#Native American history in Alaska

[jepergola]

New story today: "Never Turn Down a Free Cruise"

#the skewed life #humor #humour #comedy #friend #friends #cruise #cruise ship #Alaska #Alaska cruise #Alaskan cruise #cruise staff #excursion #shore excursions #history #nature #Native Americans #Native American history in Alaska #Russian history in Alaska #whales #bald eagles #ravens #bears #glaciers #glacier melt #so much to do so little time

[glowingcritter]

Little girl using ulu & Mama drying fish

Alaska

The World of the American Indian, National Geographic, 1974

#indigenous history #Alaska #ulu #Inuit #National Geographic #vintage #indigenous #ndn #native american

[memories-of-ancients]

Walrus ivory snow goggles, Thule culture, Alaska, 800-1200 AD

from The Metropolitan Museum of Art

#history #antiquities #art #thule culture #native american #alaska #arctic

[worldhistoryfacts]

Alaskan Native American snow goggles, made around the year 1000. These would preserve the wearer’s vision by reducing the amount of light that reflected off of the arctic snow into their eyes.

{WHF} {Ko-Fi} {Medium}

#history #medieval #alaska #snow #goggles #native american

[todaysdocument]

Deg Xit'an people fish for crabs through the sea ice of the Bering Strait on May 30, 1973. 

[Image cropped from original.] 

Record Group 79: Records of the National Park Service

Series: Alaska Task Force Photographs

File Unit: Bering Sea

Image description: Four people in fur-trimmed parkas stand among piles of snow on an ice sheet that stretches to the horizon. There are several holes in the ice. One person is holding a long pole that goes into one of the fishing holes. 

#archivesgov #May 30 #1973 #1970s #Native American history #Native Alaskan history #Indigenous American history #Deg Xit'an #Deg Hit'an #Alaska #fishing #ice fishing #crabs #cw: ethnic slurs in original

[astraphel]

🎉IT'S ELIZABETH PERATROVICH DAY

She was the Tlingit Civil Rights Leader responsible for the first (US) anti-discrimination law of the 20th century, which passed in 1945!

“Have you eliminated larceny or murder by passing a law against it? No law will eliminate crimes, but at least you, as legislators, can assert to the world that you recognize the evil of the present situation and speak your intent to help us overcome discrimination.”

Elizabeth Peratrovich, Ḵaax̲gal.aat, was a member of the Lukaax̱.ádi clan under the Raven moeity. Her Tlingit name means "person who packs for themselves."

Elizabeth held the position of Grand President of the Alaska Native Sisterhood (ANS), a partner organization of the Alaska Native Brotherhood (ANB). Founded in 1912 to address racism against Alaska Native peoples in Alaska, the ANB is one of the oldest Native-led Civil Rights Organizations in the world, followed closely by the ANS, established just three years later.

A restaurant in Juneau, Alaska, in 1908, advertises that its staff is White only. The Nelson Act (1905) had passed in Alaska three years earlier, segregating education systems between Whites and Alaska Natives. Mixed children weren't initially allowed in school, but this changed thanks to an ANB member. Playgrounds, theaters, and other public places were also segregated.

Today honors the fateful day she took the Senate floor and swayed the overtly racist Senate to pass the Alaska Equal Rights Act of 1945. This law made Alaska the first Territory in the United States to abolish Jim Crow laws.

"Fighter in Velvet Gloves: Alaska Civil Rights Hero Elizabeth Peratrovich" (2021). Tlingit Author Ann Boochever reads from her book, which was written in collaboration with Peratrovich's family. Skip to 38:46 in the video for what happened that day in the Senate.

