meowdy nyall, i've decided to set this blog/account down. i do like blogging tho so it's still going to happen, just elsewhere! there's no pressure to refollow or whatever, it's also partly just paring things down for my brain's sake. anyways, take it easy✌️🖤
STANDING ROCK INDIAN RESERVATION, S.D. — Ray Taken Alive had been fighting for this moment for two years: At his urging, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Council was about to take the rare and severe step of banishing a nonprofit organization from the tribe’s land.
The Lakota Language Consortium had promised to preserve the tribe’s native language and had spent years gathering recordings of elders, including Taken Alive’s grandmother, to create a new, standardized Lakota dictionary and textbooks.
But when Taken Alive, 35, asked for copies, he was shocked to learn that the consortium, run by a white man, had copyrighted the language materials, which were based on generations of Lakota tradition. The traditional knowledge gathered from the tribe was now being sold back to it in the form of textbooks.
I’m reblogging this again because people in the notes are focusing on the wrong things.
This isn’t about books. This is about an organization founded and led by two white men using the work of indigenous peoples to create resources for their endangered languages and then not giving those people access to those resources. It’s about them literally copywriting the words of Elders and other indigenous people and refusing to let their tribes use them.
People are fighting to have access to the recordings that deceased loved ones gave to this organization and being denied because those recordings are copywrited. These men are literally taking aspects of these communities and saying, “these are ours now, no one else can use them, not even the people who shared them with us.”
And it’s not just one or two people who have issues with this. It’s not just one tribe. It’s multiple accounts of this organization and its founders violating the boundaries of both individuals and tribes and taking what wasn’t theirs to take.
The Lakota Language Consortium is trying to strip Ray Taken Alive of his teaching license. His hearing is on June 27th and his wife is on the 29th of this year (2024)!
He is a little less than 50% of his $50,000 goal to fund his legal fees if anyone can donate here.
You can also read the complaint and rebuttal on that same page as well as extra background information.
This is a collection of links to various posts concerning fundraisers I've vetted and instructions on how to submit fundraisers to me. These are primarily ones for Ghazzan families although some fundraisers for Sudanese families are also listed (I'm more familiar with my own country's politics and dialect and am more capable of vetting fundraisers for Palestinians as a result). Each post will have a time stamp indicating the latest date of update. And fundraisers will have colour-coded disclaimers according to the particularities of their case.
I know that people do not like clicking on links or navigating between posts, but please actually look through these posts and choose a fundraiser to donate to. Please.
Instructions on how to submit a fundraiser. (for those not Ghazzan)
تعليمات لتقديم طلب توثيق و نشر حملات التبرعات الخاصة بالغزاويين و عائلاتهم (للغزاويين فقط)
ملاحظة خاصة نشر الحملات.
List of fundraisers for my direct contacts from Ghazzah & Sudan. - PRIORITY.
Vetted family evacuation fundraisers list 1. - Particularities Listed.
Vetted family evacuation fundraisers list 2. - Particularities Listed.
Unvetted but highly likely legitimate fundraisers.
ykw, this is very likely not it, but i'm going to tell myself this is the very last post i'm making about some stuff
to whom it may concern (and there is a specific Whom, mind)
you know, i am not this deeply broken person. i'm just not. my wording? clumsy! but my actions? they aren't what you have fully convinced yourself they are. "before" meant years ago, talking to you at all meant finding a solution for both of us. being asked what i and i alone want to do? it's unhelpful. no one is "above" me, you were placed on that pedestal once when i was deeply unwell once upon a time, but i healed and grew on my own. my ability to love others and myself, it changed over the years, and i hate that you couldn't and wouldn't see that. i took my feelings about this and that and i put them down because i wanted to trust you more than my own wariness.
i tried to give you space to share, but you weren't interested, and i know now that you were already sowing quiet little hatreds and resentments of me despite my trying to get ahead of them. my biggest error was letting me get the better of myself and defaulting to overcorrecting and apologizing and taking responsibility for things i hadn't actually done. the worst of it was to be an awkward conversation, and i felt badly that you would feel awkward, and instead i was shut down, shut out, and discarded.
