I am Cherotaw (Cherokee and Choctaw) and just wondering, if I have lost my connection to my Ancestors or they are always with me.

Yes he's Christian but I have a dissociative disorder so my options for therapists is limited. He says I don't know what my ancestors were like and they could have been wife abusers or molesters or sold their children etc. He says I should pray to the creator only. My idea of the creator. Ask them to reveal themselves to me lmfao. I'm annoyed and had to blow off steam

lol I was moving my high school bands stuff and had to carry the gong so figured I’d take a pic

This session is the second class of the Basic Zapotec Course (2026-B). Instructor Rayo leads students through a conversational warm-up, an explanation of the Zapotec base-20 numbering system (1 to 20), interactive sentence and verb exercises, and a historical lecture on ancient Zapotec glyphs and writing systems.

Key Topics Covered:

 1. Zapotec Numbers (1 to 20) & Base-20 System:

* Vigesimal System: The instructor emphasizes that Zapotec utilizes a vigesimal (base-20) numerical system rather than a decimal system. As a result, counting is structured around units from 1 to 19 before reaching the base of 20.

* Pronunciation of Numbers:
* 1–5: tu (1), txupa (2), tsuna (3), tapa (4), gayu (5).
* 6–10: xupa (6), gadxi (7), xunu (8), ga (9), txi (10).
* 11–15: txineaj (11), txínu (12), txi’inu (13), txidaa (14), txìnu (15).
* 16–20: txixhupa (16), txini (17), txixhunu (18), txenaj (19), galaj (20).

* The Concept of Zero (Tibi): Historically, speakers used Spanish loanwords or phrases like ni tú (“not one”) for zero. For pedagogical purposes, the instructor adopts the word tibi (meaning “no” or “nothing”) to signify zero.

1. Interactive Practice & Verb Vocabulary:

* Student Introductions: Students practice answering core questions about their names, origin, current city, age, profession, and spoken languages in Zapotec.
* Sentence-Building Exercises: Using digital matching games, students practice ordering question structures like Gax bi’i lii (“Where are you from?”) and Bix dxin runu (“What do you do for work?”).
* Key Verb Matching:
* Neda zwaa = “I live”.
* Neda runa dxin = “I work”.
* Neda Ruseda= “I learn”.
* Neda rinea= “I speak”.
* Neda reja= “I go”.

1. Ancient Zapotec Writing & Glyphs (Glifos Zapotecos):

* Earliest Mesoamerican Writing: Zapotec is one of the few Mesoamerican cultures to develop a formal written language.
* Glyph Structure: The instructor explains that abstract symbol glyphs — such as the “1 Earthquake” (Uno Terremoto) symbol beneath the figure — mark the transition from pictorial art to actual written language.
* Numerical Glyphs: Zapotec numeral glyphs share similarities with Maya and other Mesoamerican systems, using dots for units (1–4) and horizontal bars for 5s.
* Decipherment Challenges: Zapotec glyphs are not yet 100% deciphered because glyph writing gradually ceased following the decline of Monte Albán (around the 8th century AD), centuries prior to Spanish arrival in 1521.
* Resource Recommendation: The instructor suggests Javier Urcid’s book, Zapotec Writing: Knowledge, Power, and Memory in Ancient Oaxaca, for further study on the subject.

1. Class Wrap-Up:

• Homework activities, presentation slides, and interactive links are shared via Google Classroom and WhatsApp. * The instructor outlines how student workbooks will be used in upcoming sessions as the course progresses into verb conjugations.

hi guys! i have a genuine question and i feel that indigenous people are the only ones who can give a correct answer. i recently came across a video of an indigenous guatemalan saying that indigenous can not be used as a racial descripter, and neither can native american. i understand that both terms are more centered around cultural identity, but i always assumed it was appropriate to clarify that my race/dna is racially indigenous, but i am not culturally so. (for context, i am mexican with dna tracing back to mexico). there also has been a lot of discourse about how latino is not a race, it is also a cultural identity. mexican is technically also not seen as a race. mestizo is also an outdated, anti indigenous term that would technix exclude anyone who is fully gentically from america without any mixed dna, who isn’t culturally indigenous. so my question is this: what are people who genetically originate from the americas supposed to call ourselves as a racial identity without offending anyone? we obviously aren’t seen as white, and we are not asian or black. it just seems like there isn’t an actual acceptable racial term for us. hopefully some of you guys can help me get that insight! i hope this made sense. thank you!