Portrait of Elizabeth Peratrovich

Alaska State Legislature House of Representatives

A Recollection of Civil Rights Leader Elizabeth Peratrovich 1911-1958

Alaska Celebrates Civil Rights Pioneer (PDF)

For the Rights of All: Ending Jim Crow in Alaska (Video)

Celebrating Elizabeth Peratrovich (Google Doodle)

Overlooked No More: Elizabeth Peratrovich, Rights Advocate for Alaska Natives

Treasury urged to mint 5M Peratrovich coins

1945: Alaska’s territorial legislature adopts anti-discrimination law

Alaskans and the Nation Celebrate Elizabeth Peratrovich

Anti-Discrimination Act of 1945 and Elizabeth Peratrovich

Sealaska Corporation

#elizabeth peratrovich #indigenous women #civil rights #ndn #civil rights leader #alaska native #native american #ndn tag #native peoples #ndn tumblr #elizabeth peratrovich day #native history #indigenous history #civil rights history #american indian #first nations #indigenous #indigneous people #tw racism

[deannagrimstead]

#native vote #native american #indigenous rights #native american history #alaska

[theivorybilledwoodpecker]

For people who live in the U.S., November can bring to mind a lot of things, and one of them is Thanksgiving. This can be a complicated holiday because while most people just see it as an excuse to get together with friends and family and pig out, we all know that the story of the "First Thanksgiving" is bullshit.

This November, and for as long as it takes, I'm asking you to keep Native American and Alaska Native rights in mind and to fight for them. ICWA, the Indian Child Welfare Act, is at risk.

This act was created to stop cultural genocide. Until the late 1900s, Native American and Alaska Native children were routinely kidnapped and placed in residential schools and white families, where they faced abuse, forced assimilation, and sometimes murder. ICWA was passed in 1978 to stop this by allowing tribes to control the foster and adoption placement of Native American and Alaska Native children.

However, today, the SCOTUS started hearing arguments in a case that could overturn ICWA. This would not only endanger children and allow cultural genocide, but it would endanger tribal sovereignty since it would deny sovereign tribes the rights over the placement of their own children.

This November, this Thanksgiving, and until ICWA has been upheld, I ask you to stand up for the rights of Native Americans and Alaska Natives.

Spread the word about what is happening. Don't let this get swept under the rug. Post about it. Tell your friends and family.

Sign petitions.

Write to representatives.

Reach out to local tribes to see what you can do to help.

Protest.

And if you can afford to do so, donate to Native American and Alaska Native organizations.

#ICWA #indigenous rights #native americans #alaska natives #indian child welfare act #Thanksgiving #Signal boost #Boost the signal

[reasonsforhope]

"Growing up, Mackenzee Thompson always wanted a deeper connection with her tribe and culture.

The 26-year-old member of the Choctaw Nation said she grew up outside of her tribe’s reservation and wasn’t sure what her place within the Indigenous community would be.

Through a first-of-its-kind program, Thompson said she’s now figured out how she can best serve her people — as a doctor.

Thompson is graduating as part of the inaugural class from Oklahoma State University’s College of Osteopathic Medicine at the Cherokee Nation. It’s the first physician training program on a Native American reservation and in affiliation with a tribal government, according to school and tribal officials.

“I couldn’t even have dreamed this up,” she said. “To be able to serve my people and learn more about my culture is so exciting. I have learned so much already.”

Thompson is one of nine Native graduates, who make up more than 20 percent of the class of 46 students, said Dr. Natasha Bray, the school’s dean. There are an additional 15 Native students graduating from the school’s Tulsa campus.

The OSU-COM graduates include students from 14 different tribes, including Cherokee, Choctaw, Muscogee, Seminole, Chickasaw, Alaska Native, Caddo, and Osage.

Bray said OSU partnered with the Cherokee Nation to open the school in 2020 to help erase the shortage of Indigenous doctors nationwide. There are about 841,000 active physicians practicing in the United States. Of those, nearly 2,500 — or 0.3 percent — are Native American, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.

When American Indian and Alaska Native people visit Indian Health Service clinics, there aren’t enough doctors or nurses to provide “quality and timely health care,” according to a 2018 report from the Government Accountability Office. On average, a quarter of IHS provider positions — from physicians to nurses and other care positions –are vacant.

“These students here are going to make a generational impact,” Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. told the students days before graduation. “There is such a need in this state and in this region for physicians and this school was created out of a concern about the pipeline of doctors into our health system.”

