nezua:

thinkmexican:

Indigenous [Me]Xican

Photographer ugonzale superimposes drawings of Mexican Indigenous symbols and designs on portraits of his subjects. “The drawing emerges as a reaction to the photo, the pose, and my relationships with my models. I eventually scan the transparency so I can superimpose the line drawing onto the photograph,” says ugonzale.

“I am influenced by indigenous art forms from Mexico, Central, and South America that I render in a contemporary way, that borders between tattooing and graffiti,” adds ugonzale.

See more of his portraits here.

“I am aiming to explore the identity of Latinos without offending or misrepresenting them. These images show pride—an element I see missing in the popular portrayals of Latinos. The current anti-immigrant climate in the U.S. can complicate the question of pride for Hispanics. But I also hope this work speaks beyond the issue of immigration.”

Man, what?? Fuck outta here. If you ain’t of indigenous blood/Mexican heritage, leave the fuck off our art, history, or legacy. Seriously. We can represent and document ourselves, thanks for the sympathy and fascination.

Police Pepper Spray Tonga Boys After High School Football Game - ICTMN.com →

adailyriot:

The Desert News reports that after a small town football game ended in the town of Roosevelt, Utah, police used pepper spray on fans and players to break up a post game celebration. The game was between Uintah High and Union High, two rival schools that are 30 miles apart from each other. After Union lost the game, a group of Tongan fans tried to help boost their team’s morale by performing the Haka, a traditional war chant that is performed at football and rugby games around the state.

The Tongan men and boys, numbering approximately 15, were performing the dance to what appeared to be the delight of their team’s players, coaches and family. The police felt the boys were blocking the exit from the field, and yelled at them to move. When coaches, players and family members tried telling the cops that it was okay, and to let them continue the Haka, the cops allegedly began spraying the crowd of performers, players and fans with pepper spray.

A Roosevelt resident who asked The Desert News to identify her only as Breana, said her husband was among of the performers who were sprayed. “It was continual spraying and spraying,” Breana told The Desert News,  and said that not only was her husband sprayed, he was hit in the face with a police baton. She also reported that her 4-year-old son was also exposed to the spray.

Another person on the scene, Shawn Mitchell, told The Desert News that his young son and daughter, as well as his mother-in-law, were affected by the pepper spray. He called the response to the Haka an overreaction.

“I didn’t see anything that looked like there could be a threat,” he said.

The Roosevelt police declined a request for an interview Friday, but added that the incident is under investigation. They are looking to hear from anyone who saw what happened after the game.

The men and boys who performed the Haka are mostly from the Wasatch Front.

Union fan Jason Kelly told The Desert News that the way police treated the visitors was an embarrassment to the community of Roosevelt.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Kelly said. “It was totally unprovoked.”

you know, i could write/(kinda am starting to write) a paper about how dancing POC bodies historically provoke a disproportionate reaction from the state, and how it comes from the same imperialistic thought process that led colonial powers the globe over to ban colonized people’s dances/from dancing. i mean, congo square, freaknik, police mobilizing to shut down breakdancers……..what is it about POC bodies dancing in a public space that FREAKS white supremacy out? is it because in those spaces we’re mostly dancing for each other and not a white audience?

because this *keeps* happening.

(Source: rematiration)

unaguerrasinfondo:

(This isn’t a real serious writing project and the information is mostly based on The Devastation of the Indies by Bartolome de las Casas. I’m totally open to your historical insights or research about this subject. - Also this is NOT for the purpose of denying African heritage.)

Taíno heritage is an essential part of the formation of cultural identity for many people with origins in the islands of the Greater Antilles. –This is also a huge point of contention for many historians or cultural critics that believe the obsession with Taíno identity is a way of denying the heavily African origins of Caribbean people and culture, being that it is generally believed that the Taíno people were annihilated by European invaders during the 15^th and 16^th century. And this information is of course based largely on Spanish accounts of the Exploration and Conquest of the Americas –such as Bartolomé de las Casas account recorded in The Devastation of the Indies, which states the following in relation to the havoc wrought upon Puerto Rico and Jamaica by the Europeans,

“Before the Arrival of the Spaniards there had lived on these islands more than six hundred thousand souls, it has been stated. I believe there were more than one million inhabitants, and now, in each of the two islands, there are no more than two hundred persons, all the others having perished without the Faith and without the holy sacraments.”

The account of De las Casas as well as the work of many other historians basically verifies that the Taíno people ceased to exist in large numbers throughout the Caribbean following the genocidal war carried out against them by European peoples during the 15^th and 16^th century.  However – de las Casas also states that indigenous peoples from throughout Mexico, Central and South America arrived in the Caribbean as prisoners and slaves of the Spaniards.

