"I have my own theories about why people want to claim to be Indian. I think people are desperately looking for a sense of place and connection. As human beings, we need to have a connection to the earth, to place and ultimately to each other. Unfortunately, the only way some folks know how to find or get something is to buy it and own it as quickly as possible. Since Indians are widely believed to have an almost magical connection with nature, why not just claim to be Indian and legitimize the claim by purchasing a DNA test? It’s silly and kind of sad."
- The Cherokee Syndrome by Marie Annette Pember

"Gay people were seen as magical too.
I mean, like in many cultures, men were viewed as warriors and women were viewed as caregivers. But gay people, being both male and female, were seen as both warriors and caregivers.
Gay people could do anything. They were like Swiss Army knives!
My grandmother had no use for all the gay bashing and homophobia in the world, especially among other Indians.
“Jeez,” she said. “Who cares if a man wants to marry another man? All I want to know is who’s going to pick up all the dirty socks?"
- The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie 

lexuswhitfield:

Dorcas Honorable by nha.library on Flickr.

A Wampanoag woman who lived on Nantucket in the 1800s.

"Ironically, Adolf Hitler displayed more knowledge of how we treated Native Americans than American high schoolers today who rely on their textbooks. Hitler admired our concentration camps for American Indians in the west and according to John Toland, his biographer, “often praised to his inner circle the efficiency of America’s extermination—by starvation and uneven combat” as the model for his extermination of Jews and Gypsies (Rom people)."
- James W. Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me 

Native American Youth to Diane Sawyer: We’re Not Poverty Porn 

badlandspolaroid:

NICELY SAID. 

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Last month ABC’s 20/20 aired a special they called “Children of the Plains,” that portrayed the Lakota Indian reservation as a place that only dealt with crime, unemployment, alcoholism, overcrowded trailers and crumbling schools.

On Monday, young Native American students from Rosebud, South Dakota released a short video that challenged the claims made by “Children of the plains.”

“I know what you probably think of us…we saw the special too. Maybe you saw a picture, or read an article. But we want you to know, we’re more than that…We have so much more than poverty.”

“The stories are manipulative to the point of tears—literally,” wrote Rob Schmidt on Indian Country about the show. “A boy cries because his mother is an alcoholic. A girl cries because she tried to commit suicide. The school principal, an old lady in a motorized chair, cries because her work is so difficult.”

Schmidt argues the ABC documentary was little more than poverty porn because it didn’t offer any historical context or the causes of poverty for many Native American reservations.

“Are the Lakota responsible for their own plight, or is someone—the government or big business—causing it?,” Schmidt continued.

Sawyer glossed over broken treaties, stolen land and disinvestment by the end of the show, but by then it’s too little, too late. “The ‘poverty porn’ feeling predominates,” Schmidt said.

ameliarosefarley:

Graffiti in the Navajo Nation.