|
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. The volume of stories stemming from the pandemic-plagued Navajo Nation is extraordinary, and not in a good way. To be fair, most of the content getting published lately isn’t really news at all, but rather novelty — clickbait, like the little Navajo grandma who went “viral” on TikTok. Or the piece out in The Guardian, Thursday about how the tribal nation won a political re-districting battle in Utah…TWO YEARS AGO. It centers around the theme of my latest newsletter taking a look at distortion. One of the most trending stories for The New York Times this week was about the Hopi professor on Twitter who turned out to be a hoax. A bizarre story, to be sure, but what was perhaps more disturbing was just how many people believed in the fake social media account. Also on #NativeTwitter was something a little more inside baseball, a steady focus on whether a science fiction and fantasy writer is marauding as a Native American. Meanwhile, some singer who I don’t know, but apparently has a good following, was lambasted this week because she Instagrammed a photo (now deleted) of what seems to be a purifying ritual inspired from Native culture. And, like every new age ritual, the spread also featured some sage, which was the detail of her critics. Apparently white sage is on its way to endangerment because so many stores, from Anthropologie to Walmart are stocking their shelves with sage bundles causing an over-harvest of the plant. (Funny, not funny). All of this is to say that the distortion continuum is all connected, and for all kinds of reasons —Native Americans, Indian Country—we are the “miner’s canary” in bearing the brunt of such distortion, what leads to what is fashionably termed as “implicit bias.” It’s why I’m introducing my first installment of “The Crisis in Covering Indian Country” segment which you will see below. And there are more relevant tidbits in this week’s Index. Enjoy! Here’s wishing you a warp-less weekend. — JM
|