The Cherokee Nation spent $40 million to build the college in its capital of Tahlequah. The walls of the campus feature artifacts of Cherokee culture as well as paintings to remember important figures from Cherokee history. An oath of commitment on the wall is written in both English and Cherokee.

The physician training program was launched in the first year of the pandemic.

Bray said OSU and Cherokee leadership felt it was important to have the school in the heart of the Cherokee Nation, home to more than 141,000 people, because students would be able to get experience treating Indigenous patients. In Tahlequah, students live and study in a small town about an hour east of Tulsa with a population of less than 24,000 people.

“While many students learn about the problems facing these rural communities,” Bray said. “Our students are getting to see them firsthand and learn from those experiences.”

While students from the college are free to choose where to complete their residency after graduation, an emphasis is placed on serving rural and Indigenous areas of the country.

There’s also a severe lack of physicians in rural America, a shortage that existed before the COVID-19 pandemic. The Association of American Medical Colleges has projected that rural counties could see a shortage between 37,800 and 124,000 physicians by 2034. An additional 180,000 doctors would be needed in rural counties and other underserved populations to make up the difference.

Bray said OSU saw an opportunity to not only help correct the underrepresentation of Native physicians but also fill a workforce need to help serve and improve health care outcomes in rural populations.

“We knew we’d need to identify students who had a desire to serve these communities and also stay in these communities,” she said.

Osteopathic doctors, or DOs, have the same qualifications and training as allopathic doctors, or MDs, but the two types of doctors attend different schools. While MDs learn from traditional programs, DOs take on additional training at osteopathic schools that focus on holistic medicine, like how to reduce patient discomfort by physically manipulating muscles and bones. DOs are more likely to work in primary care and rural areas to help combat the health care shortages in those areas.

As part of the curriculum, the school invited Native elders and healers to help teach students about Indigenous science and practices...

Thompson said she was able to bring those experiences into her appointments. Instead of asking only standard doctor questions, she’s been getting curious and asking about her patient’s diets, and if they are taking any natural remedies.

“It’s our mission to be as culturally competent as we can,” she said. “Learning this is making me not only a better doctor but helping patients trust me more.”

-via PBS NewsHour, May 23, 2024

#indigenous #native american #cherokee #choctaw #cherokee nation #medical school #united states #doctors #medical news #medical student #cultural competence #cultural heritage #public health #health care #medicine #good news #hope #oklahoma

[batboyblog]

Things Biden and the Democrats did, this week #10

March 15-22 2024

The EPA announced new emission standards with the goal of having more than half of new cars and light trucks sold in the US be low/zero emission by 2032. One of the most significant climate regulations in the nation’s history, it'll eliminate 7 billion tons of CO2 emissions over the next 30 years. It's part of President Biden's goal to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 on the road to eliminating them totally by 2050.

President Biden canceled nearly 6 Billion dollars in student loan debt. 78,000 borrowers who work in public sector jobs, teachers, nurses, social workers, firefighters etc will have their debt totally forgiven. An additional 380,000 public service workers will be informed that they qualify to have their loans forgiven over the next 2 years. The Biden Administration has now forgiven $143.6 Billion in student loan debt for 4 million Americans since the Supreme Court struck down the original student loan forgiveness plan last year.

Under Pressure from the administration and Democrats in Congress Drugmaker AstraZeneca caps the price of its inhalers at $35. AstraZeneca joins rival Boehringer Ingelheim in capping the price of inhalers at $35, the price the Biden Admin capped the price of insulin for seniors. The move comes as the Federal Trade Commission challenges AstraZeneca’s patents, and Senator Bernie Sanders in his role as Democratic chair of the Senate Health Committee investigates drug pricing.

The Department of Justice sued Apple for being an illegal monopoly in smartphones. The DoJ is joined by 16 state attorneys general. The DoJ accuses Apple of illegally stifling competition with how its apps work and seeking to undermining technologies that compete with its own apps.

