Where are the brown vegans at?

I suspect one of the reasons why not a lot of POCs are into veganism has to do with that veganism as a movement has a problem with racism, as in there are white vegans who often chastise nonwhite people for the things they do even if not all of them do this (like say Asians when it comes to dogs). Some are so insensitive they even chastise indigenous Americans a lot for hunting and fishing, without regarding that these traditions are part of their culture and also without regarding that they have a high unemployment rate. It’s not that there aren’t any indigenous vegans around, they certainly do exist, but it’s an uneasy existence especially when white people always blame them for the things they do.

That’s why it’s not uncommon for indigenous people to mistrust vegans, even if not all vegans are racist it doesn’t help that white vegans’ actions are off-putting to them. It gets even weirder how white vegans frequently blame POCs for eating animals, yet turn a blind eye to dogs whenever they’re proven to kill wildlife repeatedly. Not just in news reports, but also in legitimate peer–reviewed studies. As if the lives of dogs matter more than the livelihoods of those at risk of unemployment due to racism, especially when it comes to indigenous livelihoods at that. I’m not saying we should eat dogs, but that these people don’t hold dogs to the same standards they do with nonwhite people. This is why veganism has a problem with racism, they never hold beloved pets to the same standards they subject people to.

And why veganism has grown off-putting to outsiders, especially if they don’t want their livelihoods and jobs threatened by sadly well-intentioned activism. I could get not eating meat, I don’t even eat that much meat either. But to put things into perspective, I was unemployed for a long time and my own grandmother wouldn’t let me make soap. I feel that’s probably the same with Inuit people, they want to work but aren’t allowed to by others so they’re stuck between a rock and a hard place. Between preserving what’s left of their culture and lives and following the whims of racist white people. I’m afraid white vegans might have a hard time understanding this, most especially due to their white privilege.

And also because a good number of them have stable jobs, whereas with Inuits if they do have jobs it’s often unstable though I could be projecting here. Many white vegans don’t get what’s like to not only face racism, but also constant unemployment that makes it harder to earn a decent wage. Let alone afford vegan and vegetarian friendly foods, especially if these are either expensive or if nonwhites are often stuck in food deserts where there’s nothing better to eat and do. Black and brown vegans do exist, Asian vegans exist and indigenous vegans exist. The problem is that white vegans have a habit of scapegoating nonwhite people for the things they do, even if not all of them do these.

White vegans don’t even hold dogs to the same standard, because if they did that involves realising that dogs themselves can be problematic to the environment when it comes to pathogenesis and dog predation on endangered species. While one might argue that dogs can be vegan, but when dogs kill so much animals on their own that they probably have double standards of sorts. Especially whenever they play favourites, which they tend to do a lot, despite facts pointing out to a rather less favourable take on dogs when it comes to predation. I also think white vegans are kind of ignorant of the economic reality Inuit people are in, especially when 18% of them are unemployed and 37% of them are kind of underemployed.

If they’re not in the labour force, they certainly have jobs but are underemployed or have no regular paying job to pay the bills. Let alone cultivate their own gardens to grow fruits and vegetables, which I think some Inuits may’ve toyed around with but can’t due to their economic situations. They could and can to some extent, but when produce is expensive wherever the Inuit live there’s only so much greens they can afford to eat. In some countries, veganism has an issue with classism. Especially when people lack the things needed to prolong the life of vegetables and fruits that unless if they know how to make preservatives themselves (which was the case before), it would be real difficult maintaining a vegan diet.

In addition to white privilege, many white vegans have economic privilege. In the sense that a good number of them have stable paying jobs, whereas the Inuit really don’t. While it’s possible to go vegan on a budget, that would involve making veganism less exclusive. They’d become less special, even if that involves making it actually accessible to others. Not to mention the surprising fact that although indigenous people make up 6 percent of the human population, they conserve 80 percent of the world’s biodiversity despite their hunting and fishing. I guess that’s because they don’t take natural resources for granted, even when it’s abundant, perhaps in ways non-indigenous people don’t understand immediately.

