fifth lines of block-letter text are sky-blue on earth-brown, as the bottom margin of the poster has a wider band of brown to accommodate the text, while the brown background of the first line is in the form of a thin banner near, but not at, the top margin and slanting slightly downwards to the right. The text reads as follows (rendered in mixed Caps for readability):
From Anahuac to Anishinaabewaki
indigenous sovereignty means
immigrant rights
decolonize immigration through indigenous
and migrant solidarity on Turtle Island
—end of image description—]
Image credit: Poster created by visual artist and Michigan State University assistant professor Dylan Miner.
(via feministwerewolf)
Source: newclearvision.com
“Keeping the wrong people out” has never been an acceptable civil rights goal.
widdershinsgirl:“Keeping the wrong people out” has never been an acceptable civil rights goal.
“Keeping the wrong people out” has never been an acceptable civil rights goal.
“Keeping the wrong people out” has never been an acceptable civil rights goal.There are legitimate aims that can only be achieved by limiting the admission of people to a particular space. “Making sure we’re not made to feel uncomfortable” isn’t one of them. Comfort is not a human right, and thank Goddess for that (if “comfort” was a human right, Christians could argue I was violating their human rights for even mentioning the Goddess).
Sometimes people mentioning Jesus makes me uncomfortable…
Source: widdershinsgirl
“I created this series of photos in response to Iran’s president Ahmadinejad’s naive comments that we do not have homosexuality in Iran. I wanted to say that we do have homosexuals and we have lots of them. My hope was to give solace to Muslims who feel they cannot be Muslims and homosexuals at the same time. I wanted to say that your love for God or belief in good for humanity should not determine who you’re choosing to love. My hope is that more people come to see that we should leave people to make their own choices, regarding who they want to love. I think the message of love from all of the prophets was lost, in all the noise from the later organizers of religions and their followers. I wish to remind people of that original intention of our belief in a higher good.”
This makes me happy beyond belief.
Shayne Oanes is a transgender man born and raised in Iran. Click through to The Linfield Review for more photos from his photo series Islam & Homosexuality and to learn more about his amazing journey from a repressive rural upbringing to a life of individual and social freedoms in the West.
(via huzzahactuallygoodporn)
Source: linfield.edu
![[Image description: a crowd scene showing at least three dozen people and giving the impression there are many more out-of-frame. Most are turned away from the camera and have uncovered dark hair, while a few wear headscarves or hats. Part of two large signs in Arabic script are visible being held up to the upper left of the photo. In the midst of the crowd, two people are holding up a banner-width sign which reads: “(first line, red letters) The Syrian people are slaughtered (second line, black letters) Where is the (second line cont’d, red letters) world?”]
syriafreedom
I am Syrian living in Syria under many fake names cause otherwise I will be caught, tortured, and possibly killed by Assad mercenaries called Mukhabarat, Shabiha, Army, etc.) I want to see an end to the innocents and civilians killing in Syria any possible way.I have these account for photos about Syria on Flickr:www.flickr.com/photos/syriafreedomwww.flickr.com/photos/syriafreedom2Please help us!
Western politicians love to talk about “encouraging regime change” and “bringing democracy” to the (so-called) Middle East… but when there are grass-roots movements demonstrating against the lack of freedom and democracy in countries there, what happens? Foreign powers, especially the United States, turn a blind eye — or at best issue wishy-washy ‘statements’ without putting any real diplomatic pressure on the repressive totalitarian regimes which are actively suppressing pro-democracy movements.
But this isn’t merely hypocrisy on the part of the West.
It’s ultimately unsurprising that many of the governments the U.S. and its Western allies stand behind no matter what atrocities they commit are also governments that allow the U.S. CIA (Central Intelligence Agency, which conducts foreign espionage and ‘classified’ secret programs) to hold prisoners extra-judicially on their soil. Some of those prisoners are tortured and/or questioned, not directly by agents of Western governments, but by the same kinds of people now carrying out massacres of Syrian civilians peacefully demonstrating their desire for a more democratic society.
