The comments on this thread are INFURIATING. It is people (mostly Black Americans) saying that Indigenous Australians (Aboriginal people), Torre Strait Islanders, and Melanesians are not allowed to self-identify as black.
Let me give you a quick lesson on why they can and do.
First Europeans arrived in Australia in 1606, permanent settlement by British started in 1788. They identified indigenous people, whose skin was black, as black people. So in our racial system, they are black. They were called black and refered to themselves as black just like us
Present-day Aboriginal Australians, Torre Strait Islanders and Melanesians come in many different shades, like American black people, bc of same traumas that caused intermixing here. They were subjected to genocide, then slavery, then apartheid/segregation, and now incarceration.
Hatshepsut - ruled Egypt c. 1479 – 1458 BC. Took the religious ideology back to a female godhead to show the legitimacy of her authority. Eventually declared herself a man and ruled as Pharoah. Most prolific builder of architecture in ancient Egypt. And she had many lovers.
Nefertari, the Great Royal Wife of Rameses II. Unusually educated for a woman of her time, she could read & write in hieroglyphics. Bc of this, she aided the King in diplomacy. He had a temple built in her honor and she has the largest and most elaborate tomb in Valley of Queens.
I’ve talked a bit about my family, the Pamunkey tribe’s historic anti-blackness, and the enrollment case for which we have enlisted the help of Congresswoman @RepGwenMoore and a tribal lawyer, but now I want to take time to explain the whole story.
First off, here is an article with an interview with my cousin Jasmine Anderson that will provide a lot of background. It’s two pages,
FYI
The Pamunkey are a tribe in Virginia. We are the tribe of Pocahontas and Chief Powhatan, first contact with the English at Jamestown. At that time we were a Confederacy of over 30 independently governed tribes in villages and cities in what is currently MD/VA/NC.
Native American history is largely unknown in this country. Like deeply deeply misunderstood.
White people don’t know Native history.
Black people also don’t know Native history because they learned it from white people.
Please understand that.
My sist & i have been helping an elder Wampanoag woman build her website. She is a master Chef trying to secure funds to open a living history site that would teach traditional, sustainable agriculture and foodways.
I have to start by explaining what the hell a Wampanoag is.
Like literally, the Wompanoag were the first to meet the Pilgrims. They are the reason they survived.
Every Thanksgiving Americans eat Wompanoag foods - roasted turkey, cranberry sauce, pumpkin, acorn squash, Indian pudding.