What I was taught growing up: Wild edible plants and animals were just so naturally abundant that the indigenous people of my area, namely western Washington state, didn't have to develop agriculture and could just easily forage/hunt for all their needs.
The first pebble in what would become a landslide: Native peoples practiced intentional fire, which kept the trees from growing over the camas praire.
The next: PNW native peoples intentionally planted and cultivated forest gardens, and we can still see the increase in biodiversity where these gardens were today.
The next: We have an oak prairie savanna ecosystem that was intentionally maintained via intentional fire (which they were banned from doing for like, 100 years and we're just now starting to do again), and this ecosystem is disappearing as Douglas firs spread, invasive species take over, and land is turned into European-style agricultural systems.
The Land Slide: Actually, the native peoples had a complex agricultural and food processing system that allowed them to meet all their needs throughout the year, including storing food for the long, wet, dark winter. They collected a wide variety of plant foods (along with the salmon, deer, and other animals they hunted), from seaweeds to roots to berries, and they also managed these food systems via not only burning, but pruning, weeding, planting, digging/tilling, selectively harvesting root crops so that smaller ones were left behind to grow and the biggest were left to reseed, and careful harvesting at particular times for each species that both ensured their perennial (!) crops would continue thriving and that harvest occurred at the best time for the best quality food. American settlers were willfully ignorant of the complex agricultural system, because being thus allowed them to claim the land wasn't being used. Native peoples were actively managing the ecosystem to produce their food, in a sustainable manner that increased biodiversity, thus benefiting not only themselves but other species as well.
So that's cool. If you want to read more, I suggest "Ancient Pathways, Ancestral Knowledge: Ethnobotany and Ecological Wisdom of Indigenous Peoples of Northwestern North America" by Nancy J. Turner
How we hunted the beavers to near extinction, and a beaver pond effects the soil moisture level, wetlands, etc.
How we banned intentional fires, and now are dealing with bigger, hotter, more dangerous fires. And that one of the tools in invasive species management is intentional fires.
How we have all these invasive plant species invading everywhere, and if people were still allowed/encouraged to "forage" like they did pre-colonialization, that would include removing those invasive species. And people would have eyes everywhere, so the populations of invasive species would not have had the chance to get established.
The land needs people. Leaving it "wild" and "untouched" is actually neglect.
do you have any recs for horror by Indigenous authors?
Do I ever!
Never Whistle At Night is a collection of short stories that will chill you to the bone. A wonderful collection that includes several Indigenous women authors.
Empire of Wild by Cherie Dimaline was definitely a fun choice to bring on a camping trip last year. The ending had me feeling all kinds of conflicting emotions.
And Then She Fell by Alicia Elliott is a WILD ride. More Thriller than Horror and I feel that Native readers and Non-Native/White readers will have very different experiences reading it. I don't want to give too much away because figuring out what's going on as you're reading it is definitely part of the appeal.
Mexican Gothic is exactly what it sounds like. A scary remote village in Mexico? A big scary mansion run by a rich colonizer family? A badass Meso-Indigenous main character trying to figure out a mystery? It's all here. The build up is slow but as soon as shit starts getting WEIRD it's nothing but thrills and fun.
Anoka by Shane Hawk is another collection of short stories. It's a short read but each story is as fun and creepy as the next. Read at night <3
White Horse by Erika T. Wurth is for all the urban NDNs out there. The main character is a certified badass. I love the NDN/Punk rock feel of it combined with the horror of the supernatural.
Taaqtumi: An Anthology of Arctic Horror Stories. Terrifying. Scary. Dreadful. Cannot recommend it enough. Read it alone or at night when all is quiet to get the most of this experience. You'll have nightmares. lol
hey do you guys remember a couple years ago when i made a post about how the "there are two wolves inside you" saying is racist, and the origin of it is prevalent even in the meme retellings of it, and i was harassed for weeks with nonstop anon hate and racist asks and messages? i think we ought to revisit that. there's a vitriol i see rarely elsewhere in the response to whenever natives and ndns bring up anti-indigenous racism, mostly from white people far older than me. i had 30-somethings in my inbox telling me my ancestors and relatives ought to have been wiped out. i don't have any huge message to bring up about it this time but now i'm a little older and a little wiser, wise enough to say that was super fucked up. and i don't know exactly where the confidence and audacity to be blatantly racist and diminishing to natives comes from. but it's there, in people who would otherwise claim to be leftists or progressives, or even, egregiously, anti-racists. and it sucks
#anyone else remember when some native ppl were like “hey that line about smallpox in the barbie movie was rlly fucked up” and everyone #jumped on them to be like “so you hate women???” “it actually makes perfect sense in context” etc etc #just remembered that. (@blorb0)
yeah. that too. i find it extremely difficult to be taken seriously by nonnatives when discussing things like this - because it's so, so ingrained in american culture, people don't see it as a problem.
