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arc520-deactivated20250811

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‘I’m too dumb to learn”

(A)

razzledazzy

Okay I’m only gonna say this once and preface this with the fact that I am Eyak and I probably do not want to hear your opinion on the Pharah skins Raindancer/Thunderbird. This is a really soul baring post so I’m not so sure about people reblogging it, if you do just try to be respective and remember this isn’t a go-ahead to go and appropriate all native cultures.

They’re pretty damn clearly based on Pacific Northwest tribal cultures. The ones I can pick out being Eyak/Tlingit/Haida/Tsimshian, but we often get grouped together so that doesn’t surprise me. There are many more, but I don’t claim familiarity with all tribes and I can’t say if their art styles and myths were used.

For your comparison a little sample of the tribe’s artistic styles just to get the point across:

And I really have to get something off my chest people. I don’t have a problem with these skins, in fact I adore them. Please just chill with me for a second while I explain.

The biggest issue I see here is people (who usually arn’t ndn, let alone from pac nw tribes) yelling about cultural appropriation. Which good! I’m glad people are on guard for it! But it’s entirely possible that Pharah’s father was Eyak/Tlingit/Haida/Tsimshian or from another closely related Pacific Northwest tribe, so we can’t really call that yet. It wouldn’t surprise me if he was.

Most importantly, speaking as an Eyak. Which is all I can do despite Tlingit/Haida/Tsimshian being so closely related, our tribe’s relationship with cultural appropriation is uh, not exactly the norm.

The last Eyak fluent speaker died in 2008, her name was Chief Marie Smith Jones and she was also the last full-blooded Eyak on Earth. The very last. Please appropriate Eyak culture. It’s the only way it’s going to survive. There’s less than 500 of us remaining, and we’re scattered more and more every year. Families I grew up with in Alaska converted to Catholicism. The military took my family across the globe and left us an entire continent away. The language I learned at the dinner table in 1998 now almost exclusively exists on those cassette tapes my white father recorded that night and in reconstructive attempts from a French academic that studied our language from halfway across the globe.

It sucks shit guys, it really does.

When I first saw the Thunderbird skin I cried, I cried for an hour. Because Overwatch is huge. It will live on for years if not decades. And there’s Pharah with her hair in braids I haven’t seen my mother wear in over a decade. Wearing the colors that remind me of a home I no longer have. Embodying a mythic figure that I trusted to protect me during Y2K and sought out constellations in the sky for.

So before you spew vitriol about how racist it is that they did that. Just kind of chill out and think about different perspectives for a moment. If you really want to help us? Consider taking a poke about http://www.eyakpeople.com/ and taking a look at our language revitalization project! It’s pretty fun and you could even learn a language out of it.

AwA’ahdah (Thank You)

coelasquid

I gonna ask people to please, please respect this person’s wishes to be considerate of what they’re saying and not willfully misrepresent the point they’re trying to make.

I just wanted to reblog this because it’s something I think about a lot in terms of how viewing cultural appropriation in a very black and white binary has the end result of making white supremacy stronger than ever. By treating different arts and cultures like that plastic-wrapped grandma furniture no one’s allowed to sit on because it needs to remain perfectly preserved, white culture and art becomes the only one people feel as though they can safely engage in. I absolutely know this is done from the very conscientious place of trying to prevent the dominant culture from taking things they like and running off with them like Jack Skellington, but when it’s taken in extremely pass/fail terms it makes it very difficult for people to celebrate their OWN cultures.

Of course the best answer is “let people tell their own stories and make their own art” but I have been told by several people from a number of different backgrounds that this hostility toward anything resembling cultural exchange by audiences assuming everyone behind the scenes is white makes them afraid to engage in their OWN culture in any public way for fear of being told they’re getting it wrong. I see this happen fairly regularly in a number of creative fields, television, fashion, art, even cosplay. The number of times I see cosplayers accused of “lying about their race” when they try to dress up like a character who IS supposed to be the same background as them every con season is staggering.

