James Cameron avatar folly

By ali | February 8, 2023

CW: suicide ideation, physical, emotional, mental, sexual abuse. Someone asked me about James Cameron and his controversial statements about Lakota and the new Avatar movie. Up until then, I had re-posted some things, but hadn’t said anything yet. I hadn’t planned to until things settled in the apartment, but that could be months; see last … Read more

Lakotaman1 – Fake Native or Fake Lakota

By ali | July 7, 2022

It’s not just a catchy title. Disclaimer: I have pages upon pages of problematic tweets and reduced them down to what is included. Should the need arise, I will add another article with more of John Martin’s tweets. For years, John Martin, aka Lakotaman1, has tweeted some very interesting takes when it comes to Lakota … Read more

Counting down to counting digital coup at SXSW

By ali | March 14, 2021

In just a few days, our panel “Cultural Appropriation: a fixable cultural crime” will become available at SXSW Online 2021. The conference itself will be digital and our panel will be available to view by attendees on March 16th, from 9:15am to 10:10am CST. “Counting coup” refers to a practice by some tribes and cultures … Read more

Vote for our SXSW panel proposal!

By ali | November 16, 2020

This is our third year of proposing Native content and inclusion for the annual South by Southwest (SXSW) conference. Until 2018, I don’t recall seeing any Indigenous content from SXSW or by topic in panels. Our first year in 2018 of applying gave us some insight about how little visibility that modern Natives have in … Read more

green field with four feathers

It is not just “a feather in her hair”

By ali | July 13, 2020

Not too long ago, Rick Riordan, author of the popular Percy Jackson series, posted a blog about a character, Piper McClean, who is “part Cherokee”. The reason he wrote the blog was in response to backlash over the representation of the Cherokee character and the feathers that she wore in her hair. By the end … Read more

Depp Sauvage: the scent of appropriation

By ali | September 6, 2019

On August 30th, Dior tweeted about the newest version of a long standing scent titled, “Sauvage”. In the ten second clip, a Native fancy dancer danced in slow motion while Johnny Depp played guitar. The backlash was immediate and spread quickly through Native Twitter and beyond. There are some very big issues involved with this … Read more

2020 SXSW Panel Picker Proposal on Cultural Appropriation

By ali | July 22, 2019

Cultural Appropriation: are you guilty? Click here to vote now! Last year, a little birdy at SXSW told me that the panel submission of “Playing Indian & Other Racist Nonsense” was too niche of a topic. That thought has echoed with me to this day. Too niche for an immense society with the population of … Read more

All your eagles are belong to us

By ali | July 17, 2019

Many Natives in the U.S. were not aware that a petition has been put forth that pushes for loosening and changing regulations over who can request and possess feathers and bird parts from protected species, such as eagles. The original Facebook post indicated that the original deadline was July 1st to submit comments. It was … Read more

Photographers are to blame

By ali | June 25, 2019

Appropriating Indigenous cultures has been going on for a very long time. Anytime something appropriating Indigenous cultures or racist comes up, it doesn’t matter what Natives might say in protest, most often the person doing the wrong thing claims it’s to “honor” us. Much the same way people think that Native mascots honor us. It … Read more

Pretendian @kodeerants on Twitter

By ali | May 17, 2019

There’s a few stereotypes about non-Natives that many of us roll our eyes at to this day. Claiming to be Native based on family lore, ‘I have Native in me’, ‘I’m part Native/tribe’ – ‘I’m a descendant of Pocahontas’. In the real world, when I’m among the general public, it’s often that, one hundred percent … Read more