If you’re not a Queer, Trans, and Black, Indigenous, and/or Person of Color, instead of expressing to leave the US Empire, maybe y’all can express to support land back and the sovereignty of Native Nations. 🙃 I honestly am starting to find that whole expression to leave the US Empire to other countries annoying and violent because of the legacy of imperialism and American exceptionalism that so many folks benefited from and force onto other counties and communities globally.

I’m quite surprise that I would have to say this…yet, we should be weary of the popularization of the word “colonizer” on social media.

Two reasons: lack of understanding of relations to settler colonialism AND the weaponization to silence BIPOC. I’ve noticed that those who use “colonizer,” generally don’t have a foundational understanding of settler colonialism nor have they reflected on their own positionality within or relationship to settler colonialism.

I’ll never get over the fact that for centuries. CENTURIES. Colonizers thought and convinced the world that Indigenous Peoples were uncivilized and unintelligent.

And now, they expect us to save the world.

https://twitter.com/npr/status/1298028858898341889

A lot of knowledge and ceremonies were explicitly banned until a few decades ago.

Many practitioners literally had to survive imprisonment and death to salvage what we know.

And a lot of y’all just expect us to freely share this knowledge?

Colonizers will really have you believing Indigenous Peoples were uncivilized and unintelligent.

Then like 500+ years later, they “discover” these amazing inventions and appropriate our knowledges.

https://twitter.com/backt0nature/status/1294139184605736960

Like when y’all were burning witches and against hygiene, many Indigenous communities were proficient in what is now known as math, astronomy, botany, urban planning, sustainability, etc with thriving and sustainable cities. 🤷🏽‍♀️

Non-Black Natives, especially white Natives, benefit socially from anti-Blackness, both contemporary and historically. Ex: Academia.

Non-Black Natives were “allowed” to attend prominent universities before Black folks were.

Granted non-Black Natives were used to acquire financial support, yet we were seen as “worthy” of an education when many Black folks were not.

I totally missed posting this on #LovingDay2020, but Mildred Jeter was Rappahannock, and their marriage license has her listed as “Indian,” this case has significance for understanding blood quantum given Virginia’s archaic one drop rule.

https://twitter.com/CivRightsVoices/status/1271541350350102530

The one-drop rule was used against anyone with Black ancestry to showcase “impurity” whereas, blood quantum for Indigenous Peoples was used against us to showcase “purity”.

Blackness was/is considered expansive. Yet, indigeneity was/is not.

Anti-Black Natives really think that most of their movements in the last century were on their own, when really Black solidarity, Black scholarship, and Black theories influenced how we engaged in the public sphere around liberation. A lot of y’all love to bring up AIM, when that happened post-Civil Rights Movement, which arguably influenced how people resist and challenge colonizing government structures, especially during a time many people were grappling with unlearning anti-Blackness.

I’m waking up this morning learning more and more about what the colonizer’s president just did and -

1. the settler colonialism that is just being reinforced and recycled as “America” continues to expand its colonial skewed understanding of democracy. 2. the violence being reinforced against Muslims is terrifying and something to be conscious of as colonial propaganda increases against them.

3. the (failed) concept of unity among “Americans” and the erasure this will have globally on Black and Native experiences.

As promised, I did write a blog post about it. Feel free to read more here: dineaesthetics.com/telling-storie…

https://twitter.com/GrandmaSaidNo/status/1027635571412414464

a dear friend of mine shared that they heard arguments that Roanhorse “sacrificed the sacredness of our cultural practices to suit her story”, which is highly possible, but also not.