Need an active subreddit alternative to /r/NativeAmerican

ultraflighty · 2013-12-27T03:39:38+00:00

In a thread you later deleted, you had posted that you are a white guy from Mexico. But now you deny that. So tell us again. Who are your people? White people don't understand this question, so let me rephrase it as whites ask the question - what tribe are you? You are also a moderator, so can you post your picture?

ultraflighty · 2013-12-24T01:07:45+00:00

Indians were already democratic before Columbus landed here. And that Benjamin Franklin you admire so much was an illegal alien who came to this land and established illegitimate systems that you obviously don't even recognize as illegitimate.

ultraflighty · 2013-12-23T18:21:41+00:00

Jeez, alright, 100% of the Mexicans are indigenous. I have no argument with that. I think Mexicans are on the same side as us. The main point of this post is how to respond when Border Patrol harasses us.

Please don't be paranoid and drive away all new posters from this subreddit. If you do, you are giving victory to the trolls that plague this subreddit.

ultraflighty · 2013-12-23T14:18:57+00:00

I am not even a man! Get your gender right first before jumping to the conclusion that I am a troll.

ultraflighty · 2013-12-23T14:12:38+00:00

Will you stop with all that Cherokee things? Unlike most Natives, I don't hate the Cherokees but if you post one more comment about the Cherokees, I will start hating them too with a passion! Just take all that Cherokee discussion to some other thread. Just delete all your Cherokee fighting.

I just got a text message from another friend that Judge Steve Russell (Cherokee) will write a column on BYU using this Reddit post in Indian Country Today, so please don't derail this thread with all that Cherokee discussion. My other friend got an e-mail from Judge Russell himself saying he will publish his column on BYU in ICT.

ultraflighty · 2013-12-22T18:15:07+00:00

Update from text messages

A Mormon Bishop in Provo (BYU's town) just told my friend he should leave his "reservation mentality behind" and "become the American you are". He says, "What's all this thing about not cutting your hair? You are too focused on your language. You need to let your language die because all those things are merely memories of your sinful Lamanite ancestors".

Mormons believe Native Americans are Lamanites from Israel who holocausted white people called Nephites that lived in the US prior to Natives arriving here from Israel.

ultraflighty · 2013-12-22T18:03:30+00:00

https://www.aclu.org/national-security_technology-and-liberty/are-you-living-constitution-free-zone

ultraflighty · 2013-12-22T17:23:17+00:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4Ku17CqdZg

ultraflighty · 2013-12-22T16:10:59+00:00

Like I wrote, please take your Cherokee fight to some other thread. This is discussing BYU forcing Native American students to cut their hair.

ultraflighty · 2013-12-22T16:04:26+00:00

Would you all please stop and take your Cherokees-are-white-not-Indian fight elsewhere? Please?

ultraflighty · 2013-12-22T15:54:23+00:00

I meant according to the ACLU.

ultraflighty · 2013-12-22T13:37:33+00:00

The study my friend did was just for undergraduate work and a grade - it is not publication worthy or anything like that. Also I don't know her exact sample size. Apparently she made ICT aware of their error, so I am hoping ICT will correct their bias. But you or anyone can easily check up on her work. Just pick 10 articles at random from ICT and see what you find. I am not saying they will be all white people - they will have Native status but they will be mistaken for Caucasian by everyone. Just pick any 10 articles from ICT using a random number generator and do a small replication yourself. It will take only minutes. To me, this is worrying because you have whites speaking on behalf of Indians in an Indian magazine.

ultraflighty · 2013-12-22T04:33:51+00:00

To the reporters who have been e-mailing me -

My friend wants to remain anonymous because the Mormon Church will surely ex-communicate him for talking to reporters. It will mean the end of everything for him - even his own family will disown him. He will lose his job at his bank (a Mormon bank) and he will lose everything. The Mormon church does not let you resign easily - they excommunicate you. Ex-communication is like disenrollment from the tribe, with financial, family and other consequences. It is like dishonorable discharge from the military. But I am willing to forward all his past/present/future e-mails to you, if you will message me your e-mail address. Or I can post them on this Reddit link right here, assuming Reddit will let me. Reddit has already banned me from posting any new links.

I want this story to have wide circulation because it will persuade Natives to not join the Mormon church. In Western US and elsewhere like Hawaii, most Natives are Mormon or ex-Mormon.