(Handy havens for extra-judicial detention and torture-based interrogation of prisoners Western powers can’t even legally maintain custody of on their own soil aren’t the only countries who get a wink and a nod, or at most a tap on the wrist, from the West. In many cases, all it takes is for the government of a given country to be willing to — for example — allow NATO member nations like the U.S. and U.K. to maintain military bases inside their territory; or sell their natural resources including not only oil, but also everything from uranium, to precious metals and gemstones, to timber, to land cleared of rainforest to allow for plantation farms, directly to multinational corporations who could afford to pay fair value but are never required to; or even simply pledge enmity against a neighboring nation… and the most despotic, dictatorial, repressive, totalitarian, anti-democracy governments can terrorize their own people for decades with the tacit approval of the so-called First World.)
So if you live in a Western nation that hasn’t condemned the Syrian government’s ongoing slaughter of its own citizens (or one that has offered only empty words while still working closely with the Syrian government and encouraging their own citizens to invest there) please contact your own government and ask them why. Express your outrage, or your solidarity, or your belief that your nation should be siding with the pro-democracy and giving them real support, not just empty words. Say it whatever way is comfortable for you.
whitehouse.gov is a good starting place for Americans.
edited to add: Update as of Friday, 20th April, 2012, via Reuters; Civilians are still being abducted, tortured, shot and even shelled by the village despite there being a cease-fire in place, a U.N. delegation was nearly killed by Syrian military forces when demonstrators rushed to them for protection, and the Syrian government is refusing to allow a full U.N. observation team into the country unless President Dictator al-Assad is granted full control over the team’s movements within the country — a condition agreed to by the previous Arab League observers and cited by them a the reason for their mission’s failure.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m2lh73kOuM1qb5wbbo1_1280.jpg)
[Image description: a crowd scene showing at least three dozen people and giving the impression there are many more out-of-frame. Most are turned away from the camera and have uncovered dark hair, while a few wear headscarves or hats. Part of two large signs in Arabic script are visible being held up to the upper left of the photo. In the midst of the crowd, two people are holding up a banner-width sign which reads:
“(first line, red letters) The Syrian people are slaughtered
(second line, black letters) Where is the (second line cont’d, red letters) world?”]
I am Syrian living in Syria under many fake names cause otherwise I will be caught, tortured, and possibly killed by Assad mercenaries called Mukhabarat, Shabiha, Army, etc.)
I want to see an end to the innocents and civilians killing in Syria any possible way.
I have these account for photos about Syria on Flickr:
www.flickr.com/photos/syriafreedom
www.flickr.com/photos/syriafreedom2
Please help us!
Western politicians love to talk about “encouraging regime change” and “bringing democracy” to the (so-called) Middle East… but when there are grass-roots movements demonstrating against the lack of freedom and democracy in countries there, what happens? Foreign powers, especially the United States, turn a blind eye — or at best issue wishy-washy ‘statements’ without putting any real diplomatic pressure on the repressive totalitarian regimes which are actively suppressing pro-democracy movements.
But this isn’t merely hypocrisy on the part of the West.
It’s ultimately unsurprising that many of the governments the U.S. and its Western allies stand behind no matter what atrocities they commit are also governments that allow the U.S. CIA (Central Intelligence Agency, which conducts foreign espionage and ‘classified’ secret programs) to hold prisoners extra-judicially on their soil. Some of those prisoners are tortured and/or questioned, not directly by agents of Western governments, but by the same kinds of people now carrying out massacres of Syrian civilians peacefully demonstrating their desire for a more democratic society.
(Handy havens for extra-judicial detention and torture-based interrogation of prisoners Western powers can’t even legally maintain custody of on their own soil aren’t the only countries who get a wink and a nod, or at most a tap on the wrist, from the West. In many cases, all it takes is for the government of a given country to be willing to — for example — allow NATO member nations like the U.S. and U.K. to maintain military bases inside their territory; or sell their natural resources including not only oil, but also everything from uranium, to precious metals and gemstones, to timber, to land cleared of rainforest to allow for plantation farms, directly to multinational corporations who could afford to pay fair value but are never required to; or even simply pledge enmity against a neighboring nation… and the most despotic, dictatorial, repressive, totalitarian, anti-democracy governments can terrorize their own people for decades with the tacit approval of the so-called First World.)
