people who eat maize

Today I was hunched over my desk (I have very bad posture) reading about the morphology of Algonquian languages in The Routledge Handbook of North American Languages when my professor asked me if I have any personal connection to the topic I am studying. I guess he was basically asking me if I am Indigenous, so I said no. Then he asked me why I am interested in Indigenous cultures. He was just curious. I don't think it's that deep honestly, I just do. But I wanted to give him a satisfactory answer, so I had to self-reflect. 

To be honest I don't really like talking about myself because I am not interesting. And I don't like talking about how I got interested in a certain thing, I just like talking about the thing I am interested in. But I think it's important to do introspection to try to understand why you like something and critically examine yourself. Plus in Indigenous studies classes in university, they do make you try to be aware of your positionality and where you stand in relation to the group you are studying. Something that Indigenous scholars seem to understand better than European ones is that you can only try to be objective, you can't ever be 100% objective because your views will always be influenced by the culture you live in. I do believe there is a such thing as the objective truth, but that it is ultimately unknowable by humans, not just because of the limitations of our senses but also because of whatever culture we are influenced by. This can influence our thought process not only in the humanities, but in the sciences. 

Anyways, I think the question is quite vague. Because if he named a specific culture, I could have said what I liked about it (probably something to do with the traditional art, language, or unique way it resisted colonialism). And to be honest, I do like every culture, including both historical and modern ones. I'm only xenophobic to British people ironically, I literally studied English literature in university so I simp for my boys Shakespeare, Milton, Spenser, Chaucer, whoever wrote Sir Gawain and the Green Knight etc. 

But I guess the reason why I like learning about the cultures of North America in particular is because I like the intellectual challenge that comes with understanding with diverse groups of people that don't agree with each other. It's honestly the same reason why I like hearing people from the Indian subcontinent argue about politics (as long as they are being civil... which they aren't a lot of the times yikes) and wondering if India is going to balkanize because of all the different religions and ethnicities. 

It's very satisfying to try understanding different religions, languages, and systems of government. And of course pre-1492 North America was a lot more diverse than Europe at the same time. 

And it also keeps your biases in check if you read about other cultures. There are certain things you assume to be universally done in a certain way until you find out about how another culture does things. Reading about the maize-eating people or other people prevents me from becoming an ethnonationalist and believing in South Asian r@cial svpremacy :)  

Also, my culture is even more patriarchal than yuropians but I was shocked that not all cultures are patriarchal when I found about Haudenosaunee clan mothers. 

So TLDR, I like learning about Native Americans because I like diversity and having my mind blown and having my ethnocentrist worldview destroyed. 

Here is a drawing I made of a female mansplainer "studying" a nagin (snek goddess in Hindu mythology).  This is actually a metaphor for white anthropologists who arrogantly impose their views on the people they study. The title is "I have read all your lore." I hope you like it :) thanks for reading, frens. 

I am obsessed with drawing snek girls

Okay so in Hinduism there is a half-human half-serpent race called Naga which resides in the underworld. Here is what they are supposed to look like:

A female naga is called a nagin. A lot of terrible Bollywood horror movies have nagins in them, for some reason. My general opinion of Bollywood movies is that they suck (at least when it comes to the plot). The costumes, music and set design though? All that is awesome, especially in historical movies. 

Anyways, Bollywood horror movies suck. They're not even scary. They're more funny. I am a really easily scared person but I still don't find them scary. 

I haven't seen all the nagin horror movies out there, although I hope I can eventually get to all of them. The one I did watch was called "Hisss" and it was released in 2010. It's about an evil British guy who is trying to capture a nagin to force her to grant him immortality. He captures a male cobra to try luring her in, or something like that. I don't remember all the details. 

This is objectively a horrible movie. It has a 2.9/10 on IMDb and a 16% on Rotten Tomatoes. But I still loved it because of the snek girl. 

Anyways, so I'm NOT a good artist. At all. But I do enjoy drawing. I really liked drawing mermaids but eventually I moved on to drawing nagins. It's kinda the same idea, isn't it? You draw the upper body of a woman and then you give her a fish tail if it's a mermaid or a snek tail if it's a nagin. I make nagins look Indian and mermaids look European, usually. 

I want this post to be dedicated to my nagin art but I'll link some of my mermaid drawings on DeviantArt if you're interested. Please do follow my DeviantArt if you use it! Just go to aztecatl13.deviantart.com. 

And here are links to my mermaid drawings: 

• Mermaid (European) 
• Sedna (Inuit) 
  
• Candy corn mermaid (a fictional race that has tricoloured hair that's white, orange and yellow like candy corn) 
  

Anyways it's time to talk about my nagin art. 

My very first attempt at a nagin, back in 2017:

So at that time I struggled with proportions a lot. However, I do like the eyes and hair here. I think I like how her face is cute but the rest of her looks scary. She has a really menacing curved sword dripping with blood. She also has a snake around her neck that she's wearing like a scarf. I think that was a nice detail, but the colouring was not done well enough for the snek scarf to stand out. 

My second attempt at a nagin in 2019 (basically a redraw of the first one)

Alright, the colouring on here is much better and the proportions are better. Maybe not perfect, but I think it's a big improvement from the first one. I like doing this sort of thing a lot as a self-taught artist where I just go back and try redrawing something I made a few years ago. If you want to see more examples of me doing this sort of thing, check out this drawing on DeviantArt and this one as well. 

Anyways, I do like how this nagin's figure looks and the hair as well, although I think I could have done a better lighting effect on the hair to make it shine more. 

Digital nagin (2020) 

In 2020, I came back to this drawing and made a digital version of it with the Ibis Paint X app. Now, I'm horrible at digital art. But keep in mind I was only using a tiny phone screen and my finger to draw, so I guess this is decent. I don't have a stylus or drawing tablet. 

