Why "Precolonial" Indigenous North American History Matters: A Mini Syllabus
Okay I had this half-finished lying around so I prettied it up into something vaguely usable and added links wherever possible (most of them being totally legal...)
This is not a full treatment of Indigenous history before European contact. It was originally created to be a 15 week class, so it was not intended to cover everything but to give a taste of various regions and histories. Unfortunately, certain essays I would highly recommend are in the Oxford handbooks I listed at the end, and I have been unable to locate free-to-access versions.
Each section includes a question to consider that is intended to suggest ways that these precolonial histories have reverberations into the present. In a course I'd be able to draw them out more clearly, but keep them in mind as you read, if you like. Finally, please keep in mind that few of these sources will read like a "straightforward history" of "precolonial [xyz region/tribe/nation]." Be open-minded and critical-thinking!
Part 1: Foundations
Questions to consider:
Why didn't we learn this stuff?
Why should we learn this stuff?
Why do so many Indigenous people distrust historians / anthropologists / archaeologists?
Readings:
Michael Witgen (Red Cliff Ojibwe), "American Indians in World History" in The Oxford Handbook of American Indian History
Vine Deloria, Jr. (Standing Rock Sioux), Custer Died For Your Sins, chapter 4: "Anthropologists and Other Friends"
Floyd Westerman (Sisseton Dakota), "Here Come the Anthros" (music video!!)
Juliana Barr, "There's no such thing as prehistory"
Peregrine and Lekson, "The North American Oikumene"
(Parts 2-6 under the cut)
Part 2: Mesoamerica
Question to consider: How could so few Spaniards conquer the vast population of Tenochtitlan and other Aztec cities?
Readings:
Camilla Townsend, Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs
Popol Vuh (translated by Allen J. Christenson)
Part 3: Aridoamerica/Oasisamerica
Question to consider: How did the Southwest region of the United States become so associated with the touristy image of the "peaceful Pueblo Indian"?
Readings:
Joe Sando (Jemez Pueblo), Pueblo Nations: Eight Centuries of Pueblo Indian History
Kelley and Francis (Navajo), A Diné History of Navajoland, introduction
Severin Fowles, "The Pueblo Village in an Age of Reformation"
Part 4: The Midcontinent
Question to consider: How did the Five "Civilized" Tribes become so powerful, both historically and today?
Readings:
Alt and Pauketat, "Medieval Life in America's Heartland"
Christopher B. Teuton (Cherokee Nation), Cherokee Stories of the Turtle Island Liar's Club
Part 5: The Great Lakes
Question to consider: What role did Indigenous peoples play in the French ultimately losing their North American colonies? (Why am I writing this in English and not French?)
Readings:
Georges Sioui (Wendat), Huron-Wendat: Heritage of the Circle (I can't find an online copy but it's extremely worth buying)
Kayanerehkowa: The Great Law of Peace (Kahnawake Mohawk)
Part 6: General Resources
I would also recommend these two handbooks, if you can get a hold of them for a non-outrageous price:
The Oxford Handbook of American Indian History (2016)
The Oxford Handbook of North American Archaeology (2011)
Three years later, Minneapolis participants in the George Floyd uprising are consistently lied to from multiple directions about the reality of those inspiring, earth-shaking days in 2020 and their aftermath.
We hear the reactionary law-and-order narrative that the uprising was nothing but senseless destruction, leaving Minneapolis a barren wasteland and the police defunded (if only!). We hear the liberal fantasy that everything good that happened, including the storming of the 3rd precinct, was actually done by white supremacists. And also we hear the story advanced by many police abolitionists, such as in Mariame Kaba and Andrea Ritchie’s fall 2022 book “No More Police”, that it was organizers and nonprofits responsible for pushing abolition into mainstream conversation thanks to their petitioning, peaceful marching and meeting with city council members.
I picked up an early copy of “No More Police” before it came out in the fall of 2022, intending to determine which chapters might be best suited for study groups or political education of various sorts (I’ll get to that later in this essay), and what new materials or lessons had been incorporated since Kaba’s previous book “We Do This Til We Free Us.” But, as I sat in a park not far from George Floyd Square writing the first draft of this overview after several false starts, I had a hard time getting past my rage at the revisionist history that frames and permeates “No More Police.”
Flipping again through Kaba and Ritchie’s introduction and the foreword by Miski Noor and Kandace Montgomery, leaders of Black Visions—the both celebrated and side-eyed Minneapolis nonprofit whose leadership was, as I wrote my first draft, busy failing to recognize a staff unionization effort[1]—I become paralyzed at the disconnect between the reality my friends and I lived, versus their telling of the uprising.
In their story, massive protests were augmented by a petition demanding defunding of the police. Then, “The movement in defense of Black lives achieved one of its first abolitionist wins: a veto-proof majority of the Minneapolis City Council supported an amendment to disband the MPD.”
