Living In the Past?

"Just let go of the past"

How many of us have heard that when we were having a rough time with a bad break up, a bad fight, or whatever it may be.  Just let go of the past, leave it behind, simple right?

That's not what this guy thought as he writes about his encounters with non-Indian people who always ask him "Why do you live in the past?" and debate about American Indian events via his Facebook.

Not only is this a, for lack of better words, dumb question, but it's inconsiderate and Mike Taylor shoots back some pretty good comments: "Why don't you forget 9/11? Or the Holocaust?"

History creates you, it shapes you, every action has molded you to be who you are today.  For these people to say "Forget about the past" is a very high demand.  How are Native Americans, forced onto reservations, highest chronic diseases in the nation, highest teen pregnancies rates, crime rates, etc suppose to forget what has brought them here to their current state?  The past history is a reason that all these problems are occurring.

For Mike Taylor's reasoning for "They probably feel guilty and don't want to be reminded of the past", I'm not sure.  This may or may not be true, but it doesn't seem like the obvious answer.

Read more of his opinion piece, it's a good read.

Native American Supermodel?

Remember Mariah Watchman?  A contestant that appeared on America's Next Top Model and was singled out for her Native American background.

This beauty is no longer just a TV figure, but a household name on reservations ever since her appearance



In this interview by Indian Country Today, Watchman talks more about her Native American background and history and her new clothing line, N8TV.  Clever :) (Say it out loud now)

It's really good to see a rising Native American star who has hopes to improve the state of her nation and wants to continue to help as her career progress.  The best way to help out Indian Country is to bring awareness and that is exactly what she is doing!

As she says: "I wasn't respresenting myself, I was representing a nation"

Culture, tradition, importance to family, this girl has it going on!

I can only hope she can keep up the good work and continue to represent Indian Country! :)

Memes: No One Can Escape Them

Meme: an element of a culture or behavior that may be passed from one individual to another by nongenetic means, esp imitation.

If you're an avid internet user, you have seen memes! There's no way of escaping them!  Here an example:

This is Ridiculously Photogenic guy, this image just happened to be capture of a guy running a 10k (and he looks pretty good!) and there are MILLION of captions!  You get my jist.

So I saw this article in Indian Country Today and I'm thinking "Oh boy.. this can't be good".  But it actually turned out to be quite hilarious:

These are hilarious!!  I thought they would be extremely racist or not tasteful, but I actually found myself laughing at all these because it speaks about the social injustices that the Native Americans faced!  But in a clever, sarcastic way!

Do you find these funny? Offense?  Sound off!