So if you live in a Western nation that hasn’t condemned the Syrian government’s ongoing slaughter of its own citizens (or one that has offered only empty words while still working closely with the Syrian government and encouraging their own citizens to invest there) please contact your own government and ask them why. Express your outrage, or your solidarity, or your belief that your nation should be siding with the pro-democracy and giving them real support, not just empty words. Say it whatever way is comfortable for you.
whitehouse.gov is a good starting place for Americans.
edited to add: Update as of Friday, 20th April, 2012, via Reuters; Civilians are still being abducted, tortured, shot and even shelled by the village despite there being a cease-fire in place, a U.N. delegation was nearly killed by Syrian military forces when demonstrators rushed to them for protection, and the Syrian government is refusing to allow a full U.N. observation team into the country unless President Dictator al-Assad is granted full control over the team’s movements within the country — a condition agreed to by the previous Arab League observers and cited by them a the reason for their mission’s failure.
(via androphilia)
Matilda Joslyn Gage, Sally Roesch Wagner, and the Haudenosaunee Origins of American Feminist Thought
zuky:
feminist.com“The Untold Story of The Iroquois Influence On Early Feminists”
by Sally Roesch WagnerI had been haunted by a question to the past, a mystery of feminist history: How did the radical suffragists come to their vision, a vision not of Band-Aid reform but of a reconstituted world completely transformed?
For 20 years I had immersed myself in the writings of early United States women’s rights activists — Matilda Joslyn Gage (1826-1898), Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902), Lucretia Mott (1793-1880) — yet I could not fathom how they dared to dream their revolutionary dream. Living under the ideological hegemony of nineteenth-century United States, they had no say in government, religion, economics, or social life (“the four-fold oppression” of their lives, Gage and Stanton called it.) Whatever made them think that human harmony — based on the perfect equality of all people, with women absolute sovereigns of their lives — was an achievable goal?
Surely these white women, living under conditions of virtual slavery, did not get their vision in a vacuum. Somehow they were able to see from point A, where they stood — corseted, ornamental, legally nonpersons — to point C, the “regenerated” world Gage predicted, in which all repressive institutions would be destroyed. What was point B in their lives, the earthly alternative that drove their feminist spirit — not a utopian pipe dream but a sensible, do-able paradigm?
Then I realized I had been skimming over the source of their inspiration without noticing it. My own unconscious white supremacy had kept me from recognizing what these prototypical feminists kept insisting in their writings: They caught a glimpse of the possibility of freedom because they knew women who lived liberated lives, women who had always possessed rights beyond their wildest imagination — Iroquois women.
The more evidence I uncovered of this indelible Native American influence on the vision of early United States feminists, the more certain I became that this story must be told.
ok so there’s a few things to criticize in this rosy view of “white folks and ndns yay!” but people need to stop acting like none of this ever happened.
Incidentally I wrote an essay on my old blog in 2009, largely inspired by Sally Roesch Wagner’s writings on Haudenosaunee women, entitled “Ongoing Echoes from the Women of the Long House” — which I reposted on this very tumblr. For whatever it’s worth, I argued that not only were Haudenosaunee women a galvanizing original source for early US (white) feminism (e.g. Bloomers), but also for the most well-known ideals of US democracy and liberty, as well as the League of Nations and the United Nations.
I sorted out the various links, because figuring out who said what where was getting confusing:
- This link goes directly to the gift shop at the Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation (MJGF) which offers works by both Sally Roesch Wagner and other authors including both Gloria Steinem and Matilda Joslyn Gage herself.
- This link goes to the Amazon.com page for Sisters In Spirit: Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Influence on Early American Feminists, the book by Sally Roesch Wagner which zuky discovered and purchased on her trip to Women’s Rights National Historical Park in Seneca Falls and, in February 2009, wrote her (zuky’s) essay largely in response to. (This is one of the books available via the MJGF gift shop as also linked to above.)
Hopefully I’m not the only one who will find these links less confusing to navigate.
Definitely read the essay by Sally Roesch Wagner, and everyone’s commentary on in here on Tumblr, but especially also read zuky’s essay. It’s all well worth your time, and may just blow your mind.
In closing, I’ll just repeat part of deluxvivens’s brief but incisive commentary:
“people need to stop acting like none of this ever happened.”
