myqueertestimony:

NATIVE YOUTH SEXUAL HEALTH NETWORK, North America (www.nativeyouthsexualhealth.com)

Campaign Titled: Healthy Sexuality and Fighting Homophobia: Native Youth Photography Project

About the Project:

This is the first national campaign for First Nations youth across Canada to fight homophobia and normalize healthy sexuality!

First Nations youth from across Canada came together in March 2010 to create a national campaign about sexuality and fighting homophobia. These are the images created from the campaign which can be utilized as posters, postcards, as well as community newspaper inserts for articles and awareness.

About the Organization:

The Native Youth Sexual Health Network (NYSHN) is a North-America wide organization working on issues of healthy sexuality, cultural competency, youth empowerment, reproductive justice, and sex positivity by and for Native youth.

The reclamation and revitalization of traditional knowledge about people’s fundamental human rights over their bodies and spaces, intersected with present-day realities is fundamental to our work.

We work within the full spectrum of reproductive and sexual health for Indigenous peoples.

(via qnasjsu)

loowheezs10:

CSU San Jose 

(via marzipansexual)

girlinboyclothes:

A fish in an aquarium.: Why I Need Black Feminism

droppingthefbomb:

Black feminist thought is a body of ideas that offers black women a means of exploring and generating understanding of our lives, and that provides a basis for black women to create strategies…

(Source: blackfeminists.blogspot.com, via cosmopolitan-fascist)

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weexist-weresist:

ponderaway:

If I were watching anything but two funny looking animated cats discussing “How to Solve Illegal Immigration,” I probably would have started to doze thanks to the monotone male voice. What an ingenious delivery method. A number of important aspects of illegal immigration are explored, such as indifference to the injustices inflicted upon Native Americans and the demonization of illegal immigrants. Great find!

“These self-appointed watchdogs of Americanism, they’ve actually been very successful in whipping up popular animosity towards these so-called ‘illegal aliens’. If you think about it, what they’ve been able to achieve is actually quite remarkable - they’ve basically taken a group of people from tremendously impoverished places, living extremely difficult lives, and they’ve successfully branded them as a bunch of criminal opportunists hell-bent at exploiting America’s generosity. Which is, of course, totally ironic since First World exploitation of the Third World has historically been the driving force behind creating that poverty they’re trying to escape in the first place. The lack of awareness or compassion is extraordinary.”

(Source: pinkyshow.org, via cosmopolitan-fascist)

readonethingtoday:

Except there really is no invasion, no growing national crisis. In fact, recent statistics show that immigration from Mexico has actually gone down—and steeply so—over the past decade. (An estimated 80,000 unauthorized migrants crossed the Mexican border into the United States last year, down from 500,000 ten years ago.) More to the point: There is nothing new about this story. Importing foreign labor has always been the American way, beginning with 4 million slaves from Africa. Later came the Jews and Poles, the Hungarians, Italians, and Irish, the Chinese and Japanese—everything you learned in sixth-grade social studies about the great American melting pot. And with each group came a new wave of anti-immigrant, pro-Anglo rage.

(via cosmopolitan-fascist)

nysylc:

My silence was never meant to betray you; I just never thought it defined the person that I am… It’s important for me to share this with you. I’ve had a hard time sleeping ever since I left Jacksonville…

I was eleven when I first came to America. It was 1989. It’s hard to…

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ukulelerave:

such a needed campaign. i wish they’d have included native americans as well, though, as cultural appropriation of them in costumes is just as awfully common.

(via mycultureisnotatrend)

marmotkind:

[Image: An indigenous person holding up a photo of white people dressed in Native Amercian “costumes”, i.e. being appropriative assholes. Text on the piece reads, “We’re a culture, not a costume. This is not who I am and this is not okay.”]

saucy-sarah:

The Native American poster. My computer was acting cray earlier, so it wouldn’t upload. But here it is!

