#fuck colonization

[captainpirateface]

[mossadspypigeon]

[youcannotkillmeiamsubhuman]

Is it a burden or just a blow to our pride that we are forced to acknowledge the talents of the foolish, hated, and heinous?

I wish I could say Colombus was nothing more than a lucky fool to run across North America, but though he is a fool in any other regard it was not luck that caused a giant landmass to interrupt his voyage to China.

Donald Trump is a charlatan, a grifter; a rundown, washed up hack. But it's still so impressive how he's able to get away with murder in plain sight because of that fucking MAGA cult. But you'll pay sir. With interest.

And Drake, your rhymes are trash and you can't write a song for shit. But I have to admit you have a nice voice. I wish you didn't, but you do.

I will always call these men frauds, fools, and I will always say "Fuck them specifically" but I will always hate that I can't lie on their names just because I don't like them.

[theglowsociety]

[vampfire1]

being white-passing and métis is not a contradiction. it’s a fight i’m in every day.

i don’t talk about this enough because i’m always afraid someone’s gonna try to fact-check my existence. that someone’s gonna look at me and decide, again, that i’m not enough. not native enough. not métis enough. not oppressed enough. not traumatized enough. not legit enough. and i’m tired. i’m so fucking tired.

i’m métis. my dad is blackfoot and ojibwe. his dad—my pa—literally went to a residential school. he had our language beaten out of him. had culture stripped from him like it was dirt that needed cleaning. and guess what? he survived. and then he passed down whatever scraps colonialism didn’t steal to my dad, who passed it down to me. stories. pride. grief. resilience. memory. and you know what the world says to that?

“oh. you don’t look native.”

i want to scream every time i hear that. like indigeneity is a costume i forgot to put on that morning. like you get to look at my skin, my face, my paleness, and just erase everything else. like the blood in my veins doesn’t matter because it doesn’t match your textbook idea of what native is “supposed” to look like. as if colonization didn’t literally breed people like me into existence. as if passing privilege means absence. as if my culture disappears the second you decide it’s inconvenient.

white-passing isn’t some kind of golden ticket. it’s a complicated-ass identity crisis you never get a break from. it means i don’t get followed around stores, but i do get erased. it means i don’t get some forms of direct violence, but i get silence. silence when i speak about my people. silence when i try to grieve what was taken from us. silence when i say, “my pa was in a residential school,” and someone replies with “oh… but you’re basically white, right?”

no. i’m not basically anything. i’m métis. and yes, my mum’s french. colonizer blood, settler ancestry. that shit lives in my family tree like rot and roots at the same time. and i don’t ignore it. i can’t. it’s part of me, and it makes things more complicated than i ever asked for. it means i’m constantly reconciling the fact that i carry both the colonized and the colonizer inside me. it’s guilt. it’s shame. it’s discomfort. and it’s mine to live with. and yet people act like that’s the part that makes me more “valid.” like proximity to whiteness is some kind of credibility. like i should be grateful.

i’m not fucking grateful. i’m angry.

i’m angry that i have to “prove” anything. i’m angry that my culture is something i have to perform in order for people to believe it’s real. i’m angry that i have to talk about residential schools—literal generational trauma—as some kind of evidence that i belong. why do i need trauma receipts for you to listen? why do i have to list blood quantum and history and geography like this is a test?

you wanna talk about passing privilege? fine. it’s real. i’ll say it myself. i know i can walk into places and not be immediately marked as “other.” that’s safety i didn’t earn, and i don’t deny it. but it doesn’t mean i’m not indigenous. it doesn’t mean my ancestors didn’t bleed. it doesn’t mean my culture is a costume i’m borrowing.

i’m not borrowing anything. this is mine. this grief, this pride, this confusion, this rage—it’s all mine. my identity isn’t a checklist. it’s a constant push and pull between what i feel, what i know, and what the world tries to take from me.

sometimes i feel like i’m stuck in the middle. not native enough for some people, not white enough for others. and i get it—métis identity has always been complicated. we’ve always existed in the margins, the in-betweens, the places where people refuse to look. and still—we exist. we survive.

so yeah, i’m white-passing. and i’m métis. and i’m pissed off. and i’m proud. and i’m still here.

don’t tell me i don’t look native. you don’t know what native looks like. you only know what colonialism wants you to see.

[rrcraft-and-lore]

This is very true. I can go find a thread I did on this for those who are interested.

Hijra: They are the transgender, eunuch, or intersex people in India who are officially recognized as the third sex throughout most countries in the Indian subcontinent. The trans community and history in India goes back a long way as being documented and officially recognized - far back as 12th century under the Delhi Sultanate in government records, and further back in our stories in Hinduism. The word itself is a Hindi word that's been roughly translated into English as "eunuch" commonly but it's not exactly accurate.

Hijras have been considered the third sex back in our ancient stories, and by 2014 got official recognition to identify as the third gender (neither male or female) legally. Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, and India have accepted: eunuch, trans, intersex people & granted them the proper identification options on passports and other government official documents.

But let's get into some of the history surrounding the Hijra community (which for the longest time has been nomadic, and a part of India's long, rich, and sometimes, sadly, troubled history of nomadic tribes/people who have suffered a lot over the ages.

Hijras and intersex people are mentioned as far back as in the Kama Sutra, as well as in the early writings of Manu Smriti in the 1st century CE (Common Era) - specifically said that a third sex can exist if possessing equal male and female seed.

This concept of balancing male/female energies, seed, and halves is seen in two places in South Asian mythos/culture and connected to the Hijra history.

First, we have Aravan/Iravan (romanized) - who is also the patron deity of the transgender community.

He is most commonly seen as a minor/village deity and is depicted in the Indian epic Mahabharata. Aravan is portrayed as having a heroic in the story and his self-sacrifice to the goddess Kali earns him a boon. He requests to be married before his death. But because he is doomed to die so shortly after marriage, no one wants to marry him.

No one except Krishna, who adopts his female form Mohini (one of the legendary temptresses in mythology I've written about before) and marries him.

It is through this union of male, and male presenting as female in the female form of Mohini that the seed of the Hijras is said to begun, and why the transgender community often worships Aravan and, another name for the community is Aravani - of/from Aravan.

[glass-lotus]

When I say colonization is evil and unacceptable, I don't just mean French and British colonizations. Arabian colonization is justified and glorified to a crazy level. They destroyed our culture, religion and monuments. They made us pay fines to practise our own faiths and oppressed us. And I'm not just talking about them destroying Desi culture, Arab Muslim colonization affected African people as well. They called the great Warrior-Queen Dihya a sorceresses because she defeated them, and they couldn’t accept that an indigenous woman was better than them. The fact that she had extraordinary skill, strength and intelligence made them seethe. This is just a tiny example of what they did.

[yasha-laurelabonagracia]

My original digital art was inspired by the struggles faced by Jamaica.