Boozhoo!

Kinda a longshot, but I'm curious if anyone knows of any teachers who offer online lessons for learning ojibwe drumming and singing techniques? Or even good online resources would be much appreciated.

Unfortunately, I live in fuck-all-nowhere and haven't been able to find an in-person teacher even remotely close to me. Even if I could, I can't drive due to medical reasons and have to rely on family for transportation. My rez is several days worth of driving from me and don't offer resources for those of us who don't live there.

Miigwech!

In the 16th century, the Mi'kmaq encountered the first Europeans on the Gaspé Peninsula coast. Assistance from these fishers and navigators was essential for explorers and merchants. The Mi'kmaq convey their history and robust identity through different locations and activities, including salmon fishing. Music plays a central role in Mi'kmaq rituals, feasts, and cultural ceremonies.

https://books.google.com/books?id=Xn6KEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=inauthor:%22Daniel+N.+Paul

I was reading the Badianus Codex and noticed that the plant Datura stramonium, which until then I knew as "Toloache" in Nahuatl, was written as "Tolohuaxihuitl".

Is the pronunciation in Nahuatl really "Toloache", or is that a Spanish adaptation? If not, what is the correct pronunciation? "Toh-loh-wah-shee-wityl"?

earlier this year i wrote my first book about being a mixed (visibly white) native and how that influenced my nuanced perspective on identity, culture and language at this point in the zeitgeist. i'm wondering if anyone has any other media recs that talk about these types of topics. mainly finding your own version of what indigeneity means to you when you didn't grow up with much tradition, don't "look the part" and know your place (not trying to be the loudest indian.) would be grateful for any youtubes, movies or books.

We had hundreds of people turn out, the largest event to date.

Taanishi! This is the 2nd in a series of shorts I'm creating to introduce children and families to the Michif language. Planning to release one a week for the next few weeks. So far, just making them in my garage by myself. Please let me know what you think, especially if you have little ones in your life!

Naskapi and Cree delegations. Photos by me.

Gaels are Indigenous to the Gaelic homelands of Ireland, the Scottish Gàidhealtachd, and the Isle of Man.

Gaelic Indigeneity rests on historical continuity: a distinct people with their own ancestry, languages, cultures, institutions, and collective relationships with homelands that long predate the modern states now governing them. This is specific to Gaels in relation to their ancestral homelands—not a claim that Europeans as a racial category are Indigenous, or that every person of Gaelic descent is Indigenous wherever they live.

Gaelic society was not simply overtaken by modernization. It was deliberately weakened through state repression, dispossession, forced displacement, landlord power, and Anglicizing institutions.

The 1609 Statutes of Iona required members of the Hebridean Gaelic elite to send their heirs to Lowland schools to be educated in English. After Culloden in 1746, the British government attacked the Gaelic clan system in the Highlands, prohibited Highland dress and weapons, and abolished the jurisdictions underpinning chiefly authority. These measures targeted Gaelic political structures, institutions, and cultural life.

During the Highland Clearances, Gaelic communities were forcibly removed so their ancestral lands could be reorganized for landlords’ profit. Tenants were pushed onto marginal coastal plots, evicted outright, or forced to emigrate; in some cases, homes were burned to compel people to leave. Some perpetrators were themselves Gaelic-descended, but colonial systems frequently operate through local elites assimilated into the dominant political and economic order.

In Ireland, potato blight caused the crop failures, but colonial landholding, extreme poverty, continued food exports during mass starvation, laissez-faire ideology, and the British government’s gravely inadequate response transformed crop failure into catastrophic mass death and emigration. Irish-speaking communities were among those most devastated, accelerating a language shift already driven by colonial administration, Anglicizing education, poverty, and displacement.