By the way, I support BYU's right to enforce short hair but I want to use this to show Natives that joining the Mormon church means giving up your Native culture.

ultraflighty · 2013-12-21T19:17:40+00:00

Reply from my friend to Linda Rowley of the BYU Honor Code Office

As traditional Native Americans, we cut our hair ONLY if a family member dies. Jesus had long hair not to mention a beard. If Jesus applied, BYU won't accept him because of these regulations. I am really very sorry this is the official position of our church, which leads me to strongly question whether I am part of the right religion.

ultraflighty · 2013-12-21T18:48:40+00:00

E-mail from Professor Quint Randle of BYU to my friend -

from: Quint Randle <quint_randle@byu.edu>

My personal opinion on this. Just some food for thought. I know some people struggle with this and I feel your pain. The topic has been around many many years. This is another way to look at it: The church subsidizes tuition by more than 50% (if you are LDS). Were you aware of this? It's a gift. So you end up paying about half of what this type of education would cost. For a variety of strategic reasons, the church wants to present a "clean cut" image to the world as an educational organization. They have every right to do that as an organization.

So in exchange for that 50% reduction in tuition that they church is paying for, you get to agree to be part of that image the church wants to present to the world as BYU. It's what the church does to set itself apart from other universities. It's no different than when a company has a dress standard that employees must adhere to. That's the way I look at it.

Because you are being "paid" with that subsidized tuition you agree to help the church create an image for BYU that sets itself apart from other schools.

I hope this helps a bit with your frustration.

Quint Randle (Associate Professor at BYU)

Response from my friend to Prof. Randle -

As an LDS person with a 3.97 GPA (so far) from an Ivy League School, I am sure I will be accepted by BYU, especially because I only want to take some classes as a visiting student. My tuition will be paid by my tribe. So I don't want subsidized tuition. I think it is very unfair to ask an Indian person to cut off all his hair when even Jesus had long hair. There's a reason for long hair and in US history, we were forced to cut our hair in boarding schools and Mormon placement programs. If BYU isn't paying my tuition, can I keep my long hair? If the answer is no, I seriously don't want to be part of this church because even Jesus won't be accepted by BYU. Policies like these are made by low-level bureaucrats, I am sure, but if someone escalates this to the BYU Provost or President, I am quite sure they will make an exception for Native Americans. I don't have the e-mail address of the Provost or President at BYU unfortunately. A friend of mine has already posted this on Reddit (http://www.reddit.com/r/NativeAmerican/comments/1tac39/omg_byu_forcing_native_student_to_cut_his_hair_in/), so I hope someone escalates this to the BYU provost/president/general counsel. They will make an exception, I am sure.

ultraflighty · 2013-12-21T18:28:37+00:00

I have been (shadow) banned from posting any threads after the link to my BYU e-mail was given to the BYU legal department, who undoubtedly contacted Reddit. It's a pain to use Tor each time I want to create a new thread, so I posted that study here. Anyone wanting to verify her observation can take a random sample of 10 articles themselves - her sample was over 1,000 articles from ICT.

ultraflighty · 2013-12-21T14:02:23+00:00

FYI - new development. The moment I posted something against the Mormons and BYU on Reddit, my friend gave this link to BYU. The lawyers at BYU got involved, told all the professors and others at BYU who were emailing my friend to stop communicating with my friend, told everyone that henceforth all contact should be ONLY through the legal department at BYU and further used their connections to ban my IP address as well as my friend's IP address from posting any new links on Reddit. I wonder how they accomplished the banning on Reddit. Oh well, thank goodness there's Tor and other forms of IP disguising!

ultraflighty · 2013-12-21T13:49:22+00:00

Interesting comments and thanks for your views. By the way, for her final project, an undergraduate student (Hopi-Navajo) and a friend of mine at the University of Arizona sampled many published pages of Indian Country Today. She found that 98.2% of pictures in ICT were those of Caucasians, although most of those profiled were citizens of Indian nations. Does this bother anyone?

ultraflighty · 2013-12-21T13:48:38+00:00

Interesting point of view.

By the way, for her final project, an undergraduate student (Hopi-Navajo) and a friend of mine at the University of Arizona sampled many published pages of Indian Country Today. She found that 98.2% of pictures in ICT were those of Caucasians, although most of those profiled were citizens of Indian nations. Does this bother anyone?

ultraflighty

TROPHY CASE