”The intellectual and cultural property of indigenous Australians provides the foundation of our personal identity and ancestral anchorage. It offers a distinctive world view that outsiders can rarely grasp. When our knowledge is fabricated by outsiders, a wedge is thrust between the object and its meaning and, as a result, the world view and cultural matrix of our societies are attacked. Protecting our cultural property and knowledge systems from exploitation has become part of our agenda. However, it cannot become a question of how to fit indigenous culture and knowledge systems into western legal and conceptual frameworks, but that our systems and concepts should guide the debates. It is when we decide how we define our knowledge and cultural property rights that we may be able to protect ourselves from the exploitation and fabrication of our culture that is widespread in our communities today.

On Display for its Aesthetic Beauty: How Western Institutions Fabricate Knowledge about Aboriginal Cultural Heritage; Sonia Smallacombe (Maramanindji)

(Source: nitanahkohe)

”I love my job and I can’t imagine doing anything else, but doing it here at the University of Chicago has been one of the most emotionally and physically damaging experiences of my life. I return every day to rooms in which I’ve been hurt to learn from people who look nothing like me and to teach people who look nothing like me about whole theoretical worlds in which I do not exist. I sit, shoulders tensed, in classrooms as each racist, sexist, and homophobic word from the mouths of my colleagues hits me like a blow to the chest. Some of them, I imagine, actually leave the classroom feeling full of life and intellectual energy. The structural violence of this institution makes it unlikely I will ever know how that feels. I don’t know how much stronger and braver I might feel if the professor were black, or latino, or gay. I don’t know how much more capable I would feel if I could see a world I recognized in the texts we read. And as I walk home every evening past countless University of Chicago police officers and my shoulders knot even tighter, I wonder if you realize that they don’t make everyone feel more safe…Sexism, racism, and homophobia thrive on this campus and it is not a problem of dialogue, it is a problem of institutional violence…I don’t need you to implement programming to “raise awareness” about my very existence, and I don’t have the strength left to lend my energies to the project of documenting my worth.

An Open Letter to Karen Warren Coleman, Vice President for Campus Life and Human Services (by Kaya Williams)

as most grad students of color know, Kaya Williams is not alone in feeling this way. this is a persistent problem on university campuses nationwide.

at Washington State University, for example, where a Native faculty member was recently brutally beaten within an inch of his life and three Asian undergraduate women were sexually harassed in racially targeted violence in the same weekend, the university has responded poorly at best; they never issued an emergency alert to students in the wake of the attacks, it took several days for administration to even acknowledge the events, and the only concrete thing they’ve promised is yet another inquiry & commission on the matter. these actions obviously don’t make a dent in patterns of violence on campus, considering the same response was given a few years ago when a Black student had his teeth kicked in, a trans student was severely beaten, & neo-Nazi propaganda was posted all over campus—no changes in campus climate have occurred. the university’s disappointing response to this violence isn’t all that surprising when you remember that they have terrible enrollment and retention rates for underrepresented students of color, an even worse rate of recruitment of faculty of color, no substantive requirements for curricula that addresses issues of race, and have recently consolidated their Women Studies, Queer Studies, & Ethnic Studies programs into one “minority studies” department (which is headed by a cis-hetero white male). moreover, there is a serious problem with sexual harassment and assault on campus, that’s occurring even at the faculty level.

is it any surprise so many students of color drop out, go on extended leave, and/or take way longer to earn their degrees? these universities are unsafe on every level, and things need to change.

(via nitanahkohe)

man, I am honestly so exhausted with this stuff at uchicago and I’m only a damn second year undergrad. I’m honestly at the point where I’m no longer really interested in being a hugely active part of trying to fix anything here, I’m just trying to survive.

This line: “And as much as I would love to serve on an Advisory Council on Diversity with several highly paid staffers, most of the work I do here is already unpaid and I quite literally can’t afford to give you more time.” GOD YES. I have had at least four offers in the past two weeks of university people asking me to come be on some diversity council or help formulate a statement or whatever. Last year I would have been so down for that, but now I’m just tired. It shouldn’t be the job of the students to fix this crap, I’m a little busy trying to eke out an education among the substantial amount of crap I take at this university. 

(via sofriel)

”

The feminist movement is generally periodized into the so-called first, second and third waves of feminism. In the United States, the first wave is characterized by the suffragette movement; the second wave is characterized by the formation of the National Organization for Women, abortion rights politics, and the fight for the Equal Rights Amendments. Suddenly, during the third wave of feminism, women of colour make an appearance to transform feminism into a multicultural movement.

This periodization situates white middle-class women as the central historical agents to which women of colour attach themselves. However, if we were to recognize the agency of indigenous women in an account of feminist history, we might begin with 1492 when Native women collectively resisted colonization. This would allow us to see that there are multiple feminist histories emerging from multiple communities of colour which intersect at points and diverge in others. This would not negate the contributions made by white feminists, but would de-center them from our historicizing and analysis.

Indigenous feminism thus centers anti-colonial practice within its organizing. This is critical today when you have mainstream feminist groups supporting, for example, the US bombing of Afghanistan with the claim that this bombing will free women from the Taliban (apparently bombing women somehow liberates them).

Indigenous Feminism Without Apology - Andrea Smith (via ellesugars)

(Source: whitedenial-ontrial)

”19% of prime time television characters are non-human while only 17% are women

A Profile of Americans’ Media Use and Political Socialization Effects: television and the Internet’s relationship to social connectedness in the USA ― Daniel German & Caitlin Lally

There are more “non-humans” on TV than women. Talk about unequal gender representation in the media.

(via yourlittle-bird)

Wait wtf

(via bitch—craft)

and please tell me what percentage of those women are women of color

we’ll wait

(via lightspeedsound)