Mainly because they’re so detached from nature that they don’t know what it’s like to feed a community using whatever nature has in store, one of the ways they can overcome this is if they learnt to grow their own food which’s the case with some indigenous people. When it comes to whaling among other indigenous communities, it’s actually rather cost-efficient since one whale’s enough to feed an entire community. Whereas you have to slaughter several cattle to get more burger patties, you’d have to raise even more of them to make far more burger patties if you do the maths. Maybe that’s why indigenous people are able to make the most out of it, they don’t take natural resources for granted.

Especially when it comes to beliefs that animals will willingly sacrifice themselves to people, that it’s something they take very seriously. There are indigenous vegans out there, but the actual reason why there’s not more of them’s that they get ripped to shreds by white vegans. Not taking into account that since they’ve been forced to assimilate, that indigenous people are left clinging onto what’s left of them. I don’t think most white vegans are going to be comfortable about this, even when there are things they should learn from indigenous communities or two. There are vegans who do genuinely stand up for indigenous people though unfortunately they’re in the minority.

When you have too many self-righteous vegans around, it makes it harder for people to take veganism seriously. Especially if it risks insulting their very cultures, that veganism would forever be seen as a cult rather than a legitimate lifestyle. That’s what’s costing vegans their ability to influence more people for the better, that’s why they’re so repulsive to the very people they want to reach out to.

Nonexistent Natives

There’s a tendency to treat indigenous people in the Americas as almost always either in the past, nonexistent or imaginary. That actually not only robs them of their humanity and actuality, but also robs others of their reality as well (both the good and bad). Perhaps the tendency to treat indigenous people as oftentimes imaginary or nonexistent does contribute to both attempts at getting rid of them and also ignoring whatever problems they face in the real world, which’s why it can be this hard to bother empathising with them in any way. One such problem includes the persistence of colonialism and cultural assimilation, that’s the pressure to give up their indigenous cultures to better blend in with white people in this case.

While not unique to them in the Americas, it’s a very thorny problem as they got there first. Hence that’s why they’re called Native Americans in America and First Nations in Canada, with similar words likely showing up in the rest of the Americas. To make matters worse, some white people will even appropriate or co-opt indigenous customs, costumes and beliefs to make them sound more indigenous or more special than they really are. When it comes to totem animals, these are oftentimes hereditary passed down from parent to child either patrilineal or matrilineal. Among the Akans of Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire, various clans have a totem animal. Some families would be associated with the dog totem, which represents adroitness and thus cunning.

Some would have the leopard totem, which is associated with aggression. Should you marry an Akan woman, since Akan totems are passed down matrilineally it’s going to be fat chance since the person who will inherit the totem animal is the child, not the spouse who wishes to live vicariously through them. This is likely the same with some indigenous communities that have those, well at least essentially or practically so. No matter how many times a white person tries to claim a totem animal or something similar, if these animals don’t have the same meaning or significance as they do in some non-Western cultures it wouldn’t just come off as cultural appropriation.

It would also be preposterous, especially if (certain) animals didn’t play such a big role in some Western cultures to begin with. Well some cultures in general so to speak. The tendency to treat Native Americans and their ilk as oftentimes nonexistent or a mere fashion has made it this easy to appropriate their cultures and beliefs, though this could be applied to other people of colour (in the West and the like) to an extent as well. It’s also that easy to gloss over their rights and suffering, so there really needs more awareness of them as people. It already is to some extent among some people, but more work needs to be done to minimise such problems.

Discolouration of the wind

Pocahontas, as she was known to Mattaponi oral historians, was a preteen when she first met John Smith. She did get older but she never fell in love with him, she got married to Kocoum first and then to Thomas Rolfe though with the attempt to assimilate her into English society. If you believe them, she could’ve been raped or generally treated worse than she was used to when she was with the Powhatan community. If because she wasn’t white, it would’ve been easy for 17th century Britons to dehumanise her. Certainly life with the Powhatan wasn’t any better either, but she was treated better there than in England where if Sarah Baartman was any indication being nonwhite she would’ve been treated as a curiosity throughout the rest of her life.

