decoramagica

[decoramagica]

Are you an Indian

ARE YOU AN INDIAN?as told to Les Tate - used with permission

How often have you heard or said “I’m part Indian”? If you have, then some Native American elders have something to teach you. A very touching example was told by a physician from Oregon who discovered as an adult that he was Indian. This is his story. Listen well:

Some twenty or more years ago while serving the Mono and Chukchanse and Chownumnee communities in the Sierra Nevada, I was asked to make a house call on a Mono elder. She was 81 years old and had developed pneumonia after falling on frozen snow while bucking up some firewood.

I was surprised that she had asked for me to come since she had always avoided anything to do with the services provided through the local agencies. However it seemed that she had decided I might be alright because I had helped her grandson through some difficult times earlier and had been studying Mono language with the 2nd graders at North Fork School.

She greeted me from inside her house with a Mana’ hu, directing me into her bedroom with the sound of her voice. She was not willing to go to the hospital like her family had pleaded, but was determined to stay in her own place and wanted me to help her using herbs that she knew and trusted but was too weak to do alone. I had learned to use about a dozen native medicinal plants by that time, but was inexperienced in using herbs in a life or death situation.

She eased my fears with her kind eyes and gentle voice. I stayed with her for the next two days, treating her with herbal medicine (and some vitamin C that she agreed to accept).

She made it through and we became friends. One evening several years later, she asked me if I knew my elders. I told her that I was half Canadian and half Appalachian from Kentucky. I told her that my Appalachian grandfather was raised by his Cherokee mother but nobody had ever talked much about that and I didn’t want anyone to think that I was pretending to be an Indian. I was uncomfortable saying I was part Indian and never brought it up in normal conversation.

“What! You’re part Indian?” she said. “I wonder, would you point to the part of yourself that’s Indian. Show me what part you mean.”

I felt quite foolish and troubled by what she said, so I stammered out something to the effect that I didn’t understand what she meant. Thankfully the conversation stopped at that point. I finished bringing in several days worth of firewood for her, finished the yerba santa tea she had made for me and went home still thinking about her words.

Some weeks later we met in the grocery store in town and she looked down at one of my feet and said, “I wonder if that foot is an Indian foot. Or maybe it’s your left ear. Have you figured it out yet?”

I laughed out loud, blushing and stammering like a little kid. When I got outside after shopping, she was standing beside my pickup, smiling and laughing. “You know” she said, “you either are or you aren’t. No such thing as part Indian. It’s how your heart lives in the world, how you carry yourself. I knew before I asked you. Nobody told me. Now don’t let me hear you say you are part Indian anymore.”

She died last year, but I would like her to know that I’ve heeded her words. And I’ve come to think that what she did for me was a teaching that the old ones tell people like me, because others have told me that a Native American elder also said almost the same thing to them. I know her wisdom helped me to learn who I was that day and her words have echoed in my memory ever since. And because of her, I am no longer part Indian, I AM AN INDIAN!

#native american #research #reblog

[decoramagica]

Being White-passing and Native in America

I am a white-passing mixed white/native nonbinary individual living in Indiana, USA. I am bisexual and nonbinary. My mother is Eastern Cherokee and white mixed, and my father is white. There are three main federally recognized Cherokee tribes: the Cherokee Nation, the Eastern Band, and the United Keetoowah Band. We are Eastern. 

Daily struggles: Being white passing, people don’t normally know that I’m mixed unless I tell them – and then they don’t believe me when I say so. I feel insecure about reclaiming any part of my culture, due to my white-passing-ness. Cultural appropriation is abundant in America, and it sucks. 

Food: My dad is the cook in the house, so what we eat is mostly influenced by him. But I will say that Native Americans are largely lactose intolerant. It’s a thing. My mom and little sister don’t drink milk, and I’m lactose intolerant too but I drink it anyway.

Holidays: We celebrate Christian/American holidays, for the most part. Yes, even Thanksgiving. We celebrate it at my Cherokee grandma’s house. She has a figurine of a stomp dancer placed in the dining room, and every Thanksgiving she replaces it with a statue of two white pilgrims. I don’t think the white side of my family notices.

Home/Family life/Friendships:

My grandma has all of our heirlooms, papers, and family history concerning our Nativeness kept away somewhere. “Upstairs in a box somewhere” is her verbatim, I think. She’s ashamed of our history, and what we’ve been through, and therefore has never shared anything with us, good or bad. This is cultural assimilation still at work. I am angry that I’ll never know what my family house was; that I had to Google what “tsalagi” means; that slowly, my family history will die out, and it’s not even my grandma’s fault. I understand her. 

