emma ↟ > Recent Status Updates

sorry wait, coffee is coffee, cinnamon rolls are cinnamon rolls, lattes are lattes, but biscottis are thimblets? I think I ask too many questions for this world building

I’ve suspended my disbelief for a lot of this… but did that kid have an electric guitar????

“Mythical generalities of what built this country and made it great must now give way to consideration of keeping contractual obligations due to the Indian people. Morality must begin where immorality began.”

written in 1969—could not be more relevant now.

already giggling. vine deloria jr, you were such a gift

this mc is so scary. it’s a short book but I set it aside for a full two days after he obsessively combed through his foster sister’s room & belongings just… because he wanted to? I’m really struggling to understand what the author was going for here

“[Colonel Maynadier] was surprised to see tears well up in Spotted Tail’s eyes; he did not know that an Indian could weep.” (125)

^ this is shortly after Spotted Tail’s daughter died of illness. the level of dehumanization of Native peoples, on such a sweeping scale across the U.S., is astounding.

really wanted to like this book but i am only vaguely invested

brown’s fixation on battles & sporadic use of citations have bewitched me - jk, jk. this book shines most when pulling together primary sources. inversely, it suffers when the author takes interpretative liberties. it somehow manages to read as paternalistic even while clearly siding with the Native parties—yet it’s undeniable that laying out colonial depravity this frankly is valuable. much to think about.

a timely read.

“[This book] starts from the assumption that colonization was not just a process of invasion and eventual domination of Indigenous populations by European settlers, but also that the eliminatory impulse and structure created in actuality began as environmental injustice. Seen in this light, settler colonialism itself is for Indigenous peoples a structure of environmental injustice.”

I’m reading this so I can compare it to indigenous-authored histories like the heartbeat of wounded knee. I have a lot of thoughts re: the author’s framing of “vanishing” Indian communities, but I’ll save those for later. clocking my progress here just to note: he’s referring to all of the Oceti Sakowin as Dakota?? I’m not Oceti Sakowin but even I know that’s wrong.

january reading wrap up ✨ trying to do more monthly wrap ups this year because they help me consolidate my thoughts before my memory becomes too foggy :)

https://youtu.be/0Gu8WuBI2XE?si=sllGK...

tier ranked all my 2024 reads on my (mostly underused) youtube channel :)

https://youtu.be/12jOQ1C6Y7k?si=KnvoB...

this sibling relationship 😭😭😭

idk if it’s just migraine postdrome or if the prose has actually gotten more confusing but there are like four passages in the last three chapters that have left me going “????”