Disney, at some point, when portraying Pocahontas at life attempted to tell a story that was closer to fact but deliberately gave up when they realised she’d be more interesting if she was idealised in a way she wasn’t. They bought into false stories about her falling in love with John Smith, even though in reality she hadn’t and if she did have a crush on him it would never be reciprocated. The idealisation and objectification of Pocahontas has badly affected Native American and First Nations women that it does contribute to the Murdered, Missing Indigenous Women phenomenon not helped by that Pocahontas herself is the first MMIW in history. Perhaps rightfully so as she was taken away from her people in her mid-teens.

In hindsight, in light of the growing awareness of MMIW, Disney’s Pocahontas has left a very dark legacy since it happened in recent memory. According to one Redditor, Disney’s Pocahontas may’ve influenced people for the worse when it comes to surviving victims being compared to her or rather the idealised version of her. It’s also not much of a stretch to say that while degrading portrayals of indigenous women did exist before, Disney’s Pocahontas has led to a more blatant sexualisation of not only the namesake historical figure (as evidenced by the 2005 New World film, one picture and also Conan’s version of her) but also one female character’s appearance in The Road to El Dorado.

Because the Pocahontas film was so popular that it would’ve influenced how those growing up in the 1990s and 2000s see Native American women as, there were people idealising Pocahontas before but the film pretty much directly led to not only The Road to El Dorado (in a way) but also more blatant sexualisation. This has led to a counterpoint in the form of Missing Matoaka (Pocahontas’s second name after Amounte). I still think whoever you believe, Pocahontas was likely treated as a curiosity more than as a person since she’s not white and was in England when she got abducted or something. The sort of attention she received would’ve hurt her a lot, since she wasn’t treated like a person the way she was at home.

Even today, due to stereotypes and idealisations, Native Americans and Native American women in particular aren’t treated like people. This kind of othering dehumanises them, as it would with other marginalised demographics even if they aren’t always alike. The fact that Pocahontas is now better remembered as a fictional character sort of tars her status as not just a historical figure, but also one of the earliest MMIW around.

Idealising Native Americans

I have the nagging feeling that the Continental European (specifically German and Polish) fascination with Native Americans isn’t just due to a feeling of how shameful German culture has become due to Nazi influence but also a fascination with the Wild West. Even though what West Coast Native Americans wear may not always be identical to what Plains people wear, same with the rest of their cultures. At best, this is a romantic idea of what America and Native Americans are like (to be fair, there are those who’re genuinely concerned about them and put effort in learning new languages).

At times, it’s a naive but damaging view of the American West and indigenous people especially if you take the effects of colonisation have on them. Denied of their cultures and customs for years, these same customs get appropriated by European and American whites. The war bonnets were historically and still are only given to truly outstanding or important individuals, not a mere fashion accessory that can be worn when one wills to regardless if they earned it or not. People don’t get spirit animals, it’s something that’s handed down to them from relative to relative.

Well in some cultures to the point where one could live vicariously through their child, but only the child will get the totem not them. While demonising Native Americans isn’t any better either, I don’t think idealising and appropriating their cultures would do any good either. If because that involves disrespecting the things they hold so sacrosanct and have gone through worse when their own customs get repressed and stolen, so cultural appropriation is by default often disrespectful to them. Not to mention there’s a habit for some white Americans to claim Native American descent but turn out to be otherwise.

I remember a book where it said that for some reason, white Americans abstain from claiming male Native ancestors on their side if because they seem too savage yet readily claim female relatives. Perhaps to cover up the guilt of killing Native Americans, or more probably need to be seen as authentically American. Not that there aren’t any people who actually have Native American relatives, they do exist but some of them so strongly identify with Native American culture that they’ll fight to the death to defend it. It also gets complicated by that not a lot of Americans know Native Americans, let alone undo their racist ideas of them.

Coupled with constant appropriation, this makes it easier to ignore their plight regardless of how badly they feel about it.

Colonisation

They say that America was built on stolen land and there’s a study that proved it right, but I’d say that all of the Americas are built on stolen land. This is due to the strong legacy of colonisation through taking land and immigration, to the point of displacing native people off their lands in many if not all cases. There are still Western hemisphere countries that have substantial indigenous populations, but others are gone, displaced and marginalised or sent to live in other countries.

