Thread by @cutchabaldy

Allow me to quickly explain the #SettlerNonsense in the Dior description of it's "NEW Savauge."

You can read description here: dior.com/en_us/products…

Begins: A new, highly concentrated interpretation of Sauvage, melding extreme freshness with warm oriental tones... #Thread

"A new, highly concentrated interpretation of Sauvage, melding extreme freshness with warm oriental tones and wild beauty that comes to life on the skin."

"Oriental" is a craptastic way of making something "exotic". Edward Said talks about "orientalism":

Orientalism makes stereotypes of the east about how "different" these peoples are from us. And then suddenly they are just those stereotypes. Also it centers the west. See everything "over there" is the east. The world is round. We are also to the EAST of the EAST.

Using terms like "oriental" just lets people know you aren't interested in how these peoples represent themselves, instead you want them to be "exotic other" to you. And somehow you romanticize that while also allowing policies to pass which criminalize/dehumanize them.

Line #2: François Demachy, Dior Perfumer-Creator, drew inspiration from unspoiled expanses of wilderness beneath a blue-tinged night sky, as the intense aromas of a crackling fire rise into the air.

Wilderness is a creation of settler colonialism to dispossess Indigenous lands.

Wilderness is not real. The "wilderness" you know is stolen land & in many cases required removal of Indigenous peoples from those lands to create "expanse" you identify as "wilderness."

Indigenous peoples identify "wilderness" as a negative. People should be a part of nature.

Here is a good book about the creation of wilderness:
Dispossessing the Wilderness: Indian Removal and the Making of the National Parks by Mark David Spence where he says "uninhabited wilderness had to be created before it could be preserved."

oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/a…

When you make wilderness a romantic place to find your inner "savauge" and say that you are inspired by the "unspoiled expanses" you are not only erasing Indigenous peoples you are saying that somehow it was GOOD that they were killed/removed because then it remained "unspoiled."

Buying in to "wilderness" story erases the amount of violence it took to make wilderness happen. There were Native people everywhere. We had named everything. We were in relationship to all these places. It only became "wilderness" after they tried to kill and remove all of us.

I'll say it again. Wilderness is a creation of settler colonialism to dispossess Indigenous peoples of their lands.

Final line in the description: The fragrance of a new frontier: an interpretation with a rich, heady trail that celebrates the magic of wide-open spaces.

The mythology of "frontier" - wild west - the "pioneers" it all comes from this settler colonial notion of manifest destiny.

You know they weren't riding on in to these "magical wide-open spaces" like "Ima take my horse down the old town road."

They were freaked out and had no idea where they were. Many times they relied on Native people. If they didn't do that they got scared and shot Native people.

The real "frontier" was actually Native lands that were part of complex cultures, societies & polities. The idea that it was magical place for people to "roam" acts like this land wasn't already part of sovereign nations.

The frontier wasn't new, wasn't empty and wasn't wilderness. It was ours. Those roads they travelled, our roads. Places they camped, our camps. Historians often point out that had there not been the roads, the camps, the access to water that likely most settlers would have died.

Here's some ways you see this play out where they are like "all this vast emptiness and wilderness and expanse" and then you find out that Brooklyn is actually just them building right on top of the villages and highways we'd already created.

6sqft.com/this-1946-map-…

All told Dior - this is some #SettlerNonsense
Stop trying to make Savauge happen.
And Johnny Depp if you ain't giving land back then just stop.