Everything good that's ever happened in the world comes back to the Haudenosaunee | director of
@ProtectTheTract
| policy wonk
@Yellowhead_
| she/her | writer
245 years ago, George Washington spent 85% of the US budget trying to genocide the Haudenosaunee from our homelands. They started a months long scorched earth campaign that destroyed 40 villages, 1400 homes, 150k bushels of corn, and displaced 5k people to Fort Niagara
Can't think of anything more emblematic of Haud bad-assery than surviving genocide and deciding that you like the taste of it, you keep eating the scorched earth. 245 years later the babies you survived for keep themselves fed because after the soldiers were gone, you went home
The scars of the Sullivan Campaign still impact us today, but 245 years later, I sat in a longhouse with other Haudenosaunee appreciating how much we have survived. The young women spoke Mohawk to one another. We laughed. We ate corn and strawberries.
The campaign resulted in fields of green corn being burned. We survived off of cicadas and burned corn soup. Washington tried to kill us all, and 245 years later, I ate burned corn soup. The corn kept us alive.
The rez sucks, cause sometimes you just lose the goodest boys to worst circumstances. My Burdie has passed away way too soon, my heart is broken. Hopefully he impresses the sky world with his offer of a paw for a sgęno. When I die bury me with a timbit so I can take it to him 💔
The cool thing about chronic poverty is when you fight back you have no colonial assets to lose. You're gonna try and sue me for $20 million over a cancelled development? I have a cat and a lot of beads and fabric. COME AT ME
TW: Intimate partner violence
Five kids in my community need our support. Their mama is fighting for her life after sustaining life threatening injuries. Please support this fundraiser for the children, and pray their mama lives 💔
My partner dropped out of an Indian Day School in grade 5. He ran away from home and worked as a labourer in the States at age 12. He had to teach himself reading and math. He just got news he has been accepted into a GED program in February. I'm so proud of his bravery 💜💜💜
Colonialism has done so much damage to us that people actually believe we shouldn't exist together, live together, work together. The result is we can barely organize, resist, fight back, and those who do get looked down on
The Judge says Skyler was upholding his responsibilities under Haudenosaunee law.
Skyler Williams has been given an absolute discharge of all his charges related to 1492 Land Back Lane!!!
Can
@CHCHNews
stop saying it's a six nations man trial!!! Jon is dead! He's the one who was murdered! He is not on trial Peter Khill is the murderer who is on trial!!!!!!!
My friend, my frontline sister, mother of six beautiful babies was killed this morning in a hit and run. She was directed to leave a house party by police, with no ride home.This is exactly what people mean when we speak of the need for police abolition.
For those following along. I made a lil organic space to plant. No bottom barrier between the planters and the earth. The rain came at the perfect time to start these ancestral seeds. We shall see if they grow 💜
It's kind of unbelievable that
@cafreeland
and
@fordnation
are coming to Six Nations to *not* deal with
@1492lbl
issues and continue to be complete cowards about being actual leaders and instead are coming for *checks notes* a photo op about a battery storage project
My cousin passed away yesterday morning. Our ancestors survived genocide, one of our grandmothers was eight years old when she walked from the Mohawk Valley to the Grand River, just for her one of her babies to get devoured by colonialism generations later. It hurts so much
Teaching pre-WWI history this week. Focused on the Haudenosaunee, resistance, and power of Indigenous Peoples. Our ancestors fought and organized for us to be here. Students are in immersion, so we contextualized their education as a legacy of resistance
Learning how to tan hides today. I organized a hide tanning camp to hopefully create an exponential amount of people who know how to tan hides traditionally, to build our self sufficiency and exert sovereignty. This is what gets me called a terrorist.
Cooking white corn in a clay pot, eating white pine and ashes, making corn bread with my niece and showing her how my auntie used to make it... ya. Today was a good day.
