The Longhouse: A Gathering For Steampunker Of Aboriginal Descent

[Hurricane Annie]

I have found some other interesting Mayan documentary  DVD on the catalogue

[J. Wilhelm]

Part Two of the Red Queen is even more interesting.  Starting from 3 female candidates, the scientists finally identify the Red Queen as the wife of King Pakal II, and the episode even includes a 3-dimensional reconstruction of her head from a 3-d printed copy of her skull, by a forensic reconstruction specialist - of all places- in Austin, Texas.

The Red Queen - A Mayan Mystery (part two)

[rovingjack]

necro- I'm doing a little canvassing to recoup my monetary losses these days. and today a carpool run out to our turf was over an hour long, and the driver was one of those painfully white guys trying to prove how woke he is to the two hispanics and one black member of the group. Now I'm a quarter indiginous, but I don't usually claim it, because I was my mother was an unfit parent and lost rights to raise her kids, I wasn't raised in the culture, I don't really look the part unless you know what to look for and even then my Dutch and irish cloud it enough that I've been call middle eastern and italian as people try to describe my feature. and I'm usually pretty careful not to claim native heritage because it is frequently met with the eye roll and comments about how every white guy wants to claim native heritage. or how I wasn't raised that way so it doesn't count. or some such.

and I don't really disagree. I'm 1/4 from several nations. I wasn't raised that way and nobody can tell by looking. so I don't really want to claim something that isn't an active part of my life.

But the discussion shifted through education to languages and I professed wishing I could learn the Seneca and Mohawk languages of my anscestors. and the elsalvadorian in the back said that if I don't "get paid" I don't get to claim the heritage.

The thing is I don't want the heritage. I'm not looking for an identity, I have one, and it's not a native identity... but it does include natives in my families past. And I want to learn about it and know it better. I'm not going to convert. I have other lineages I respect just as much and maybe resonate a bit more with my identity, but I don't wish to remain ignorant of a part of my family history and some of various people I come from.

But the comment reminded my too much of the gate keeper mentality that I encounter, and I cant even be upset by it because the BS claims are rampant and the pushback justified.

And so I'm left feeling like I need to not explore or express interest in that part of me, and it feels like letting a branch fade away as others require me to hide it in the dark.

what sucks the most though is I don't believe for a second that I'm the only one out there this is the case for.

[Banfili]

This is all most interesting! Have just caught up with the thread, and, thinking about the concept of aboriginality find myself in two minds as to my own. My father's family is so Irish we bleed green ( ). I have no definite knowledge of who my mother was - there is a considerable amount of ambiguity surrounding my maternity - the person on my birth certificate is biologically impossible as a parent - her blood group makes this certain. About the time I was born there was a process in Australia of "forced" adoptions, with no birth certificate issued until after the adoption process had been gone through. My father is my father, but my mother is ... who knows? I had the step-mother from hell, so no attachment there whatsoever!

However, there is a "prime suspect" on my radar (all these people are deceased, so no harm in speculating now!), the daughter of a close friend of my paternal grandmother and former fiancé of my father. If this is the right person, then I am, by descent 100% 'old' Irish. The short, fair-skinned, dark-haired 'native' Irish, for, despite popular opinion, 90-odd% of Irish are not Celts. All interesting to me, no doubt! Which brings me to a statement, and a question. I believe I suffer from a condition I have called 'country dysphoria' - the feeling of being born in the wrong country - anyone else suffer from this condition??

And, is it a valid option for defining 'aboriginality, by descent'? I'm curious as to whether this condition 'counts' & it there are any others out there who have the same 'complaint'?

[J. Wilhelm]

necro- I'm doing a little canvassing to recoup my monetary losses these days. and today a carpool run out to our turf was over an hour long, and the driver was one of those painfully white guys trying to prove how woke he is to the two hispanics and one black member of the group. Now I'm a quarter indiginous, but I don't usually claim it, because I was my mother was an unfit parent and lost rights to raise her kids, I wasn't raised in the culture, I don't really look the part unless you know what to look for and even then my Dutch and irish cloud it enough that I've been call middle eastern and italian as people try to describe my feature. and I'm usually pretty careful not to claim native heritage because it is frequently met with the eye roll and comments about how every white guy wants to claim native heritage. or how I wasn't raised that way so it doesn't count. or some such.

and I don't really disagree. I'm 1/4 from several nations. I wasn't raised that way and nobody can tell by looking. so I don't really want to claim something that isn't an active part of my life.

But the discussion shifted through education to languages and I professed wishing I could learn the Seneca and Mohawk languages of my anscestors. and the elsalvadorian in the back said that if I don't "get paid" I don't get to claim the heritage.

