okay but war of hearts and storm by Ruelle give me such imodna vibes. like i feel like imogen would feel so scared about letting laudna get close because of fear of what may happen but she can’t help it and it’s so overwhelming
Saskatchewan is not the only province with “starlight tours” on record either. Vancouver police have done the same, dropping people off on Kitsilano Beach. Winnipeg police were found to have killed at least 76 people this way from a study back in 2010.
Let’s also not forget that RCMP have murdered minors this way, too, not just grown adults.
Sunday afternoon, dozens of non-Indigenous commercial fishing boats continue to surround Mi’kmaw fishers in St. Mary’s Bay, hauling up lobster traps set by the Mi’kmaq.
The Sipekne’katik First Nation launched its moderate livelihood fishery on Thursday in Saulnierville, a three-hour drive west of Halifax. In the days since, there have been confrontations with non-Indigenous fish harvesters on the wharf and on the water.
For anyone who may not know the whole gist and may not have the time to read an entire article- TL;DR the treaties of peace and friendship written in 1752 and again in 1761 and 1779 guaranteed fishing and hunting rights to the Mi’kmaq nations in exchange for settlers being allowed to live “quiet and free from molestation” in Mi’kma’ki. These treaty rights were reaffirmed by multiple supreme court cases since then, the most recent in 1999.
Settlers claim that they are taking action to prevent “illegal and out-of-season” fishing. However, the fisheries being established by Sipekne’katik, and other First Nations across the province, are completely legal. Additionally, Mi’kmaq people have been the custodians of this land for generations before settlers landed- meaning (no shocker here) that they can be trusted to fish in a way that is respectful of the land and the species they’re hunting.
Lastly, I should mention that the situation is escalating beyond intimidation- indigenous people are being denied service at gas stations and other small businesses. Fishers and their boats are being psychically attacked. Mobs of people have been breaking social distance laws to intimidate the fishers, their families, and most recently, people suspected of buying from them. Some people have even advocated for the re-enstatement of residential schools.
All of this is over 50 lobster traps- five fishing licences total. Clearwater, a Nova Scotian company, has illegally operated thousands of traps without this kind of pushback- because this is not about conservation or legality. this is about settlers wanting to suppress mi’kmaq people and their treaty rights.
Greedy white people are forgetting that this eventuality was the compromise after Burnt Church, and now even that’s too much? Mikmaw can set 5000 traps if they want to. It’s their land, and their estuaries. Thousands of years, Mi'kma'ki was famous for its bounty, and after four hundred years of white people, it’s apparently so tight that whites are prepared to go to war over 50 lobster traps.
black people, please take care of yourselves. please take care of your health. please take care of your mind. please take care of your spirit.
i understand if your soul is not at peace. i understand if you are exhausted. just, please take care of yourselves in these dark, hateful times and surround yourself with people who understand why.
its silly that we have BLM carrds going around, everyone was reblogging them months ago on the regular & u guys are still asking “what are we supposed to do if voting biden is bad” or whatever. like the answer was in those carrds, several of them provided books & pdfs, most of them were FREE for you to read. & you STILL didn’t do your homework.
stop reblogging headlines without reading the article. actually put in the effort to learn about how to be antiracist and how to organize & make a change within ur community. get in touch with local groups. if you don’t have any near you, take the time to learn, listen, & spread resources. research & criticize yourself. take it easy, but take it.
here are those resources again to get started:
ORGANIZING RESOURCES doc
Master List of Black Revolutionary Readings by Timmy Chau (free pdfs, some have been taken down but most are still up, you could try googling the ones that have been deleted)
Anti-racist Resource Guide by Tasha K. (books, podcasts, movies and more)
D e c o l o n i z e : Resources by Ari Sahagún and Jay Saper (also check out resource generation)
Antisemitism: a basic guide by @bishonen and @hotgirlkakashi
yes this is a lot to take in all at once. make small goals for yourself though, try reading at least two articles a day that interest you, etc. find out what works for you.
sorry for adding on, but i specifically want to highlight w.e.b. du bois’ why i won’t vote. if you want something to start with that really underlines the issues with voting that are still going strong 64 years later, please read it.
