When Turkey Tayac was trying to save sacred Piscataway lands from development in the late 1950s, he found allies across the river at Mount Vernon. https://t.co/QLUpSiirfj When Turkey Tayac was trying to save sacred Piscataway lands from development in the late 1950s, he foun…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 27, 2022
Just because it's #nationaljustbecause day, here's a random picture of a quintet jamming for the bears at the #NationalZoo. #1920s #DChistory https://t.co/U0eDWaJFEo Just because it's #nationaljustbecause day, here's a random picture of a quintet jamming for the bears at the…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 27, 2022
Check out *NEW* PALOMINO BLACKWING MATTE LOT Of 4 Boxes = 48 Pencils. https://t.co/7nlAw2Ckcl #eBay via @eBay
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 27, 2022
Check out 120 Colored Pencils Sanford 1999 PRISMACOLOR Artist Quality Soft USA https://t.co/eoRbp4olI8 #eBay via @eBay
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 27, 2022
The original divisive politics. https://t.co/daVUQ62F34 The original divisive politics. https://t.co/daVUQ62F34 — Boundary Stones (@BoundaryStones) Aug 27, 2022
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 27, 2022
Today in History - August 27 https://t.co/EYZsSRaNSb On August 27, 1900, U.S. Army physician James Carroll allowed an infected mosquito to feed on him in an attempt to isolate the means of transmission of yellow fever. Continue reading. Click here to search Today in History…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 27, 2022
Apollo 15 Catches Earth on the Horizon via NASA https://t.co/bkwZATKMLW https://t.co/aitERX5ieU
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 26, 2022
Almost more of an artistic print than a map, this piece is a testament to the progress made by the city of St. Louis, MO through the late 19th century. The two largest ovals in the center of the image depict the city a century apart. Have a look: https://t.co/ef7S3uSTqs …
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 26, 2022
The #19thAmendment was adopted 102 years ago #OTD bringing the vote to women nationwide... except here in #DC. The aptly named "Voteless League of Women Voters" took up the cause. #DCHistory #Suffrage https://t.co/RVQjvNIf4I The #19thAmendment was adopted 102 years ago #OTD …
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 26, 2022
Ohio and North Carolina often fight about which state can rightfully “claim” the #WrightBrothers. That's fine... but the #DMV was where they really fathered the American #aviation age. #FtMyer #CollegeParkMD https://t.co/iqivGUrNvC Ohio and North Carolina often fight about w…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 26, 2022
Today in History - August 26 https://t.co/IOUZd7L7ga On August 26, 1791, John Fitch and James Rumsey, rivals battling over claims to the invention, each were granted a federal patent for the steamboat. Continue reading. Click here to search Today in History for other histor…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 26, 2022
Here are five standout pieces we read this week. You can always visit our editors’ picks or our Twitter feed to see what other recommendations you may have missed.