there's something very scary about the way we argue and entertain discourse on israel or on settler colonialism when, on the ground, israel has totally isolated northern gaza and is currently systemically liquidating jabalia (a refugee camp in northern gaza) just as they have, from the very beginning, said they would do. just as large swathes of israel came to be in 1948, to 1967, to the west bank today. there's something scary about watching indigenous people undergo a genocide in real-time in 2024 like they're squatters on some prime property while nobody moves except to argue about semantics. there's something scary about people being trapped and killed like fish in a barrel while you can text them and follow them on social media and watch their pleas in video as soldiers and tanks come closer. what the hell is this
jabalia in northern gaza has been under siege for over a week. no food aid in. constant bombing. journalists being openly targeted. the bbc describes israel's plan to use medieval siege tactics to ethnically cleanse and settle the north of gaza as a "controversial plan" while acknowledging that not only does israel not allow people enough time to use the humanitarian corridor to evacuate, they also shoot at people evacuating and are still targeting the south. they have also made it clear that whoever leaves will not be returning.
i don't really understand how the news can describe the process of genocide in such stark terms and call it a "controversial plan" instead of what it is: a horrifying crime against humanity.
i see they changed the headline after widespread condemnation with no apology or editor's note as usual. the BBC has done this multiple times over the past year:
everyone (including kamala harris) has acknowledged that aid isn't going into gaza and aid trucks are at the lowest they've been since the genocide began (and of the aid that enters, NONE reaches jabalia camp, currently under siege).
israeli reservists have confirmed that the so-called general's plan is, in fact, being acted out.
the biden admin issued a "thirty day notice" for israel to start letting aid in—people in jabalia have had no drinking water for ten days already. like rafah, the humanitarian pier, and all of biden's other "red lines" this is political theatre. the people of jabalia are being exterminated and have been for over a week.
as a side note, which many have forgotten: this happened with al-shifa hospital and the surrounding area. when israeli forces retreated (which will not happen if the general's plan is carried out) they found mass graves at the site, with nearly 500 people buried (some buried and bulldozed while still alive) in the courtyard.
the israeli army has currently surrounded all three barely functioning hospitals in the north of gaza and attacked two of them. there is nowhere for injured people to go. horrifying videos have been coming out of the aftermath of bombings (including one of a child being bombed, then the people gathering to gather the child being bombed). there are reports of idf rigging neighborhoods up to blow while people are still there, and bulldozing a house with the residents inside. several families have succumbed to starvation inside their homes.
israel is systemically destroying entire families, home by home. people from north of gaza are losing their families who have withstood over a year of genocide:
people in jabalia are literally being exterminated. this is not an exaggeration in the slightest. israel has declared that it will exterminate the people of the north of gaza, and it is doing it, and the united states has given them 30 days to finish the job. this is genocide in every sense.
kill the rhetoric that americans are so lazy that they won't take farm jobs. americans take labor intensive jobs all the time. the reason no americans will take farm jobs is because agricultural work is exempt from the vast majority of labor laws and labor protections, including the use of child labor. so only immigrants - people who have little to no protection from the law or other options for work - take most of these jobs. we have created a permanent underclass of labor and then say that americans are just lazy for not volunteering to be part of the underclass.
there are actually good discussions to be had about how alienated many americans are from food production (hi hello that's what my only popular post is about), but the real solution to this problem is to protect agricultural workers, citizens or not. ban child labor in its entirety. punish corporations and farm owners that abuse and poison their workers. reform the immigration process so that these people aren't barred from legal protection and recourse.
agricultural workers have been exploited since the dawn of civilization, but the US in specific has been doing this since slavery, and it evolved in the 30s when FDR's labor laws excluded them specifically because most agricultural workers at the time were black. now it's mostly latino immigrants.
food doesn't fucking pick or slaughter itself. but citizens aren't going to take these jobs when the entire industry is rife with abuse - both legal and illegal - and horrific wages and working conditions.
