Taking Our Thunder Back

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Here's the thing: When you've been caught being a racist, about the worst possible thing you can then do is to appropriate the images of children (children!) of color as a form of apple-polishing for your butthurt ego.

And that's just what Rosie O'Donnell did in her Twitter war with women of color two days ago. She Tweeted the above photo at Native activist Lauren Chief Elk, along with separate statements to the effect that Ms. Chief Elk was "only 1 person" (and therefore, her opinion didn't matter), and that she (Rosie) has "done more for WOC [women of color]" than Ms. Chief Elk ever has or will. Coming from someone who thinks it's appropriate to make fun of Asians using stereotypical fake "Chinese" words and accents, to a fierce and dedicated Native woman activist who fully grasps the obligations of intersectionality, it would be laughable if it weren't so vicious.

Well, Ms. Chief Elk has the last laugh tonight. Late yesterday, The View apparently gave a pre-weekend news dump to The Hollywood Reporter, announcing that the show and O'Donnell were parting ways. The official excuse is the old "spend time with her family" routine, buttressed by an acknowledgment that O'Donnell and her wife separated three months ago and are apparently divorcing. But if anyone thinks that's the sole reason, I have some swamp land south of Tucson and a bit of the Sahara in Miami to sell you at a really great price.

Still, though, O'Donnell herself is really a sideshow in this whole mess. A toxic sideshow, to be sure, but tangential to the underlying trigger for the whole ugly spectacle. That belongs to Eve Ensler and her ghastly, racist, narcissistic, proprietary appropriation of women of color and our causes and very identities to further her own ego. [It sure as hell ain't about the money, of which she has far more than enough.]

It was bad enough that she hijacked February 14th, a day on which First Nations women have banded together for a quarter of a century now to bring attention to the tragedy and the crime of our missing and murdered indigenous women. Worse, she decided to hijack an actual Native woman's very image, manipulate it, plaster a phrase containing the word "Vanishing" across it (as though we're some sort of exotic and rapidly-going-extinct animal), and use it to promote her hijack of the date without so much as a by-your-leave, forget about anything like royalties.

But that wasn't enough. When called on it by Lauren Chief Elk and others, she immediately became the "victim," tears flowing and whines commencing. Meanwhile, her paid minions went to work erasing Native women's voices from the organization's Facebook page. Funny, that: She wants to exploit us as "vanishing," yet erase us entirely from existence when our existences are inconvenient? But of course. That's the norm in the dominant culture.

But that's by no means all. her treatment of other women of color has likewise been nothing short of reprehensible, and in a similarly exploitative vein. For me, the nadir came with her article about her Congo experiences. I've written about it once, with the shameful title she used; I won't repeat it here. Like many (most?) Native women, I've been through a lot in my life, and borne witness to more; there's not a lot that I can't look in the face without flinching. But that "article" made me feel genuinely soiled. It still does.

Over the next week, we're unfortunately going to be treated to many more reams' worth of deathless, breathless prose about the virtues, the very sacredness, of V-Day and #OneBillionRising. It's hooey, of course, but it's celebrity hooey, and so most people won't know the difference.

But if you're on Facebook, there's a new counterbalance out there. It's called TWO Billion Rising Against V-Day, and it's a place where activists and allies can record their own testimonials and show solidarity with the #MMIW movement and other women of color, from whom Ensler's group has attempted to steal voice and presence.

Not for nothing is the secondary translation of my name "Thunderbird Woman." Right now, she's ascending, and she is pissed. So come; join me and other women of color and our allies.

Because we're taking our thunder back.



#NoMore #MMIW




All text is copyright Aji, 2015; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.

Invisibility, Appropriation, Erasure, and Racism: When Mainstream "Violence Against Women" Activists Do Violence to Native Women. #NoMore #MMIW

Photo copyright Wings and Aji, 2015;
all rights reserved.

The photo above is of myself. I own it, both rights and identity. That's something that should not have to be said, but it does.

This post will ramble a little, or a lot. I want those who read it to see what it's like, to the limited extent possible, to live in our moccasins, just for a brief moment. I want you to feel what we feel, and to do that, you're going to need to travel a winding road to get there. As always, we speak only for ourselves, but by the same token, only we speak for ourselves. So take my hand, and let's visit what for most of you will be another country, another world entirely.

I'm going to talk today a lot today about identity: about personal autonomy and sovereignty; about intersections and crossroads; about respect or racism; about being an ally or being a thief. Yes, thief: Appropriator, exploiter, user, all of those fit, but what it all boils down to is theft. And what that boils down to, among other things, is another, particularly insidious form of racism and fundamental disrespect.

And today, it's all boiling over on Twitter, as — yet again — another white woman who styles herself a feminist, an activist, and no doubt an anti-racist engages in vicious racism and sexism against women of color, specifically, indigenous women.

This post is about many things, among them Rosie O'Donnell and Eve Ensler, the casual racism and dismissiveness of V-Day and OneBillionRising, the colonialist mindset of certain self-appointed "leaders" in the vanguard of the dominant culture's "feminist" movement.

Or, as Wings said this morning: "It's the same old thing, nothing changes; white people take from Natives, without asking and without credit, and use it to promote themselves." 

It's also about US: the indigenous women of this continent; our sovereignty, our autonomy, our very identities; about our sisters, erased and rendered invisible in literal as well as metaphorical terms in the public discourse — the missing and murdered indigenous women for whom the hashtag #MMIW was created, and whose lives and memories Native women activists are forcing back into the light of day on February 14th.