In 1494, Columbus launched the transatlantic slave trade, sending at least two dozen enslaved Taínos to Spain, “men and women, boys and girls,” as he wrote. The next year, 1495, Columbus launched massive slave raids, rounding up 1,600 Taínos, from which the “best” 500, perhaps 550, were selected to be shipped to Spain. Of the hundreds of captives left over, “whoever wanted them could take as many as he pleased,” one eyewitness, a Spanish colonist, Michele de Cuneo, wrote, “and this was done.”

…It began as early as Columbus’s first trip back to Spain, when he left 39 Spaniards at his La Navidad settlement, confident that the powerful Spaniards could handle the supposedly timid Taínos. In response to the Spaniards’ rapacity, the Taínos killed all 39 Spaniards, and burned their fort.

If Columbus’s first trip, with three vessels and maybe 100 men, was an exploratory probe, the second trip, with 17 ships and between 1,200 and 1,500 men, was a full-scale invasion. When slavery turned out not to be profitable on la Española (the island that today is Haiti and the Dominican Republic), Columbus instituted a tribute system for the Taínos, demanding quotas of gold and cotton, with sadistic punishments for those who failed to comply.

…Contrary to some scholarship, the Taínos were not all killed off by Columbus and subsequent occupiers, and today members of the Taíno diaspora along with people in the Caribbean who claim Taíno ancestry are reviving and celebrating their culture. 

Whose History Matters? Students Can Name Columbus, But Most Have Never Heard of the Taíno People

sigh…

The Passamaquoddy Reclaim Their Culture Through Digital Repatriation | The New Yorker

Very cool.

Historians say federally run boarding schools and other tactics to assimilate Native people into white culture have taught generations of Navajo, including Nelson and Sherman’s parents, to discriminate. Navajo leadership are an example. In 2005, the Tribal Council passed the Diné Marriage Act rejecting same-sex marriage.

…“We are seeing clearly the aftereffects of what colonialism can look like and how it really shifted our values as Navajo people,” Nelson said. “Whereas at the time, if you were LGBTQ and growing up in a Navajo traditional family, families celebrated that fact. They said that we were sacred. They said that we had sacred roles.”

Those roles included mediators and leaders.

…When First Man and First Woman weren’t getting along, tradition says, it was the nádleehí [intersex, multi-gendered spirit] who intervened.

…“Navajo family used to pride themselves to have two-spirited people in their family,” Smiley said. “Some of them would take someone by the arm and say, ‘This is my boyfriend. This is my boyfriend.’ That would show people ‘This person makes me rich.’”

…Across the Navajo Nation, elders have come to the aid of granddaughters and grandsons when the rest of the family rejects them. Medicine men revere the “two-spirited,” as they’re sometimes called.

…“When I came out to my family, my mother took it the hardest, but my grandparents didn’t,” said Alray Nelson, an LGBTQ rights activist. “My grandmother sent me a handwritten letter when I was in college. My grandfather doesn’t speak English. He speaks Navajo fluently. He told my grandmother to tell me I would always have a home with them, that I’m his son.

Pride in the ‘two-spirited’: Navajo LGBTQ youth find unlikely champions in their elders | Arizona | wmicentral.com

Before reading this article the word, “unlikely,” jumped right out at me. Because -at least to my admittedly whitey white butt-  that didn’t seem unlikely at all. Many indigenous cultures in what is now the United States, throughout the Americas, and Polynesia have a tradition of revering or making a special place in society for those with “Two-Spirits.”

What a tragedy that this beautiful tradition of respect, understanding, and acceptance became a casualty of white-washing. ..And how encouraging it is to see it coming back.

The scandal most centrally involves Bolsonaro’s eldest son, Flávio, who has long been a state deputy from Rio de Janeiro, but was just elected to the Federal Senate with a massive vote total in the last election. The scandal began with the discovery of highly suspicious payments into and out of the account of Flávio’s driver, a former police officer and long-time friend of the president’s.

Each new discovery has escalated the scandal’s seriousness: One unexplained deposit was found going into the account of Jair Bolsonaro’s wife, Michelle; both the driver and Flávio himself began using highly suspicious maneuvers to try to stymie the investigation; the amounts of the suspicious transfers began rapidly increasing to US$2 million; and then deposits were found going into Flávio’s accounts in small increments of multiple deposits in rapid succession: at times up to 10 cash deposits made within three minutes, the hallmark of money laundering and evading banking regulations.

…That the Bolsonaro family has been discovered to have such close and intimate ties with militias, including the one involved in Franco’s brutal assassination, stunned the country.

…In explaining why he fears for his life, Wyllys specifically cited these new revelations that the Bolsonaro family is linked to the militia blamed for the death of Franco, who was in the same party as Wyllys.

Video: Bolsonaro Scandal That Drove an LGBT Congressman to Flee Brazil

hmmmm