My mother is abusive. This is hard to process, because on the one hand, she’s awful to me; but on the other hand, I have a strong desire to connect with my culture and my heritage, and one of the only ways I know how to do this is through her. 

Identity issues: I have considered using the term two-spirit as an identifier for my gender, since I don’t identify strongly with any other term, and it helps me connect with my heritage. However, since I am white-passing, I feel like I don’t deserve this title, and therefore I don’t identify with it.

I also usually don’t use the term “POC” for myself. I’m blonde, for fuck’s sake. I usually just say “mixed” or “part native american” when identifying myself.

Things I’d like to see more of: Natives in love! Natives not doing Stereotypical Native Things©! LGBT Natives! Natives travelling, natives with families and young natives!

Tropes I’m tired of seeing: The Unholy Trinity: native savage, holy savage (spirit man), native princess. Avoid these three tropes, y'all. Thanx

#Native American #White passing #Cherokee #mixed race #abuse tw #research #reblog

[decoramagica]

Mixed Polynesian/Cherokee

@laurelmyqueen asked:

I’m working on a story where the main character is half-Polynesian, half-Cherokee. I want to show respect for her culture and was wondering if there are any sites you can recommend for me to look up to do research that aren’t biased?

So here’s a few facts about being mixed for you. This isn’t to discourage you from writing a mixed Native— we exist, in fairly large numbers— but to explain just what you are taking on when you write one.

This is from the perspective of somebody who is, blood-wise, extraordinarily mixed thanks to generations old assimilation. I am not status and have no hope of being status because of just how mixed I am.

Tribe Reception

First off, some tribes aren’t terribly fond of mixed individuals. It happens. As a result, you’ll have to take it band by band, reserve by reserve— see whether or not they’ll accept somebody mixed whole-heartedly, conditionally, or not at all.

You’re dealing with, potentially, two tribes— depending on who the Polynesian person is from. There are, after all, multiple Polynesian tribes, each with a different culture. So narrowing down in this regard is also important.

Legal implications

Native Americans have a registry. This registry determines who is “allowed” to be Native and not. Thankfully the laws have slacked up a lot since their initial implementation, but fact remains: if a person is “too mixed” (like I am!) then they can’t be put on the registry.

Historically, as well, sometimes people would lose their status on the registry if they married outside of the tribe (Canada made any woman who married outside of the tribe “non Native”, but any woman who married in gained status. This robbed children of their language, because, as an elder put it, “mother tongue” means the language of the mother).

I’m 95% sure this isn’t the case anymore. But! Who knows. I am very unfamiliar with Polynesian peoples, so I have nothing to say on that.

Cultural Implications

You’ll be dealing with two very strong cultures, here, with their own really strong identities. That isn’t to say they can’t exist in harmony— The Rock is a prime example, being Black and Samoan— but you’re going to have to really characterize the individual as being mixed. You’ll have to see what parts of culture they take, and it could genuinely be “all of both”… unless some parts directly contradict each other, then you’ll have to figure out where the compromises are.

I’d look up “third culture kids” as some base literature on the topic. These are kids who grew up in multiple cultures and as a result have made their own, that’s basically unique to them. It’s likely not going to be identical to what you’re dealing with, but it’s something to start thinking of.

History of Assimilation

Aka, “people could get touchy”.

I’m really trying to not paint any Indigenous group as closed off or hostile towards outsiders. What I am saying is some people hold the scars of assimilation and can be very wary of their culture dying off. So there’s a certain responsibility for kids to carry on the culture, and that might be a weight. It might not be a weight at all, and both families are super accepting and they take an “all” approach to culture.

But it’s something to keep in mind, depending on the reception of whatever peoples you choose.

Overall

This is going to be tricky! I’m not sure of any one place I can point you other than The Rock’s relationship with his identities and how he talks about his daughters, because he’s the only mixed Polynesian person I know in mainstream. If followers have any comments, we’d be happy to hear them!

~Mod Lesya

#Mixed race #Cherokee #Polynesian #Native American #research #reblog

[decoramagica]

Hi, I'm writing a story that has a Native (Cherokee) mc. In my story, 70 years into the future, America is trying to rebuild itself after losing WW3, and isn't the safest place to live. My mc' s parents want her to be successful and able to leave America, so they send her to a boarding school in London, where she studies engineering in hopes of getting a job and enough money to get her parents out of America. I wanted to know how to avoid making the school seem like an assimilation school?