(This is, of course, false: The council members present at that now widely-derided rally in Powderhorn Park did not support such a measure; as their immediate backtracking in the days to follow made clear, their pledge was calculated to quell the ungovernability of the streets. Every single council member present later voted for at least one measure that either modestly or significantly increased police funding.)
Reading this, I think of the long hours of toxic gas and “less lethals” endured by people posted up behind blockades made of shopping carts from May 26–28, 2020. I think of the courageous looting and arsons that enabled the 3rd precinct siege, by spreading “public safety” resources thin throughout the metro area. I think of Calvin Horton, murdered by a vigilante pawn shop owner, and Montez Lee, Dylan Robinson, and others still behind bars for their actions in those days.
I think of friends who held the George Floyd Square barricades during subzero nights the following winter, heeding the call “No Justice No Streets” only to be betrayed, pooh-poohed and even assaulted and exiled by organizers who gave up the occupation of the square the next spring. Then I think of how we took the streets after the murders of Dolal Idd, Winston Smith, and others — when many organizers so quick to claim credit for the Uprising were either nowhere to be found, or actively peace-policed us. At those demonstrations, the Police 2.0 groups (We Push for Peace, Agape, A Mother’s Love, and others) funded by the “abolitionist” nonprofits’ Big Victory (a few million dollars given to the city’s “Office of Violence Prevention”) assaulted comrades while screaming misogynist, homophobic and transphobic slurs.
And I also think of those (usually anonymous) militants who, despite repeated trauma and setbacks, are keeping up the drumbeat of resistance today — with graffiti and street art, through covert actions like attacks on police precincts and arsons against those responsible for camp evictions, and through political education groups that tell the stories mainstream leftist publishers won’t ever. They — not the nonprofits or the celebrity organizers — are the reason that despite an increase in MPD funding since 2020, MPD has lost over 300 officers, a 33% reduction.
If this litany sounds like I am bitter, it is because I cannot help feeling so. Seeing the rewriting of history here in Minneapolis has made so many of us feel that way. “No More Police” frames itself from the beginning around a false story of 2020 uprising. If you thought that this much-hyped book hitting stores in fall 2022 would center itself on something other than the analyzed-ad-nauseum events of the Uprising, or at least substantially address some of the most brutal lessons learned since then, sadly, you’d be wrong.
something that needs to be adressed around bottom surgery is that it is SO difficult to find examples of post-recovery patients, which is understandable because hey, its ya genitals, not everyone wants to show them off...
Except that there are myriad examples of how it looks during and immediately after surgery. That isn't the case for any other gender affirming surgery, that the post-surgery images would be so widespread and yet the post-recovery images would be all but absent. You don't even get that for top surgery, it's always bottom surgery. This applies broadly too, not just vaginoplasty but phalloplasty and orchiectomy too. Always bleeding incisions and bruising stitches and never actual results. shits whack
Just verified this, I tried to find "Vaginoplasty post-recovery examples", and all that came up were images of the complications, and mid-surgery images. I am fully convinced this is intentional, to prevent trans people from wanting to get bottom surgery.
Idk if its intentional but it is entirely true that I quite literally had to start hooking up with post op trans women to get an idea of what a trans woman's vagin looks like and how it works!!!
I will never forget when I learned about John Robert Brown and had the moment of clarity where I realized that a lot of scaremongering over what people claim to be routine complications for bottom surgery are actually the results of this man's botched surgeries specifically.
Transphobes are walking around talking about the botched surgeries of a man who lost his medical license and was convicted of second degree murder for his medical negligence as though these are typical results, and it's just absolutely stomach churning for me.
Perhaps not all of them realize this is what's happening (these people tend to spread misinformation like the plague), but the people that started this game of telephone had to know. I have an extremely difficult time believing they didn't know what they were doing and that this wasn't intentional. They'll do anything to stop people from exercising their bodily autonomy.
For a reference of not botched images... We've used transbucket website and r/Transgender_Surgeries on reddit to see volunteered images of different transfeminizing bottom surgery post-op pics in early and later recovery to have a realistic sense of expectations and options. You need a transbucket account and reddit account respectively to see the images (for reddit, to see "nsfw images"). Though fair warning that early and post-recovery images are often posted together. The reddit board also has other useful informations.