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Ryan Devereaux |The Intercept |July 20th, 2022 | 10,268 words
This story opens with a single gunshot, blood pooling on the snowy ground, and a missing body. The victim: a wolf. The shooter: a member of Montana’s backcountry law enforcement. Some people call what happened a ruthless kill; others say it was part of a sanctioned harvest. Therein lies the central tension of Ryan Devereaux’s deeply reported feature about the wolves of Yellowstone, and how their fate has become tangled with the politics of Montana’s ascendant right wing. This is the (exceedingly) rare environmental policy investigation that reads like a crime thriller. —SD
Tess McNulty | Harper’s Magazine | August 10th, 2022 | 5,086 words
As far as I was aware, my high school didn’t even have a debate team; if it had, I doubt I would have joined. But now, after reading this compelling and deeply disturbing essay from Tess McNulty, I’m glad that it never even entered the picture. McNulty was a self-possessed and fearsome competitor during her early teen years, but it didn’t take long for the debate circuit’s deeply ingrained toxicity — gendered expectations, sexually inappropriate coaches — to rob her of her confidence. “The circuit made us all complicit in sustaining its stratifications,” she tries, “if only by stoically accepting our place within them. This undermined its more lofty intellectual pretensions. Every rule could be bent in the pursuit of power. To protest was to show weakness. This made it difficult for teenage minds to recognize when lines were crossed.” The writing alone lets you know she would have absolutely mopped you if you were unlucky enough to go against her; now, with a clarity of both hindsight and purpose, she reclaims the very power she unknowingly relinquished. —PR
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Alyssa Harad | Kenyon Review | July 29th, 2022 | 6,113 words
“I am not sure I know how to unbraid the language of the apocalypse from all this and still have a voice left to speak to you,” writes Alyssa Harad, early on in her Kenyon Review essay about climate change and the end of the world. But the deeper you get into this intense, sprawling piece, the clearer it becomes: Harad indeed has a voice, and as she flows from vignette to vignette, you realize she knows exactly what she’s doing. I love the way Harad threads her trans-apocalyptic observations about the world with personal musings that trace her own thinking since she was a child, and also describes how she’s come to make sense of the precarious times in which we live. Instead of relying on catastrophe narratives or thinking of the end as a singular event, she contemplates life as a series of “nested crises,” and explains that “worlds end all the time.” There’s some comfort in knowing that there are endings happening every day, everywhere, to everyone and everything. The piece covers bleak ground, but Harad’s gorgeous words and artful weaving make for a quietly uplifting, inspiring read. —CLR
Leland Cecco | The Walrus | July 5th, 2022 | 4,058 words
Leland Cecco was only diagnosed with Tourette’s at the age of 31. Growing up, his parents put his tics down to nervous tremors that would pass. As an adult, he deliberately resisted looking inward: “not knowing their cause meant not pathologizing them into an incurable condition, not knowing what limits might exist with them.” Here, he grapples with what it means to have finally been diagnosed with this disorder — one still widely misunderstood. Does the label help? In considering this question, Cecco goes back to the very beginning, finding the first possible account of Tourette’s in “The Hammer of Witches, a fifteenth-century book that describes, among its anthology of witchcraft and demonic possessions, a priest whose abnormal tongue movements, vocal tics, and coprolalia, or calling out inappropriate words and sounds, were believed to be the work of the devil.” It’s a fascinating, but confusing, background. Even Gilles de la Tourette himself contributed little other than his name to the condition, writing only one paper on the subject, in which he “bore a grim warning: there was no cure for the syndrome … because ‘once a ticcer, always a ticcer.'” This essay may be light on science, but the interweaving of a personal story with the history of Tourette’s provides an enlightening cultural perspective. —CW
Caitlin Giddings| Outside | December 30th, 2019 | 2,997 words
Full disclosure, this is an older story, from the age before COVID, no less — that distant year of 2019. I came across it this month when Outside made it into a podcast, a wise decision: It’s a fun, witty tale that bounces along at pace. Grabbing you from the start, it places you in the middle of a bike chase with “a middle-aged psychopath in high-vis spandex.” The psychopath in question is a disgruntled client kicked off one of the bike tours led by the writer, Caitlin Giddings. Giddings relays her time as a tour guide with candor, and with just a few words manages to paint a visceral picture of dirty, sweaty trail life, and leave you giggling at the characters sharing it. It’s a snapshot of the broad spectrum of humanity, from how we deal with tragedy to how we allocate who washes the group spatula. Luckily Giddings stuck out this grueling profession long enough to gather these stories, although sadly left before discovering the identity of the mysterious tent urinator. —CW
NEW ARTICLE! For decades, Turkey Tayac fought almost singlehandely for the recognition of the Piscataway people in southern MD... and succeeded after finding an unlikely ally. #MDHistory https://t.co/QLUpSiirfj NEW ARTICLE! For decades, Turkey Tayac fought almost singlehande…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 25, 2022
A mafioso walks into a restaurant in #DC — and sets up an international crime syndicate in the #FBI's backyard. Two arsons, a faked murder, and hundreds of thousands of dollars-worth of cocaine later... #DCHistory https://t.co/8lD2RcdiiF A mafioso walks into a restaurant in …
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 25, 2022
This map of New York City, with a focus on Brooklyn, is chock full of details. Zooming in you’ll find steam and sail boats floating in the East River, and clusters of buildings throughout the borough. See the detail here: https://t.co/qftthYxcNP https://t.co/6XCTBSzr4n This m…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 25, 2022
On August 25, 1814, just when Washington, #DC was hoping for something to put out the fires set by invading British troops, mother nature stepped in to help. #OTD #DCHistory https://t.co/ajdSw7Nfmq On August 25, 1814, just when Washington, #DC was hoping for something to put…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 25, 2022
Today in History - August 25 https://t.co/nelt89zHYe Allan Pinkerton (1819-84), founder of Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency, was born in Glasgow, Scotland, on August 25, 1819. Continue reading. Click here to search Today in History for other historic moments.
