Yes. This. 

radicallyhottoff:

via www.sdpb.org

My crappy internet connection will not let me post a full picture of this—which is originally a picture taken by local newspapers of Lost Bird (or Zintkala Nuni)—who had dressed up as a “native woman” for her white mother—who was a suffragette and was speaking at an engagement. Lost Bird was to represent suffragette (and then later on, *F*eminist) icons, Sacagawea and Pocohontas. Lost Bird was expected to look “regal”—like a true Indian Princess.

Lost Bird was also a survivor of the Wounded Knee massacre. She was discovered by a group of white people who were burying the dead after the massacre—her Indian mother had scratched out a small hovel with other mothers to protect their children from the cold. Her mother was wounded and not only froze to death over Lost Bird, but bleed all over her. When Lost Bird was found, they thought she was wounded because she was covered in so much blood. It was all her mother’s blood.

After she was found, from what I can tell, two native women at separate times tried to take her back from white men who claimed Lost Bird as a literal war trophy—but ultimately, she was kidnapped permanently by a white soldier and his suffragette white wife.  

The white soldier used Lost Bird as a trophy to get attention—the white woman attempted to raise Lost Bird, and most speculate that she really did love Lost Bird—but this picture shows that the mother may have had the best of intentions, but had no awareness of irony or even basic humanity.

This picture demonstrates a historical ….violence? of *F*eminism—that can only see native women as princesses—and not as daughters or genocide survivors. That can only see women/gender liberation on the terms of whiteness and white supremacy—that covers up the violence white supremacy commits with kind words like “noble” and “regal” and “princess”—i see now that in *my* time as an activist looking to “reclaim” or “make space” for vioces that are so often silenced, even I was looking in the wrong direction. This pictures shows that it is not a question of “what were Sacagawea and Pocohontas’s lives really like? let’s “reclaim” the human from the princess fantasy—this is a question of how the racist princess fantasy erases the lived reality of Native women—how the reality of genocidal violence and war atrocities can be sitting right up in our (colonial and imperial) faces—and we don’t even need to look away. We can just re-dress that violence with the face of a Princess. The baby covered in her mother’s blood and paraded around for trophy pictures by soldiers raised by white supremacy becomes a princess.

Andy Smith has written about how this phenomenon still occurs in feminist circles—feminists wanting their noble princess to pray over the group of (mostly) white feminists who then get to ignore her and her needs as a native woman as the (real) feminists work on issues from a point of view that never seems to incorporate Native women’s needs or reality.

I read about Lost Bird that she managed to make her way to South Dakota (where her tribe’s reservation is located) several times. And she was rejected by the tribe. One time, she stood out in the rain screaming “It’s me, Lost Bird! Zintka Lanuni! Please help me!”  . The Indians around her noted that she mispronounced her own name. 

The name she was given by a native woman who tried to rescue her from white kidnappers—the name her white mother couldn’t pronounce so shortened to Zintka…the name that came after several white kidnappers tried to impose white names on her like Margaret (which also happened to be the name of a white woman who helped to snatch her back from the tribe that tried to adopt her)…The name that came because her given name—the one given to her by her parents and her tribe—the one that carried her history and the love of people who knew her—was taken from her—killed just as surely and as permanently as her mother and father were.

Lost Bird couldn’t say that name—didn’t have anybody around her to tell her the right way to say it. She could play her white mother’s regal Indian princess just fine for the cameras—but she couldn’t say her own name. 

How many of us carry Zintkala Nuni’s life in our history. On our shoulders? How many of us carry the same tongue that can’t roll the r’s? How many of us were raised by white mothers that meant well—but thought we looked so cute dressed like a (native, mexican, black girl, china doll, etc)? How many of us go back to where we once had people who loved us and are scared to say our own names? Because we know….

I think the pictures of Lost Bird (especially as a baby) are war crimes. I think Feminists have a lot to answer for. Even more than I ever knew. I think I’m sick of being lost and not knowing. I think we all need to finally see the emperors naked ass walking down the aisle. We could see—we *can* see—if we only let ourselves. 

(via twkestrel)