I just want to remind everyone how affordable buying food from indigenous tribes is. I live in a major city and I was able to purchase and ship (15) pounds of fish from back home to myself for cheaper than I could buy it from a grocery store here in the city. Yeah, shipping has its own environmental factors but I was able to support an indigenous owned business while also getting my groceries at a lesser cost. (Buying in bulk is always a good idea if you’re planning on having something shipped to you)
Some tribal owned grocers that ship:
Bow and Arrow (Ute Mountain)
Native Harvest (White Earth)
Red Lake Fishery (Red Lake)
Wozupi (Mdewakanton Dakota)
Ramona Farms (Gila River)
Tanka Bars (Oglala)
Indian Pueblo Store (Pueblos)
Twisted Cedar Wine (Cedar Paiutes)
Ute Bison (Ute)
Seka Hills Olive Oil and Vinegars (Yocha Dehe Wintun)
Are there any other indigenous people in X-men? Like islanders?
So here’s a list of every Indigenous mutant in Marvel Comics (Earth 616) that I know of. Unfortunately, some are just straight up offensive. But there are a number of underappreciated gems!
Dani Moonstar AKA Mirage (Obviously gotta start with my fave)
Cheyenne
Illusory powers (originally her powers were creating illusions of peoples’ fears. Overtime her illusions eventually expanded to pretty much anything she wants. After she gets fried by the High Evolutionary’s machinery, her illusions could become solid objects, but she could only have one at a time. And during her time undercover with the MLF she developed the ability to channel her illusions into psonic arrows that stun people, trapping them in their nightmares. This is what she mostly uses, currently. (TBH I’d really like to see writers remember her abilities have far more uses than just that... Like, remember that time she recreated Jimmy’s whole damn farm and family so he could ‘see’ them again?)
Dani is also a valkyrie with the ability to sense death
Original member of the New Mutants
Honestly the best character on this list IMO. I could ramble about how awesome Dani is for days...
Forge
Cheyenne
Superhuman mechanical ingenuity/genius (kind of a complicated power, but basically his mutation is that he can understand machines and create anything he can imagine. Like a mutant Tony Stark except better in every way, fight me.)
Back in the day he also dabbled in sorcery but turned out uh Not Good and he hasn’t since
He’s been a member of a bunch of different X-Men teams and none of them have ever given him the respect he deserves
I like Forge a lot TBH, especially after the sorcery thing was dropped and forgotten
A shame we will probably never get to know his real name
Lucas Bishop AKA Bishop
Indigenous Australian (Unknown Nation)
Energy absorption and redirection, subsequently super durability (if you blast him he will just blast you back)
Bishop isn’t technically from 616, being born in a dark future, but has existed in the main universe for as long as he’s been around. He’s been a team member in Uncanny X-Men and X-Treme X-Men but then went through a period as an enemy, mostly cause he has a That’s So Raven syndrome where he thinks he's shaping the future for the better and fucks things up. Can’t say I’m a fan in the way he was used as an inconvenience for Cable, but otherwise you can count on Bishop for being pretty damn cool.
Just a warning for anyone unfamiliar with him but wants to read up on him: His background may be triggering. The tattoo over his eye isn’t a choice, but a brand he received when put into the mutant concentration camp where he was born in.
Shard Bishop AKA Shard
Indigenous Australian (Unknown Nation)
Energy blasts from light
Shard is Bishop’s younger sister, and therefore also not technically from 616. She’s also not nearly as prominent a character, but was member of X-Factor for a while.
Honestly, Shard was never actually given a chance to do anything and her relationship with Fitzroy (green haired, slimy time travelling serial killer) is BS.
James Proudstar AKA Warpath
Apache
Super strength, speed, senses, stamina, reflexes, durability, healing, and flight (everyone forgets the flight)
Also he’s over 7 feet tall which is its own superpower
John Proudstar’s younger brother
Sadly, Jimmy chronically suffers from writers not having a sweet clue what to do with him or how to write him. Swear to god, no one should be allowed to touch him before reading X-Force vol 1 after Liefeld left. James appearing to be scary to people who don’t know him and actually being a sweetheart is the whole deal with his character. He is not a violent raging edgelord! Everyone at Marvel just collectively forgot he rejected the name Warpath after starting to come to terms with the death of his family, too.
Anyway, I love James with pure spite and venom and would love to fistfight all the writers who’ve done him dirty over the years...
John Proudstar AKA Thunderbird (speaking of getting done dirty)
Apache
Super strength, speed, senses, stamina, reflexes and durability
James Proudstar’s older brother
This poor bastard was created to die for shock value, and has been one of the few X-Men for which death has not been a revolving door. For the brief time he was around, he was portrayed as nothing but a jerk, too. It’s only in brief flashbacks that he’s ever been given more character. Also that one Chaos World mini.