Source: feminist.com
Internets, meet Aphroditus (sometimes the same figure as Hermaphroditus, other times distinct): an ancient Greek deity, offspring of Hermes and Aphrodite, who had both male and female anatomy.
Note, however, that “hermaphrodite” — a word derived from the name Hermaphroditus — is an outdated medical term which is considered offensive by most people with intersex conditions.
(via genderanarchy)
I Wouldn’t Call You That Word and I Don’t Hate You But I Am Somewhat Unhappy With You Right Now
First, Laura, I want to say that I’m very sorry for your loss. From your description, your uncle sounds like a wonderful, loving man, and I’m sure you and your family miss him very much. I’ve lost many people close to me over the years, and while I’ve never stopped missing any of them, I can tell you that it will get easier with time. I also know, from experience, that knowing it will get better eventually doesn’t make the pain feel any less when the grief is fresh. I’m sorry that I can’t really offer anything more than my condolences; and I’m also sorry that that condolences, while better than insults, don’t in and of themselves make grieving any easier.
{Here’s where I interrupt myself to explain that I actually wrote 99% of this post having intended it as a response to a post of yours that you either deleted or made private, sometime after I began writing my response. It wasn’t until I clicked “preview” to check my formatting a few minutes ago, and got an error message, that I discovered the original post I was trying to reblog was no longer there. You should know that the text of your post is still visible in other people’s reblog-replies to that post, though, including this, the first reply. If you’re not feeling up to looking at anything more about what if anything would be wrong with a dreamcatcher tattoo right now, I respect that, and I suggest you scroll from here directly down to the very last paragraph of this post, because I make a proposal there that might help you avoid seeing most, if not all, stuff about the dreamcatcher-tattoo issue for the time being — a real solution, not some facetious nonsense like ‘just admit you’re a horrible evil baby-murdering racist and then everyone will shut up.’}
~
Skeena Reece
Raven: On the Colonial Fleet (2010)
salish swag
Attention hipsters:
NO YOU MAY NOT IMITATE THIS STYLE
NOT EVEN IF YOU THINK IT’S SUPER COOL
IT IS NOT YOURS
Stealing is wrong, m’kay?
Seriously, if I see some skinny blonde hipster copying anything about this, I don’t even. Not that non-hipster White people get a free pass to steal Native iconography, either; but the hipsters seem to be the ones laboring under the mistaken notion that ‘ironic’ cultural appropriation is somehow okay.
(via fuckyeahprettyfatchicks)
Source: skeenareece.com
I miss Samurai Champloo. It did so many things other anime just don’t — or do in such problematic ways that you wish they hadn’t bothered.
And it’s gorgeous, visually. The sound design & the soundtrack (holy crap the soundtrack) were consistently fantastic, too.
The three main characters, in the order the gifs appear in above:
- Mugen, a character who is geopolitically but — significantly — not ethnically Japanese; specifically, he’s believed to hail from one of the Ryukyu Islands, a chain stretching from Taiwan northeastward toward the Japanese mainland, and which includes Okinawa.
- Jin, a character who seems, at first, to be a stereotypical ronin…
- Fuu, a female character who is notably only ‘ladylike’ when it suits her, while at other times she will do things like out-eating nearly all the other competitors in an eating contest, including grown men who are twice to ten times her mass.
The deliberate mixture of authentic Edo-period details with intentional anachronisms (typically present-day ideas like the aforementioned eating contest) is great fun for anyone with even passing interest in Japanese history. Or possibly that’s just me?
Because we live in the future, you can acquire the complete series either re-dubbed by English-speaking voice actors, or with English subtitles over the original Japanese voice actors.
Oh yeah, and there are textually queer people in it. In addition to lots of delicious homoerotic subtext.
Source: champloo-ed
“Daphne at the moment that Apollo … ” ~ Beckie Kravetz 1999. via
In Greek myth, Daphne was a nymph or demigoddess (in one variant a mortal) pursued by the god Apollo despite her disinterest, who was transformed into a bay laurel as a means of ‘escape’ from Apollo’s advances. The moment of her metamorphosis from woman to tree has been depicted by painters, sculptors and other artists for over two thousand years. Because in some versions Daphne wished never to marry, and in some versions preferred the company of women only like the goddess Artemis, both asexuals and lesbians sometimes identify with her story.