It is possible to colonise a place without displacing the original people that much, but in the case with the Americas the original peoples were seriously displaced. There were even attempts to wipe them out, in one case it was rather successful in one part of Canada. Then we have harrowing stories of children sent to boarding schools to become more Westernised, though tainted by abuse and death. The last Indian residential school closed in 1996.

That would be some 26 years ago, which’s in living memory. I suspect there are still some people scarred by this experience, that’s if they went to such schools almost 30 years ago. Then we have people who were socialised not to speak their native languages, while not unique to them, this is damaging to the cultures they were brought up in. There are efforts to revitalise such languages, though who knows if they’ll ever be revived fully.

Mexico still has a substantial number of indigenous language speakers, but nowhere as big as it was due to Spanish colonial influence. The same can be said of almost any American country with a substantial number of indigenous people there. While non-native people revel in the trappings of indigenous cultures, people part of those cultures don’t get much credit and suffer from further marginalisation. They might as well not exist in the current day in the popular imagination, even if they still do in real life.

There goes the problem with cultural appropriation on behalf of marginalised groups, that’s where the majority ethnicity takes on the trappings of those cultures they’ve conquered without actually respecting them. Their immersion’s rather superficial, it would like wearing Chinese foods without bothering to respect Chinese people whenever you insult them. No interest in bothering to go to Chinese language websites when one wants to know more about what Chinese attitudes are actually like.

That’s probably how indigenous people feel if their cultures get appropriated, almost nobody really listens to their cries and it hurts. That’s why it’s important to respect them, well any ethnicity if you’re that into them.

They shouldn’t have done this

When it comes to Disney’s Pocahontas, it was going to be more historically accurate well in a way where Pocahontas was going to be a preteen girl. Unfortunately, she had to be aged up to her twenties to make it into a romance between her and John Smith. It’s not that she didn’t get any older in real life, but her actual life story’s a tragedy in that she got kidnapped, raped and then died possibly from poisoning if you believe Mattaponi sources.

The fact that indigenous American women are often kidnapped and murdered at higher rates makes the real life Pocahontas not only the first missing, murdered indigenous woman but also how much more harmful her fictional counterpart is and gets. This not only contributes to more MMIW (and anybody who’s survived rape say that they get compared to Pocahontas a lot), but also alongside fancy dress more stereotypes about indigenous women.

That’s being submissive to white men, sexually/romantically available and primitive not to mention only a fraction of how diverse indigenous cultures are and can get, so I do think cultural appropriation is problematic in the sense of reinforcing stereotypes about ethnic groups. Not only untrue but also a fraction of what they really are. This is how problematic the legacy of Disney’s Pocahontas is and gets, disregarding sad facts for a happy fantasy.

They can eagerly appropriate aspects of indigenous cultures, but not love or at least respect indigenous people as people. That’s what makes cultural appropriation and stereotypes problematic for any ethnic group, but especially indigenous people in this post. Pocahontas shouldn’t have been made, or should’ve been made truer to what Pocahontas was as a real person.

What she has gone through should not be sugarcoated, there’s no hiding what Native women go through and now Disney really has to apologise to indigenous women due to the harm it’s caused.

The dark side of L Frank Baum

I’m not doubting that L Frank Baum is a gifted storyteller, he has created memories for many people and generations since his passing. The Wizard of Oz has stood the test of time and has proven to be an influential film, but he has a dark side and feet of clay. He wanted the genocide of Lakota Native Americans, showing his immense contempt for these people in one column. Even if he didn’t always show contempt for them, he’s still anti-indigenous when it comes to advocating their extermination and disregard for their cultures.

One could be anti-indigenous by appropriating their sacred items and disrespecting their feelings and concerns, that’s one way of being anti-indigenous. Another way of being anti-indigenous is taking their beliefs for granted, thinking their cultures have their own totem animals when they really don’t. If some indigenous tribes do have totem animals, it’s something that’s sacred to their communities and can only be passed down from parent to child, especially if both parent and child come from the same community and if such totem animals are passed down either from mother or father.

So it would be pretentious and preposterous for them to claim a totem animal when it’s not only not part of their cultures, but also passed down from certain people to their children that it’s pretty much fat chance when they claim one at all. It’s not that white European cultures are devoid of totem animals of their own, but it’s still cultural appropriation to claim it as yours without knowing where it actually comes from and what it means to the people having them. There are many ways to be anti-indigenous.