my first reading in my African history class this year is about why using “tribe” to refer to ethnic groups stems from a racist desire to make African conflicts sound primitive or stemming from a desire to pretend that these are just ancient conflicts that have always existed. great article and I also feel like I’m vicariously experiencing the bullshittery that this author has been subjected to from people they’ve tried to talk to about this. like the article remains extremely professional but you can just hear in the tone that they’re talking through gritted teeth, you can practically see the customer service smile
[ID: a screenshot from a section of the article titled “But why not use ‘tribe’? Answers to common arguments.” Under the bullet point for the argument “Africans talk about themselves in terms of tribes” is written, “Commonly when Africans learn English they are taught that tribe is the term that English-speakers will recognize. But what underlying meaning in their own languages are Africans translating when they say tribe? Take the word isizwe in Zulu. In English, writers often refer to the Zulu tribe, whereas in Zulu the word for the Zulu as a group would be isizwe. Often Zulu-speakers will use the English word tribe because that’s what they think English speakers expect, or what they were taught in school. Yet Zulu linguists say that a better translation of isizwe is nation or people.” /end ID]
translation: “ ‘Oh ho ho but some Africans themselves say tribe!’ You dipshit. You fucking donkey. When someone has a word that means “nation” or “people” in their own language but then when they learn English YOU TELL THEM IT TRANSLATES TO “TRIBE” then THAT WILL BE THE WORD THEY USE. Maybe if you LISTENED TO THE LINGUISTS OF THAT GROUP you’d have more accurate information. Asshole.”
each point is repeated over and over with like five different examples because you just know there are dipshits out there who will keep arguing.
to the anonymous author of this article for the Africa Policy Information Center I hope you have a good day every day and experience fewer people being assholes about this, your patience is actually legendary
[ID: The author’s response to the argument “Avoiding the term tribe is just political correctness.” It reads “No, it isn’t. Avoiding the term tribe is saying that ideas matter. If the term tribe accurately conveyed and clarified truths better than other words, even if they were hard and unpleasant truths, we should use it. But the term tribe is vague, contradictory and confusing, not clarifying. For the most part it does not convey truths but myths, stereotypes and prejudices. When it does express truths, there are other words which express the same truths more clearly, without the additional distortions. Given a choice between words that express truths clearly and precisely, and words which convey partial truths murkily and distortedly, we should choose the former over the latter. That means choosing nation, people, community, chiefdom, kingroup, village or another appropriate word over tribe, when writing or talking about Africa. The question is not political correctness but empirical accuracy and intellectual honesty.” /end ID]
quick note my bad the authors are not actually anonymous they were just listed in the fine print at the end of the article rather than under the title: “The main text of this paper was drafted by Chris Lowe (Boston University). The final version also reflects contributions from Tunde Brimah (University of Denver), Pearl Alice Marsh (APIC), William Minter (APIC), and Monde Muyangwa (National Summit on Africa).”
[ID from alt text: a digital art piece of Arwen and Aragorn from lord of the rings. they are dressed in North American style indigenous buckskin clothing. they are holding hands, facing each other. arwen is slightly taller than Aragorn. the image is bordered with simple flowers, akin to stained glass in style. at the top of the image is a phrase written in Quenya. /end ID]
Graffiti seen around Aruba in the Caribbean, denouncing the overconstruction of hotels and the extreme land loss the Indigenous people of the Island are facing.
Spanish is a wonderful language for how it lets you add "-ito" to the end of a word to immediately make it small and cute.
Saw a children's book at work called "Vlad, el vampirito fabuloso" and I spent the rest of the workday going "Vampirito. Vampirito. Vampirito" in my head like a broken record
La criatura de los lagos de Tenochtitlán era enviada por Tlaloc para obtener sacrificios al señor de la lluvia, arrastraba a los macehuales a lo más profundo de las aguas para ahogarlos :::> http://bit.ly/Monstruo_Del_Agua
Tláloc tenía su manera de obtener almas en el gran lago de Tenochtitlán y lo hacía a través de la
These are the kinds of shark teeth discovered in burial sites and other ceremonial remains of the inland Maya communities. From left to right, there’s a fossilized megalodon tooth, great white shark tooth, and bull shark tooth.
This is the classic Maya logograph for the word zook, which means “shark.”
This design was copied from an early Classic Maya piece of pottery called a tetrapod plate that stands on four legs. It shows a stylized version of a shark, emphasizing a single, central tooth.
Shark jaws (shaded) worn over the groin in impersonation of the Maya Maize God, as depicted on a carved slab found east of Copán’s Great Plaza.
Found in Lamanai, Belize, this pottery vessel shows that the Maya did understand what real sharks looked like. Though stylized, this shark is recognizably anatomically correct, with nostrils and fins in the proper locations and tubes sticking out of its mouth in imitation of the barbels of a nurse shark.
A detail from monument 63 from the ancient Olmec site of La Venta in Tabasco, Mexico. Long before the Maya, the Olmec told a version of the creation story involving a mythical human vs. sea monster battle. Note that the sea monster’s face looks like it might be modeled on the upper jaw of a shark. This theme is repeated in some Maya representations too.
