urocyon

Not to inflate the last post too much, here's Amnesty's report: Stolen Sisters: Discrimination and violence against Indigenous women in Canada, which I unaccountably forgot to link.

And, yeah, similar factors are pointed out:

According to a Canadian government statistic, young Indigenous women are five times more likely than other women of the same age to die as the result of violence.

Indigenous women have long struggled to draw attention to violence within their own families and communities. Canadian police and public officials have also long been aware of a pattern of racist violence against Indigenous women in Canadian cities – but have done little to prevent it.

The pattern looks like this:

* Racist and sexist stereotypes deny the dignity and worth of Indigenous women, encouraging some men to feel they can get away with acts of hatred against them.

* Decades of government policy have impoverished and broken apart Indigenous families and communities, leaving many Indigenous women and girls extremely vulnerable to exploitation and attack.

* Many police forces have failed to institute necessary measures – such as training, protocols and accountability mechanisms – to ensure that officers understand and respect the Indigenous communities they serve. Without such measures, police too often fail to do all they can to ensure the safety of Indigenous women and girls whose lives are in danger.

Also:

Deep rooted patterns of racism and discrimination in Canadian society have contributed to this violence in a number of ways. These include pushing Indigenous women into situations of increased vulnerability to violence, denying many Indigenous women adequate protection of police and the justice system, and sending a message to Indigenous and non-Indigenous men alike that they can likely get away with acts of violence against Indigenous women...

It is also clear from these stories that all Indigenous women – whether or not they have ever had involvement with what police and politicians sometimes label “high risk lifestyles” – may be targeted for violence or denied protection from violence simply because they are Indigenous women. The 1991 Manitoba Justice Inquiry concluded that racism and sexism intersect in dangerous stereotypes of Indigenous women as sexually “available” to men.

I cannot readily find stats on how many of these crimes are committed by non-Indigenous men, unlike the 86% figure for the US.

But, in the previous post, we're talking about more than 500 missing and murdered women, "half of them since the year 2000...the equivalent of 18,000 missing and murdered non-aboriginal women". And this is still getting treated as a few isolated cases.

ETA: See also Jessica Yee's Making the connections: Sexual Violence in Native Communities, now that I've located the link. She goes into how little attention this usually gets, and asks some excellent questions:

HOW is it that you don’t know?...WHY don’t the women in our Native communities measure up in priority?...WHAT are YOU going to do with this information now that you know about it?

I sometimes read Dan Casey's blog at the Roanoke Times site. He's gotten on my nerves several times before, but nothing like this.

He runs a weekly photo caption contest, and last week's was a doozy.


A photo of Governor Bob McDonnell with tribal representatives in regalia, by Michaele White, Governor's Photographer. Said representatives' names and offices were not even specified, unlike old Smirky Bob.

This appears to be the annual ceremonial rent payment to the Governor of Virginia, which has been going on for 300+ years. It started out specifying beaver pelts--at about the time of the Beaver Wars (which did spill down into Virginia)--but is more likely these days to consist of deer and turkeys. The Virginian-Pilot article took an interesting approach to why it's continued:

As the settlement grew stronger, tributes became more symbolic – a sign of a tribe’s submission to the new government. After a while, there was no need for that, either. The tribes were broken, no longer a concern.

There’s every chance the annual tribute would have ended long ago if it weren’t for the Indians themselves. They kept delivering.

I can't find the book right now, but there was an interesting story in We're Still Here: Contemporary Virginia Indians Tell Their Stories, from a man whose father had been partly responsible for making the ceremonial tribute when hunting was bad, IIRC in the 1930s. Both deer and turkeys were still very scarce from earlier overhunting (not so much by the "Powhatan" folks, much as they've been blamed; there weren't that many of them left!)--and there was also a drought. That year, working together, tribal members couldn't get any turkeys or deer in time. So they ended up buying a few symbolic turkeys from a farmer, out of (very understandable) concern that otherwise they'd be chucked off their land for not paying the ridiculous and humiliating symbolic rent for the first time in at least 250 years. It always served the purpose of displaying "submission to the new government"--at said government's insistence. And since there is still a Governor of Virginia, even if the larger government has changed, those terms still hold. Only one side is allowed to break treaties.