One can be anti-indigenous through advocating exterminartion, one can be anti-indigenous through disrespecting their beliefs and practices whether by cultural appropriation or by denigration. L Frank Baum chose the former, many chose the latter. To repeat, L Frank Baum is a great storyteller. But there’s a tendency to ignore his darker side, especially if that involves exterminating indigenous people. Indigenous people are scientifically proven to have their lands deprived over the years, but it’s sad we don’t take them seriously like one does with Jews.

One might say that Jews hold disproportionate influence despite their small population, but indigenous people also have a small population size yet they’re oftentimes overlooked and underrepresented in the media. They might as well be nonexistent, especially if representations tend to appropriate sacred cultural practices whilst whitewashing them of their origins and that they’re represented by stereotypes. People can file complaints about anti-Semitic stereotypes, but one would be called SJW if they did same with anti-indigenous stereotypes.

Perhaps that’s how persistent and insidious anti-indigenous racism is and can get, sometimes it creeps into otherwise liberal characters. L Frank Baum’s continued popularity is symptomatic of this, one won’t let an anti-Semite off the hook but they can’t do the same to an anti-indigenous one. Well-intentioned characters unwittingly indulge in anti-indigenous racism, L Frank Baum could be one of them in a way. He was certainly a law-abiding citizen, but also harboured anti-indigenous attitudes.

Even if he may not always be outright anti-indigenous, well anybody else who aren’t indigenous that is, if they appropriate otherwise sacred practices and symbols then they’re being anti-indigenous. That’s why we need to bring up L Frank Baum’s dark side more, so that we call it out for what it is.

Erasure of indigenous people

When it comes to indigenous people, there’s often a tendency to erase them. This is either accomplished through genocide or by destroying their culture through appropriation and ignorance, but regardless of the method being used this hurts actual indigenous people a lot. People like L Frank Baum don’t just advocate killing them outright, one can disrespect indigenous people through cultural appropriation.

Things like claiming to have a totem animal, even though your culture doesn’t have one can be damaging to those who hold totem animals truly sacrosanct to those who have them. If your culture has a sacred animal, the only people who can receive them are those born into those communities or have received them with the spirit’s blessing. As far as I understand and recall.

While it’s true not all indigenous people have sacred spirit animals, it shouldn’t be taken so lightly to cultures that have these at all as these are important to them. As far as I know about African cultures, the only African cultures I can think of that have totem animals are the Cameroonian Bamilekes and the Ghanaian and Ivorian Akans. With the former, the animals associated with royalty are the elephant and the leopard but only the leopard’s the chieftaincy’s totem animal.

I could be wrong, but anybody who isn’t Bamileke or Akan claiming to have the leopard as their totem animal is taking their culture and beliefs very lightly. Similar things can be said about dogs and it should be noted that among the Akan, leopards are associated with aggression and dogs are associated with adroitness. Even then, these are totems that can only be inherited within certain Akan families from mother to child.

Any indigenous community with totem animals wouldn’t take these animals lightly and these are only passed down from relative to relative. Claiming to have a totem animal can and will erase cultures that rightfully claim to have these at all, it shouldn’t be taken out of context and so lightly. Likewise, even if not all indigenous Americans don feathered regalia but because it’s so important to certain Plains communities that it ought not to be taken lightly either.

I think that’s the problem with cultural appropriation, not only does it lack authenticity in terms of borrowing and appreciation for a foreign culture but also how appropriation takes certain cultural artefacts and beliefs too lightly. If it’s something that’s very important to their cultures, it shouldn’t be taken so lightly and the only way one can use these at all if there’s either cultural appreciation or if their culture gets influenced by that one.

For instance, in order for the Philippines to do more Chinese customs it has to be more strongly influenced by China. This would be the best situation for the Philippines to get away with doing these things, if because it’s now influenced by China a lot. Likewise, a popstar who stayed in Iran for a long time would do and get Iranian culture better than anybody who barely has any experience with it while appropriating it at the same time.