This is very anecdotal but just to look at it from another perspective, I personally am not native but I’m from a very Cree community. A significant number of my friends growing up were native and Métis, our school offered Cree as a second language, we had a Cree choir, Native studies was a mandatory class to get a diploma from our school division. As far back as 5th grade, traditional craftwork was a part of social studies when we were learning about different native nations across Canada. This included beadwork, like looms and embroidery on moccasins. I’m sure the intent was probably to make historically accurate designs, but being 11 year olds we all realized pretty quick it was like pixel art and we could write words and make little pictures, and everyone was working on their beading looms making patterns they designed themselves for months after the unit that required it ended. This was a group of kids, native and non-native alike, engaging in something they were taught in an educational context long after they were required to because they found a way to enjoy it in a contemporary manner that made it fun for them. That kind of thing was encouraged from us a lot, I remember a juried art show for our school division actively encouraging all of the students to focus more on native art and techniques if they planned on entering.

I remember experiencing a bit of a culture shock when I moved out of Northern Canada for the first time and experienced a white friend criticizing a Haida-inspired piece we saw in the hall at our art school for not being “accurate enough”. I was extremely confused because as, a 17 year old raised in Northern Canada my entire life, I’d never experienced that kind of criticism of engaging with native art in a modern, contemporary way before. I just kept thinking “You have no idea who made this! How do you expect modern Native people to enjoy making their own art if you’re going to criticize it for not being held up to a textbook standard?”

Obviously now that I’m more worldly and educated in what society is like outside of Northern Canada I understand the nuance of the situation and the different perspectives that people have informed by their own experiences, but It’s also important to remember that if you turn white culture into the only one people feel allowed to engage with in a fun contemporary manner, it will always remain dominant. This is of course not to say “cultural appropriation is made up, do whatever you want” or anything like that, just that it’s a very multi-dimensional issue to consider.

#history #culture

rabiesbaby666

i can’t wait to see the new ghostbusters movie

#it's getting decent reviews but I would have gone to see it anyway 8)

snailkites

Not in the job description: protecting native wildlife from Pokemon Trainers carrying Rana virus.

It hasn’t come to the park yet, but it’s nearby. This might be the month it shows up in our frogs and turtles.

markscherz

Important!!!

goboiano

Every single person during the Summer of 2016

micdotcom

Related: Albuquerque is also providing mobile showers to the homeless — and they’re doing it in a wonderfully sustainable way.

aprilnutter

I just donated. Please consider donating too.

Link is here since MIC.COM cares more about traffic to their website rather than actually linking to the cause.

DONATE

weloveshortvideos

fishslappping

@amatuskadanvhenan

typhlonectes

A recent census suggests the endangered Saiga antelopes in Kazakhstan are making modest gains after illness wiped out most of the species.

It was a silent spring for saiga antelopes last year.

Within a few weeks in May in Kazakhstan, a mysterious illness claimed the lives of more than 200,000 of the endangered animals, or over 60 percent of the species.

This spring scientists and conservationists around the world waited anxiously to see whether the die-off would be repeated. Not only has May come and gone with no epidemic, but newly published results from an April census revealed that the saigas are making modest gains in population…

endangereduglythings

Oh, thank goodness! I was really worried about the Saiga after all that news.

Though, I’m sure there are concerns about a genetic bottleneck…

tkingfisher

Oh thank god. I really thought we were gonna lose them and fifty years from now some clever grad student would finally figure out why.

#animals #antelope #saiga

sj0

you have been visited by the seven magic dragon balls your biggest wish will be granted but only if you reblog

hersheyhipster

Couldn’t risk it.

justjengie

didn’t realize they change colors. now I know o gotta wish.

pinayputa

THIS SHIT IS REAL I GOT THE JOB I WAS NUTS ABOUT BC I REBLOGGED THIS YESTERDAY maybe it’s a coinkidink but it okay just take the necessary steps to achieve what you’re wishing for and YOU CAN DO IT

emolumentsclause-deactivated201

the other day i saw a tweet by some man that was like “so what if men just started remaking all the iconic female comedies with all male casts?” and legit my first thought was “uh, yeah, sure, go ahead”

and then i thought a little harder and like, there are a few, but – you couldn’t realistically do that? because here’s the thing: historically, comedies with majority-female casts have been about characters in specifically gendered situations, or have only worked plot-wise because of gender roles. like – 9 to 5. the first wives club. clueless. legally blonde. mean girls. bridesmaids. like, sure, you COULD make all-male versions of those, but they’re going to bear almost zero resemblance to the original story, because those stories are specifically GENDERED stories.

whereas the reason why you can make a movie like ghostbusters with an all female cast is because the conceit is universal, since there was no reason to justify them being all men in the first place. male stories are universal. female stories are “about women.”

so, like, men: if you want to steal all the iconic female comedies and remake them, have at it! good luck with that! you’re not going to get very far.