John Scalzi nails it again. For gamers, especially straight white male gamers, for anyone who has ever had That Conversation, where you have to fight to demonstrate that privilege ACTUALLY EXISTS…show them this article. For anyone who likes to think they don’t have any privilege, despite being a straight white male…think again. The game picks your settings, sorry.
My favorite part? “The player on “Gay Minority Female”? Hardcore.”
HOOP AND SHAWL DANCERS REPRESENTING! I found this gorgeous video for Nelly Furtado’s “Big Hoops” via Adrienne over at NativeAppropriations. Although my grandmotherly brain can’t take the fast cuts in music videos these days, I was SO IMPRESSED to see the absolutely beautiful hoop and shawl dancing in the video. The dancing is great, the lack of ridiculous faux-native styling is great, the video is great.
There was a First Nations protest against the Enbridge pipeline in Toronto on Wednesday, May 9. The Northern Gateway pipeline, for those who don’t know, would run from Alberta to BC, transporting 525,000 barrels of oil a day. Enbridge says they will “work with” Aboriginal groups to add traditional knowledge to their routing plans, but many First Nations groups say they don’t want the pipeline at all.
—eBarbara McGillivray, Tjupan Aboriginal, the chair of the Federation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Languages and Culture (via selchieproductions)
(via tzoc-che)
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Holy smokes, you guys! IsumaTV’s Digital Indigenous Democracy project has made community public radio IN INUKTITUT available online for anyone who wants to listen! Here’s the description from our website of what we’re trying to do:
Community radio online is the first step in DID’s pilot project, Angiqatigingniq/Deciding Together, to adapt today’s media communication tools to the traditional Inuit skill of listening respectfully to different points of view until reaching one unified decision everyone can support.
Angiqatigingniq/Deciding Together and Nipivut Nunatinnii/Our Voice at Home link seven Baffin Island communities facing development of a $6 billion iron mine, railroad and deep-water port for supertanker shipping by Baffinland Iron Mine Corporation (BIM), 70% owned by Luxembourg-based ArcelorMittal, the world’s largest steel-maker. Deciding Together through new media gives Inuit communities more power and influence at upcoming Public Hearings and the negotiating table with Baffinland and government agencies.
Here’s the audio file of our first show from May 7!
“We’re just like a part of the show pieces; they treat us like carvings. The white people never seem to be interested in talking with us. We work hard to make a living with our art and nobody asked us to talk about how we make our carvings and prints and what kind of tools and other things we use.”
~
Iyola Kingwatsiak
Two Geese (1967)
Photo of Nipivut Nunatinnii (Igloolik community radio) station, courtesy Nunatsiaq News and Igloolik Community Radio Station Facebook page. Nunavut’s call-in radio station will be broadcasting a LIVE STREAMING SHOW on WEDNESDAY, MAY 9 from 8 pm until 10 pm EST at www.isuma.tv/DID/radio/igloolik: Zacharias Kunuk and human rights lawyer Lloyd Lipsett will be introducing Inuit and other interested listeners to the human rights issues related to the Baffinland Iron Mine (BIM) and upcoming public hearings on BIM’s Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS). This live CALL-IN radio show will stream online to a global audience and people are invited to listen and call-in from anywhere. Igloolik Community Radio Online (Nipivut Nunatinnii, Our Voice at Home) can be heard here and the call-in phone number is +1.867.934.8080 .
I (that is, the frequent poster for this account, Claire) have just gotten back to the world of internet and fast cars, after spending a full month learning about Buddhism and meditation in a series of increasingly remote Thai temples. Wat Tam Pha Noi, a smallish temple, is fairly isolated: in the mountains about 10km from the Burmese border as the crow flies and no way to get in or out unless you have a motorcycle or rickety pickup truck.
The Abbot of this temple has an in-depth relationship with the Shan village directly below the temple. The Shan are a Tai ethnic group, most often found in Burma, where, as in Thailand, they are considered second-class citizens. As with indigenous and minority groups everywhere, the Shan are isolated, denied privileges (like the ubiquitous Thai ID card required for legal work and education in Thailand), and treated as illegal immigrants in countries they have lived in for years.
The Shan village directly below Wat Tam Pha Noi has no power lines. They don’t really have running water; their water comes from a nearby sink, which is full of pesticide runoff from the lychee plantations surrounding the area. As they have no ID cards, they cannot work at a gas station or a supermarket. Instead, they are forced to work mostly as day labourers, doing fruit picking or construction for ten to twelve hours a day in the broiling sun…for the standard rate of 100 baht a day. That’s about $3.50. A DAY. They eat a lot of crap food, because that’s what they can afford, and they have no hope of excellent medical care — they are isolated, hardy, and mostly incredibly cheerful.
Wat Tam Pha Noi’s Abbot hires the Shan whenever he needs work done, at three times their normal daily rate (300 baht a day is still only about $10). He lets them use the temple’s grounds to plant fruit that they can sell, which gives them further income. He supports them in any way that he can. In return, when Burmese drug smugglers try to cut through the temple grounds at 2am with packages of methamphetamines, the Shan pop up the hill with semi-automatic weaponry. It’s a reciprocal agreement.
Hanging around with the Shan and seeing the way they’re treated made me really, really angry. It’s the same old anger: just by virtue of being indigenous, here is a group of people that Thailand would like to forget exists. In a country that has an indoor Lamborghini shop in a mall in Bangkok, that is clawing itself up along the register of capitalism, indigenous people of all types (including the well-publicized Hill Tribe peoples) are relegated to animal-like tourist attraction, when they are thought of at all. Chiang Mai is full of tours to go see the Hill Tribe Villages or peruse authentic Shan handicrafts. If you’re not on a tourist route, as Wat Tam Pha Noi’s Shan village is not, mostly, you live in incredible hardship.
I know it’s just another sad story of indigenous suppression in a developing country. In some ways, it makes me happy that more developed countries have advanced to the point where native people have voices and can fight. But they are still hamstrung by enforced ignorance, lack of access to resources, and unfair policies treating them as less-than-citizens. It could make you so outraged that you wouldn’t have space for anything in your life but ire. And yet moving forward means we can’t be angry all the time. The Shan are actually pretty cheerful. They’re doing what they can to move forward, without getting so bogged down in anger that they can’t function. It’s such a fine line: being just angry enough to do something, without poisoning your mind or being counterproductive.
My ruminations are partly based on IsumaTV’s project Digital Indigenous Democracy going live — designed to link Inuit communities that would be impacted by Baffinland’s Mary River mine proposal, and provide them with enough information to make informed decisions, communicate, and maybe, fight back. I love this idea. I’d like to see more of it, for everyone.
Knowledge is power.
This memoir, by 43-year-old Anita Heiss, talks about the media’s misconception of Australian Aboriginals as either living in remote desert camps or agitating for social change. “Am I Black Enough For You?” looks like a really excellent look at the Australian “blood quantum” issues, and I wish I could get hold of a copy in Thailand! Someone read it and tell me all about it, at least until I can get to a library!
This half-hour documentary displays life in Kangirsujuaq, in Nunavik with a poignant edge. It contrasts the lives of younger residents with older ones, and a more “modern” way of life with traditional patterns…and how frustrating the collision of those two things can be. Beautiful camera work.