It seems if this were true, whatever attempts at appropriating indigenous cultures (or any other, often nonwhite) culture stem from insincerity. They may admire the culture, but only to an extent as they appropriate only the cool stuff but not the inner workings and they neither show respect to the people either. It’s like how many Evangelicals are tone-deaf to Jews who say they appropriate and bastardise Jewish practices like seder and Passover.

(No Christian, to my knowledge, has ever bothered learning Aramaic and Yiddish which makes one wonder if their interest in Judaism is more superficial than one realises.)

It seems to me, when it comes to people appropriating indigenous people’s cultures it feels very superficial and hollow as they only go for the cool stuff but not the inner workings and the deeper philosophy. To put it this way, this would be like only dressing up in Plains clothing but never standing up for Plains Indians’ rights, never hanging out among them for long and never learning their languages.

(This is where learning a language to know what’s actually going on elsewhere has over merely using the language one knows since childhood.)

It’s fairly not uncommon to see fancy dress that stereotypes indigenous people a lot, whether if it’s the Pocahotties or the warriors which not only appropriate indigenous fashions but also perpetuates harmful beliefs about them. In the sense it’s really just what they wear and not what the outfit means to them, especially if it gets sold to non-indigenous people and never profit from actual indigenous talent.

Those living in the North, especially in the circumpolar regions, wear buckskin and fur because it’s widely available and not so much as a fashion statement beyond what they can do with limited resources like these. These came about because the world they live in isn’t conductive to agriculture, though they do farming to a degree some of them are hunter-gatherers constrained by limited resources. The only plant-based clothing they wore was bark clothing.

Most Europeans, by contrast, came from a place with climate mild enough to cultivate and farm plants with so that’s why they wear linen clothing. (As for white Russians and Yakuts, a similar pattern follows to an extent since there are parts of Russia that have very mild climates like in Sochi for instance.) It wouldn’t be any better if there are plant-based indigenous costumes that are appropriated by non-indigenous people, but this goes to show you the problem with the extent of cultural appropriation taking place.

Another form of erasure is through stereotypes and misrepresentation, which not only generalises Indigenous peoples and cultures but also risks telling something harmful about them. Pocahontas, for instance, is a real person but the way she’s represented in the media is something that’s hurtful and demeaning to many Native American and First Nations women.

Though she was a young girl, she never fell in love with either John Rolfe or John Smith. But perpetuating the story that she fell in love with John Smith, alongside sexualisation of them, puts Native women at increased risk of violence from non-Native people. The fact that Missing, Murdered Indigenous Women as a hashtag was created to raise awareness of this should point out something. It’s even said that Pocahontas was the first MMIW, due to being kidnapped and raped by the English.

Ali Nahdee had to make a test to see if fictional Native women can escape certain cliches that harm their real life counterparts a lot, it goes like this: does the indigenous woman not fall in love with a white man, does the indigenous woman not get raped or murdered and is the indigenous woman the main character of the story? There aren’t that many stories that pass this test, which makes one wonder if they really care about the well-being of indigenous women at all.

Pocahontas doesn’t pass the test, which is saying when it comes to the way an actual historical figure’s portrayed. The fact that the protagonist was aged up to seemingly get away with interacting with John Smith makes you wonder whether if they see indigenous children as they really are. Instead of portraying them as mini-adults, which’s also the case with how some people see black diaspora children as.

It seems when it comes to indigenous representation in the media, I don’t think I’ve ever encountered an indigenous geek the way I do in the real world (online encounters included). Black nerds and black people involved in STEM like Baxter Stockman, Lunella Lafayette, Shuri and Riri Williams are well-represented in fiction, not so much for indigenous geeks and those in STEM even though they exist. Likewise, indigenous cat owners don’t exist in pop culture either.

Even though they do in the real world, not just in academic studies but also outside of it like ordinary blogs for instance. I could also say that black cat owners also exist, if it seems surprising to some people that black and indigenous people own cats as well as Asian people caring for dogs make me wonder whether if they actually knew such people or are too biased to see anything else.

It’s unfortunately easy to forget these characters exist. That’s why representation matters, where it’s like if you always show black people only doing sports that’s going to ignore black people who do other things like science and art. That would alienate black people who don’t fit the stereotype, or if one wills always thinking that or portraying black men with large penises ignoring those who might not be that well-endowed.

