What is #SettlerNonsense you ask

Settler Nonsense is dehumanization and dismissal of Native knowledges so prevalent in discussions about Native people. It is the ever present "vanishing Indian" story where we all just up and disappeared one day and NOBODY KNOWS WHY (it was genocide. Yep. Genocide.) Natives are always vanishing, dying or losing something, our languages, our futures, our health, and our cultures. In this story, if we haven’t lost these things, we are on our way to losing them, one step away from an extinction that often feels inevitable and in many ways, improbably, accidental. 

​This nonsense becomes the narrative that many are taught in classrooms, that is reflected in movies, and that remains ever so stubbornly central to much of the scholarship written about Native people - scholarship that now builds the foundations of law, policy, history and acceptable rhetoric about Native cultures and societies. It is a nonsense designed to claim land and to do whatever is necessary to erase any Indigenous claims to land, territory and even history. It is the building block of so many stories (fantastical and otherwise) because then it becomes normal and natural. We must fictionalize Native people so that those days when they come to the Supreme Court saying "we need to have the ability to prosecute people who are sexually assaulting our children" everyone is like "wait, are you going to cast a plant spell or what?" 
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#1: JK Rowling published some short (short) stories about the history of #MagicInNorthAmerica and there were Natives mentioned in it and it was not good. It was mostly 1. Natives are magical 2. But they don't use wands cause all the good wand makers are British (touche) 3. They do know a lot about plants though 4. Skinwalkers aren't bad. The people who said they were bad are just jelly. 5. When the wizards immigrated here they were like "where's the apothecary?" And Natives were like "walk 1/2 a mile up that way and get the stuff yourself. We are busy." 6. So the poor British wizards were like "It's a mad wilderness here. There are few amenities." And the Natives sat back in their cities and villages and went "sure, no amenities. You are right. Stay far away from our amenities-less villages."

This whole wandless magic thing is bugging me. So Rowling has said multiple times that it takes a lot more skill to perform magic without a wand (Dumbledore does it at several points in the books), but points out that wands are what basically refines magic. Wands are a European invention, so basically she’s demonstrating Eurocentric superiority here–the introduction of European “technology” helps bring the Native wizards to a new level. AKA colonial narrative 101.

What J.K. Rowling did yesterday (March 8, 2016) in the first story of her "History of Magic in North America" is the most recent example of white people misrepresenting Native people. Her misrepresentations are harmful. And yet, countless people are cheering what Rowling did, and dismissing our objections. That, too, is not ok.

“I’m saying American society hasn’t evolved. Its conception of us and our spiritualities remains seriously antiquated. People all across this fading country still believe Native Americans cast curses, heal with magic potions … I’m saying there’s very little difference between what a 3rdGrade teacher will fleece to students in November about Native American spirituality, and what J.K. Rowling scribbled about Native Americans and magic.”

For me the representation issue boils down to this: The mass media narrative around Natives is intensely problematic; if we’re mentioned at all, it’s within a stereotypical or fantastical sense, and very rarely goes beyond 1 or 2-D. Many consumers of this media have no idea we still exist as contemporary, multi-dimensional individuals, which makes these fantastical/fictional perpetrations very much a part of the problem in that NO ONE knows or cares to know any of the very real issues our communities face. Who cares about the epidemic levels of Native youth suicide when OMG JK ROWLING IS WRITING ABOUT MAGICAL INDIAN SKINWALKERS!!!

It would’ve taken some work for her to research Navajo stories and pick (or request) some elements from that tradition that weren’t stereotypical or sacred — and then for her to do it again with the Paiutes and again with the Iroquois and so on. But that is work she should’ve done — for the sake of her readers who live those traditions, if not for her own edification as a writer. And how much more delightful could Magic in North America have been if she’d put an ancient, still-thriving Macchu Picchu magic school alongside a brash, newer New York school? How much richer could her history have been if she’d mentioned the ruins of a “lost” school at Cahokia, full of dangerous magical artifacts and the signs of mysterious, hasty abandonment? Or a New Orleanian school founded by Marie Laveau, that practiced real vodoun and was open/known to the locals as a temple — and in the old days as a safe place to plan slave rebellions, a la Congo Square? Or what if she’d mentioned that ancient Death Eater-ish wizards deliberately destroyed the magical school of Hawai’i — but native Hawai’ians are rebuilding it now as Liliuokalani Institute, better than before and open to all?