On the coast of Venezuela, European explorers encountered an especially hospitable cacique named Higoroto, who provided the explorers with provisions, aided them with ship repairs. As repayment for Higoroto’s hospitality, the Spaniards kidnapped and murdered Higoroto’s people and laid waste to his village.

“They sent a ship and invited many Indians to embark on it and, trustingly, many men, women, and children went aboard. Then the Spaniards hoisted sail and voyaged to the island of San Juan, where all the captives were sold as slaves…They have brought to the island of Hispaniola and the island of San Juan more than two million souls taken captive, and have sent them to do hard labor in the mines, labors that caused many of them to die.”

Indigenous peoples were also kidnapped in Mexico and transported to the Caribbean as Slaves. During 1525, Francisco de Garay led expeditions into Veracruz, which raided indigenous settlements and enslaved indigenous people.

“He continued perpetrating many cruel acts of his predecessor, putting in irons a great many Indians he enslaved, men who had been as free as I am, and sending on many ships to the islands of Cuba and Hispaniola where they could be easily sold. And sometimes it happened on those islands that eighty Indians, rational souls, would be traded for a mare.”

Of the slaves sent to the Caribbean it is undoubtable that many died from exposure, starvation, torture, overwork, or murder and it is even more sure that once on land many also died from exposure, starvation, torture, overwork, or murder. However it is also plausible that many indigenous peoples did survive the cruel treatment of the Europeans and lived as free people following the outlawing of indigenous slavery. If this is so, it would be very likely that the cultures and people of Mexico, Central/South Americas have to some degree influenced the people and culture of the Caribbean. If this is not the case then where did these people go (According to De Las Casas there would have been MILLIONS of enslaved peoples from throughout Mexico/Central/South America living in the Caribbean during the 16^th century)? Was European treatment so savage that it eliminated ALL of the enslaved people living in the Caribbean prior to the reformation of indigenous slavery laws? – It is of course possible that Bartolome de las Casas accounts are greatly exaggerated, but I’ve never seen his accounts of indigenous slavery in the Caribbean accounted for and it would seem more than likely that some of the slaves brought to the Caribbean from Mexico/Central/South America may have survived beyond slavery.  

(via lati-negros)

Native show form Canada →

freshmouthgoddess:

Mohawk Girls is a half hour dramatic comedy about four young women figuring out how to be Mohawk in the 21st century.

Against the Law: Indigenous Feminism and the Nation-State -- Andrea Smith →

liquornspice:

In these “postcolonial” times, terms such as “sovereignty” and “nation” have gone out of fashion within the context of cultural studies, postcolonial theory, political theory, feminist theory, etc. Nationalism and sovereignty, it is suggested, inevitably lead to xenophobia, intolerance, factionalism, and violence. All sovereignty or nationalist struggles, it seems, are headed down that slippery slope towards the ethnic cleansing witnessed in Bosnia.[14] The reason: so-called “ethnic” nationalisms[15] generally have a “drive for cultural homogeneity and purity.”[16] If, as Etienne Balibar states, racism is “a supplement of nationalism or more precisely a supplement internal to nationalism, always in excess of it but always indispensable to its constitution,”[17] then one cannot conceive of a nationalist project that is not based on racial apartheid.

Hm. Very relevant.

(Source: blackraincloud)

The Revolutionary Imagination in Cuba and Venezuela →

Wandering through the plaza in Old Havana, with tourist stalls selling Che Guevara ashtrays and Cuban Revolution T-shirts, one wonders if this is what the idea of revolution has been reduced to. But go to a Cuban rap concert, and it’s apparent that young black people are reworking the vision of revolution to encompass the kinds of changes they want to see. During a performance in Central Havana by Anónimo Consejo (Anonymous Advice), one of Cuba’s most popular rap groups, MC Sekuo Umoja, wearing a purple and yellow dashiki with his hair in short dreads, stood before a microphone. Sekuo, formerly known as Yosmel, had changed his name to emphasize his spiritual connections with Africa. “We, as hip-hop, say no to war and imperialism,” he said. “Anónimo Consejo revolución!” The crowd cheered. “Hip-hop revolución. Put your fist in the air.”

With ideas like “hip-hop revolución,” the children of 1959 are taking the slogans and analysis they were taught and using them to question the changes going on around them. As the revolutionary years gave way to the austere Special Period, racism became visible once again. And so Cuba’s young rappers ask: If the birthright of the revolution was to make all Cubans equal, why are some more equal than others? Why are blacks not treated the same as whites? Under this same rubric of equality, black women are fighting for equal space alongside black men. As the all-female lesbian trio Las Krudas rap: “There is no true revolution without women.” For Cuban rappers, this revolutionary imagination is part of a longer historical trajectory of black cultural resistance.

