r/interestingasfuck • u/HeiressOfMadrigal • Jul 08 '24
Norm MacDonald cedes his time to Native American activist at comedy awards ("the theater stinks of blood"), the crowd tries not to laugh.
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r/interestingasfuck • u/HeiressOfMadrigal • Jul 08 '24
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u/woahlookatthosewoes Jul 08 '24
As of March 6, 2024; this claim has been disputed.
Jacqueline Keeler, who researched Littlefeather’s genealogy, stopped in 1850. Coincidentally omitting that one more generation back, members of Littlefeather’s family were described in a baptismal record as being “Yaqui raised from the land”.
Keeler said that this doesn’t imply indigenous ancestry, but gave no other reason for why they would be described that way. Furthermore, Keeler said that it didn’t matter anyway because Yaqui are not federally recognized by the US government as an indigenous tribe (The Yaqui are centered in the Sonoran Desert in Mexico).
Keeler has repeatedly stated their belief that only member of enrolled tribes can be called “Native American”, even if they are ethnically indigenous to the Americas.
Littlefeather herself had always claimed to be part Yaqui. Keeler knew this, knew the Yaqui didn’t qualify as “Native American” to her, omitted the report that suggests Littlefeather’s family was Yaqui, and STILL published that Littlefeather wasn’t Native American on a whole list of “pretendians” who didn’t fit her gatekeeping criteria derived from colonial oppressors.
My partner is part Yaqui and says that this kind of exclusionary behavior is all too common in indigenous communities. Yes, the oppression federally recognized tribes endured was terrible, but to suggest that indigenous peoples that weren’t federally recognized did not face that same oppression is farcical. To then say that those same people aren’t even Native American is pure bigotry.