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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   31253 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 17, 2022

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The San Francisco Chronicle has announced the discovery of a new Pretendian, the class of white women who pretend to be Native Americans to procure benefits ranging from job opportunities to social status. This story would be insignificant, since the public is now familiar with Warren and Dolezal. But the author has discovered what can be called the Chief Pretendian, none other than Sacheen Littlefeather, the most important female native American in the 70s and 80s. You might not know the name but you’re probably familiar with the clip of the pretty Indian woman making a speech on behalf of Marlon Brando at the Oscar’s. Turns out all the evidence points to her being a white Spaniard with no connection to any American Indian nation, and no connection to any indigenous Mexican group either.

The details are the details, what I find most interesting is: why? This is a pattern, not a one-off thing. White American lib women love cosplaying as Indians. Duplicitous Littlefinger Littlefeather went all in on the LARP, dedicating most of her life to her story as an Indian. The why is so much more interesting than the how.

My thoughts are that people, and especially young women, love costumes, specialness, and emotionally significant stories. The romanced notion of Indians is a whole wardrobe of social life that a person can put on and enjoy. Littlefeather had no interested in the non-romanced Mexican identity. Indians, however, had the connotation of being cool, one with nature, wise, and good. This costumed enjoyment is why the KKK larped as wizards and wore Spanish Catholic dress, why the Freemasons larped as they did, and maybe why the Liberal Woman -> Hijabi pipeline is running despite stretching more terrain than Nordstream. We live in one of the least costumed, ritualized, and play-tending time in Western history. The only thing we have left is Halloween (and liberal women love it too, rightfully so)!

Duplicitous Littlefinger Littlefeather went all in on the LARP, dedicating most of her life to her story as an Indian.

As a footnote, even though Warren now plays it off as just a little family story, it was something that she LARPed hard enough that she was publishing recipes in Native American cookbooks. There's a pretty big disconnect between living it in that peculiar fashion while also saying that it's not a big deal.

As a footnote, even though Warren now plays it off as just a little family story, it was something that she LARPed hard enough that she was publishing recipes in Native American cookbooks. There's a pretty big disconnect between living it in that peculiar fashion while also saying that it's not a big deal.

For someone who was working on their identity so hard, it made no sense to apologize and beg for forgiveness that will never come, she knows the rules better than all of us together.

She should just double down and say: "I was taught my Native identity by my grandma who was taught by her grandma, and I trust living experience of my ancestors over any "genes" "DNA" or similar whiteman "scientific" mumbo jumbo."

Indeed, at the time I didn't understand why she failed to do exactly this.

My best guess is that Warren has pretentions of being an academic lawyer-economist as well as an Amerindian, which put her between a rock and a hard place. She couldn't rubbish "white man science" DNA testing without getting laughed out of the academy, but she couldn't accept "white man science" DNA testing without getting laughed out of the Black Hawk tribe. Faced with a stark choice between her two identities, she chose to keep the one that pays her $400,000 per teaching semester (https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/elizabeth-warren-400k-teaching/).

How noble.

She couldn't rubbish "white man science" DNA testing without getting laughed out of the academy, but she couldn't accept "white man science" DNA testing without getting laughed out of the Black Hawk tribe.

She could have denied that cultural heritage is located in DNA, I suppose, or at least refused to engage with measures of heredity. All of that seems strategically preferable to publishing the data that proves that she's just a white lady.

It might be relevant that any Indian tribe would tell her to stuff the ‘white man science’ bits until she had the goods to prove descent from actual natives anyways, whether the white man science bit was producing a dna test or going on a rant about the colonialism of western ways of knowing.

Indeed, at the time I didn't understand why she failed to do exactly this.

Apologizing is a strong norm in her circles, despite the clear problems with non-acceptance of apologies (or apologies even potentially intensifying things).

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