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 25, 2022
By Blair Glaser
Stories about gurus can be as seductive as the swindlers they profile. Even though they are entirely predictable — charismatic leader offers a solution to life’s hardship, makes millions off of enthralled followers, and careens into an alternately titillating and deeply tragic scandal — they’re still irresistible. Perhaps it’s the mystery of how a guru steps into their magnetism, and how someone like your otherwise sensible best friend can fall for their logic-defying doctrine. Perhaps it’s the schadenfreude of watching a powerful person fall, or even a cautionary reminder of how vulnerable we are in our longing. But my near obsessive fascination with longform culty stories stems from something far more personal: The first one I read laid bare the hypocrisies of my own trusted guru.
I was 25 years old. At the time, I’d been part of Siddha Yoga, a community centered on an enlightened teacher who guides students toward their own self-realization through meditation, chanting, and selfless service. I’d gone so far as to move into the community’s headquarters, Shree Muktananda Ashram in New York, but after being immersed in spiritual life for over a year, I’d had enough. When I left, I’d been warned that an impending “big article” — as the ashram’s PR department had referred to it for months — contained some pretty brutal rumors. But nothing prepared me for the shock of seeing those rumors in print, in the November 14, 1994, issue of The New Yorker. My guru, Gurumayi Chidvilasananda, was on the cover.
I didn’t recognize the cartoonish descriptions of the ashram I had called home, but my heart pounded and stomach churned while reading the allegations: the way my teacher threatened her own brother with violence; the way her own teacher, who claimed to have renunciated worldly habits and desires, smoked pot and sexually abused women and girls. I knew I needed to leave Siddha Yoga. But in the process of disentangling myself and sorting through the rubble of my shattered beliefs, I wondered whether corrupt gurus could still inspire genuine spiritual growth.
I liked the idea of joining my fellow devotees in solidarity, railing against a person we had willingly given so much power to. But the groupthink had always made my eyes roll: When posed with a problem, many followers had the same answer for everything — do the practices, say the mantra, hand your pain over to the guru. When I reflected on how I’d been abused, I looked hard, but couldn’t see it. At the ashram, I’d been given room, board, and a small stipend in exchange for service: administrative, writing, and teaching jobs that enhanced my skills and ended up serving me well once I’d left. The schedule of daily spiritual practices provided me space and structure to go within and heal my bruised self-esteem. Most significantly, I’d received useful, playful attention from Gurumayi, evading the wrath that many — especially those who got too close — did not.
More than betrayed, I felt guilty. Guilty for getting away not just without harm, but with a discipline that serves as an antidepressant and still carries me through hard times today. I was embarrassed, too, for believing in the very idea of a Siddha — a perfect enlightened being I could submit to, I could aspire to emulate. But that’s the thing: For some primitive reason probably rooted in childhood, humans have a deep need to idealize other humans; to project the possibility of transcendence or redemption onto a charismatic other. The clash between the tender need to be led and an idol’s need for power forms a breeding ground for the worst of humanity.
