Look I know people mean well, I DO. I'm not saying these things to make anyone feel bad or to be angry, but if you DO want to help elevate Native voices, please understand the difference between uplifting our voices and speaking OVER US. If you want to uplift our voices then find things written by actual natives and reblog it, and ask actual natives and reblog that, interviews, native american websites and books written by natives, etc. And also don't ask one tribe to speak for another because we are not all the same. But by taking one thing you heard somewhere and spreading that around from your own mouth, you're speaking OVER us.
Even if one native told you not to say it, that's one native. I promise the majority of us are NOT overly supersitious. If one native you spoke to is so superstitious that it freaks them out if you say the word Wendigo, then don't say it around them. If you want to protect the virgin ears of everyone with a closely held belief then don't say the name of ANY mythological beast, don't say 'God', 'Jesus', or 'Satan'. (If you think only white/European/colonists believe that saying 'Satan' will summon him, I would like to point to a swath of very traditional Christian native Americans including my own grandfather)
I saw one person say like 'respect the culture and the people who are SCARED of that shit' in the tags and like, once again, that is SO infantalizing. I know you don't mean it to be, but you really think all natives are so SCARED of a story that we get genuinely distressed by you TYPING it on the internet??? And you don't see how stereotypical that is?
Again, I'm not saying this to make anyone feel bad for trying to help, but if you want to help then you will understand this.
To people reblogging posts written by actual natives (not just mine, anyone), thank you for setting an example, it's the only thing tempering my frustration, to see some people out there spread my words without speaking for me, and learning from it. <3
(okay I lied about not responding to anything, this one just hits right)