What Native people say about the use of sage: you can use sage, but you cannot smudge as nothing you are doing (waving sage around) is actually smudging. Smudging is a ceremony and you are, we promise, not smudging. Please buy sage from either us, or someone who sources the sage from us. White sage may not be considered endangered by the US government but corperate sourcing is making it difficult for us to source sage for our own religious purposes. Let alone to sell it.
What white people hear: never use sage ever, don’t ever buy it, don’t own it, don’t even look at it.
Look, y’all. There’s a couple of facets to my talk today.
1) Yes! You can buy sage! You really, truly can! Buy it from either native sellers (go to a powwow! Eat our food, buy our stuff, watch some dancing!) Or buy it from a seller who sources the sage from native people. Pick one. And no, buying it from 5 Below doesn’t count.
2) you CANNOT smudge. This isn’t just you “shouldn’t”— this is a YOU ARE INCAPABLE OF SMUDGING. Waving a sage stick around your doorways IS NOT SMUDGING. It is smoke clensing. Smudging, depending on the tradition and tribe, could easily have dancing and drums involved. You, as a white person, do not have the cultural BACKGROUND to even know how it works. At all. Period.
3) please, for FUCKS SAKE, stop making posts here on tumblr where you tell other white people about cultural appropriation and what they can and cannot do. Please stop, your license has been revoked because none of you bother to get the facts right. We native people are FULLY CAPABLE OF DOING IT OURSELVES. Consider instead: a) reblogging our posts where we talk about it! We’re here! We have made posts!! b) Making a post that states what we said and then LINKS BACK TO US. Screenshot with a link if you must. Stop centering your own voices in these conversations. You are already centered in everything, stop centering yourselves in a native space.
Katsuyo Aoki creates stunningly intricate porcelain skulls. Her work is almost like a three-dimensional expansion on the tradition of calavera, decorated skulls made of sugar or clay to commemorate the Day of the Dead. She touches on this in her explanation of work, commenting that elevating the skull, which could be considered macabre, can make the viewer feel, “tranquility and awe that can almost be described as religious, as well as an image as an object of worship.”
This is my cat, Chumchum,
He was born on June 10, 2017. This is him as a baby.
We adopted him at a few months old and love him extremely.
While he’s extremely cute and loving, he has a big problem. Chumchum has a problem with his kidneys and ureter, which means he’s constantly leaking pee all other the house. This is involuntary. This pee-pee problem has the side-effect of swelling and infections on his genitals, and our vet has also told us that if he’s not eventually cured of this problem, in a few years he will die.
Fortunately, there is a surgery, a subcutaneous urethral bypass, that can help him and prevent future problem. However, our vet and specialist has also predicted that this surgery could cost around $6000-8000 and my family does not have the type of money to pay for it at the moment. We barely had the money for his appointments and antibiotics for his genital infections as it was.
It’s already been a few months that he’s had to live like this, and Chumchum is depressed and in pain. He knows he’s sick and sometimes hides as a result. This cat is naturally a cuddler but we can’t let him on our beds or sofas anymore because he stains it all with pee. We also couldn’t stand the thought of him dying years before he naturally should.
Please, help donate to this gofundme to help save me cat from a depressing, short life. Me and my family, and Chumchum, would eternally be grateful.
Please help save my cat. I linked the gofundme at the top and again here