It also makes for a compelling story, and the subject of endless podcasts, docuseries, and, as listed below, stellar reported features. These stories are not only entertaining, but meaningful in their capacity to shake some followers out of their trance. Some gurus, clearly, are crooks from the get-go, but in the following pieces we see flawed humans initially compelled to share some essential Truth, who get waylaid by their own greed, grandiosity, and need for control, thereby throwing the Truth and its seekers under the bus.
Hayley Phelan, with a ripe combination of rigor and snark, chronicles the rise of a Colorado farmer’s daughter (Katie Griggs) as she becomes the kundalini master Guru Jagat and head of RA MA Institute, her own wellness organization. Ragat was a spiritual renegade, on the brink of being canceled for her anti-vax, conspiritual — where conspiracy and spirituality meet — views before her mysterious death at 41. Phelan elucidates the lineage of damage passed down from Jagat’s Punjab teacher, Yogi Bajan of the tea fame, an alleged rapist who invented kundalini yoga, “an ancient technology,” out of thin air. This passage reveals the impact of these co-opted spiritual practices on the traditionally Black and brown Sikh community.
Though Bhajan himself was Punjabi, he purposefully courted mostly white followers, creating the kind of community where, decades later, someone like Jagat, a white girl from the suburbs, could find herself whitesplaining the Sikh faith during an “intersectional feminist” panel that included mostly brown and Black women. Morrison called it a troubling example of “aligning whiteness with expertise” and noted that white kundalini practitioners who cheerfully wear turbans to class seem to have little understanding of how different the experience can be for a brown person, and how much danger and attention it may attract.
John Friend wasn’t yet a yoga superstar when I lived at the Shree Muktananda Ashram, but he was at the ashram a lot, prototyping anusara, his signature brand of hatha (physical) yoga. When I read Manuel Roig-Franzia’s article in which he cites “students spoke of melting beneath his touch,” I could attest to it: In a class of 300 in the ashram’s main hall, I felt particularly lucky to be singled out for an adjustment.
While this superbly researched article doesn’t mention Friend’s early connection with Gurumayi, it was my impression that she served, if not as his guru, then as a staunch supporter of his work. Like Siddha Yoga, anusara teachers were given a strict, ethical code of no drugs or sex with students, which Friend — and the gurus of Siddha Yoga, kripalu, and kundalini yoga before him — disregarded by doing both. The article makes it clear that Friend was growing something powerful that he lost track of as his own power grew.
The small yoga classes that Friend once taught at Willow Street and other studios morphed in recent years into flashy extravaganzas, some with music and dance performances. His shows were branded with catchy names, like the tours of mega-rock bands: Ignite the Center. Melt Your Heart, Blow Your Mind. Light the Sky.
“It just got weird,” said Jezzeny, the New Hope, Pa., Anusara instructor. “I’m like, ‘What happened to the yoga?’
How did Nicole Daedone manage to turn a one night hookup with a monkish dude into a radical organization for women’s pleasure and men’s spiritual growth — one that exploded onto the wellness scene but then later found itself investigated by the FBI for sex trafficking, prostitution and labor law violations? Mick Brown deftly documents the whole journey for Los Angeles magazine, and in this particular passage showcases the sleazy recruitment and sales tactics that are mirrored by so many wellness gurus and their programs.
Potential customers, it was alleged, were referred to as “marks”— the grifter’s term for targets. The sales staff were “lions” or “fluffers”—a porn-industry term.
“You fluff someone to get them energetically and emotionally hard,” one former salesperson told Bloomberg. “You were the dangled bait, like, ‘You can have more of this if you buy this.’ ”
Potential customers were told that money was just “an emotional obstacle” and urged to take out multiple credit cards to pay for courses. Some talked of racking up debt of up to $150,000.
