Someone tells you, "There's nobody on that piece of land," and you're invited to stake a claim to it, build a home, move your family, and grow crops. Start a new life for yourself. That was the narrative fed to early European settlers and is commonly referred to as "The Pristine Myth," meaning the wilderness [...]
Category: Bitter Sweet Brain Juice
Underling Mentality in “The Smurfs:” Why Azrael Allows Himself to be Abused by Gargamel
No one believes themselves to be like Azrael. If we had to choose between the cat and Gargamel, we'd all choose Gargamel--if push came to shove. We'd rather be neither, or think of ourselves as neither. But we're one or the other in someone's eyes. This article is an examination of how the "underling" can allow himself [...]
From the Edge of a Cliff to Under a Bus: Living Under the Dark Skinned Microscope
Have you ever felt like you were being watched? It's a creepy feeling. And then you look up to find someone staring. Your instincts picked up on the energy and you knew before looking that someone was watching you. When I encounter implicit bias, it has the same effect. I know when I'm being targeted with excess negative attention. I wonder [...]
#NathanPhillips Vs. #MAGA: Are Liberals Too Weak to Defeat MAGA?
Natives watched as a liberal stronghold quickly collapsed with a simple bait and switch. How did the conservatives do it? They just repeated everything Nathan Phillips said by placing his words into their context. So why did liberals collapse so quickly? There has been an ongoing issue within the liberal community, and conservatives make the [...]
Real Life Turns Into Fiction
I've said this before: If you don't want to be villain in fiction then don't be one in real life. The beautiful thing about graduating from two different writing programs are the connections made between creative writers and journalists. We tend to be tasked with a similar challenge. How to captivate an audience. Twitter can [...]
Reductive Discernment Between the Crabs in the Barrel and Fake In’dins
You've done the work. Wrote the story, painted the painting, soldered the jewelry, sculpted the clay, or weaved the basket. You've put in the hours at the workstation, lost yourself in the art, creating work unique and powerful and meant to contribute to a collective of voices echoing from generations past. Then you take the [...]
“How Awful Goodness Is”: Novel Writing from Unseen Places
One of my favorite lines in The Crow is when Eric (Brandon Lee) has T-Bird (David Patrick Kelly) duct taped to the drivers seat of his car, as its filled with explosives and aimed at a pier leading toward a harbor. T-Bird can't believe Eric has come back to life as The Crow and as [...]
Resistance Literature: A New Wave of Intellectual Engagement
So I'm walking through a bookstore in downtown Santa Fe, New Mexico and I'm reading blurbs. I'm not going to blast any artists. That's not what I'm about. We all come from a different set of experiences. But why are mainstream book publisher publishing the same narrative over and over and over and over? These blurbs [...]
From Hipster Beards to Tiki Torches
Sometimes I wonder about the critical thinking skills of our era. We are taught in school rote behavior. Regurgitate, bell rings, regurgitate, bell rings, regurgitate, bell rings. In that form of habitualization, we stop thinking for ourselves. You become even more aware of this tactic after you read "Social Class and School Knowledge" by Jean Anyon. Having [...]
Shark Attacks: Making Friends in the Feeding Frenzy
If you've ever watched a documentary on sharks then you're familiar with the feeding frenzy. This is when a school of sharks start to feed on prey. It can be an attack on a single victim or a school of other fish, but once the feeding begins the energy multiplies over and over as the [...]
Scrutiny of Dark Skinned Males
Do you think you watch the behavior of dark skinned males more closely than other people? Maybe you feel you don't. Then you have to watch this video: Support a Native owned Etsy shop, Allies United, where I offer unique merch for allies of social justice movements, like MMIW, Native Lives Matter and Black Lives [...]
Non-Competitive Modus Operandi
You were plugging away on the keyboard, doing your thing, writing your stories, singing the songs you want to sing, and then out of nowhere you get attacked by some overly competitive asshole. If you're not competitive, then why would someone go out of their way to compete against you? I run into this often. [...]