(via cosmopolitan-fascist)

mycultureisnotatrend:

dnelsonn:

mycultureisnotatrend:

Dear Glen T. Senk, CEO Urban Outfitters Inc.:

This past weekend, I had the unfortunate experience of visiting a local Urban Outfitters store in Minneapolis. It appeared as though the recording “artist” Ke$ha had violently exploded in the store, leaving behind a cheap, vulgar and culturally offensive retail collection. Plastic dreamcatchers wrapped in pleather hung next to an indistinguishable mass of artificial feather jewelry and hyper sexualized clothing featuring an abundance of suede, fringe and inauthentic tribal patterns.

In all seriousness, as a Native American woman, I am deeply distressed by your company’s mass marketed collection of distasteful and racially demeaning apparel and décor. I take personal offense to the blatant racism and perverted cultural appropriation your store features this season as “fashion.”

All too often industries, sports teams and ignorant individuals legitimize racism under the guise of cultural “appreciation”. There is nothing honorable or historically appreciative in selling items such as the Navajo Print Fabric Wrapped Flask, Peace Treaty Feather Necklace, Staring at Stars Skull Native Headdress T-shirt or the Navajo Hipster Panty. These and the dozens of other tacky products you are currently selling referencing Native America make a mockery of our identity and unique cultures.

Your corporate website claims to “offer a lifestyle-specific shopping experience for the educated, urban-minded individual”. If this is the case, then clearly you have missed the mark on your target demographic. There is simply nothing educated about your collection, which on the contrary professes extreme ignorance and bigotry.

My primary concern with your company is the level on which you are engaging in cultural and religious appropriation. None of your products are actually made by Indigenous nations, nor were any Native peoples involved in the production or design process. On the contrary, you have created cheap knock-off trinkets made in factories overseas. Selling imported plastic and nylon dreamcatchers disrespects our history and undermines our sovereignty as Tribal Nations.

Did I mention that marketing inauthentic products using Native American tribal names is also illegal? The company’s actions violate the Federal Indian Arts and Crafts act of 1990 and the Federal Trade Commission Act. According to the Department of the Interior:

“The Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1990 (P.L. 101-644) is a truth-in-advertising law that prohibits misrepresentation in marketing of Indian arts and crafts products within the United States. It is illegal to offer or display for sale, or sell any art or craft product in a manner that falsely suggests it is Indian produced, an Indian product, or the product of a particular Indian or Indian Tribe or Indian arts and crafts organization, resident within the United States. If a business violates the Act, it can face civil penalties or can be prosecuted and fined up to $1,000,000”.

I doubt that you consulted the Navajo Nation about using their tribal name on sophisticated items such as the “Navajo Hipster Panty”. In fact, I recently became aware that the Navajo Nation Attorney General sent your company a cease and desist letter regarding this very issue. I stand in solidarity with the Navajo Nation and ask that you not only cease and desist selling products falsely using the Navajo name, but that you also stop selling faux Indian apparel that cheapens our culture and heritage.

Urban Outfitters Inc. has taken Indigenous life ways and artistic expressions and trivialized and sexualized them for the sake of corporate profit. Your company also perpetuates the worst stereotype of Indians. This is theft of our very cultural identity, no less so than the theft of our traditional homelands that began with Columbus’ “discovery” of the Americas. On this day that America still celebrates as Columbus Day, I ask that do what is morally right and apologize to Indigenous peoples of North America and withdraw this offensive line from retail stores.

Sincerely.

Sasha Houston Brown, Dakota
Santee Sioux Nation

lol. get over it. companies don’t give a shit about your opinion and how it personally offends one person An entire ethnicity / group of over 500 distinct cultures .  Urban KNOWS this will sell because it is sexy and trendy looking.  and unless enough people complains, they won’t do a thing - EXACTLY!! That is what we are doing.  . if you don’t like it, don’t buy from their store, it’s as simple as that.

Emphasis added

Bold text = my own.

This matters. It affects more people than you may think, and those people are speaking out. Join us.

(Source: auntieblazerrr)

deadpaint:

James Whistler, Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket

(via guantanamela)