The list of websites and surgeons are often U.S. centric, while the wikis tend to have other country options. So, here's some surgery and surgeon options:
From healthytrans, a list of bottom surgery surgeons that accept insurance
TransSurgeriesWiki reddit board surgery wiki page, and TransWiki reddit board page
Insurance cover letter example for out-of-network surgeon, from r/Transgender_Surgeries
Find surgeons in MTFsurgery.net, and find surgeons in transhealthcare.org
There's more options out there but here's some organizations that sometimes cover some gender affirmation surgeries in U.S.: JimCollinsFoundation and GenderBands
Archived post: U.S. insurance that might cover HRT and gender affirmation surgery (including bottom surgery)
General information on Costs and Financing (U.S. centric), from Gender Confirmation Center (a clinic)
Queerdoc has a list of more information on types of gender affirming surgeries, grants to cover costs, pre-surgery preparations n requirements, which have BMI requirements, and other info in different pages on the site
Usually, which insurance are accepted depends on the surgeon, but as long as the surgeon is well-rated and not being warned about, if they accept your insurance and referral it isn't necessary to pick only the most praised surgeons. Each surgeon (that hasn't been blacklisted or warned about) has their own techniques, pros and cons, and merits.
Hopefully with this information, it makes bottom surgery seem less scary for the girls with bottom dysphoria.
do you have any book recommendations about geography/ecology?
hello. hmm, sure. thanks for trusting me enough to ask; don’t trust me too much, though. i'm always learning and criticizing my past/previous perspectives, but there are still some "classic" books that i'd recommend. something i say often, though: i actually spend much more time reading essays and journal articles, rather than full-length books (especially since so much of the best decolonial viewpoints, Indigenous and non-Western perspectives, and newer/fresher geographical thought and "critical geography" takes are being actively revised/discussed in these newer forums without having to appease popular or profit-oriented press/publishing companies).
the subjects that i read about: human relationships with other-than-human creatures; extinction; environmental history of empires, imperialism, colonization; traditional ecological knowledge; resistance, fugitivity, and carceral geography; eerie, weird, and uncanny ecology; regional geography, specific microhabitats, endemic species; Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene; ruins, ruination, haunting, trauma, and emotional geography; reptiles/amphibians; temperate rainforest and deserts; Pleistocene fauna and Paleolithic/ancient anthropogenic environmental change; islands, the sea, Oceanic worldviews, archipelagic thinking, solidarity across islands/regions; frontiers, borderlands, hinterlands, sacrifice zones, wastelanding, social abandonment, and extraction zones; Indigenous geography/ontology; decolonization
generally, i don't distinguish much of a difference between the subjects of geography/ecology -- or human and other-than-human environments -- since lifeforms and places and (cosmo)politics are all so entangled. anyway, here are some books involving a bit more geography and human ecology (the last time i was asked for recommendations, i focused a bit more on ecology and other-than-human environments, which i'll also re-post below these newer recs):
and then, i'll say again that essays and journal articles are often a great source for some of my favorite authors (though of course none of them are perfect; they can be problematique in their own ways): Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert; Elizabeth DeLoughrey; Paulo Tavares; Anna Boswell; Achille Mbembe; Hugo Reinert; Tim Edensor; Anna Tsing; Frantz Fanon; Robin Wall Kimmerer; Kyle Whyte; Kathryn Yusoff; Iyko Day; Audra Simpson; Ann Laura Stoler; Pedro Neves Marques
so here are the books i've previously recommended:
if the butch woman doesn’t receive tenderness and good faith, it’s not a community space. if the brown woman doesn’t receive tenderness and good faith, its not a community space. if the trans woman doesn’t receive tenderness and good faith, it’s not a community space. and if the brown butch trans woman doesn’t receive tenderness and good faith? it’s about as good as an insurance company with a pride sticker smacked on top of the logo
it was a bit difficult to choose what to do for prayer, i thought about having a bunch of bones and Freya kneeling on top, i also thought about having the swirly particles around her beside and altar, but i felt like i did a lot of kneeling ones previously so i went for the overhead prayer for this one.
i chose redemption because protect from X dont really convey "pray" to me, its just a picture of melee, range or magic, retribution or smite where up there, but i went with redemption because the shape itself was easier to make and showed cleanly
Other Skills: Fishing , HP , Firemaking , Strenght , Farming , Attack , Herblore , Defence
Hey so apparently the Trump administration is trying to include Natives in his unconstitutional birthright citizenship end order. They haven't been non citizens since 1924. He trying to fucking reverse the Snyder Act.
A lot, if not all, of his plans impact natives in some way. Remember to keep advocating for native rights.
My lab group has done some (appropriately permitted) lichen collecting there and the number of specific, sensitive, and extremely rare lichens there is astounding!
On December 26th, 1862. 38 Dakhota warriors were hung in Mankato, Minnesota. They were wrongfully convicted of war crimes while trying to protect their homelands during the US-Dakota war. Shortly after freeing the slaves, Abraham Lincoln signed off to execute these 38 Dakhota men. Over 4,000 Americans showed up to watch the public hanging. To this day, this is the largest mass execution in United States history.
Remember the Genocide of this countries Indigenous Peoples everyday, remember that YOU ARE ON STOLEN LAND. And my people died trying to protect it.
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