…why is this tagged #Native American?
Seriously, ignoring the ludicrous ‘shit white people make and pretend it has something to do with NDNs’ crowd of animals around a conventionally pretty woman thing… most of the animals in this picture are native to Africa and Asia.
A panda?!! Not one but two tigers. Is that an ocelot?!
I hope the original artist didn’t really mean that. …if they did it’s one hell of a generalization in a really twisted way.
Tag it “Samoa”.
omfg.. this has a message in it… think before speaking such nonsence… and I thought the woman was a native american woman since she’s with a wolf… sorry that I made a mistake… the picture is about that we should respect all animals instead of killing them. jeeez
Back. Your train. Right. The fuck. Up.
You thought she was Native American. Because she’s with a wolf.
Do you comprehend how incredibly, horribly racist that statement is? Like, to any degree?
Depictions like this are hurtful.
You are the end result of a system that has taught you some seriously fucked up bullshit about what you should think when you heard the words ‘Native American’.
When you circulate images like this it adds one more image to the ponderous pile of this shit that creates the pervasive cultural notion that this is what people should think of when they hear ‘Native American’ , and IT HURTS REAL NATIVE AMERICAN PEOPLE. It creates, in the minds of the people that this, a stereotype - a caricature of what Native people do/should look like that erases us in reality and removes us from their perception of the modern world. It turns ‘Native American’ into someone wearing beads and headbands and feathers and face paint who talks with animals and is magical, like some kind of woodland pixie. It turns an ethnic, racial identity into a costume.
This is racism.
When you only speak about Native American people in the past tense, in certain contexts. When you only mention them as pertains to White history. When you depict them in stereotypical ways. This is how racist thought is cemented in your mind and the minds of others.
And before you argue that you didn’t MEAN to be racist or that you were just having fun, before your many white allies rally around you to tell me how wrong I am and what a good person you are and how you are not a racist…know this:
Racism is not in your intent.
Your intent is immaterial in how racist your actions are.
This isn’t about you BEING a racist. It’s about you DOING A THING that is racist.
Your intent doesn’t change it. Your ignorance of its meaning doesn’t change it. It’s got nothing to do with you as a person and everything to do with the meaning of your action in the context of sociocultural history.
Please watch this video.
Your being able to blithely say “I thought the woman was a native american woman since she’s with a wolf…” speaks to some really problematic shit in how you’ve been educated, what you’ve been exposed to, what you think you know about what Native Americans are and what we look like. And while it’s not your fault that the culture of your upbringing has handed you that shit on a silver platter and said ‘eat it’, and not your fault that you did eat it without knowing better, it’s still bullshit and it’s still hurtful. You have the Internet at your disposal. You can become educated as to what Native Americans really are like and what we really are about.
This is what a Wampanoag looks like when she’s giving you some serious fucking side eye:
