I graduated from Hamline University on May 18, 2013 with a BA in History, focus in Social Justice and Conflict Studies. Tonight, I went out with my friends for the first time in a year without a full-blown panic attack. Both of these deserve a lot of fucking applause.
I’ve come a long ways, and I have every right to be fucking proud.
CATSBY THE INHERITED CAT JUMPED INTO MY MUMS CAR AND IS JUST BEING A PRINCESS AND JUNK
Meet Catsby. She’s the cat that won’t leave my mum’s new house in Duluth. My mum inherited this cat haha
Stargazing At The Elqui Domos Hotel In Chile | Designed by RDM Arquitectura | Photos by James Florio
In the heart of the mythical Elqui Valley in Pisco, surrounded by the Andes Mountains, 500km north of Santiago in central Chile, lies a magical place that allows for star-spangled dreams beneath the clear pure sky. Combining stargazing and specialized astronomic tours with night-time horseback riding, meditation and even tarot readings, Elqui Domos is a hotel quite like no other.
It was completed in 2005 to fulfil its owners’ desire to observe and enjoy the grandeur of the one of the world’s most star-filled skies. It is one of only seven astronomic hotels around the world and the only one in the Southern Hemisphere, offering breathtaking views of the magic skies draped over the Elqui Valley (the valley is renowned for its sharp, clear skies, as it happens to sit under one of the clearest atmospheres in the world). The lack of rain and pleasant weather all year round set the perfect conditions for astronomic tourism, where guests can gather to enjoy a unique chance to liaise with the stars.
(via Yatzer)
(via amikmn)
Win any GabiFresh x swimsuitsforall bathing suit (along with a bunch of other awesome shit) in the giveaway on my blog, gabifresh.com ! It’s short lived so check it out soon. Reblogging this counts as an extra entry but you must keep this caption and leave a comment on the original post!
OH! and contact me via tumblr, OR email at hear.the.thunder@gmail.com <3
Win any GabiFresh x swimsuitsforall bathing suit (along with a bunch of other awesome shit) in the giveaway on my blog, gabifresh.com ! It’s short lived so check it out soon. Reblogging this counts as an extra entry but you must keep this caption and leave a comment on the original post!
FATKINI 2013
ATTENTION ATTENTION
THE PAPER I NEEDED TO GRADUATE
THAT I HAD TO REWRITE
ON WHICH THE TOPIC WAS SALTY CRACKER DICK IN THE VICTORIAN AGE (BLAH)
AND PUMPED IT OUT IN TWO WEEKS
I GOT A MOTHERFUCKING C+ ON
I SERIOUSLY THOUGHT I WOULD FAIL THAT SHIT
BUT I AM GOING TO MOTHERFUCKING GRADUATE
I WILL FINALLY BE DONE WITH HAMLINE
I AM GOING TO GET THAT FANCY AS FUCK PIECE OF PAPER
AND FRAME THE FUCK OUT OF IT
AND HANG IT ABOVE MY TOILET
Idk bout you but when I feel down, I dress up. In today’s case, I play up my eyes with #sugarpill poison plum eyeshadow, the newest addition to my collection.
angrybrownbaby said: Hugs if wanted.
*hugs*
thanks, doll. the thing is that i can see now i fucked up with that statement. it’s my own shit to deal with over here in my neck of the woods. i just hope the rest of the community here will let me make amends.
Different experience in different places, like you said…I know in the US that BQ issues are huge in a way I don’t think any community in Canada can really understand. I sure don’t. And I get what you were saying about being instantly recognized as native versus the ambiguity. Just felt weird about the idea of red privilege. It weirdly echoes some of the resentment up here against Status Indians who have defined rights, versus non-Status and Metis who often don’t, despite the fact that those divisions are deliberate and calculated.
For what it’s worth, I appreciate your willingness to talk about this with me. Thanks, for real.
angrybrownbaby said: I think folks could understand. Your story is complicated, as with a lot of folks, you know? You deserve better support in your community
eh we’ll see. i wish ANYONE understood the dynamics of my reservation, though. I was on and off it until was 17, and moved to Minneapolis. It’s just….dysfunctional. The stories that have been shared with me of other areas, esp. Plains reservations, are just totally foreign. I can’t even pretend to understand what that is like. Where I’m from, it’s all about the BQ. There’s constant scandal and everyone pits everyone against each other. But then go into my hometown, and I get commonly called Rezdog, Tiber N****r, Prairie Princess, or crazy alchy (which only non-whites are called, idfgi). Down here in the ACTUAL urban area I”m in, I”m just….*something*. It doesn’t matter, because at a glance I pass as about 5 different things.
angrybrownbaby said: Hugs if wanted.