In a song titled “Mambí,” the rap group Obseción identify their struggle with the mambises, or Afro-Cuban fighters in the War of Independence against Spain. In “A Veces,” Anónimo Consejo connect the history of Cuban slaves with the situation of contemporary Afro-Cubans. They see the aspirations of slaves and independence fighters expressed in the Cuban revolution, and this desire for freedom continues to orient the thoughts and actions of a new generation. As Cuban poet and cultural critic Roberto Zurbano says, there is “one element that shapes the thought of the Cuban rapper and that, moreover, differentiates them from others in the world: the emancipatory imaginary that these youth share with the Cuban Revolution, its forms of struggle, its acts of resistance; as its characteristic cultural cimarronaje at work from the time of the Haitian Revolution through today’s Cuban culture and history.”²

The quality of cimarronaje, or the rebelliousness of the runaway slave, is identified with the Cuban revolution as a lone voice contesting neoliberalism in a global capitalist order. At the same time, rappers invoke cimarronaje as a way of criticizing the inequalities and hierarchies that are developing as market integration deepens.

Meanwhile, in Venezuela, the past has also come to play an important role in reconfiguring the revolutionary imagination in the context of Chávez’s Bolivarian Revolution. Venezuelan community media producers, for example, frequently make claims to indigenous and black identity as a way of positioning themselves in broader relations of class and marginality. “We are the children of Guaicaipuro,” says Carlos Carles of Radio Perola, referring to a mythical indigenous chief, “those who screamed in the last moments of their lives, ‘Come, Spaniards, and see how the last free man of this land dies.’ ”

In Chávez’s Venezuela, where the republican hero Bolívar occupies a central role in official narratives, barrio residents re-create marginalized figures from the past as the basis for their social activism. Palmiro Avilán, a community leader from the popular parish of Petare, is a devotee of Maria Lionza, a cult based on various spirits of indigenous and black fighters from the past, such as Guaicaipuro, Negro Primero, and Maria Lionza herself. “These spirits have the elements of blackness,” Avilán told me, “a spirituality that’s been gestating and has its roots in the rochelas [communities of escaped slaves] that existed for more than 250 years in the plains. It was in the plains that they created the liberation army of resistance to rescue five countries from Spanish imperialism. One of the first leaders was José Tomás Boves, who led a group of ragtag Indians and blacks against a republican army that was in the hands of mantuanos [creole elites].”

In nationalist histories, Boves is an anti-hero who betrayed the cause of independence by launching a rebellion against the Bolívar-led republican army in 1814. But he has been mythified in popular culture as a renegade caudillo who gave importance to marginalized Indians and blacks. Avilán sees himself as a modern-day Boves, leading an army of those excluded from society.

"I was taught the Caribs and Arawaks had been decimated. But I was still alive. I was of Carib ancestry. I wondered whether we did eat people. Do we eat people? I would ask my parents…"

Trinidadian journalist Tracy Assing explores the life and history of Trinidad’s indigenous people in a new documentary. Read all about it here. 

This CODE RED article explores the erasure of the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean.

CODE RED is a feminist collective of Caribbean women and men.  Join us on facebook.

(via redforgender)

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moononwaters:

hyphywifey:

differentrealms:

Hopi woman dressing hair of unmarried girl, 1900

Amazingggg <3

[image: Black and white of two hopi women, the older one fixing the Hopi girl’s hair in a squash blossom fashion]

(Source: yaaruin, via fuckyeahethnicwomen)

adailyriot:

indigenousrev:

We-Wa, a Zuni two-spirit, weaving

Many Indigenous cultures embraced gender, sexual orientation, and sexuality as a fluid entity. You did not have to be exclusively woman or man, straight or gay, and sex was a natural and non-deviant act. Gender and sexuality is an internalized truth and reflects one’s connection to the earth, surroundings and self. Colonization forced the values of patriarchy (the cultural value system kept in order by white heterosexual male power) on all peoples. From this destructive value systems stems many social ills such as homophobia, racism, violence and trauma.

I dedicate this post to all two-spirit people. Know that you are beautiful no matter what gender or sexual orientation you are. Mother Earth does not discriminate, so why should we?

I’m down with the commentary, however, that person in the photo is a Hopi two spirited person. You can tell by the hair. Hopi women traditionally wore their hair like that to symbolize the blossoms of squash (i believe) while they were growing up until they found a partner/husband and then they’d let their hair down in a certain way to symbolize the falling/ripening of the squash fruit.

… just so that you know.  

(via rematiration)