If you’re like me, your Spotify kirtan playlist is near the top of your homepage. You could say the Westernization of kirtans — iconic call-and-response Sanskrit chants — all started when Abhay Charanaravinda Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada founded the Hare Krishnas in New York in the ’60s, and troops of saffron-clad monks danced and chanted Hare Rama, Hare Krishna in the city streets.
In Ashley Stimpson’s tale, in which she books a writing retreat at the rundown International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) headquarters in West Virginia and ends up researching the organization and its infamous scandal, she traces the trajectory of where things went wrong. In a refreshing departure from the norm, the “genuine saintly” Hare Krishna founder Swami Prabhupada was not accused of the harmful duplicity that his successors embodied.
At the top, Stimpson brilliantly lays out the question that many readers will be wondering. Her answers, with her personal story and vulnerability woven in, are deeply compelling.
The only thing more surprising than the scandal this place had endured was that it had endured at all. How did a radical, communal movement of the ’60s, dismissed as a cult and lampooned by everyone from Kermit the Frog to Cheech and Chong, manage to survive, let alone on this ruined patch of Appalachia, where fracking trucks rumble past weed-choked doublewides folding in on themselves?
Robert F. Worth’s chilling profile of Baba Ramdev, a populist swami/yoga teacher/business man, draws uncanny parallels between the rise of U.S. nationalism and the Christian right. Although Ramdev is not (yet) a politician, through his rhetoric he has successfully won the political imagination of the middle class, and contributed his vast spiritual leadership to winning Indian nationalist elections. Ramdev, in addition to running his ayurvedic herbalism business like an ashram where workers accept low wages in exchange for their service to humanity, jockeys between harsh taskmaster, merry prankster, and politician, playing to his audience, as modeled in the dialogue with Worth below:
When I asked him if I could follow him around for a day or two, he seemed delighted. “Of course! You can stay with me,” he said, gesturing at the house behind us, where he sleeps on a pallet on the floor. “I’m not married. But don’t worry, I’m not homosexual!” He burst into raucous laughter and added, “I’m against homosexuality!” The laughter got even louder, and he added under his breath, “Just kidding.”
Further reading:
***
Blair Glaser is an executive leadership consultant and writer in LA. Her essays have been published in Oldster, Shondaland, Insider, and HuffPost. She is currently working on a culty memoir.
Editor: Cheri Lucas Rowlands
Copy editors: Peter Rubin, Carolyn Wells
Would you swim in the Tidal Basin? A century ago it was filled with sewage but Federal officials promised they would pump enough chlorine into the water to make it safe... and thousands of Washingtonians believed them... Um, we'll pass. #DCHistory https://t.co/gsjzlyrl53 Wou…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 24, 2022
This map shows Port Royal, Jamaica, 90 years after it was largely destroyed by an earthquake. The town was partially rebuilt, but most of its commercial functions were taken over by Kingston, founded nearby after the disaster. See both towns here: https://t.co/ZzObkXAED2 …
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 24, 2022
"A sympathy of mind which is most unusual..." 1,500 perished aboard the Titanic, but the loss of Maj. Archibald Butt & Francis Millet was particularly devastating for #DC. #OTD 1912, Congress approved an Ellipse memorial to honor their friendship. https://t.co/UMjfx1MCjT "A …
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 24, 2022
Milky Way Time Lapse via NASA https://t.co/sywc3wbnOW https://t.co/rWc7tS2HQh
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 24, 2022
This Civil War era map depicts portions of Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, and the nation’s capital from the air. If you look closely you’ll find crossed sword icons which indicate battle sites. Zoom in for a better look: https://t.co/oQlw7bwlOQ https://t.co/008aBvo7e0 This Civ…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 24, 2022
Check out COLLECTIONS FOR LE SUIT~ EVENING JACKET ~12~NWT~$200 RV https://t.co/NOQWw84xN4 #eBay via @eBay