#2: Some girl on Instagram put up a photo of her "hot boxing a hobbit house" which just so happened to be her hitting a bong in a traditional Northwest California home in a State Park.

​Palate Cleanser: The opposite of #SettlerNonsense is

Gali will document the crisis of mass incarceration among Native Americans in the state. Using her extensive network, organizing and community-based and engaged research background, she will mobilize Native nations, incarcerated Native Americans and their families, allies and policy leaders to address and shift the tide of over-incarceration and human rights violations within corrections institutions. She also aims to build solidarity and power among Indigenous Peoples throughout California, enabling them to restore sovereign rights and to heal, care for and resolve differences among their people on their own terms and by their own tribal governments.

This week in #Settler Nonsense (2/18)

#1: Antonin Scalia admits that the Supreme Court is just making shiz up as they go... in Federal Indian Law. 

Image via wikimedia commons

As I handed over my book, I decided to go with, "I just wanted to thank you. When I was 10, I came to watch oral arguments in my family's case, and you joined the majority in our favor."
Justice Scalia looked up at me and smiled, "What was the case?"
"Babbitt v. Youpee. It was in 1997."
He paused and I prepared to be ushered along in line. "That was a takings case, right?"
I nodded, more than a little surprised at his memory.
He signed my book, and as he handed it back to me, he said something I'll never forget: "You know, when it comes to Indian law, most of the time we're just making it up."  

#2: Kevin Bacon's new move is about a kid who steals haunted Indian artifacts from an Indian site and then the whole family has to put up with the scary Indian spirits that are coming to get them because...

#3: Everybody is talking about Beyonce and how they are gonna get their behinds in Formation and I'm just over here like "wait, the director of Formation was also the director of No Doubt's WTF Native Appropriation video?" 

image via vimeo

The video also features a tee-pee village, Gwen doing some sort of smoke signals dance and sending up red smoke, scenes of cowboys getting drunk and heading out to the tee-pee village to shoot point blank at Indian people. It features Gwen in a weird swimsuit thing dancing in front of a bonfire in combat boots while telling us that we can go ahead and check out her ragamuffin. There's a lot of feathers, a red dress, a tee-pee hideaway which is for some reason filled with a hookah, an African mask and a bunch of other vaguely ethnic looking stuff. And a dog. 

I watched the video ready to be disappointed and maybe a little annoyed. I watched it thinking "It's just going to be one of those Urban Outfitters, hey look at me on a horse and in a tee-pee. Look at me dancing around with a wolf-dog and wearing feathers and I'll just think 'Gwen, you're about 8 months behind looking dumb dressed up in a headdress. You're FOLLOWING Urban Outfitters, when you USED to be a trendsetter." But then I saw the video and what struck me mostly was the implied violence against Native peoples. And especially the implied violence against Native women. ​

image via me

#4: Vanessa Hudgens and her boyfriend carved their names in Red Rocks in Sedona, AZ

image via Indian Country Today

#5: The Bundy Militia literally pooped all over Native American artifacts

image via YouTube

Settler Nonsense is the narrative of loss that is so prevalent in discussions about Native people. We are always losing something, our languages, our futures, our health, and our cultures. In this story, if we haven’t lost these things, we are on our way to losing them, one step away from an extinction that often feels inevitable and in many ways, improbably, accidental. Natives are always in the last stages of their existence. We have long past the time of the last Mohican or the last of our tribe. This is to solidify the settler colonial desire for an eventual inheriting of this land, a rightful, uninhibited, ahistorical passing of ownership from the poor, dying Indigenous to the stronger, healthier, more vibrant settler colonial society.

​This nonsense becomes the narrative that many are taught in classrooms, that is reflected in movies, and that remains ever so stubbornly central to much of the scholarship written about Native people - scholarship that now builds the foundations of law, policy, history and acceptable rhetoric about Native cultures and societies. It is a nonsense designed to claim land and to do whatever is necessary to erase any Indigenous claims to land, territory and even history

Palate Cleanser: The opposite of #SettlerNonsense is