*hugs*
thanks, doll. the thing is that i can see now i fucked up with that statement. it’s my own shit to deal with over here in my neck of the woods. i just hope the rest of the community here will let me make amends.
I am half Ojibwe, half Russian Mennonite. I have never identified with my white side, even though I was raised primarily by my white mother. I was born in northern Minnesota on a reservation, and I lived there with both my parents until I was three.
My dad is a victim of intense abuse from his father, an unjust prison system, gangs, and a boarding school. He has untreated borderline personality disorder, which my mother did not see until my father tried to kill her and me with a fork. She left him, and spent the next 4 years trying to keep me away from a crazy abusive father, grandparents, and an equally fucked up aunt.
What she unknowingly did was disconnect me from my Ojibwe identity. She didn’t know this. Shit, she even tried to get me to be a part of the tribal community near us. That in itself was really weird, looking back. The city I grew up in was about 80,000 people with a strong and visible NDN population. It was also completely isolated from anything for about 3 hours in any direction. And I didn’t live in the city…I lived on the woods on the outside of town with my mom and brother.
I had really fucked up visitations with my dad and sister, from his first partner. I can safely say that they tried to brainwash me against my mother. Well, my father did. My sister was already a victim of him, but that’s a different story and not mine to tell in any great detail. I knew small things about my culture. I knew what some of the core traditions were, at least what they were as explained to a very young child. Through out all of this, my mom tried the best she could to enforce my Ojibwe culture. She did everything she could, including enrolling me in an immersion program a handful of times. Back then, we didn’t know that I was also sexually abused by my father and I had severe PTSD that was triggered by almost anything reminding me of him, which was pretty much anything Native. Drum ceremonies made me black out and shake. The smell of sage and the feel of tobacco gave me flashbacks of what he would do to me.
It wasn’t until I was 17 that this all came into light. I got help, I got treatment for the PTSD and related issues. It was time for me to try to heal. See, my mom pretty much tried to erase my white part of me. She thought it would help. It didn’t hurt, but it really didn’t do anything beneficial either. She couldn’t have known that either. By the time I was 18, I was feeling stronger and happier, because I was finally connecting to the core of who I am. Of who I KNOW I am.
I also know that I can’t do this on my own, by any means. I am now 22. In that time span, I’ve been seeking guidance and assistance in coming back into my community. It was going well for a while, until the last summer when I finally had someone who was pretty much my mentor. That person made me question everything I am, of who I want to be, and how I understand myself. She completely invalidated me and just chalked off anything I asked as being completely ignorant and inappropriate to even ask. How am I supposed to know that? I thought I could trust this person, I thought I could be honest enough to admit that I had stupid questions and ask them. I didn’t know about how to gift tobacco, or when it was even appropriate. This was when my “mentor” told me that I’m “not Indian enough,” “not good enough.”
So this is where I am, on the low point of a big messy rollercoaster of trying to heal. This is all just one point of a bigger picture, but I digress. This is my main identity, the center of my core. I’ve always known this, but my former “mentor” acted and reacted in such a way that I am afraid has left even more scars. It’s this person and a bunch of people I associate with them that boasts of having Red Privilege. These are the people that are leaders in my community here in MN, but also tell me I’m not enough and I will never be enough.
Little background to the Red Privilege thing: It’s a term that’s been thrown around in my local geographical community with a handful of people that have a lot of pull. It’s been used in a way that reads, “Hey! I’m doing this thing that’s super awesome and Native and I’ve been able to do it for a long time! Look at me! Look at how neat I am!” It’s particularly used by someone who straight-up told me that I’m “a bad Indian,” who will never be “good enough.”
And I have a lot of anger about that.
And I shouldn’t have reacted in such a knee-jerk way to a bigger conversation.
I must clarify that I wasn’t trying to say that it was a privilege in the greater scheme of things AT ALL. I see it as something really strange and poisonous that’s happening here with people like me, people that aren’t urban, aren’t rural, aren’t reservation NDNs. I’m just floating, trying to find my place and to listen and to learn.
I am sorry that I used it in a way that invalidated people. I really am. It’s been made evident to me that this is how it may have been taken, especially by others I look up to in regards to cultural issues.
In my own life, with my own experience with the term Red Privilege (and I shit you not, it’s been used a lot lately here), it’s by passing, non-passing, easily identifiable, and everyone in between who happen to be able to have a connection to their cultural past. That is what’s so painful to me. It’s people that are lighter than me, darker than me, anything else that is or isn’t like me. But they are still more than I will seeming be recognized as. They are enough and have fun with a term. Maybe they’re reclaiming something. Probably they are. And it hurts.
I got angry. And I am sorry. It’s a personal sting of mine, and I didn’t mean to wedge any sort of rift open.