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Today in History - August 24 https://t.co/MphHIZs1l1 On August 24, 1682, the Duke of York awarded Englishman William Penn a deed to the “Three Lower Counties” that make up the present state of Delaware, recently transferred from Dutch to British jurisdiction. Continue readin…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 24, 2022
"You know I had the opportunity to make a huge mistake, and I’ve enjoyed every moment of it..." - WMAL station manager in 1979, responding to public outcry over the station's decision to cancel Felix Grant's nightly jazz program. #DCHistory #MusicHistory https://t.co/fRKF2iYtlv…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 23, 2022
The Historic X-1E Looks Forward via NASA https://t.co/lRZebxobq4 https://t.co/EoIojPOmhR
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 23, 2022
PSA: Today is the 11 year anniversary of the 2011 Virginia Earthquake. Keep Calm and Carry On, #DMV. PSA: Today is the 11 year anniversary of the 2011 Virginia Earthquake. Keep Calm and Carry On, #DMV. — Boundary Stones (@BoundaryStones) Aug 23, 2022
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 23, 2022
Green as far as the eye can see may not be how we currently think about Phoenix, AZ, but that is certainly how it is portrayed in this 1885 map. Check it out: https://t.co/8UfMLSp2Dg https://t.co/Jxa5wocckk Green as far as the eye can see may not be how we currently think abo…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 23, 2022
Today in History - August 23 https://t.co/udy7cNUPv7 On August 23, 1864, the Union navy captured Fort Morgan, Alabama, breaking the Confederate dominance of the ports of the Gulf of Mexico. Continue reading. Click here to search Today in History for other historic moments.
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 23, 2022
When my father died in October 2020 — when the world was already in a collective COVID-19 haze and period of constant grief — I turned inward. I found myself unable to read anything but texts from the so-called Native American Renaissance, a period of increased visibility for works by Indigenous authors. I read Joy Harjo and Louise Erdrich, Leslie Marmon Silko and N. Scott Momaday, Maurice Kenny and nila northSun. I abandoned my own writing in order to wrap myself in the words of those I considered like me, even if we weren’t from the same tribe. Each writer was a beating heart, one that I could feel throughout their prose, from a book’s dedication to its final sentence.
However, I didn’t find trouble with the term “renaissance” until later, when I considered why a renaissance was needed in the first place. As James Ruppert writes in a chapter of The Cambridge Companion to Native American Literature, “Some scholars hesitate to use the phrase because it might imply that Native writers were not producing significant work before that time or that these writers sprang up without long-standing community and tribal roots. Indeed, if this was a rebirth, what was the original birth?” This is a question that has continued to haunt me through the years, a specter that refuses to be banished. I, too, hesitate to use the phrase but cannot find another way to encapsulate the moment, however brief, when a spotlight was turned upon our people.
I’ve been a wide, voracious reader my entire life, so it surprises me that Sherman Alexie, one of the most well-known Native writers, was my entry point into Native American literature. But I suppose it shouldn’t. When I was growing up, Native voices were never centered, and rarely even considered. I grew up in a poor town in rural Oklahoma that was once named the “Early Death Capital of the World.” Our town’s composition is roughly half Natives, mostly Cherokee, and the other majority half is white, but I don’t remember thinking about that at all. Instead, I remember the foothills of the Ozarks, the running creeks, and my grandparents’ blue trailer. Funny how memory works.
Where are you from? classmates in graduate school would ask. Oh, around the middle of nowhere, I’d say, laughing. Now, though, I’m not so sure. I struggled, and still do, for a way to communicate how my culture has influenced and shaped me without sounding self-serving or neglecting the ways that modernity has built us all, but I’m learning. I’m changing. Earlier this year, in February, I finally felt ready to write about my life. I wrote an essay called “Life and Death in Strawberry Land,” and in many ways, felt rewritten. Here was my pain, my grief, yet it was not mine alone. I was making a mark, if even a small one, and entering my story into the collective. I felt held by all I had read and still do. What a gift.