Yet another digital nagin 

The purple-tailed nagin with the ponytail seem to be a different character. Maybe like a sister of the green-tailed nagin. I don't have a paper version of her (except for an uncoloured line drawing), just this digital drawing which I made in the same way as the previous one. 

My most recent nagin drawing (2021) 

This is my most recent nagin drawing. I brought the green-tailed nagin back. This time she has a flower, not a weapon, and she's resting by a body of water. I went all off with the Prismacolor coloured pencils here and did a lot of shading. I'm really pleased with how this turned out. I watched a bunch of really long Vaush videos while colouring this lmao (I don't like or dislike Vaush. He's a really mediocre political youtuber in my opinion but his videos are just easy to listen to while doing other stuff). 

I will definitely continue drawing nagins and posting about them, since I'm kinda obsessed with them. I'm thinking about having three different nagin characters (you've already seen the green-tailed and purple-tailed one) but I'm thinking about also having a red-tailed one and then giving them all signature weapons and different hairstyles. They could be sisters. Then perhaps I could write a story about them, idk. I should refer to the original mythology behind Naga creatures to figure out how that should go. 

Anyways, I hope you liked this post. 

The Lady of Cofitachequi

A long time ago, when I used to have a lot of internet friends, I asked people for suggestions of what to draw. One of my Native internet friends suggested I draw the lady of Cofitachequi. I didn't know who that was so I did some research. Cofitachequi was a chiefdom in South Carolina that the invader Hernando de Soto encountered in 1540. 

Well the original drawing I made wasn't that great. But recently I decided to do a digital version of the same drawing and it came out better. I used the drawing app Ibis Paint X. I don't have a drawing tablet, so I just used my phone. 

Here's how it turned out. I'm not so good at shading. If you have any tips let me know :) . 

Haudenosaunee Clan Mother

A/N: I decided to do a really small collaboration project with my internet friend, who is a great artist and does commissions! Please follow her on Instagram @artprincess235 and check out her DeviantArt account as well: https://www.deviantart.com/mariajosecreations Remember you should always support indigenous artists like her ;) . Basically, we wanted to do some informative posts about the role of women in traditional indigenous societies before Europeans arrived. We're going to start with Iroquois Clan Mothers and might continue this in the future. The art is done by her. The informative descriptions are written by me.

The Iroquois Confederacy was one of the most powerful alliances in North America prior to European contact. The Haudenosaunee, as they call themselves, have an origin story in their oral tradition about the Great Peacemaker and the formation of the league. Historians believe this to have happened around 1142. Soon after, The league came to dominate the Great Lakes area. In 1722, the Tuscarora joined and the league became known as the Six Nations.

Haudenosaunee society followed a matriarchal family structure. Each family traced its lineage back to a female ancestor. After a woman got married, her husband would move to her family’s longhouse and their children would be considered a part of the mother’s clan.

One of the most important roles of women among the Haudenosaunee was that of Clan Mother. The Clan Mothers were the leaders of the clans and were passed down the title by their female relatives. They had to oversee village affairs such as food distribution and land usage, and had to make the critical decision of deciding who would be the chief.

But even though Clan Mothers played an essential role in the government, the main reason why they were venerated was because they ensured that children were taught the traditions of the people and that the culture survived. Clan Mothers arranged marriages and named children at birth. No ceremony could begin without a Clan Mother, because they knew about all the procedures that should be followed. They ensured that the customs and ways of the Longhouse did not die out. Just as fires in the hearths of longhouses were guarded so they wouldn’t burn out, the Clan Mothers guarded the culture of the people.

ÇATAL HÜYÜK!!!!!!!

artist: Frypan

If the title of this post and the poorly drawn image above completely confused you then you probably have no idea what Çatalhüyük is!!

Well, I will tell you what it is. Right after I confuse you more with another poorly drawn thing that I made when I was in India:

Ok, ok.... now I'll tell you what it is.... 

Çatalhüyük Quick Facts:

 Çatalhüyük was one of the world's oldest towns. It was the second one ever built (the first town was Jericho in Jordan). 
 Çatalhüyük's ruins are located in southern Anatolia, Turkey. 
 This town flourished in 6500 B.C making it older than Mesopotamia, Kemet/Aegyptus, and the Indus valley civilization ;D It's also one of the coolest neolithic sites ever.
 Çatalhüyük's people were successful farmers. They were able to grow wheat and barley and raise cattle. The town also traded obsidian.

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As you can see in the fail drawings I made, (or maybe you can't because my drawing skills are just that bad), Çatalhüyük was built in a very interesting way. The houses in Çatalhüyük were rectangular, interconnected buildings with no doors. People entered the houses through holes in the roofs, which were reached by wooden ladders. This was good for safety, as it protected residents from enemies and wild animals. The ladders were simply removed when enemies were nearby to leave no obvious means of entry. The rooftops were like streets.

Also, vultures had a huge significance in this town. The walls were covered in drawings of vultures. It is also said that the people worshipped vultures.... leaving their dead for the vultures to eat and even dressing up as vultures for special occasions. (I have two vulture priests in the first bad drawing at the back BTW).

Yes, they left their dead for vultures to eat and had interesting funerals where priests would dress as vultures and dance. I actually find that awesome. Some modern religions still feed their dead to vultures ;D 

Just imagine these vultures.... eating a human instead of a buffalo carcass....

kay, bai!!

I hope this post makes up for my lame posts that I have done recently D:

What happens when....?!

What happens when you mix Nyan cat with the ancient Aztec god Quetzalcoatl?!