In the case with indigenous women, it’s like if they’re portrayed as either subservient/adjacent to white men or as wise sages and princesses wouldn’t that alienate indigenous women who don’t fit into these stereotypes? If you keep on portraying Asians as abusing animals, that would alienate those who genuinely like and take care of them. That’s why representation matters, especially if such portrayals are either stereotypical or offensive.

Even both. I think even the most well-meaning white people will turn to racial stereotypes, regardless of how long they’ve been with blacks or Asians because I think on some level they see them as other. Not quite like them, which is racist in that it kind of dehumanises them if one were to stereotype them at all. A certain white person may say they stand up for blacks, but if they appropriate the beliefs of certain black people like claiming to have a totem animal it can risk being insincere.

In the sense of being unaware of how important totem animals are to certain black cultures such leopards for Bamileke chieftains or dogs and vultures for certain Akan clans that they might as well be taking it lightly. I even think intersectionality’s the best thing to happen to social justice in that it addresses things that are unique to certain groups that those of the majority demographic don’t face.

Especially if they intersect, such as how racism and sexism intersect for many women of colour especially in the West. While women of colour face racism, some of these problems are unique to their own communities and ethnicities. Black women are frequently denied of their vulnerability and humanity, since they’re expected to be strong regardless if they have legitimate mental health problems.

It can be said that if some black women aren’t that strong, especially if they have mental health issues so this is a good argument for taking their vulnerability seriously. Some black women aren’t physically strong either, but there’s an unfortunate tendency to regard blacks as invulnerable to pain which dehumanises them and denies the help they really need.

Expecting black women to be mentally strong ignores their trauma, anguish and pain. Likewise, expecting Asian women to be demure and submissive ignores the more strong-willed, assertive and brash among them. Expecting Asians to be good at math ignores those who struggle at it (I’m Asian and I struggle with math), it also ignores those who might be better at say rugby (Eddie Jones at some point).

In the case with indigenous women and to an extent indigenous people in general, when they appear at all they often appear as stereotypes that paint them as either sexualised, primitive or abused. I’m not saying it shouldn’t be addressed at all, but the fact that there’s not a single indigenous geek appearing in fictional stories (as far as I know) says a lot about ignoring indigenous people and who they really are.

If indigenous people are proven to be marginalised by immigrants through hard data, they can also be marginalised by not appearing much in fictional media as well. If indigenous portrayals tend to be stereotypical, this would be disappointing to any indigenous person seeking representation at all. Indigenous people aren’t just physically exterminated, they’re also ignored if they don’t fit stereotypes.

If true, there must be something done about it.

The nonexistent indigenous people

When it comes to anti-Native racism and anti-indigenous racism in general, at times they’re so culturally appropriated and so often dismissed or ignored that they might as well be nonexistent in the minds of many people, even white liberals dismiss the things they go through and appropriate their culture. To give you an idea of how bad cultural appropriation is, it’s like if somebody who isn’t Akan begins proclaiming that they have a totem animal.

But it doesn’t work that way among the Akans where it’s passed down from mother to child (regardless of gender) within their respective clans, these clans have their own totem animal but the only way to get a totem animal is to be born into one of those clans. One may live vicariously through their child, but only the child will receive the totem animal. That’s probably the same with any Native American community with totem animals, only somebody born into them will get one.

But because it’s so common to dismiss, ignore and marginalise indigenous people that they might as well be nearly nonexistent in the public imagination, that is other than stereotypes which is saying. There are indigenous Americans who go to Japan and encounter Japanese people who think they’re extinct or gone, which also says a lot about prior attempts at actually exterminating them before. Some communities were completely exterminated.

There are some attempts at exterminating them, whether through genocide or sterilisation. It’s a living nightmare they go through, something they have to endure when they don’t consent to it at all. Not to mention, it’s not uncommon for indigenous women to go missing and murdered in North America where their murders are either underreported or dismissed. As if they don’t matter as actual people to others.

This is one of the reasons why it’s so easy to dismiss and ignore the suffering Native people go through, the theft of their cultures and genocides are too real for them but it’s something others don’t give a damn about which is unfortunate.