MMIW

[A short break from the series ‘how to support native americans’ which will return tomorrow]

 I saw this and could not wait a full week to share.

 with full credit to Tanaya Winder as presented on therumpus.net
***
MMIW: Pocahontas
When the president called Elizabeth Warren ‘Pocahontas’,
He thought he was clever and funny
Only confirming the idealization of a child that has been turned into fetish.
In 2017, nearly 10,000 Indigenous women were reported missing in the US.
Her real name was Matoaka,
Powhatan for ‘Flower between two streams.’
She resembled her mother,
So she took on her name, Pocahontas.
Taken by English captors. Dies at 21.
Ask yourself,
if your favorite princess were alive,
would she be hashtagging #MeToo?
Taking her name back for all indigenous women,
Screaming “I survived!?”
1995: she becomes a Disney Princess.
She becomes a Halloween Costume.
Her 10-year-old body becomes full-figured, a Barbie Doll Collectable.
That’s the year John Smith’s story became a musical staring a rape victim.
It was the year I learned I had to know all the colors of the wind.
It was the year I learned that saving white men always makes you the hero.
1617: our daughter dies in England,
Renamed Rebecca.
You know, a good Christian name,
For a Good Indian.
How else would she be accepted,
If she wasn’t whitewashed?
Language lost.
New clothes, new name, new her.
Would we have put out an Amber Alert?
Posted pictures of the assailants?
Described the ship in detail?
Filed her name along with the others?
We are still searching for her bones.
Wanting to bring her home.
When you call Native women ‘Pocahontas’,
Your breath reeks of a missing persons report
When you call us ‘Pocahontas’ it says, little girls tickle your fancy.
Murdered Missing Indigenous Women, is no recent epidemic.
And you wonder why we’re so quick to go to battle.
Because History has never been kind to our women.

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