Month: October 2021

  • Wiki Down (For Now), Merch Section Removed, New Content On The Way

    I can’t believe we’re nearing the end of the second year of Alameda Native Art, and the Alameda Native History Project, already. I feel like I’ve been sleeping on this site. Now there’s a whole bunch of stuff to add, and update.

    ANHP Wiki

    The ANHP Wiki reached it’s functional limit on Tuesday; when it broke for the last time. Hopefully, DokuWiki, or MediaWiki will upgrade their code a little in the next update. (Fingers crossed.)

    Merch Section

    I opened a Merchandise section to see if I could offer more prints and stickers for cheaper than RedBubble does. (It’s expensive.) But… I need the storefront and everything to be fully automatic, because I can’t be bothered with processing orders, payments, and shipping. And, I’m also not gonna buy 1,000 stickers, and just hope I can sell them all.

    I have considered buying a bunch of slaps to give away or send to friends. That’s always an option.

    New Content Coming

    Lemme just list the things I’ve done in the past couple of months:

    Visual Art, Maps, Graphic Design

    1. San Francisco Bay Area Tribal Language Groups Map
    2. San Francisco Bay Area Tribal Groups Map
      1. And combinations of the above, sometimes with the San Francisco Bay Region Shellmounds Map
    3. Verona Area Maps
    4. Cover Art of various Historical Newspaper Articles, and for Books
    5. Social Justice Art
    6. Other collages.

    Articles/Pages

    I have a number of write-ups to start. I’ve got some drafts to re-visit, and finish; as well as new topics. And, lots of pages to update, and redesign, with all this content.

    Writing, Stories, Serials

    I’ve been having difficulty deciding whether or not I want to start talking about ghosts, and spirits, and stuff. I know it’s close to Halloween now, and everything….

    And I’m concurrently devoting a lot of time to a project that is rooted in fact, and basically exalts the kinds of documentary evidence that does not exist, and cannot be found, when it comes to ghosts, and spirits, (and stuff.)

    But I desperately need to address the spiritual intersectionality of being Native American–and having a spirituality that is deeply connected with the earth and the celestial bodies–and doing something which is supposed to be “administered”, or carried on dispassionately.

    I can’t argue with my feelings as if they’re facts. I can’t use a hunch; a hummingbird; or the faint sound of singing on the wind as evidence.

    I want to tell you that these things led me to the shellmounds; showed me to the evidence; helped me out without any real information to go off of. That I seemed to arrive there by magic, or Luck (with a capital “L”.)

    Common Sense isn’t scientific, either. But this is investigative journalism, if you really put me in a corner. I’m just answering all of the questions I had as kid; I’m trying to accumulate all the information I need to form a model of “what it looked like” in my head. Somehow continuing an inquiry-based education.

    But this journey is based on a deep-seeded wound that I have held on to for too long. Something I still can’t really define, yet. (But I’m working on it.) It has to do with my adoption. And my search for myself, and my birth family.


    It’s almost the end of second year of this project (“Season 2′).

    It’s time for some deeper reflection. And some story-telling.
  • Milliken 2009, “A Time of Little Choice”, Has Just Been Liberated

    Anthropology, Archaeology, and Ethnology have always been competitive fields. In the East Bay, Native American Graves Consulting is a booming, and exclusive business.

    And, the documented existence of the Ohlone people, who have occupied the East Bay continuously, for thousands of years, hinges upon the information locked away behind paygates; only being referenced by Developers, and City Attorneys.

    The exclusivity of this information has been exploited for money. And used to bolster false claims of sovereignty.

    But, let me be clear:
    The only reason you have this information is because you robbed our ancestors’ graves.

    On a very basic level–without being reductive–these academic papers; all of the information; tangible and non-tangible things that have been developed, derived, or created from the desecration of our ancestors….

    All of that still belongs to us.

    ” A Time of Little Choice: The Disintegration of Tribal Culture in the San Francisco Bay Area 1769-1810″

    Randal Milliken, 2009

  • “Towards a Theory of Digital Necropolitics” Next-Gen Look at Representations of the Dead, Dying, Disappeared, and Wounded Body

    Towards a Theory of Digital Necropolitics

    Link: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1059d63h

    A dissertation written by Francesca A. Romeo, in 2021; and submitted for partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Film and Digital Media, at UC Santa Cruz.

    This dissertation examines the intersections of technology, human rights, and “testimony through representations of the dead, dying, disappeared or wounded body.

    It starts with an examination of the testimony through intimation, like Facebook Live Streams of police murders of black men.

    Includes the examples how images of the murders of Oscar Grant, Stephon Clark, Eric Garner, (and too many more) stood as an intimate testimony that galvanized a community of people who are still being brutalized, and executed, by the police. And these images also served as a counter-narrative to the lies Police, City and other Officials would have told us about why these black men died.

    The power of these images, and videos, the way that these people documented their lives: let the audience experience what it was really like to be the “other”, at the hands of injustice and inequity.

    These testimonies are powerful tools that can be used to help communities mourn, and harness the outrage, and energy behind social movements, and changes in policy.

    This dissertation has three chapters. All of which are eminently relevant today.

    1. Networked Testimony as Necroresistance: Social Media and the Shifting Spectacle of Lynching in America
    2. Digital Decolonialism: Mapping the Personal and Collective Necropolitics of MMIW
    3. Open Source Investigations as Practice: The Forensic Aesthetics of Post-Human Testimony
    Whether or not they are read in order, or even all together, this is definitely a Next-Gen Document for anyone who’s working in the Social Media BLM, MMIW, Anti-Racist, and other Social and Political Movement Spheres.

    Read the article, for free, on eScholarship.org, https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1059d63h