The EPA passed a rule banning the final type of asbestos still used in the United States. The banning of chrysotile asbestos (known as white asbestos) marks the first time since 1989 the EPA taken action on asbestos, when it passed a partial ban. 40,000 deaths a year in the US are linked to asbestos

President Biden announced $8.5 billion to help build advanced computer chips in America. Currently America only manufactures 10% of the world's chips and none of the most advanced next generation of chips. The deal with Intel will open 4 factories across 4 states (Arizona, Ohio, New Mexico, and Oregon) and create 30,000 new jobs. The Administration hopes that by 2030 America will make 20% of the world's leading-edge chips.

President Biden signed an Executive Order prioritizing research into women's health. The order will direct $200 million into women's health across the government including comprehensive studies of menopause health by the Department of Defense and new outreach by the Indian Health Service to better meet the needs of American Indian and Alaska Native Women. This comes on top of $100 million secured by First Lady Jill Biden from ARPA-H.

Democratic Senators Bob Casey, Tammy Baldwin, Sherrod Brown, and Jacky Rosen (all up for re-election) along with Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, and Sheldon Whitehouse, introduced the "Shrinkflation Prevention Act" The Bill seeks to stop the practice of companies charging the same amount for products that have been subtly shrunk so consumers pay more for less.

The Department of Transportation will invest $45 million in projects that improve Bicyclist and Pedestrian Connectivity and Safety

The EPA will spend $77 Million to put 180 electric school buses onto the streets of New York City This is part of New York's goal to transition its whole school bus fleet to electric by 2035.

The Senate confirmed President Biden's nomination of Nicole Berner to the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. Berner has served as the general counsel for America's largest union, SEIU, since 2017 and worked in their legal department since 2006. On behalf of SEIU she's worked on cases supporting the Affordable Care Act, DACA, and against the Defense of Marriage act and was part of the Fight for 15. Before working at SEIU she was a staff attorney at Planned Parenthood. Berner's name was listed by the liberal group Demand Justice as someone they'd like to see on the Supreme Court. Berner becomes one of just 5 LGBT federal appeals court judges, 3 appointed by Biden. The Senate also confirmed Edward Kiel and Eumi Lee to be district judges in New Jersey and Northern California respectively, bring the number of federal judges appointed by Biden to 188.

#Thanks Biden #Joe Biden #Democrats #politics #US politics #climate change #climate crisis #student loans #debt forgiveness #shrinkflation #women's health #drug prices

[jewish-vents]

As a proud Jew and a member of the Iŋalit Iñupiaq people I have never felt as seen as reading a Choctaw Jew's post on here. Christian missionaries hauled my people off of our lands and killed most of us and they didn't even inhabit the land. They didn't even build shit there, they just took it to take it, and I'm supposed to go "ah yes America has no colonizers" and not laugh when these people say "Hebrew is a colonizer language"? Motherfuckers, MY LANGUAGE IS EXTINCT BECAUSE OF YOU! You know who didn't ever try and force a language on anyone? The Ashke Jewish man my great-great grandmother fell for and married. People really expect me to be onboard with their fact-free zero colonialism rewrite of history while my people's lands remain off limits to us, illegal to even visit, the US government holding onto it on the off chance there might be oil there even though they never bothered to even drill for it in over 70 years.

"No other religion acts like this" first of all please read up on Islamic imperialism and get your boot off the neck of my indigenous Middle Eastern brethren and secondly Christian-governed Alaska wouldn't let Native students attend school with "American" children - that is literally how the law phrased it - unless we abandoned our language, our clothes, our songs, our stories, our religion and even traditions as basic as sharing food with poor families in the community. You wanna know how my great-great grandmother met my great-great grandfather? They were both arrested for violating the law and "indoctrinating" children into "Native, anti-European practices" by which I mean THEY WERE BOTH ARRESTED FOR GIVING FOOD TO POOR PEOPLE. They were both arrested by CHRISTIANS!