Then there are the recognition issues, common east of the Mississippi: no treaties with the U.S. government means no basis for federal recognition, without an act of Congress. The British Crown does not count. From Paper runs series on Virginia tribal recognition:

The tribes were the first to greet the European settlers at Jamestown. They also signed a treaty in 1677 with the Queen of England and have maintained ties to the nation.

But the tribes remain unrecognized by the U.S. A bill that passed the House last week and is working its way through the Senate could finally change the situation.

“We were here first,” Kenneth Branham, the chief of the Monacan Nation, told the paper. “We should be holding meetings to decide whether to recognize the European races here – not the other way around. It just really galls you.”

The tribes are mainly concerned about federal funding and acquiring land. The bill ensures they can follow the land-into-trust process but contains some limits. It also bars the tribes from engaging in gaming under federal or state law.

That bit of extortion ("we'll only give you recognition if you agree to give up some of your legal rights") is a pretty serious sovereignty erosion, popular as those clauses are these days. Also, that was written last year; I ran across another article from last month: Pamunkey tribe seeks federal recognition (and no doubt will be waiting for a very long time):

While the Pamunkey are seeking recognition from the federal government through an administrative process, six other Virginia tribes are seeking federal recognition through an act of Congress. They are the Chickahominy Tribe, Chickahominy Indian Tribe Eastern Division, the Upper Mattaponi, the Rappahannock Tribe, the Monacan Tribe and the Nansemond Tribe...An eighth tribe, the Mattaponi, which also has a reservation, has not sought formal federal recognition.

The state-recognized tribes have very, very little of their original land left. There are only two fragments of the original Crown trust reservations left, the Mattaponi and Pamunkey--and eight state-recognized tribes. (The Tutelo were part of the same federation as the Monacans, but did not give the British diplomatic recognition. So most of the western part of the state is screwed that way. There are more than eight remaining nations in Virginia.) It's a very galling situation anyway, especially having gotten the much-vaunted first permanent English settlement in North America. Camping on the "Powhatan Confederation" folks was the very beginning of the British Empire.

OK, maybe a bit heavy on the background, but some knowledge is necessary to get the full effect of the fail.

The winning entry for that caption contest?

Indian # 1: We make big wampum from casino one day…
Indian # 2: We make even bigger wampum when we go into liquor store business…
Indian # 3: Shhhhh! Don’t say anything until he’s finished signing…
by Elena

In case anyone was wondering just how popular ignorance and racism are, there you go. (Liquor stores?!) I don't expect much these days, but it was an extra slap in the face, coming from a self-consciously liberal columnist. No, we're just not real people. The comments are about what you'd expect.

And just in time for Thanksgiving--'tis the season, I suppose...

I ran across that the other night, and my eyes are still trying to bulge out of my head, looking at it again. I'm not so much pissed off at Dan Casey (though I am that, too), as freshly appalled at the general public levels of smugness and contempt. And it's not like Roanoke is somehow devoid of Native people.

I really need to get new glasses. The ones I'm wearing now are several years out of date, with several big scratches as well as diabetes thrown in for extra prescription-changing fun. My sunglasses are from the prescription before that, and are making me dizzy and headachy with basically no depth perception. I think the regular ones have been helping the migraines along recently. Sounds like time to take advantage of a 2-for-1 deal at Specsavers, eh?

The thing is, my relationship with eyeglasses and trying to choose new frames is more complicated than it ought to be. I really, really dislike trying to find frames that might just about work. Similar to Margaret Cho's observations, "My skull is such – that is a memorable phrase isn’t it and worth repeating – my skull is such that a normal pair of glasses will not fit my head...The anger that I have right now is directed toward those who make, design and market glasses, which are probably essential to all people at one time or another, specifically not for – a skull like mine – if you will – a skull as such. So fuck all y’all."

I am not Asian. Still, I am tempted to give the more reasonable migration hypotheses some credence, since pretty much my whole skull seems to be "wrong"-shaped in the same ways. Yep, it's the skull that's wrong.


Could Thayendanegea/"Joseph Brant" have kept up a pair of glasses to save his life? He had enough to deal with already. It may be very different and lower-level stuff, but so do I. There's a somewhat eerie resemblance going.