This reading list, then, does not seek to establish Native writers as writers, nor is it a comprehensive list of all those who are Indigenous who are doing wonderful work. I like to think of it as a primer, perhaps, on writers to seek out at the beginning of your journey. It is my hope that one day the average reader will be able to name their three favorite Native authors without a furtive Google search, or the aid of this list. Native American(a), here, is a catch-all term. It is not meant to build a monolith, but instead to celebrate the shared experience of being Indigenous in America, highlight important issues, and raise awareness of voices often forgotten. Let this be a reminder that we are not lost to time — there is no lack. For in the Cherokee worldview, there’s a constant theme of transformation and rebirth. When we die, we don’t really die. We are wind, or birdsong, or cedar trees. We can walk on rainbows and stop storms. We are accountable to each other, to the Earth, and to ourselves. Despite it all, you cannot kill us in any way that matters. We live on. So, dear reader, watch these ashes birth new life and be thankful you are alive to see it.
Terese Marie Mailhot is one of my favorite writers ever, full stop. I love this essay because it articulates all of the things I can’t — things that I’ve been working to realize within myself. It urges its readers to take in the panoramic picture, the inseparable whole. Native people are often reduced to their tragedies and their rampant stereotypes, but that is not all, or what, we should be recognized for. (To only write of joy without the pain, of course, would also be a misstep. Life is complicated, to put it mildly.) Why are Indigenous people reduced and withheld nuance?
Mailhot writes with clear, lovely prose that makes me ache, but not wholly in a sad way. She says it best in the last line of the essay: “I don’t want a joyous future nearly as much as I want the freedom to present the tragedy in our lives—and not be bound to it.”
It wasn’t until graduate school that I heard the term “poverty porn” and realized non-Natives were titillated by our misfortunes, and that indigenous people were consuming it too, albeit for different reasons. Maybe, like me, they were just happy to be seen, finally—not as mascots or advertising icons or mystic ghosts, but as people, alive and still struggling in the aftermath of colonization.
Addams Family Values is a sequel that improves upon the original, though not when it comes to sensitivity about race and culture. In the film, Wednesday and Pugsley Addams are sent to summer camp at Camp Chippewa, where children who aren’t blonde and preppy are viewed as misfits. Wednesday ends up performing as Pocahontas in the camp’s Thanksgiving play, but goes off-script and takes over the show. She, in this right, becomes a pilgrim hero by masquerading as an Indian.
I couldn’t, and wouldn’t, say that being Native has a recurring theme, but there is a throughline that runs through many essays about Indigeneity. This theme, simply put, is: Everything is complicated. Nothing is simple. Why don’t we get simple? Here, Elissa Washuta tells us — while the majority of America celebrates Thanksgiving with turkey and dry stuffing — we fight for our lives and sovereignty. What do we do with all of that? How do we move forward? There is no clear answer, but there is a path here. Washuta, in strokes both personal and cultural, reminds us to find togetherness however we can, in and out of colonized spaces. We resist the ideal of American independence; we find each other in the dark.
I am neither Wednesday nor Fester. I am not the grim girl with her own guillotine, not the unsmiling camper who would let the blonde girl drown. Neither am I the old ghoul who wants a companion so badly he clings to the woman who tries to electrocute him in the bath. But I am a loner and a weirdo. Even in our kindergarten Thanksgiving celebration, for which I was assigned a construction paper feathered headband that signified my affiliation with the half of the class playing the Indians, I didn’t belong, because I was going to be Native the next day, too, and every one after, while they were going to forget we’d even played this game.
This essay by David Treuer is a compelling take on existing between cultures in a country that has tried to eradicate one of them completely. Though Treuer and I don’t share a complete set of politics, this piece hits a personal note, as I, too, am a child of one white parent and one Native parent.
Treur leads us through his parent’s marriage and their disparate lives, as well as where he himself has ended up. This is the kind of writing I crave, brutally and emotionally honest, without sacrificing nuance. It’s a read that demands empathy and leaves one with much to chew over, long after reading.