And people mistake my brown skin for proof of goy status and want to talk shit about how the only good colonizer is a dead colonizer. You're white and you're in ALASKA, you might want to rethink the words coming out of your mouth when most of your ancestors came here to mine gold and get rich and mistreat indigenous people. Even if I accepted the idea that Israel is doing colonialism, which I do not, nobody moved to Israel to get rich and rape indigenous women with impunity to the point where there are words in Inuit languages for gangrape done by white men.

I don't want to hear another thing from a white goy in Alaska about Israel being colonizers when the US bought Alaska from Russia. We were colonized twice for you to get to be here and tell me to my face how colonizers are bad. AND THEN people want to say my Ashke ancestors were colonizers. Fleeing Russia is not colonization, one, and two, WHY DO YOU THINK THEY LEFT?! For fun? What, they heard our weather was nice and wanted to come visit?

I am going to need white goyim to learn US history before they open their mouths.

I'm sorry this is long and I yelled/capslocked but I have had to bite my tongue so many times to not cause a scene because I don't want the university to come up with an excuse not to let me graduate due to poor conduct. It is so tiring. I feel like I'm holding my breath all the time. Graduation is tomorrow. Shabbat shalom.

.

#jewish vents #antisemitism #american history #genocide tw #rape tw #Iŋalit Iñupiaq #indigenous history

[atlaculture]

Cultural Architecture: NWT Totem Poles - An Overview

In the Northern Water Tribe (NWT), totem poles are commonplace throughout the capitol city. According to Indigenous Foundations:

Totem poles are monuments created by First Nations [and Alaska Natives] of the Pacific Northwest to represent and commemorate ancestry, histories, people, or events... A totem pole typically features symbolic and stylized human, animal, and supernatural forms.

And the totem poles of the NWT are no different. The poles in the NWT are composed of different "segments" that likely represent animals and natural phenomenon of spiritual significance in their culture (totems).

The biggest difference between real-life totem poles and the ones depicted in ATLA are the materials used. Traditionally, real-life totem poles are carved from red cedar wood. Meanwhile, the totem poles depicted in ATLA appear to be carved/bent from ice. This makes perfect sense when considering the different resources available in the arctic versus the subarctic.

Along with bone chokers, totem poles are a type of Native American/Alaska Native/First Nation art that is well-known to most non-indigenous people, so it's not surprising that they were incorporated into the worldbuilding of the NWT.

In Part 2, I'll be covering the possible meaning/symbolism behind each of the totem pole's segments.

Like what I’m doing? Tips always appreciated, never expected. ^_^

https://ko-fi.com/atlaculture

#avatar #atla #avatar the last airbender #water tribe #cultural architecture

[mostly-mundane-atla]

Inupiaq Books

This post was inspired by learning about and daydreaming about visiting Birchbark Books, a Native-owned bookstore in Minneapolis, so there will be some links to buy the books they have on this list.

Starting Things Off with Two Inupiaq Poets

Joan Naviyuk Kane, whose available collections include:

Hyperboreal

Black Milk Carbon

The Cormorant Hunter's Wife

She also wrote Dark Traffic, but this site doesn't seem to carry any copies

Dg Nanouk Okpik, whose available collections include

Blood Snow

Corpse Whale

Fictionalized Accounts of Historical Events

A Line of Driftwood: the Ada Blackjack Story by Diane Glancy, also available at Birchwood Books, is a fictionalized account of Ada Blackjack's experience surviving the explorers she was working with on Wrangel Island, based on historical records and Blackjack's own diary.

Goodbye, My Island by Rie Muñoz is a historical fiction aimed at younger readers with little knowledge of the Inupiat about a little girl living on King Island. Reads a lot like an American Girl book in case anyone wants to relive that nostalgia

Blessing's Bead by Debby Dahl Edwardson is a Young Adult historical fiction novel about hardships faced by two generations of girls in the same family, 70 years apart. One reviewer pointed out that the second part of the book, set in the 1980s, is written in Village English, so that might be a new experience for some of you

Photography

Menadelook: and Inupiaq Teacher's Photographs of Alaska Village Life, 1907-1932 edited by Eileen Norbert is, exactly as the title suggests, a collection of documentary photographs depicting village life in early 20th century Alaska.

