The Combahee River Collective

“The nature of photography silences in a peculiar way, crowding out all senses but the visual. Yet I do not see the classic “stoic” Indian in this face; I see deep grief, and desperation, and the burning of the kind of strength that emerges when all else fails.” Bad Indians, Deborah A. Miranda

Tuskegee Airmen

“Those air crew and ground crew personnel associated with black flying units of the Army Air Forces (AAF) during World War II are known as the Tuskegee Airmen.”

Billie Holiday

Million: Theory of Life

Learn more about forced Native assimilation here. (click photo)

Leslie Marmon Silko

Note: Fuck your complicity to genocide, and the oppression of those whose lives have the same weight as yours.

Fawn Woods

 “Indigenous peoples reached out to the life-affirming stories of their enduring experience in these places, these places that are inhabited by our ghosts, our spirits, the spirits of the potential, the life force itself. They are people transformed, and transforming, living what they mean by any healing. It is from this potential, the potential of our proposition for other ways of being and living, that we generate and attach ourselves to our intensely dreamed future, always becoming.” Theory From Life, Million

Note: One of the most notable ways in which indigenous and black Americans found identity and resistance was through songs. Dating back to times before colonization, both within the “Americas” and Africa, songs were the way in which communities would hold history, the storytelling to bring life to those who had passed, or to educate those who had yet to come. During the enslavement of Africans and the genocide of both them and Indigenous peoples, songs were used as a form of protest, still to this day used as a way to critique colonialism within American society, and complicity with oppression.

Note: Think within the context of missions, or reservation schools, along side the forced assimilations of Christianity that enslaved Africans had to navigate, Indigenous peoples were forced to partake of a religion not of their own, and within this concept of religion, of narrative within the ideas of holiness, both enslaved peoples and indigenous were stripped of their humanity, their initial sense of value, of the truth of their history and their sense of self, to then have it be replaced with the assumption of white superiority. So religion has deep roots within both communities, and one of the most notable aspects is the stripping of life, in the name of “justice” or “sin”.

“The epidemic of murdered and missing indigenous women is a substantial issue; therefore, no single solution is sufficient and there needs to be a collaborative process to aid all Canadian indigenous communities.”

American Indian Law Review

How do we approach the disappearance of a people when the way we understand them, or highlight them within society, continues to erase who they truly are?

Audre Lorde

Missing White Women Syndrome

MISSING WHITE WOMAN SYNDROME: AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF RACE AND GENDER DISPARITIES IN ONLINE NEWS COVERAGE OF MISSING PERSONS

“We’re half the world
but carry the rest of it on our backs

We both live in occupied territories

But what can I know about you

Half a world away from me.

You and me, we know violence:

The pain of our mothers,
The memories of this land.

We share a history of being moved, removed,
moved again.
Taken from our homes

and wondering if we’ll ever go back.

We’re shared sleepless nights telling,

retelling,
telling again
the stories they tried to take from us;

trying to remember the ones they did.” (Lee 1)

Note: As we have touched on within a variety of our in class texts, community is truly one of the forefronts of ensuring colonialism is dismounted, one of the most important parts of that is seeing how oppression is collective within different demographics, and no one is truly “singular”, oppression to one is oppression to all.

A Litany for Survival

A Duck’s Tune

Ya kut unta pishno ma*

Ya kut unta pishno ma

Ya kut unta pishno ma

Ya kut unta pishno ma

So I moved to this place,

Iowa City, Ioway

Where green-headed mallards

walk the streets day and night,

and defecate on sidewalks.

Greasy meat bags in wetsuits,

disguise themselves as pets

and are free as birds.

Maybe Indians should have thought of that?

Ya kut unta pishno ma

Ya kut unta pishno ma

Ya kut unta pishno ma

Ya kut unta pishno ma

Maybe you would have

left us alone,

if we put on rubber bills,

and rubber feet,

Quacked instead of complained,

Swam instead of danced

waddled away when you did

what you did…

Ya kut unta pishno ma

Ya kut unta pishno ma

Ya kut unta pishno ma

Ya kut unta pishno ma

So I moved to the Place

The “Jewel of the Midwest”

Where ghosts of ourselves

Dance the sulphur trails.

Fumes emerge continuous

from the mouths of

Three-faced Deities who preach,

“We absolve joy through suffering.”

Ya kut unta pishno ma

Ya kut unta pishno ma

Ya kut unta pishno ma

Ya kut unta pishno ma

So I moved to this place where

in 1992, up washed Columbus again

like a pointy-chinned Son of Cannibals.

His spin doctors rewrite his successes

“After 500 years and 25 million dead,

One out of 100 American Indians commit suicide

One out of 10 American Indians are alcoholics

49 years is the average lifespan of American Indians.”

Each minute burns

the useful and useless alike

Sing Hallelujah

Praise the Lord

Ya kut unta pishno ma

Ya kut unta pishno ma

Ya kut unta pishno ma

Ya kut unta pishno ma

And when you foreigners

build your off-world colonies

and relocate in outer space

This is what we will do

We will dance,

We will dance,

We will dance

to a duck’s tune.

Ya kut unta pishno ma

Ya kut unta pishno ma

Ya kut unta pishno ma

Ya kut unta pishno ma

LeAnne Howe

Note: Historically, both Indigenous and Black Americans have been on the suffering end of white supremacist ideals and actions. Both Black and Indigenous peoples have felt the stretch of a noose around their necks. One of the most formative steps in understanding and decolonizing this colonialism construct is understanding who holds the power of the story.

What does lynching really mean?

For those of us who live at the shoreline

standing upon the constant edges of decision

crucial and alone

for those of us who cannot indulge

the passing dreams of choice

who love in doorways coming and going

in the hours between dawns

looking inward and outward

at once before and after

seeking a now that can breed

futures

like bread in our children’s mouths

so their dreams will not reflect

the death of ours;

For those of us

who were imprinted with fear

like a faint line in the center of our foreheads

learning to be afraid with our mother’s milk

for by this weapon

this illusion of some safety to be found

the heavy-footed hoped to silence us

For all of us

this instant and this triumph

We were never meant to survive.

And when the sun rises we are afraid

it might not remain

when the sun sets we are afraid

it might not rise in the morning

when our stomachs are full we are afraid

of indigestion

when our stomachs are empty we are afraid

we may never eat again

when we are loved we are afraid

love will vanish

when we are alone we are afraid

love will never return

and when we speak we are afraid

our words will not be heard

nor welcomed

but when we are silent

we are still afraid

So it is better to speak

remembering

we were never meant to survive.