I came of age in the 1990s with the different and warring natures of my parents’ attitudes fighting for room in my head. While I was in college, the multicultural wave crested, and I couldn’t help angrily noting the superficiality of it. It seemed that all anyone wanted from Native culture was the “three F’s”: food, folklore and fashion. As part of that multicultural process I, my mother’s son, was skeptical of even the adoration that was beginning to creep into how people thought of me, my tribe, my reservation and, by extension, Native Americans generally: exoticized others who were interesting in direct proportion to our suffering.
I’ve come back to this critical essay by Abaki Beck several times over the past couple of years. Beck confronts how much of Indigenous culture is co-opted by Hollywood, and explores topics like normalizing Native knowledge and reclaiming history. As the world melts and shifts around us, it’s a potent reminder that our people’s apocalypse has already come, and we survived it. What is more comforting than that?
This article also touches on the ways our cultures — our lives — are taken and twisted for profit at a massive scale. This theft of knowledge is not the work of a white man selling authentic dream catchers at a roadside stand, but instead of multi-million dollar enterprises. Beck gives us food for thought, as well as some delicious book recommendations in the process.
In many mainstream science-fiction narratives, Native Americans—as people, not lifted cultural elements that make a scene more exotic—are virtually nonexistent. Yet many of our most iconic science-fiction tales offer perspectives about colonialism. Aliens or apes invade or attack planet Earth, aiming to replace us (the “us” usually being white people), and cataclysmic wars bring about the end of the world. This connection isn’t coincidental: In his 2008 book Colonialism and the Emergence of Science Fiction, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa English professor John Rieder notes that Western science fiction rose to prominence in the late 19th century during a period of massive European colonial expansion.
To call this piece heartbreaking would be too simple, not devastating enough. Still, it is. It’s also a necessary reminder that even the bluest of states are mired in racism and riddled with blind spots. Who can protect us? How can we protect ourselves? These are not questions easily answered. Brandi Morin leads us through just a few cases from among more than 5,000 missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, but it is enough to leave you reeling. Through Morin’s essential reporting and Amber Bracken’s beautiful photography, this story highlights Indigenous women doing the hard work of spreading awareness — and searching when they can — and the ways in which the government and its affiliates continue to falter.
Native American families continue to contend with this “bloody legacy,” as the report calls it. Their daughters, sisters, and mothers are vulnerable, says Lucchesi, and predators know it. Police are less likely to investigate missing Indigenous women, known perpetrators are less likely to be prosecuted or convicted, and the media is less likely to cover MMIWG cases with the same alarm as those of missing white women.
Further Reading:
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Autumn Fourkiller is from rural Oklahoma. She is currently at work on a novel about ghosts, grief, and Indigeneity. A 2022 Ann Friedman Weekly Fellow, her work can be found in Scalawag, Atlas Obscura, and Man Repeller. You can follow her newsletter, Dream Interpretation for Dummies, on Substack.
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This map of Hawaii from the early 19th century depicts the islands as they were understood at that time. It is one of a small number of maps we hold that is written in the Hawaiian language. Take a deeper look: https://t.co/38jXGs9z4b https://t.co/6JF9BGLbLz This map of Hawai…
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Quote of the Day: "Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers." - Alfred Lord Tennyson
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After the death of former President Warren G. Harding, then Vice President Calvin Coolidge (famous for his frugality) briefly used the Willard Hotel as his headquarters while the White House was being prepped for his arrival. https://t.co/xbi3icU15L After the death of former…
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Diamondback Terrapins, the turtles that inhabit the marshes of Maryland, were once a highly regarded delicacy amongst people of the District. https://t.co/dqow2zvJZX Diamondback Terrapins, the turtles that inhabit the marshes of Maryland, were once a highly regarded delicacy…
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Today in History - August 21 https://t.co/FiU5AxFVxD On August 21, 1912 Arthur R. Eldred of Oceanside, New York, achieved the rank of Eagle Scout, the highest rank in the Boy Scouts of America. He was the first person to earn the award. Continue reading. Click here to searc…
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