Sending a Cherokee Protagonist Away to School and Possible Assimilation Issues

I’m going to tell you something you probably don’t want to hear: there is no way to avoid making this look like an assimilation school, because the plot is built on assimilation and places assimilation as not only necessary, but preferable.

Indigenous groups from around the world have, indeed, sent their children to Western schools because their home was in danger. Many anthropological interpreters, who have lent the best data because they lived in two worlds, are such children. Many negotiators for treaty rights, stopping further colonialism, and teachers are more such children. Every example I could name— and sadly names other than Princess Ka'iulani and Francis La Flesche are escaping me— have the children return to the nation so they can try and negotiate with colonizers, and/or work with anthropologists to preserve culture. They are viewed as a necessary sacrifice in order to survive long term.

Children are so, so, so prized in Indigenous cultures. They are our future, and our societies have fallen apart because our children have been taken away. We try to keep our children close (unless trauma over generations of forced assimilation makes us think it’s for the best our children assimilate, but that is a plot non-Natives should not touch), so sending a child so far away, where there is no hope of them being able to continue their culture, is a level of hopelessness I cannot articulate. Having the goal be to take the parents away is even worse. When everything we do is to protect our ancestral lands, throwing that away is inconceivable to an Indigenous person.

And there lies the crux of why this story has an inescapable assimilation plot. When Indigenous groups send their children away, they do so in order for the children to come back partially assimilated and help protect their home. Natives do not have the concept of giving up their ancestral lands willingly. Every single resistance movement since colonization began has been built on the exact opposite, which is to stay on our homelands as long as humanly possible. Despite everything colonizers have tried to do to have us leave, we refuse to.

You cannot escape the assimilation plot you have, should you choose to go on this course. Read the story of Queen Liliʻuokalani and Princess Ka'iulani. Read the story of Francis La Flesche. Read them as told by their people. Those stories are the narratives for why we send our children away. It is not to help our parents escape. It is to help our lands remain as ours.

~ Mod Lesya

#research #native american #cherokee #reblog

[decoramagica]

Id love to post my Zoo Academy fanart, but I want to show it to the creator of Zoo Academy first lol. So enjoy some chatacyer design instead! For Decora Magica. •••••••••••••••••••••• Check Out My Art! https://www.instagram.com/sebastianseancrow https://www.facebook.com/sebastianseancrow https://www.sebastianseancrow.tumblr.com https://www.twitch.tv/sebastianseancrow

Buy My Art! https://www.society6.com/creationsbysebastiansean https://www.redbubble.com/people/sebastianscrow

Buy Me a Coffee! https://www.ko-hi.com/sebastianseancrow

Become a Patron! https://www.patreon.com/sebastianseancrow

Commission Me! [email protected] ••••••••••••••••••••

#arachnia #arachnophobia #support queer creators #manga #sebastianseancrow #magical girl #magical fighter #anime #sketch #character design #decora magica #decoramagica #spider #many arms

[decoramagica]

I mixed up the hands when drawing the gloves in red… v.v but I fixed it when going over it with my mechanical pencil. What a magical girl she is~ ••••••••••••••••••••••••• Check Out My Art! https://www.instagram.com/sebastianseancrow https://www.facebook.com/sebastianseancrow https://www.sebastianseancrow.tumblr.com https://www.twitch.tv/sebastianseancrow

Buy My Art! https://www.society6.com/creationsbysebastiansean https://www.redbubble.com/people/sebastianscrow Buy Me a Coffee! https://www.ko-hi.com/sebastianseancrow

Become a Patron! https://www.patreon.com/sebastianseancrow

Commission Me! [email protected] •••••••••••••••••••••••

#magical fighter #magical girl #decora magica #arachnophobia #arachnia #mahou shoujo #support queer comics #support queer creators #support queer artists #decoramagica #sketchbook #neurodivergent character

[decoramagica]

Charisma from my series Decora Magica. I've never drawn her out fully fleshed before and I'm really glad how this turned out. I do kind of wish I made her hair fuller or larger, like the image i used for original reference and inspiration for her, but maybe I'll fix that in later incarnations.

