Tag Archives: Pocahontas

I’m not related to Pocahontas and neither are you

Probably. Right up there next to the my-grandma-says-I’m-descended-from-a-Cherokee-princess thing is an almost-as-farfetched American white people myth: that you’re related to Pocahontas. It’s difficult to go a month in online forums about Native ancestry without someone claiming it. So it came … Continue reading

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My badass great-grandmothers and the power of Native women

Women have always occupied positions of strength and respect across Native America. For starters, most tribes were matrilineal. This generally meant that when a couple marries, the husband moved into the woman’s town and joined her family. Her brothers, the … Continue reading

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America, meet the real Pocahontas

These facts are well-documented: Pocahontas was kidnapped by the men of Jamestown. Then, while in captivity, she was impregnated by and married to one of her captors, John Rolfe. Like one of the Boko Haram girls. He took her to … Continue reading

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The Native women in the Capitol Rotunda

In the center of the US Capitol, under the iconic white dome, is a large round room called the Rotunda. There are eight niches in it, circling the room, each with an oil painting twelve feet tall and eighteen feet … Continue reading

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The rapid rise and fall of racist symbols

The Southern Poverty Law Center prepared this remarkable diagram, illustrating when Confederate symbols, such as statues, flags, and monuments, were erected in public places– mostly around 1910 and then again in the 1960s during the Civil Rights movement.  Their full … Continue reading

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ISIS’s “Theology of Rape” is Nothing New to Native Americans; It Happened Here

On August 14, the New York Times published an article describing how ISIS uses their Islamic beliefs to justify rape and sex slavery.  The story explains how ISIS soldiers pray before and after each rape, and even go to the … Continue reading

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Baltimore Riot’s “Mother of the Year” is Part of a Historical Pattern

Finally, after years of egregious police brutality and hundreds of cases involving paralyzed and dead citizens (as documented by out-of-court settlements), Baltimore erupted in rioting.  As the white media struggled to understand why, rather than why it took them so long … Continue reading

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Twelve Things More Offensive than the Washington Redsk*ns

Much has been written about the problems associated with team mascot names like the Redsk*ns—their derogatory history, their effect on indigenous youth, and the inevitable offensive chants and signs from fans of opposing teams (e.g. “scalp the Redsk*ns”, etc.). Thanks … Continue reading

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