there was no punishment, i wanted to be honest. i wanted to let you know where i was coming from, and you chose to just, run with whatever it is you were feeling—and i'll never know because for all your supposed honesty, i knew very little about what you were thinking or feeling and had to tiptoe around lest i set you off and you toss me aside—and you crafted this, horrible iteration of me that didn't want you free. i wasn't ever upset when you mentioned previous experiences because even if you disagree, i've changed, and truthfully? it hurts the most that you thought so little of me that you believed otherwise among other things.
i'm sorry i wasn't as reassuring as you needed or in the way you needed, i'm sorry you didn't like my writing choices. i tried to give you space to speak, i feel as though i actively encouraged you to say your piece in our shared space you'd successfully had me thinking was ok and i see now i was wrong. every single step i made to be fair and honest with you wasn't up to your standard, and after having spoken with someone, i don't believe that's just me intentionally failing you because i'm this self-centered person. you don't have to like me, but i wish you could be fair and honest with yourself about me.
you can take aspects of a character i altered to try and make you happy and i don't want to look at anymore, you can rip me a new one for being creatively tepid and slow compared to your boundless enthusiasm, but i need you to remember i'd told you this was likely going to be the case; that i cannot keep up. also just, since when was this a competition? a quota to meet? that hurts. i have to assume this is resentment built up now, seeing as you'll do things like take little pieces of what i'd made while deriding me and my work, and you refused to try to speak to me, but just. leave me be. whatever this is, you've won. there is no new 'you' like you quickly found, there are no creative efforts to pick apart, it's just me asking to be left alone to recover.
i don't want you looking at my page. i know you and another individual are speaking, likely trading stories of my many failures, and that's a-ok, i own that i haven't done tight by people, but leave me be. i don't hate you, i'm just deeply hurt that no amount of change from me was good enough for you when you'd already made up your mind to be exasperated, on guard, and unhappy with me. i don't even know if that's true, but all i ever had was my assumptions so it is what it is still. it is truly the worst kind of pain to know you think i'm some awful person, but i can't fix that for you when you've already decided, so leave me alone. you've "won", congratulations.
and to the other party, you, i never hated. i struggled for years with my guilt and shame over acting so badly towards you while not once growing up and admitting as much to you and apologizing. i know it doesn't change things, but this is where things lie now. you know as well as i do that you didn't deserve the worst of me, but that's what i gave you without hearing otherwise. i couldn't spare you a kind word without talking myself down thrice as much, i was childish, mean, manipulative, and as you said, things were codependent, and i cannot apologize enough for any hurt and stress i caused failing to manage myself and understand those things so i could treat you with the respect and dignity and kindness when you needed it. i never said this to you personally because i figured leaving you be to heal was best, and i apologize if i was wrong and you needed to hear this sooner and directly from me. i truly do wish the best for you.
anyways. i trusted you and took your advice one last time to see the professional you thought i was so fucking messed up i needed to see or else, and i learned what i already know: i know damn well who i am where you refuse to and thus, do not. so, i am asking you to please, PLEASE just leave me alone for every single moment this is true. i don't write or draw things anymore, there's nothing to look at and comb through to tear every unsatisfactory detail apart, or contextualize as fantastically harmful, so please. there is nothing here for you anymore, i do not want to be subjected to things you think while being told to listen and remain unheard, or that my feelings don't matter, or be made an even worse villain when your own hurts make you vulnerable and i stumble, so leave me alone.
have a great life, genuinely. you're a very smart and deeply kind person who's struggled with hard times like the best of us shouldn't but always seem to, but i know you can go so far and be so unbelievably happy, and i hope you find it.
blakekathryn
janainaart
origamiaround
stormborns
turnnoffyourmind
titsay
izzy806
andulkaphoto
tangentwithtanner