Gloria Muñoz AKA Risque
Seminole
Can make objects implode (think the opposite of Gambit)
Risque was an anti-hero/anti-villain associated with the original X-Factor, and formerly James’ GF. She was a complicated character and deserved a redemption arc. That’s a hill I’m gonna die on.
John Greycrow AKA... I don’t even wanna say it
Unknown Nation
Technology manipulation (can like, turn a gun into a different gun for example), super healing
Scalphunter. His name is fucking scalphunter. And just like the other Indigenous Marauder member on this list, he’s been nothing but a lingering racist caricature. He is currently a protagonist in the running Hellions series and I honestly do not know what miracle Zeb Wells thinks he can pull to reinvent this character, but I guess we’ll just have to see.
Kodiak Noatak AKA Harpoon
Inuit
Can supercharge his harpoon with energy
That’s right, the Marauders don’t have just one, but two racist as fuck caricatures! He also... for some reason... speaks... like this a lot... I sure... wonder why...
Gateway
Indigenous Australian (Unknown Nation)
Teleportation portal creation
Oh look, it’s the X-Men’s bus ticket. Seriously, Gateway is nothing but a silent teleporter for the X-Men to travel around by, and another racist caricature. However, there is one good thing to come out of Gateway’s existence, and that’s that without him, we may never have gotten...
Eden Fesi AKA Manifold
Indigenous Australian (Unknown Nation)
Teleportation portal creation (and some interesting ways of using it too)
I swear Hickman must have looked back at Gatway and thought, you know what, let’s try that again except not offensive. Eden is pretty cool, and one of the three reasons I read Avengers vol 5 (the other two being Bobby and Sam). It’s a shame he’s never gotten the chance to interact with the X-Men, what with being a mutant and all. I would love to see him on Krakoa. Given that Hickman is at the helm and Eden is a Hickman character, I don’t think it’s too far-fetched of a hope?
Yeah, that’s all I can think of, unfortunately. Really makes you wish there were more, huh.
BONUS:
Julio Richter AKA Rictor
Listen. I will fight to my last dying breath to defend what I have always seen as the obvious; Julio was created with the intention of him being an Indigenous Mexican boy. I legit have a half-done powerpoint presentation about it that I never finished upon realizing no one would take me seriously when I sound like this mapping out all the evidence -
Hugo, Nebula, and Locus-award winning Black/Ohkay Owingeh writer Rebecca Roanhorse and Tongva artist Weshoyot Alvitre tell an Echo tale like none before as she is set to play a critical role in Marvel Comics. Geoscientist and Lipan Apache writer Darcie Little Badger joins acclaimed Whitefish Lake First Nation artist Kyle Charles for a Dani Moonstar story where she will face the crucial question of what her Indigenous heritage means in the new era of mutantkind. And Bram Stoker-winning horror writer Stephen Graham Jones of the Blackfeet Nation teams up with Qalipu Mi’kmaq First Nation artist David Cutler to revisit one of the darkest spots of X-Men history!
Visibility; erasure; and what I talk about when I talk about the Maximoffs.
[I started writing this immediately after reading Q:NS #2. It ended up sitting in my drafts for a while, as I’ve been quite busy, and in the intervening weeks I’ve read a number of alarming headlines about antiromani hate crimes and systemic oppression in different parts of Europe. Meanwhile, we Americans have entered very troubling times regarding immigration policy. I’m a comics blogger, not a political journalist or even a prolific activist, but if you found this month’s issue of Q:NS particularly moving, I hope you’re tuned into the news. This stuff is still happening to real people, right now- if you’re inspired by Pietro’s story, I encourage you to figure out how you can be an ally for immigrants and marginalized peoples in your community.]
Saladin Ahmed’s new miniseries, Quicksilver: No Surrender, follows Marvel’s best-known speedster on a journey across an Earth frozen in time, where the only other moving creatures are a horde of monsters which are attempting to prey on immobile civilians. These phantoms are specifically targeting people and places from Pietro’s past, and so he must embark on an international chase to protect his friends, family and neighbors.
No Surrender is narrated in the first person; in #1 Pietro ruminates on how his powers work, and how they inform his identity and perspective on life. Similarly, #2 works to establish Pietro’s character by examining his history, and Ahmed uses this set-up to do something very few Marvel writers have done: take an unflinching look at Pietro’s experiences as an immigrant and as a Rom who grew up in abject poverty.