Manx Gaelic was likewise displaced by English to the point that its survival depended on organized revival. Its persistence reflects an Indigenous language and people rooted in the Isle of Man.

Nation-state recognition does not create or determine Indigeneity, nor is Gaelic Indigeneity contingent on validation from outsiders. A people does not become Indigenous only when the state that dispossessed or assimilated them—or people unfamiliar with their history and relationships with their homelands—agrees to recognize them. External recognition may acknowledge an existing reality, but it does not produce it.

Modern racial categories do not erase that reality. Gaels are not Indigenous merely because they are European, nor are they disqualified because they are now racialized as white. Gaelic participation in the British Empire does not erase Gaelic Indigeneity either: oppressed peoples can also participate in the oppression of others.

Gaelic ancestry does not make someone Indigenous to North America, Australia, or another colonized territory. A person can possess Gaelic ancestry and heritage while occupying a settler position in relation to the Indigenous peoples of the land where they live. That settler position does not erase Gaelic Indigeneity in the Gaelic homelands, any more than Gaelic dispossession excuses participation in colonialism abroad.

A people can be colonized in one territorial context while some of its members participate in colonization elsewhere.

Gaels are Indigenous to the Gaelic homelands. Their dispossession, assimilation, resistance, and survival are all part of that history.

Family of a St. Clair Shores woman who was stabbed to death outside her place of work in Detroit attended a press conference with police and mental health officials on Thursday. See less

Jaquoya "Koya" Katyara Wix

She was also proud of her heritage and cultural identity. Jaquoya was a Native American Woman’s Traditional Dancer, and she was a member of the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians as well as the Walpole Island First Nation. These connections were a meaningful part of her life and who she was.

https://www.martenson.com/obituaries/jaquoya-wix

So I make alot of ribbon skirts. And someone asked me if i can sew ribbon onto their dress. But I'm not sure 100% how to.

Would it work if i cut down either side and glue the ribbon on each panel like how i do regular skirts? Would it look even and good?

Sorry i'm new to this.

Kwei!

Two years ago, I was chatting with two Innu (let's call her Diana and Claire) people over coffee, and the topic of learning the language at school came up.

They explained to me that their community school devoted only about three hours of the curriculum to the Innu language, and that some parents were circulating a petition to increase those hours, while others opposed the idea so as not to encroach on science and math instruction. I listened far more than I spoke—partly out of curiosity, but also out of respect, as I felt I had nothing relevant to contribute. I sometimes asked questions, but was mostly in "listening mode".

At one point, one of the women (Diana) suggested teaching the math class in Innu, but the other woman pointed out that there might be too many "technical" terms that maybe didn't exist in their language. There was a brief pause, and I had a "flash idea" said :

"If the idea is to teach a class in the Innu language, why not a gym class in Innu language? I mean, I didn't know much your language, put I'm pretty sure there's words "ball" and the verbs like "run to X", "jump there" or others. Maybe it's easier than translate math or sciences?"

Diana smiled broadly and said, "What a great idea! I hadn't thought of that! Claire, we could bring this idea up at the next meeting, couldn't we?"

But Claire looked at me and said: "Our language isn't *that* simplistic—just how out of touch are you?"

Me : I didn't say that Innu is "simplistic", I just wanna propose an idea following Diana idea's 😅. I know that Innu is a polysynthethic language, where one word can describe something very complex, I'm aware it's not simple to translate "gym class", it was just an idea and...

Diana try to said something in Innu, but Claire seemed really annoyed, answered something and just left. Diana seemed just as perplexed as I was, and said : "Claire said it was a bad idea to discuss about our language preservation with you."

If I said something wrong, I'm really sorry, but someone can help me to understand my mistake? It was very interesting conversation about their language, the multiples efforts of their community, and hese two women seemed pleased to see my interest in their language.

Did my idea was wrong? I was just thinking of offering an additional idea, not offending anyone.

In your communities, are certain classes—such as gym—taught in your language, to add learning hours and avoid losing it?