Nobody in my family can keep a pair of glasses up, what with the low nose bridges and big, flat faces with high cheekbones. Nary a soul. And most of us wear them.

( Persistent fun with glasses. And, finally, enter Asian Fit frames--Asianness optional! )

Still, I am really honked off that something as basic as suitable glasses frames for non-European faces are still so hard to find, and you have to pay extra to get them. If you are in the very limited geographical areas where they are even available at this point, without paying $700 for Japanese designer frames--which may or may not be suitable for your own non-European (i.e., typical of most of the world) features. It pisses me off that I have very little chance of finding frames that fit where I am living now, when I need new glasses.

I know that a lot of people of African descent have exactly the same trouble with glasses and noses. So, out of curiosity, I tried to find out if anybody had thought to cater to that particular market--roughly 12.3% of the 2000 US population, besides those whose ancestors "passed" but who still have characteristically African nose shapes. (Like a number of my relatives, actually.) That would make economic sense, right? Hell, there's a substantial untapped non-European market here in the UK, some with "low" (as compared to whose?) nose bridges. Could certain ideologies be trumping even enlightened self-interest here?

Not too surprisingly, I couldn't find anything. Nada.

The closest I ran across was frames designed for people with Down Syndrome, which is good in itself, but not really what I was looking for. The designer's patent application, which I ran across initially, points out: "There have heretofore been no eyeglass frames made specifically for people with Down syndrome according to research which has been done on this topic, and likewise no eyeglass frames for people with similar facial characteristics* and for those with a depressed nasal bridge or low set noses including those individuals of African descent and Asian descent. About 87% of children with Down syndrome require glasses."

Unfortunately, I can well imagine that, attitudes still being what they are, not many other people with "low" noses are buying these. They are also mainly available through online ordering, without trying them on. This strikes me as a serious accessibility issue.

Appallingly, searching on terms like "African nose bridge eyewear" (or "glasses"), I kept getting results with individual Black people talking about not being able to keep their glasses up, designs surface styled to appeal to, say, hip hop aesthetics--and ones shilling rhinoplasty. Try it, if you want boiling blood.

Never mind the rather large potential market for glasses that fit, apparently you can get shit injected into your bridge "(so the glasses will not slide down on the nose)". Ack. "People who could greatly benefit from a non-surgical rhinoplasty are people who would typically get nasal implants to augment their noses, such as Asians, African-American, or Hispanic patients."

That's a pretty big part of the population, just looking at the US (and neglecting us non-Hispanic Indian types). "Typically", I would prefer to be able to buy usable, suitably designed assistive devices so that I can see, rather than to "augment" my nose into a state some people find more acceptable. But, maybe that's just me.

If making money is the main goal**, why might I think there's more profit to be made overall from necessary products people can use than from "ethnic rhinoplasty" ("Anyone who seeks a new shape for the nose and who has nasal features typical of their ethnic group is a candidate")? Interesting what products and services are deemed necessary.

Gah.

_____________

* Like me, apparently; Carrie Buck came from a similar Tutelo background, and that photo looked like we could have been sisters. Gotta love the attitudes that produced the "Mongoloid" label! ('But there’s more! The man for whom Down Syndrome is named, John Langdon Down, claimed in 1866 that the facial characteristics of people with Trisomy 21 represented a genetic regression, because Caucasians should not have “Asian” facial features.'--excellent piece, meloukhia!)

I had basically no nose bridge as a kid. Not only is that generally treated as a highly unattractive characteristic, but throw in some nasty stereotypes, and such features still get people diagnosed with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome--"due to a bias in diagnosis that occurs because of a lack of knowledge of the regular morphological features of Native Americans", Asians, and apparently an awful lot of adoptees from the former Soviet Union. Indeed, "a flattened midfacial area" is only "flattened" in comparison to some expected state (reasonable or otherwise), and that description reflects the idea that there really is something wrong with our skulls.

So, yeah, the glasses frames aggravation is only a fairly piddling symptom.

** And I'm not saying that's a good thing, at all. It sure does get used as an excuse a lot, though it breaks down kinda quickly under scrutiny in many cases.