#manga #anime #natural hair #characters of color #woc characters #WOC #sketchbook #Decora Magica #charisma #black characters #SebastianSeanCrow #Sebastian Sean crow #drawing #ink #art #artist #lineart

[decoramagica]

Reposting this Orabelle moodboard. The model in the picture is who they're modeled after. I saw that picture and was like "omg that is so Orabelle" even though Orabelle is Indian? Anyway, here's a few facts about Orabelle: •Orabelle is contracted to a water spirit as a magical fighter •They are first generation American with their parents being first generation British and the rest of their family being from India •They are nonbinary and I've not decided on pronouns I don't think, so I've been trying to just use "They/Them" •they go through a variety of ways to present If you have any questions about this character, send them in via ask box!

#decora Magica #Orabelle #moodboard #magical girl anime #Sebastian Sean crow

[decoramagica]

It's been a while since I did anything Decora Magica related (other than ask @katblaque for advice on her True Tea thing--you should go check her out, she's pretty cool and very talented), so since I have some down time, I decided to crack open the sketchbook and, well... Sketch. Character designing is very important to me, even if the character is never put into comic and only words. This is the first design (and possible final) of J/Jay, one of the male characters. I have a pic i drew of him in magical fighter form, but this is his mundane/non fighter form. I used a selfie of mine as a reference lol. I'll post the reference later.

#Jay or j #decora magica #decoramagica #character design #character designing #art #artist #Sebastian Sean crow

[decoramagica]

Honestly, I am so stuck in terms of story making on this. I have scenes I want to do, but nothing to hold it all together. I don't even know how the main cast is going to get together yet, though luckily most their profiles are all done. I want the story and the art to be as good as possible. I don't want to just rely on having a gender and racially diverse cast. I also want to be as accurate and respectful as possible when writing my characters, as I do want them to be in touch with themselves or their heritages. And I'm so confused as to if Dela and J/Jay should have specific heritages like the rest of the main cast or if they should just be straight up American. And did I make the right choice in making Orabelle's parents British while the rest of their family is Indian? Sigh, so many questions, so much confusion. To be honest, the main reason their parents are British is because their name is British and I really liked it... Ugh, I don't know what to do. Maybe I should start writing short stories/minis for this?

#decora Magica #decoramagica #shit Sebastian says

[decoramagica]

So, I know I haven't posted in a very long time here. Also, I know I posted this video by @katblaque on my personal channel over excitement of her making a response to my email. Anyway, I'm posting it here, too, as the video is about Decora Magica. I've even seen comments asking about where they can follow the story, so I link them to this tumblr. I've been going through and reading the comments on this video for advice on this subject. If anybody else would like to comment on it or message me about it, send me an ask here at @decoramagica! The story is still very much in development. And Kat is right in that I need more on how all the characters get together other than "they're all magical fighters who team up to fight". I do have in my head relationship developments, but not too much on character or story development.

#decoramagica #decora Magica #Sebastian Sean crow #katblaque #video

[decoramagica]

Reblog if your blog is safe for the LGBTQIA community.

[decoramagica]

The people who love you Really Do love you. Your friends don’t secretly hate you. You matter to people. You are loved. Learn to believe it even if you think it isn’t true.

[decoramagica]

A Blog to Write Gender Diverse Stories

Hey! In case you don’t already know, I am Sebastian Sean Crow and I have made a blog staffed by all transgender people for the purpose of helping writers to accurately and respectfully write characters of different genders. So!

Are you a writer?

Are you a trans writer?

Are you a writer who wants to include transgender, including nonbinary, characters in your stories?

If the answer is “yes” to any of those, then head on over to @writingwiththetranskids!

[decoramagica]

This is my reference/inspiration for Charisma’s look. Her name isn’t set in stone. She’s black, possibly of Egyptian descent, idk. She has hair like what you see here. Idk how to describe her other than Black Power. Like the movement from the 60/70’s but more 21st century? Anyway, she’s very important to the heroine. #DecoraMagica

#charisma #decora magica #decoramagica

[decoramagica]

Decora Magica: Heritage

Momotarô: Japanese Hialeah: Cherokee Orabelle: Indian, English/British Charisma*: Egyptian* *the asterisk means it's still undecided but this is what I'm currently going by at the moment

#decora magica #decoramagica #heritage

[decoramagica]

A Note on Asterisks

In my latest post (on character nationalities) you'll see that beside names and nationalities there's the asterisk (*). I used that and forgot to put a footnote for it! In that post, I basically out that down as a note that those names/nationalities have not been fully decided yet.

#decora magica #decoramagica #asterisk #note