The thing is I don't want the heritage. I'm not looking for an identity, I have one, and it's not a native identity... but it does include natives in my families past. And I want to learn about it and know it better. I'm not going to convert. I have other lineages I respect just as much and maybe resonate a bit more with my identity, but I don't wish to remain ignorant of a part of my family history and some of various people I come from.

But the comment reminded my too much of the gate keeper mentality that I encounter, and I cant even be upset by it because the BS claims are rampant and the pushback justified.

And so I'm left feeling like I need to not explore or express interest in that part of me, and it feels like letting a branch fade away as others require me to hide it in the dark.

what sucks the most though is I don't believe for a second that I'm the only one out there this is the case for.

I had to grapple with your statements for a while. First I wrote a long winded response (you know me), then erased it, thinking that I was being patronising (which I often am), and then after re-reading the offensive comment from the El Salvadorean , I realised I was right the first time.

OK. So here goes my answer:

1. The El Salvadorean can go jump off a bridge. It's none of his business.

2. American society is full of psychological baggage related to race relations. Some of it justified, but most of it serves only to inflame and separate the so-called "races." The biggest problem is that American society is very racist. The world can see that today in the news.

3. Imagine for a second that I was a shaman of sorts, and I could put you in a trance, whereby - like the Maya in Mexico believed- you could be put into direct contact with the spirits of your ancestors, presumably your Great Grandparents. By the way, that makes you as much Native American as I am French. And 1/4 blood is only two generations apart. My great grandparents were alive when I was born!

I give you three subjects of conversation to discuss with your great grandparents (1/4 blood). You have no other options. You must follow through or your soul will die during the trance:

a) Tell them how you think that you can or can't claim Native heritage

b) Your perception of the white dude trying to be "in tune" with the brothers."

c) How you feel about the El Salvadorean's comments.

What you tell your great grandparents? Do you even dare to tell them that you don't feel it's right for you to claim to be Native? I won't blame you for anticipating a slap in the face. What do you think they'd answer? What do you think they'd say about how close they think you are to them? Is colour of skin important to them?

That white dude who was trying to be "politically correct." What do your great grandparents tell you? Would they even have anything to say about him?

And what about the El Salvadorean's comments? Just because most Hispanics (another ignorant American word I hate) in Latin America (another ignorant American term I hate) have some level of Native American blood in them (ranging from none to 100%), do you think your great grandparents even care what he says about what you can claim or not? What do you think your great grandparents would feel and say about what you can claim to be?

Do you see what I mean? This is not about colour of skin, it's about family. Colour of skin is the trick the white man has used for centuries to control and divide people!

These are your great grandparents man! What do you think is the right thing to do?

[J. Wilhelm]

PS. I've told you this story before. In the United States, I've been put down for claiming to have European heritage, on top of my Native and Mexican heritage (a redundant term, that last one). I've been told to my face that "I'm just another Mexican," to use the waitress' own words, because of the way I tan in summer. It's not like I'm going to take off my shirt at the pub, so that the waitress can see than my untanned skin is really white. I'm not going to carry my birth certificate from a parish in Louisiana in the late 60s which reads that my race is "Caucasian." Nor am I going to carry around a passport and pictures of my great great grandparents.

This should not happen to anyone, because only you know what you are. Colour of skin is not an excuse for calling you "not this", or "not that." It's up to you to accept or reject components of what you are, but in the end even you can't choose what you actually are made of. It's like that Eagles song, "Hotel California."

"You can check out any time you want. But you can never leave."

And no one else's ignorance on the subject should be the basis for boxing you in to a category. Fact: the so-called "races" are an old fashioned concept that is being debunked by genetic analysis today (see Cheddar Man thread in Off Topic). Even long accepted European history starting with Ancient Rome can show you how much of a melting port Caucasian people really are. In the 19th C, at Ellis Island in the United States, the immigration forms that people filled had several categories for "race." Germans were *apparently* not the same race as Irish people or British people! The concept is somewhat artificial and subjective. The concept of race becomes becomes most useful in politics and in war.

Having said that , no one has the right to tell me that I'm not Native either. I'm Native because it's a fact. I am Native and I am French because my mostly Native Mexican Great Grandfather from the mining city Guanajuato was an accountant in the Mexican Embassy in Washington DC and married a Mexican Born 100%-French girl born to French Jewish immigrants in Mexico City. And they raised their kids in New York City before returning to Mexico when it became apparent we were going into WWII.

Nothing can take that away from me. My skin tans brown like my great grandfather's, but is as white as a sheet of paper when hidden from the sun for 3 months. The shape of my eyes is identical to my great grandmother's, with an epicanthic fold that probably is Middle Eastern in origin. I am Italian too, and like the French, they also married in to a Mexican and Basque family which included Native Mexican elements. Which means I'm Basque too. The tendency for my family's boys to be born with perfect yellow blonde hair and have it darken to brown or dark brown as an adult is a unique we trait inherited from those strange ancient people we call the Basque. The shape of my face has an awful lot from the Italian side of the family, as much as I sometimes hate it.