I've been with my bf for over two years. We broke up on Wednesday. I am so unbearably sad. I feel like I'm dragging pieces of my heart behind me on strings
I have genealogy info that traces my matrilineal line back to the Mohawk Valley in 1645. My g-gpa was an original Mohawk Worker, a pine tree chief, Council secretary. My dad's mom was a Clan Mother. Your petty lateral violence slides off me like I'm a slick little beaver 🦫
Community recieved a stay at home alert following the search for two suspects who are believed to have killed an OPP officer. The road currently blocked is the boundary line between Six Nations/New Credit and Haldimand/Norfolk County. Racist backlash online is already started
I was accepted into the next phase of my education journey... gaining teaching credentials to work in language immersion 💜💜💜 unfortunately I don't have tuition funding for the May start of this program, so anything might want to share helps!
The Dutch Ambassador presented the Chiefs with a string of white wampum to affirm the commitment to a treaty based relationship, which began in 1613. The Guswentah, affirms peace, friendship, and mutual respect;
If you ever try to help me plz be advised one of my man besties pulled the "I'm not good at wrapping presents" while helping me with the toy drive I organize and every time he struggled I yelled WEAPONIZED INCOMPETENCE at him until he improved. That's my leadership style
TW: Intimate partner violence
Five kids in my community need our support. Their mama is fighting for her life after sustaining life threatening injuries. Please support this fundraiser for the children, and pray their mama lives 💔
Beading with whimsy references that are older than Canada. Raised beadwork is a cultural practice that has always existed. It's never died out, never stopped, never needed to be revitalized.
Some WW wanted to bring cupcakes to an ndn bb shower today. I suggested their clan, turtle. I said that the turtles shouldn't have big legs (like a seaturtle), our turtles have little legs. All they heard was "turtles can't have legs" and then cut the legs off the cupcake turtles
Me: I love peaches
Cuzn: ya me too
Me: I love how spicy they taste
Cuzn: ?
Me: like pop rocks
Cuzn: that's not what peaches taste like?
Me: like sweet, juicy TV static
Cuzn: ur dumb
Me: my face is getting itchy just looking at them
Cuzn: ur allergic to peaches
Me: no
Spending time with the ancestors, learning about my clan family role in the Great Law 💜
"Walking away with an idea from listening is a gift being passed on from your ancestors"
I got a chance to check out a genealogy project for the Mohawk families that fled the Mohawk Valley following the Sullivan Campaign and settled Grand River. Seeing my maternal line stretch all the way to our homelands, affirming our clan family title is awesome.
I've been doing treaty week conversations with little Hauds this week. Today a lil Haud girl in grade 3 told me: the nations and people work together and we use our good minds so we work together and have skennen because a long long time ago all our people were brought together..
In court with
@landbackskyler
and a bunch of other Haudenosaunee land defenders, awaiting decisions on criminal charges related to
@1492LBL
but includes other related charges.
There are so many Indig folks who try to distance themselves from 1492LBL by saying shit like *I would never block a road* *I would never dig up a road* and other shit like that... and I'm over here like, why would you say that? Do you need everyone to know you won't fight back?
@M4TTW4RD
I used my status card at sephora and the cashier was like omg ur First Nations, I hear a lot of your women have been murdered!
(I used this experience as a bit when I did stand up)
A student kept goofing around and I kept gently reminding them to keep still.
The boy was like, you need to be more strict. You need to control us.
