Two For Tuesday: Native American Heritage Month
What is it?
Post two of anything: book reviews, pictures, quotes, poems, songs, videos, rants, shout outs, whatever floats your boat. Just connect them somehow. That's it.
Today: I have mixed feelings about "awareness" months, no matter what the topic, mainly because they seem to imply that their topic doesn't matter the other 11 months of the year. But then again, obviously the topics haven't been mattering, so maybe it's better to matter for 30 days than none at all.
Obviously the issue is a lot more complicated than that, but I can't deny that if we have to choose a month to raise the profile of native cultures, November's the month to do it. All over the country, schoolchildren will start making pilgrim hats and construction paper headdresses and fake tipis, and I will rage that the plains Indians wore headdresses, not the people in the Northeast - who also did not live in tipis - and for the love, will someone please at least attempt to tell children a Thanksgiving story that is in the least bit realistic... and so on and so forth.
Luckily there are a lot of folks on the internet raising awareness on a daily basis.
General Knowledge and Discussion:
Native Appropriations: "Discussing the use of Indigenous cultures, traditions, languages, and images in popular culture, advertising, and everyday life." Most recent posts include discussion of a Harvard frat's decision to throw a "Conquistabros and Navajos" party. To paraphrase Amy Poehler and Seth Meyers: REALLY, HARVARD? She also has an amazing guest post about the New York mosque controversy and the desecration of holy spaces.
My Culture Is Not A Trend: "Hi, I'm a Native American, and I'm fed up with the appropriation of my culture by those desperate to be trendy, hip, ironic etc." Tons of interesting conversation, a great deal of which is sadly instigated by hate mail the blog owner receives.
More Specific:
Want to counteract the myths and stereotypes that your kids pick up? Lee&Low Publishers has a list of good books.
Like Native fashion but smart enough not to don a hipster headdress? Learn about Native American designers at Beyond Buckskin.
ETA: Unfortunately I'm late in posting this, but the Red Nation Film Festival went on last week in LA. And on their website, I found... WTF. "To date there have only been 4 contemporary American Indian women stories ever produced in film history in the United States." I repeat: W. T. F.
I found that website via Gil Birmingham. THAT'S RIGHT, I SAID IT. I follow the dude who plays Billy Black in Twilight. And he tweets a ton of good info on indigenous causes and happenings around the country and abroad, so I'm not even going to pretend to be embarrassed.