But I should have been far more forceful with that waitress at the bar. I should have called the manager and raised a big stink at the bar. But when you're confronted with those types of situations you don't know what to do.

[Banfili]

When my older brother was born, his hair was almost white - as he grew older it went very, very dark. Mine was blonde, but I went a lovely chestnut-y type colour, with red lights, and my younger brother was also blonde but went darker as he grew older.

[rovingjack]

When my older brother was born, his hair was almost white - as he grew older it went very, very dark. Mine was blonde, but I went a lovely chestnut-y type colour, with red lights, and my younger brother was also blonde but went darker as he grew older.

I was blonde and blue eyed for the first several years, then brown and gradually to the color in my photo, interestingly theres some red in there because when I tried coloring it once in highschool the red kept interfering with the color.

my eyes went from blue to green and then settles in the hazel they are now.

my skin has that scotch irish color to it all the time now, but summers used to leave me the color of nutella when I was a kid, only to fade to the pinkish white in winter.

The other things that's always a bit funny is I've pretty much no body hair at all. and the sides of my jaw struggle to grow any facial hair, but I've succeeded in being able to manage a goatee over the years.

[Banfili]

Sun = "burn, baby, burn!", although arms, usually exposed when driving, gradually tan. It's not good for the skin, so now long sleeved loose cotton shirts while driving. 15-20 minutes of sunshine a day, for the vitaminD, that's all! I really could not see the point of baking yourself to the consistency of black leather, while being as prejudiced as the KKK!

[J. Wilhelm]

When my older brother was born, his hair was almost white - as he grew older it went very, very dark. Mine was blonde, but I went a lovely chestnut-y type colour, with red lights, and my younger brother was also blonde but went darker as he grew older.

I was blonde and blue eyed for the first several years, then brown and gradually to the color in my photo, interestingly theres some red in there because when I tried coloring it once in highschool the red kept interfering with the color.

my eyes went from blue to green and then settles in the hazel they are now.

my skin has that scotch irish color to it all the time now, but summers used to leave me the color of nutella when I was a kid, only to fade to the pinkish white in winter.

The other things that's always a bit funny is I've pretty much no body hair at all. and the sides of my jaw struggle to grow any facial hair, but I've succeeded in being able to manage a goatee over the years.

The transitions are witness to our rich past. You don't get to be so "polychromatic" unless you have an interesting background. Genetic analysis will correct all of out assumptions, eventually. The other thing is that in America, I feel, one is always somewhat removed from the past, relegating our ancestors as some sort of statistic to be read from a history book.

It's easier to get in contact with your past in Mexico, because the native culture is very much alive and evolving. To illustrate my point, see the post below. It's always better to see and talk directly to the living, breathing native people, which in the "First World" we tend to either "hide" or "idealize" depending on how you feel about them.

Sun = "burn, baby, burn!", although arms, usually exposed when driving, gradually tan. It's not good for the skin, so now long sleeved loose cotton shirts while driving. 15-20 minutes of sunshine a day, for the vitaminD, that's all! I really could not see the point of baking yourself to the consistency of black leather, while being as prejudiced as the KKK!

Pfft! Your statement reminded me... I *wish* the KKK was the ONLY thing we had to worry about. It was easy when there wasn't much more than a few loons wearing sheets. A sad state of affairs our country has become today. Definitely worse than 1987 when I came back to the USA. And I'll shut up here, because I don't want politics in the thread (but you can probably guess that I've been burning up with rage in the last year and a half). I find searching for videos about Mexico a very cathartic process that is now helping me make a decision about the rest of my life.

Going back to the subject of Mexico, Natives and the Longhouse, I think I should post these videos here:

The Guelaguetza is an annual parade and general week long party event that showcases the different Native and Mestizo (mixed blood) cultures of Mexico. It takes place in the State of Oaxaca with the main parade and final staged event in the City of Oaxaca, because the State of Oaxaca is one of the states with the highest concentration of Native blood in Mexico. The Native American colours and dress are obvious as well as the Spanish, Catholic and generally Western contemporary influence. Remember, these Native Mexican are very much alive in the present day and after 500 years of Spanish influence their culture now meshes with today's global culture. Can you make sense of what you see?

Most colourful will be the "Huipil" 3-part dresses that the women wear. This is one aspect of Native clothing that remains very much alive today in present day Mexico

OAXACA knows how to PARTY! (Desfile de las delegaciones Guelaguetza 2018)

La Guelaguetza 2018: The Most Incredible Festival in Oaxaca, Mexico!