Nuvuk, the Northernmost: Altered Land, Altered Lives in Barrow, Alaska by David James Inulak Lume is another collection of documentary photographs published in 2013, with a focus on the wildlife and negative effects of climate change

Guidebooks (i only found one specifically Inupiaq)

Plants That We Eat/Nauriat Niģiñaqtuat: from the Traditional Wisdom of Iñupiat Elders of Northwest Alaska by Anore Jones is a guide to Alaskan vegetation that in Inupiat have subsisted on for generations upon generations with info on how to identify them and how they were traditionally used.

Anthropology

Kuuvangmiut Subsistence: Traditional Eskimo Life in the Latter Twentieth Century by Douglas B. Anderson et al details traditional lifestyles and subsistance customs of the Kobuk River Inupiat

Life at the Swift Water Place: Northwest Alaska at the Threshold of European Contact by Douglas D. Anderson and Wanni W. Anderson: a multidisciplinary study of a specific Kobuk River group, the Amilgaqtau Yaagmiut, at the very beginning of European and Asian trade.

Upside Down: Seasons Among the Nunamiut by Margaret B. Blackman is a collection of essays reflecting on almost 20 years of anthropological fieldwork focused on the Nunamiut of Anuktuvuk Pass: the traditional culture and the adaption to new technology.

Nonfiction

Firecracker Boys: H-Bombs, Inupiat Eskimos, and the Roots of the Environmental Movement by Dan O'Neill is about Project Chariot. In an attempt to find peaceful uses of wartime technology, Edward Teller planned to drop six nukes on the Inupiaq village of Point Hope, officially to build a harbor but it can't be ignored that the US government wanted to know the effects radiation had on humans and animals. The scope is wider than the Inupiat people involved and their resistance to the project, but as it is no small part of this lesser discussed moment of history, it only feels right to include this

Fifty Miles From Tomorrow: a Memoir of Alaska and the Real People by William L. Iģģiaģruk Hensley is an autobiography following the author's tradition upbringing, pursuit of an education, and his part in the Alaska Native Settlement Claims Act, where he and other Alaska Native activists had to teach themselves United States Law to best lobby the government for land and financial compensation as reparations for colonization.

Sadie Bower Neakok: An Iñupiaq Woman by Margaret B. Blackman is a biography of the titular Sadie Bower Neakok, a beloved public figure of Utqiagvik, former Barrow. Neakok grew up one of ten children of an Inupiaq woman named Asianggataq, and the first white settler to live in Utqiagvik/Barrow, Charles Bower. She used the out-of-state college education she received to aid her community as a teacher, a wellfare worker, and advocate who won the right for Native languages to be used in court when defendants couldn't speak English, and more.

Folktales and Oral Histories

Folktales of the Riverine and Costal Iñupiat/Unipchallu Uqaqtuallu Kuungmiuñļu Taģiuģmiuñļu edited by Wanni W. Anderson and Ruth Tatqaviñ Sampson, transcribed by Angeline Ipiiļik Newlin and translated by Michael Qakiq Atorak is a collection of eleven Inupiaq folktales in English and the original Inupiaq.

The Dall Sheep Dinner Guest: Iñupiaq Narratives of Northwest Alaska by Wanni W. Anderson is a collection of Kobuk River Inupiaq folktales and oral histories collected from Inupiat storytellers and accompanied by Anderson's own essays explaining cultural context. Unlike the other two collections of traditional stories mentioned on this list, this one is only written in English.

Ugiuvangmiut Quliapyuit/King Island Tales: Eskimo Historu and Legends from Bering Strait compiled and edited by Lawrence D. Kaplan, collected by Gertrude Analoak, Margaret Seeganna, and Mary Alexander, and translated and transcribed by Gertrude Analoak and Margaret Seeganna is another collection of folktales and oral history. Focusing on the Ugiuvangmiut, this one also contains introductions to provide cultural context and stories written in both english and the original Inupiaq.