The peoples of Classic Maya civilization were obsessed with sharks. Images of shark-like monsters appear in Maya cities throughout the regions known today as Mexico, Belize, and Guatemala—even deep in the continent’s interior, where people never saw the ocean. Now one archaeologist has suggested these mythic symbols may have been based on real experiences Mayans had with sharks, as well as a brisk trade in shark jaws and giant shark tooth fossils.
Shark teeth have been found in some of the earliest Maya sites in the interior, going back to 100 CE. Some are perforated, as if they were worn as jewelry. Others seem to have been attached to weapons or used in bloodletting rituals. Sea monsters with shark-like features appear on pottery and the walls of ceremonial buildings. An ancient Maya creation story features the Maize God defeating a shark in battle and sometimes being born from the creature’s toothy jaws.
The question is, how did sharks become such an important part of a landlocked civilization? Writing in the journal Antiquity, James Madison University anthropologist Sarah E. Newman explains that coastal Maya peoples probably hunted sharks. Because sharks sink when they die, their teeth sink with them—so shark teeth among the Maya almost certainly came from the spoils of the hunt. There are accounts from Europeans who witnessed sixteenth-century Maya in the Yucatán hunting sharks using remoras, or suckerfish, to snag the great fish from their canoes. Others used massive hooks baited with chunks of meat.
It’s likely that traders journeyed to the interior with shark teeth and jaws, bringing stories of the fearsome animals along with them.
Odd symbolism explained
In Classic Mayan writing, the logograph for shark is “xook” or “xoc,” pronounced “shok” (rhymes with “woke”). Though some linguists have suggested that the English word for shark is borrowed from Mayan languages, there is at least one example of English speakers using the word “shark” to describe these fierce fish before making contact with the Maya.
There were a number of symbolic conventions among the Maya when it came to representing the xook. Often it was portrayed as having a single, large tooth, emblazoned with icons meant to convey shiny hardness. Sometimes the xook had razor-sharp teeth lining its upper jaw and practically no lower jaw at all. These creatures, explains Newman, were viewed as deities. “Classic Maya rulers associated themselves with the powerful, semi-divinity of sharks by incorporating the creatures into their names, such as Tikal’s dynastic founder, Yax Ehb Xook (“First Step Shark”) and Ix K’abal Xook (“Lady Shark Fin”), an eighth-century queen of Yaxchilan,“ she writes.
Newman suggests that these divine xook images may have been more realistic than we realize. Inland sites often contain shark teeth only from the upper jaws of sharks. She suggests that these artifacts may be all that Maya from the interior knew about sharks:
This correlation between iconography and artifacts raises the possibility that only the upper jaws of sharks, prized for their cutting edges, were transported inland. Indeed, it is possible that the Maya of the interior jungles never saw a complete pair of shark jaws, only the upper half.
That said, there are some very realistic representations of sharks at interior sites. Possibly this can be explained by the presence of bull sharks, which are known to swim in fresh water rivers that penetrate far into the interior of Mexico and Guatemala. So it’s possible that some inland Maya communities had first-hand experience with sharks, while others only saw upper jawbones.
As for the common representation of the xook with a single tooth, Newman notes that many Maya sites contain huge fossilized teeth from Megalodon, a prehistoric shark that roamed seas that encroached on Mexico and Central America millions of years ago. It’s likely that the locals excavated these teeth and imagined xook-like sea monsters with a single, huge tooth as a result.
Sometimes the xook’s single tooth got transplanted into other gods’ mouths. Newman writes:
At El Zotz, one of three versions of the Maya Sun God displays a shark tooth as his central incisor, with droplets of blood falling from his mouth. This nocturnal, blood-drinking Sun God sinks into the ‘fiery pool’ of the western sea at sunset. The sanguine droplets flowing from his mouth and the sunset-red, salty sea highlight an association between the strong saline taste of both fluids, perhaps another allusion to the Cipactli myth in which the great sea monster is speared and slain, making the ocean a realm of blood, violent conflict and dangerous beasts.
If we assume images of single-toothed monsters were inspired by the discovery of Megalodon fossils, that would make the Maya among the first peoples on Earth to identify these Cenozoic beasts. Newman writes, "It would be almost a millennium before Europe’s burgeoning biologists would similarly tie Megalodon teeth from Malta, known as ‘tongue stones,’ to large sharks from the distant past.” Beneath 1500-year-old Maya symbols lurked a scientific reality that eluded the Europeans. Perhaps xook-like sea monsters are among the earliest examples of paleontological speculation in the world.
Para celebrar su participación en la #CopaAmérica2024, Adidas colaboró con artesanas mexicanas de Naupan, Puebla.
Cada pieza es única, está hecha con materiales sostenibles como hilos reciclados. Por pieza se invirtieron aproximadamente 11 horas bordando cada detalle.