The issue opens with Pietro rescuing a woman who he recognizes as the immigration lawyer who helped him, and his sister Wanda, “get through a difficult process” years ago. It’s a brief scene, but I can’t recall another time a writer has thought to mention the twins’ citizenship status or the challenges they may have faced as immigrants. Following this encounter, the monsters lead Pietro to the Central European village that was his childhood home, where he delivers this searing monologue:
[..] This is the place my parents raised my sister and me. We were poor. And not poor like Americans mean it when they say it, but poor. […] My father did everything he could to feed my sister and me. Some of it was illegal. All of it was hard work. He made a tiny fistful of money a day. Barely enough to keep us off the streets. Because we are Romani, the villagers called him a thief when he tried to feed his children. It’s what the Europeans always call us. It’s in their very words for us. They never mention that they stole our whole people– enslaved us for 500 years. They don’t have a word for that level of theft.
The Americans are almost worse. They turn us into cartoons and costumes. When they use their trust funds to safely wander the world, they call themselves gypsy, never having to feel the pain and hate that word carries with it. They think we are carefree nomads. They have no idea how important home was to the people I grew up with. How much it meant when Wanda and I lost ours.
There have been many contradictory portrayals of the Maximoff’s upbringing and homeland, most of them offensively stereotypical. Ahmed circumnavigates all of that confusing continuity to strike at the heart of the story, which is that Pietro grew up in destitution, largely as a result of racism. Pietro’s narration is woven with social commentary- he calls his European neighbors out for their racist hypocrisy and reproaches Americans for their willful ignorance and exploitation of “g*psy” stereotypes.
While this scene is educational (it’s the first time I’ve ever seen Romani enslavement mentioned in popular media), it’s also a timely and necessary piece of character work. Rebranding Quicksilver’s trademark sour attitude as a case of acute social awareness and giving him the space to talk about antiromanyism makes Q:NS a great counterpoint to the Avengers and X-Men films, which often treat the Maximoffs’ ethnicity and background as disposable minutiae.
James Robinson attempted something similar with his 2015 run of Scarlet Witch, but he stumbled over terminology, failed to avoid certain stereotypes, and ultimately overextended his cultural tourism by using random bits of Romani vocab in magical incantations. So far, Ahmed is dodging all of those pitfalls, and it seems as if he understands that the key to building better representation is not to trespass into Romani culture or community (which are varied and diverse); rather, the best way to approach a character like Pietro is to figure out how his background might inform his personal voice and his relationship to the larger narrative, and use his popularity as a platform to address racism when appropriate.
I’ve written recently about my belief that “woke” movie fans fail to grasp what, specifically, is wrong with Wanda and Pietro’s portrayal on the silver screen. The issue, in my mind, boils down to how Jewish and Romani people fit into the historical and sociopolitical narratives that Marvel stories are built on. Take the recent X-Men movies, for example: First Class and Apocalypse are both hung up on Magneto’s experiences as a Holocaust survivor, however, no X-Men film has ever explicitly confirmed that he is Jewish. Magneto is arguably the most well-known Jewish character in superhero media, but the movies do not allow him to exist as such on screen. Similarly, Erik’s wife, Magda, who is also a concentration camp survivor and a Sinti Roma woman, was recast as a white Polish woman, while Pietro was recast as a white American named “Peter”. The X-Men films have built an entire plotline around the most well-known act of antisemitic and antiromani violence in modern history, all the while denying the very existence of Jewish and Romani people within their fictional world. The people making these movies either fail to understand how these characters fit into the real-world history they are referencing, or they simply don’t care.
This matters, for a number of reasons, but for our purposes it matters because most Americans are more familiar with the g*psy myth than they are with the existence of real Romani people. As Pietro says in the above quote, privileged Americans love to exploit cartoons and caricatures of Romani people, but they don’t know that many of those stereotypes are racist stigma engineered by white Europeans to encourage antiromanyism. Antiromanyism thrives off of misinformation and the denial that Romani people actually exist outside of myths and folklore. By perpetuating that denial, Marvel media perpetuates, or at the very least enables, that racism. Ahmed is pushing back against this pattern by making Quicksilver into a voice for his people while simultaneously respecting Romani communities’ privacy and autonomy. This is, in my mind, exactly the right way for outsiders to engage with Romani representation in fiction: challenging the cycle of erasure and exploitation.
I don’t think that Ahmed believes Pietro’s experience is universal, but he clearly understands the importance of visibility, and he knows how to handle characters who have experienced racism and xenophobia without overstepping his bounds. I look forward to reading the rest of Quicksilver: No Surrender, and I hope that Ahmed’s work on this series changes the way that fans and other writers approach the Maximoff family.
Quicksilver: No Surrender #3 will be available July 11
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