The Winter Walk by Loretta Outwater Cox is an oral history about a pregnant widow journeying home with her two children having to survive the harsh winter the entire way. This is often recommended with a similar book detailing Athabascan survival called Two Old Women.

Dictionaries and Language Books

Iñupiat Eskimo Dictionary by Donald H. Webster and Wilfred Zibell, with illustrations by Thelma A. Webster, is an older Inupiaq to English dictionary. It predates the standardization of Inupiaq spelling, uses some outdated and even offensive language that was considered correct at the time of its publication, and the free pdf provided by UAF seems to be missing some pages. In spite of this it is still a useful resource. The words are organized by subject matter rather than alphabetically, each entry indicating if it's specific to any one dialect, and the illustrations are quite charming.

Let's Learn Eskimo by Donald H. Webster with illustrations by Thelma A. Webster makes a great companion to the Iñupiat Eskimo Dictionary, going over grammar and sentence structure rather than translations. The tables of pronouns are especially helpful in my opinion.

Ilisaqativut.org also has some helpful tools and materials and recommendations for learning the Inupiat language with links to buy physical books, download free pdfs, and look through searchable online versions

#eskimo on main

[beatrice-otter]

Protect Native American Children

The US and Canada have a horrifying history of enacting cultural genocide (and sometimes physical genocide) by removing Native American/First Nations/Alaska Native children from their families, first to residential schools and then to put them in white families. In the US, this was mostly stopped by the Indian Child Welfare Act in 1978, which said that if Native American children were removed from their families they needed to be placed with other Native American families. ICWA is being challenged in the Supreme Court as we speak, and the Trump-packed Supreme Court is highly likely to overturn it. This would be a disaster. However, it could be mitigated by legislation at the state level. The Lakota Law Project has a widget for you to email your state Governor and state legislators asking them to put in place state laws to protect Native American children should ICWA fall. comments Comment? https://ift.tt/WI9ZGNp

#dreamwidth #original post

[llyfrenfys]

i must admit i know nothing of welsh history or language. im reclaiming learning the irish language bc i know the history of it and bc i think it's essential to protect native languages of various places. but as someone who doesn't know welsh history, i see "its not like welsh people were beaten for speaking it" and i recoil in a sense of distaste. because while i may not know the history, i very much doubt no one ever in the world has been beaten for speaking welsh, that's a pretty huge assumption to make even if a language isn't being legally oppressed (assuming thats what op really meant). but also, i just loathe the idea that only minority languages are worth saving or caring about if they're being beaten out of people. genocide happens in many ways and only some of them are actually active violence/assault, most are subversive, and purposefully so

idk if i should even be speaking on this bc i dont know the history of welsh but i feel like you literally dont need to know the history behind it to see something very wrong with "speakers of a minority language should shut up if they're not actively being killed for it"

Sorry I took so long in getting to this ask (post anon is referring to) but yeah- that post was gobsmacking to me as a Welsh speaker. I've studied language loss and revitalisation and I can name several endangered languages in which children (and adults) were beaten and abused for speaking their native tongue. For example, we covered the Tlingit language in Alaska (one of the few North American languages I've studied) which is subject to a revival- some Tlingit wanted to learn the language, while others (usually older people) had an aversion to the language. One man said that whenever he speaks Tlingit he can taste soap because he was punished as a boy for speaking Tlingit by having a bar of soap put in his mouth. Language loss via abuse is real and prevalent in many, many endangered languages. The audacity to assume Welsh is somehow immune to that was astounding.

But even if Welsh *was* immune to that somehow (it wasn't) you're right in that we should care about the decline of a language even if it doesn't involve overt suppression. More surreptitious kinds of linguistic genocide lie within the state apparatus. For example, when Wales was merged into the Kingdom of England (see: the Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542) the language of the legal system in Wales was changed to English-only, depriving monolingual Welsh speakers (Welsh was spoken in pretty much every part of Wales at this point) of legal services. This meant that Welsh speakers were effectively pressured indirectly to learn English in order to have a chance at any legal services in court. Over time, the privileging of English over Welsh created a pressure to abandon Welsh in favour of English, because there were 'more opportunities' in English than in Welsh.

