...and how Native Americans really don't live on perpetual genocide.

Via ithiliana:

Making the connections: Sexual Violence in Native Communities.

Now even if I wanted to think that way and only stick to say sexually transmitted infections or abortion rights, I really can’t. Why? Because I’m Native, and as such the existence of violence in our communities, especially against our women, exists at rates that are extremely abhorrent and exceedingly high. We HAVE to talk about it all because to not talk about is to ignore some 80% of the population of our women who, for example, have experienced intimate partner violence, or the over 90% of our people who are deeply feeling the effects of residential/mission/boarding school which can sometimes result in different types of violence against oneself and others.

[...] First of all – isn’t the fact that Native American women experience violence almost 3 times more than any other group of women in the United States, 86% of the time by non-Native men – an inherently cross-sectional feminist issue? I don’t mean one that gets the occasional blog post every now and then, or gets centre mainstream feminist stage when it’s convenient, especially with statements like “Oh wow, Iook at these numbers – we didn’t even know about this!” HOW is it that you don’t know? Sure the Native American/American Indian/Alaska Native population is just over 1% of the population in the United States, and in Canada the Aboriginal population is roughly 3%, but with rates like these, say in Canada where there are over 500 missing and murdered Aboriginal women, that’s equivalent to some 18 000 white women. WHY don’t the women in our Native communities measure up in priority? I would think that the occurrence of violence against this many Native women would have every single feminist group up in arms and refusing to shut up until something is done about it – I certainly see that kind of coverage when abortion rights are threatened. WHAT are YOU going to do with this information now that you know about it?

Now some of the mainstream media have been paying attention – a little – albeit in a very sensationalist and sucker-punching way. Yet I’ve been reflecting a lot on why it is that violence against Aboriginal women is all of a sudden receiving more mainstream media attention. Ask anybody from an Indigenous community or nation and you will hear that this has been going on for 500+ years. I certainly don’t feel like the violence is subsiding or going away, but I’m acutely aware of how long it’s been going on for and how deeply entrenched it is in many of our communities, to the point of lateral and internalized violence and oppression.

Or, you know, do what I have been telling people to do for years and read Andrea Smith's Conquest. Here on Google's Books is the preview.

Cumpleaños time! Día bastante agotador (jaja, gracias, Mako! Me fue leve XP), pero al final la pasé bien. Jo.

Espacio para revisión de estos últimos tiempos:

Las traducciones al inglés de Tsubasa por Del Rey son de verdad muy buenas. Los dos últimos volúmenes que publicaron (17 y 18, son los que yo tengo) son bastante fieles, y muestran aprecio y respeto por la serie. Que, por cierto, no será opinión popular, pero tenía menospreciada cuando la leía por capítulos. Dejando a un lado mi amor fangilrlístico y lo rompecabezas que es; noto que Tsubasa está bien ejecutada en sus tropos y temas (o éstos me gustan, supongo). Eso si me preguntan ahora que la leo por tomos. Incluso pienso en los últimos capítulos que han salido, y... apruebo lo que CLAMP hizo. Huh, qué raro se siente (no es que desaprobaba de lo último, no voy a mentir: no lo hacía XD; pero ahora me satisface como serie en un sentido... ¿estético?, y no sé si hizo eso alguna vez antes XD).

Empecé Sandman de Neil Gaiman. No puedo decir que me emociona mucho, ni que es lo mío (de hecho a veces toca mis puntos 'no no'), pero ni siquiera terminé el primer volumen (al menos el archivo que me bajé lo tenía por volúmenes, sería como el... ¿cuarto capítulo?). Espero que me guste más al avanzar. Si no, bueno.

Oh la ironía de los dos párrafos anteriores. Un manga de CLAMP considerado 'campy' vs un comic occidental ultra alabado por su 'calidad y profundidad'. Cual yo prefiero. (Hey, no será la primera y última vez que hago esto. ¿Alguien se acuerda de Berserk? No voy a hablar de lo que pienso sobre los estándares dominantes occidentales de lo que es 'bueno' y 'malo'.) Como sea, tampoco es que perdí las esperanzas con Sandman.

También tengo Conquest de Andrea Smith, que es un libro fantástico y muy doloroso, y del que hablaré en otra entrada cuando lo terminé porque se lo merece, y porque no puedo hacer menos.