11. Contrary to what movies will tell you, we don’t need rescuing. Tell Kevin Costner: Dances With Wolves and other Hollywood westerns perpetuate the white savior narrative. Instead, watch films written, directed, and/or produced by Natives.
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15. Expose your children to as many Indigenous activities as you can. The more children are exposed to the truth of a people, the less they will be affected by stereotypes.
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25. Recognize that DNA does not equate to culture. Ancestry.com and 23andMe, for example, are in the business of biotechnology, not culture. Culture is the community, not your spit.
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39. Stop buying “sage wands” at grocery stores. Sage, for traditional purposes, is not to be purchased. Sage, or “smudging,” as we call it, is meant to bless and cleanse a person or place. Purchasing some hippie sage wand diminishes its sacred meaning.
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64. Don’t even think about calling anyone/anything your spirit animal.
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66. Just because you lead your local Wiccan circle does not mean you understand 500 years of genocide. First, worshipping the gods and spirits of nature, which is a tenet of Wicca, is not directly comparable to Indigenous spiritualities, and second, please do not compare the Salem Witch Trials to the genocide of Native Americans. That’s not cool.
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75. It’s worth remembering that reservations were first established as prison camps, and Hitler was inspired by them. America doesn’t want you to know that one.
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87. Going camping with your pals whilst pounding booze in Patagonia jackets isn’t a “vision quest.” Please just go camping. No need to call it a “vision quest.”
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93. Stop using the words, “tribes,” “tribe,” and “tribalism” as hip words for interest groups or groups of shared interest. This usage undermines the political, legal and social unique status of tribes.
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99. Stop saying “Native Americans believed…” We believe. We survived. Being a better ally is about getting to know who we are and who we are not. We are not mascots. We are not mere relics of the past. We are writers, doctors, business owners, your classmate, neighbor. We are still here.