Similarly, the true Treachery of the Blue Books wasn't that the British Government in 1847 had ordered a review into Welsh schools and found that too many people were speaking Welsh- but that Welsh-speaking parents began to forbid their children from learning Welsh and supported the findings of the inquiry because they too had felt that pressure of English-language supremacy. Believing that there's more opportunities in English than in Welsh. It's an unfortunate legacy and attitude which still persists today- and none of the Commissioners of the Blue Book Inquiry shed any blood in doing so. But the impact was nonetheless dire. It's also a self-creating cycle: There are no opportunities in Welsh -> People learn English instead of Welsh for opportunities -> There's fewer Welsh speakers to create more opportunities in Welsh ->There are no opportunities in Welsh.

But yeah, I have no idea what the OP of that other post was thinking but it was offensively ignorant in any case. I'm glad though that Welsh's struggles are seen by others at least, in this day and age.

#cymraeg #welsh #ask #gofyn #cwesitiwm #genocide cw #language revitalization #language loss #tlingit #abuse cw #cultural genocide #cwestiwn

[todaysdocument]

Aleut (Unangax̂) women sent this petition on 10/10/1942 criticizing their living conditions at the Funter Bay Evacuation Camp in southeastern Alaska during World War II. They had been forcibly moved after Japan captured two Aleutian Islands.

Series: Subject Files, 1923 - 1945

Record Group 22: Records of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 1868 - 2008

Transcription:

We the people of this place wants a better place than this to

live. This place is no place for a living creature. We drink

impure water and then get sick the children's get skin disease

even the grown ups are sick from cold.

We ate from the mess house and it is near the toilet only a few

yard away. We eat the filth that is flying around.

We got no place to take a bath and no place to wash our clothes

or dry them when it rains. We women are always lugging water

up stairs and take turns warming it up and the stove is small.

We live in a room with our children just enough to be turn around

in we used blanks for walls just to live in private.

We need clothes and shoes for our children how are we going to

clothe them with just a few dollars.  Men's are working for $20 -

month is nothing to them we used it to see our children eat what

they dont get at mess house and then its gone and then we wait

for another month to come around.

Why they not take us to a better place to live and work for our

 selve's and live in a better house. Men and women are very eager

to work. When winter comes it still would be worse with water all

freezed up grub short do we have to see our children suffer.

We all have rights to speak for ourselves.

(signed)

Mrs. Haretina Kochutin

Mrs. Alexandra Bourdukofsky

Mrs. Valentina Kozeroff

Mrs. Platonida Melovidov

Miss Anastasia Krukoff

Mrs. Alexandra Fratis

Miss Haretina Kochergin

Mrs. Sophie Tetoff

Mrs. Anna Kushin

Mrs. Anfesa Galaktionoff

Mrs. Olga Kochutin

Mrs. Juliana Gromoff

Mrs. Agafia Merculief

Mrs. Alexandra Kouchutin

Mrs. Natalie Misikin

Mrs. Mary Kochutin

Mrs. Claude Kochutin

Vassa Krukoff

Anna Emanoff

Chionia K. Misikin

Heretina Misikin

Alexandra Melovidov

Marina Kozloff

Mary Kushin

Ifronsenia Rukovishnikoff

Mrs. Pelagia Krukoff

Mrs. Agrippina Tetoff

Mrs. Martha Krukoff

Mrs. Mavra Stepetin

Mary Oustigoff

Agrippina Hanson

Alexandra Mandregan

Helen Mandregan

Alexandra Gromoff

Lubre Stepetin

Nina Oustigoff

Helena Krukoff

Miss Justinia Stepetin

Antonina Stepetin

Francis Emanoff

Anna Stepetin

Kapetolina Buterin

Helen Kochergin

Prascodia Hapoff

Marina Sedick

Ludmilla Bourdukofsky

Mary Bourdukofsky

Alice Philemonoff

Virginia Kozloff

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