Hello Readers! Happy Native American Heritage Month! Ok so Thanksgiving is in two weeks & like every year it is a great time of year and a terrible one.

Being Native American can make me hate Thanksgiving. Its a made up holiday that the “colonizer” came up with to make it seem like they didn’t come take a people’s land and food and then kill, rape and give diseases to thousands of millions of men, women and children who now have little rights in their own country.

On the other hand I do celebrate it. Now you might say hypocrite but the way I see it I’m definitely not celebrating that racist holiday but just the act of eating and hanging with family and friends.

I always the day of say a prayer for all my ancestors & for all my friends still in the struggle. But I have noticed that this holiday happens to fall during Native American Heritage Month which is funny because no racist holidays fall during Black History Month or Hispanic Heritage Month so what’s the deal.

I mean it’s hard to be Native year round but then you have racist holidays like this, Columbus Day (now Indigninous People’s Day in Seattle and other states) & the fact that girls (and guys) think it’s ok to dress up like us on Halloween (it’s as bad as black face for blacks).

Then being from the Washington DC area you have to deal with racist Dan Snider (enough said) and it just all adds up after a while. I’m pretty lucky though considering I’m more of an “urban” Native then the ones that grew up on the reservation (or reserve as the Canadian tribes call it) so I’ve had a lot more opportunities then a lot of them have.

But no matter where you grew up the things your ancestries had to go through for 500 years still hurts. So at Thanksgiving time when a teacher or a mom goes to tell the story of the “First Thanksgiving” to their kids, at least tell the truth. Don’t be ignorant and let kids believe more lies about this country then they already do.

The being Thankful part is fine because everyone should be thankful everyday but don’t celebrate a lie.

Enough on that subject. In celebration of Native American Heritage Month, (which by the way gets very little recognition as a national holiday) I wanted to present some modern images of Natives. Oh and ps we are not all red with straight long black hair & from the mid-west (just saying)

Supaman- Crow

Nahko Bear & Medicine for the People- Nahko is Apache, Puerto Rican & Filipino

Tiana Spotted Thunder- Lakota from the Pine Ridge Reservation (which I have been fortune to visit)

Fawn Wood- Cree

Indiginous- Sioux (Lakota, Dakota, Nakota)

Plateros- Navajo

Walela- Cherokee

A Tribe Called Red- Mohawk, Cayuga and Nipissing Anishnabe from Ottawa Canada

Three Generationz- Choctaw

Walatowa Massive- Hemish (Jemez) Tribe out of New Mexico

I’ve also saw on the MTV Facebook that they are doing their Rebel Music documentary series which airs today at 4pm on their fb page dealing with the issues of Native American youth today and highlights a few young musicians who are making a change and uplifting through their music.

http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory/mtvs-rebel-music-highlights-native-americans-26867912

Crooked Arrows- A really great movie about Native American stick ball/lacrosse. I actually think it’s on Netflix so check it out.

Preparing to square off against the superior teams of an elite prep-school league, the rag-tag members of a Native American lacrosse squad gain confidence on the playing field as their coach inspires them to take pride in their cultural heritage.

Nelly Furtado- Big Hoops ft some dope Native hoop dancers

Skrillex ft Damian “Jr Gong” Marley- Make it Bun Dem

Joanne Shenandoah- Cherokee

Cool little video about Native Youth & Native American Heritage Month from a college in Arizona-

That’s all for now my homies & remember to believe in the good things coming! ✊

*Update*: Hello readers here is a little update from my post from last year. I wanted to post on here about something I just found out about that you can do on Thanksgiving day if you choose to celebrate it but feel some type of way about the low-key way this holiday is celebrated without thinking about what happened to the Native Americans and other indigenous people on this day. You take a chair from the table and you leave it empty. This chair is to symbolize the people who have lost their lives either through the USA genocide of the Native Americans, Blacks & Latinos or it can be like a person who is homeless and has no where to go for this holiday. It can even be a family member who has died recently and your are honoring them by having a seat at the table.

Also check out my playlist below of different versions of what being Native American means and updated versions of who we are as people today.