I think this is my first time being on the other side of a #TwitterMigration. It's pretty cool! For all the new folks here making an #introduction for those concerned about not being able to find POC, I strongly recommend starting by following hashtags and using those to follow people who use/are associated with them. I did that and found a really active, engaged, diverse, and vibrant Black community here. Use the following hashtags in particular:
There are other hashtags associated with other communities - our Indigenous siblings use #Indigenous and maybe #NDN, not sure. And every once in a while, someone will tweet a bunch of good accounts to follow. Personally, I could do with more #french#francais or #spanish#espanol content, but that's kind of on me.
The craft of knitting Cowichan sweaters is handed down through the generations in First Nations families on Vancouver Island, BC.
Having to sell the sweaters at wholesale prices to shops that mark up the retail cost by hundreds of dollars has led to an initiative called Knit With Purpose to deal direct with buyers and give knitters a fair wage for their time and expertise.
Oral #stories as #Indigenous#histories: How long can stories be passed down by word of mouth? - New research suggests that #Aboriginal#Tasmanians' oral tradition tells of geological events and astronomical conditions stretching back 12,000+ years.
Apropos of non-Native Masto users making fun of an #Indigenous user (not me) for being light-skinned, let's talk about the colonial thought structure called BLOOD QUANTUM.
You might have wondered things like: Why do some Natives look so white? Are they reeeeally Native? Aren’t they just white people with one distant Native ancestor? Etc. Etc.
To speakers of underrepresented languages: If your language isn't available in Mastodon's posting window and you'd like me to add it, please let me know.
1924: an #Indigenous man hunts a deer on treaty-reserved land. Gets criminally convicted.
The ruling said tribal nations are not sovereign or independent, "the Indians being mere occupants of the land.”
The hunter died decades ago. The family member who continued his case died in 2007. But a tribal attorney kept pushing to get the unjust, demeaning conviction reversed.
On Thursday, nearly a century later, the #Washington state Supreme Court admitted it was wrong.
Beneath all the complicated #ColoradoRiver issues is a big, simple question that media hasn't adequately covered or even really approached: why don't #Indigenous communities have water? Literally just WHY. Without crazy loopy wonky theatrics. Ag has water. #Arizona Suburbs have water. Why don't tribes?
Finally, @ProPublica and HCN are addressing that question. It's a major investigative series. They've published the first of their findings:
This article, a very good AP piece about #Klamath dam removal, does many things right: they quoted someone from an impacted tribe (this is a low bar, but you’d be astonished at how many articles don’t even bother to do this); they provided robust context for past and future challenges surrounding dam removal; they even gave Indigenous people the last word.
"Sistine Chapel of the Ancients." Deep within the dense Amazon rainforest in modern-day Colombia, archaeologists recently discovered an 8-mile-long "canvas" filled with ice age drawings of giant sloths, mastodons and other extinct beasts, dating back to between 11,800 years and 12,600 ago.
More images/info: https://bit.ly/3QJaSU8
America built its first "concentration camp school," or Indian boarding school, on the Yakama reservation in 1860.
Now, the state of #Washington has appointed five #Indigenous leaders to a Truth and Reconciliation Tribal Advisory Committee, which will investigate the state’s history of Native boarding schools.
Today is Sorry Day in so-called Australia. "Sorry" does not refer to apologies. It's based on Indigenous practices of Sorry Business; a collective process in times of grief & loss.
It's a day of remembrance for the 10000s of Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander children forcibly removed from their families: the Stolen Generations. Taken between late 1800s to early 1980s, the children were placed in church-run institutions or (later) put up for adoption without parental consent.
Up until the late 1950s, the children were trained for domestic servitude and unpaid labouring and sent to white businesses and households. The abuse and neglect in the institutions and elsewhere was rampant. Many died in these places; not everyone who survived found their families; and most have passed away without seeing any justice.
Every Indigenous family has one or more members that were part of the Stolen Generations. And the trauma of this particular act of genocide is intergenerational.
Sorry Day was one of the recommendations of a royal commission - the Bringing them home: Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families. Which was tabled with the Australian
Parliament on 26 May 1997.
Another recommendation was a national apology, and that occurred on 13 February. Otherwise, very few of the 54 recommendations have been actioned.
In more recent years, in addition to commemorating the Stolen Generations and advocating for their rights, this day is also for fighting for the rights of Indigenous children who are being taken away in record numbers.
Today, I think of my family members who were stolen by the government, and forced into servitude as children. Fuck the government, churches and others who participated in this race-based cruelty; who used Aboriginal blood, sweat and tears to build a white nation on stolen Blak land. Yes, Sorry Day is also a day of anger.
Good news, everyone! The Yurok Tribe will now co-manage 125 acres of Redwood forest, a gateway to the state/national park, along with the National Park Service.
The tribal nation signed a memorandum of understanding Tuesday with Redwood national and state parks and the non-profit Save the Redwoods League.
Right-wing Australian billionaire and money-bag climate change denier Gina Reinhart apparently doesn't want people to see her portrait by the Indigenous artist Vincent Namatjira in the National Gallery.
The solar eclipse is a special time in the history of Indigenous nations. Founded in August 31, 1142, the history of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy (Iroquois) speaks of their founding under a full solar eclipse. Western scholars only verified it in the 1990s. As such, the Haudenosaunee are one of the world's longest lasting democracies