I was like... nah, you need to control yourself. You have your own mind and Creator gave you free will. Only you can control you
My body isn't able to birth. I won't have kids. My aunt knew this before I did. I wasn't exiled from community or disregarded, I was taught about a role for me that is meaningful and still oriented towards the survival of our nations. We all belong, there's space for all of us
My official first day as an instructor at the iconic Red Barn summer camp... an on rez arts camp that's been ensuring Haud kids at Grand River know our ancestral crafts since the 70s. I coveted these few weeks every year as a kid. Feeling like a rez auntie supreme 💜💜💜
I made this bluebirb mini wallet. Raised beadwork, using Tuscarora style birds nests, glass beads. Raised beadwork is distinctive to Tuscarora/Haudenosaunee artists. I've been learning raised beadwork techniques for 23 years
What do you gain by not showing solidarity? I'm begging you to sit with yourself and do some self reflection. Why do you think the way you do? Because if you find yourself opposite of people who are doing the riskiest and most sacrificing work, you gotta figure that out
Well, I got word I am officially being deemed someone who experienced long-lasting harm from attending Indian Day School. Feels weird to have verified trauma, not just the inherited kind. Now I have my own unique toxicity to pass on
Canada relies on our deaths, the upheaval of our communities, and the denial of our inherent laws to legitimize itself. Canada feasts on our blood like a parasite
Took my squirrels snow tubing. My body is aching. But we had chicken nuggies for lunch, hot mini donuts hillside, and pink drinks and cake pops for the ride home. Niece 3/4 said it was a billion out of 10 day, and Niece 5 said it was catnificent
When you see a white woman who gained status through marriage in the 80s move from the rez to the city and start giving teachings at a friendship center with a "complex" identity story... like... everyone on the rez remembers the white woman who moved here. This is toxic AF
My bf and I have been shacked up for well over a year now. My weekends are basically making a huge pot of corn soup on Fridays, eating it for every meal until Sunday, freezing the leftovers, and slowly accumulating a stockpile of different vintages of corn soup in the freezer
My friend Kahionwinehshon is selling this AMAZING purse, the back is hand tanned leather she did herself, look at that amazing edging with size 15 beads 😍😍😍 this is truly a work of Haudenosaunee excellence
Been dealing with a toxic/abusive person for a year. I finally had my fill and set a boundary with them, saying they shouldn't be abusive to another person. I am now in that space where a person not used to having boundaries set is lashing out, trying to make me the problem
Hello, I'd like to take a group of youth I'm mentoring to have a hide tanning camp during the school break this winter, a lil anti-colonial space. As always my organizing is outside typical funding resources, if you would like to donate, plz etransfer info
@ProtectTheTract
.com💜
I reviewed a TRC teaching guide and it was so frustrating to read teacher resources that are full of neoliberal reconciliation BS. I'm glad in my class I have the freedom to teach with our own teachings. This week, we read the last speech of Deskaheh in an oral traditions unit
Some days on the rez are just a rollercoaster of amazing wins, rage, just terrible pain and lingering grief. Every loss just brings waves of every loss before it... just taking a moment to remember it hurts so much because I love everything so deeply.
Police placed a Haud woman in direct danger. Police do not keep us safe!!!
When I was arrested, they left me with no ride to walk home at sunset from Cayuga. Police REGULARLY endanger our lives. They do not care about the safety and wellbeing of Haud women.
Creator, it's me, your girl. I gotta get across this colonial border with nothing but my brown skin and a photocopy of my lost status card. Can you help me out? Nya:węh
Spotted this colonial ass map at the flea market. It's the "Economic Map of Ontario and Quebec" nearly entirely dependant on the "natural resources". Such a clear illustration of the expansive exploitation of Indigenous lands, plants, and animals that drives the economy
Indigenous women will not be safe, will not be free, will not realize their human rights and full human dignity until Canada no longer exists. Let the provinces recede, let the house of Commons turn to dust.
The internet told me to do a coconut oil treatment on my cat now she looks even more demonic than before. Also I had to shave her primordial pouch so she's just swanging that pink thing around
My cousin and I have been sewing our own bras and underwear. I figured out how to make my own reusable period undies. So when the apocalypse happens, we got ur gitch 🖖🏾
Haudenosaunee youth have said they are blocking the main entrance of this corp until
@BlueTritonCA
meets to discuss the moratorium on development in the Haldimand Tract
I failed civics so many times on purpose (4, maybe 5 times) that the school let me graduate and get a diploma one half credit short of the mandatory credits to graduate
Flex your lowest academic low score.
To remind us that almost everyone fails at some point in life but it isn't the end of the road. Just a memory in the end.
Mine was 27/100 in Engineering Math 2, just a year after I'd scored 99 in 12th boards. Much needed kick in my butt.