Oct. 18, 2012 at 7:53pm with 7,714 notes
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Native American
Before and after shot of a man who attended Carlisle Indian boarding school.  The destruction of an entire culture in one photo Um…no. I think the Original Poster’s heart is in the right place here but by saying that culture is only visual is reinforcing the stereotypes and appropriations that have been detrimental to Native representation (It is also dangerous to place culture at the site of the body). As Hebdige argues, Culture as an aesthetic value (or an image) is a product of the feudal or dominant hierarchy. I would agree with his second definition of culture (via Raymond Williams) that culture is “the relationships between elements in a whole way of life,” and the visual and physical aesthetics would be only one of those elements. This is important because it changes the idea of culture from immutable to historicized “from fixity to transformation(See from Subculture: The Meaning of Style).” It was part of his culture not his “entire” culture which was denied, and then not entirely erased.  Native Culture is not only in our dress and while most of the Boarding Schools were horrendous (though some ran by tribes were quite progressive) within them we found multi-cultural spaces-via this meeting of tribal cultures in some ways the schools inadvertently laid the foundation for the pan-tribal movements that would occur later in the century. The success of Native Culture has been that it can survive, and has survived all forms of attempted genocide. As someone who has studied Native images they do and can lie-resistance is something that cannot be quantified in or as an image.

Before and after shot of a man who attended Carlisle Indian boarding school.  The destruction of an entire culture in one photo

Um…no.

I think the Original Poster’s heart is in the right place here but by saying that culture is only visual is reinforcing the stereotypes and appropriations that have been detrimental to Native representation (It is also dangerous to place culture at the site of the body). As Hebdige argues, Culture as an aesthetic value (or an image) is a product of the feudal or dominant hierarchy. I would agree with his second definition of culture (via Raymond Williams) that culture is “the relationships between elements in a whole way of life,” and the visual and physical aesthetics would be only one of those elements. This is important because it changes the idea of culture from immutable to historicized “from fixity to transformation(See from Subculture: The Meaning of Style).”

It was part of his culture not his “entire” culture which was denied, and then not entirely erased.  Native Culture is not only in our dress and while most of the Boarding Schools were horrendous (though some ran by tribes were quite progressive) within them we found multi-cultural spaces-via this meeting of tribal cultures in some ways the schools inadvertently laid the foundation for the pan-tribal movements that would occur later in the century. The success of Native Culture has been that it can survive, and has survived all forms of attempted genocide. As someone who has studied Native images they do and can lie-resistance is something that cannot be quantified in or as an image.

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    and you know this was shown as like a “successful case” of assimilation, like people would proudly show this shit around...
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