RE: https://mastodon.social/@fromjason/116149689926467364
I'm reflecting on this, as I spent a few months on TikTok in 2021. I was mainly there for the exmormon community, which was also full of activists, but other things spilled into my feed. I haven't thought about that time much, but I'm realizing how many of those videos are still sitting inside me.
And remembering that it was watching just a few clips of native anti-DAPL activists (I'm sorry, I forgot the tribe — Lakota?) explaining colonialism to me that really turned on the lights. That really helped me understand.
It's different seeing someone say it. Their inflections and expressions. Their context, visually. A person, not just an imagined person behind written words.
I remember one man, who was speaking *to* white folks and pulled no punches, every time he addressed you he said, "colonizer!" and spat the word in contempt.... but... it wasn't hostile? Or aggressive? He was calm and deliberate. He was teaching, so I felt no hate behind it, and no other words he said carried that tone. But it did communicate that he was angry. That he was holding me accountable for the history and the dynamics he was describing. And that he expected me to listen, and then do something about it.
It made me sit up straight and pay attention in a whole new way.
And that has transformed into action. Into my anti-colonial deconstruction on here and my attempts to unpack the white unculture inside me and teach it to other white people. Into my support of land back. Into me trying to learn as much as I can about the Kootenai whose land I'm on. And about how to take better care of this land.
I was certainly deconstructing and learning long before Tiktok. But that medium added a whole other dimension to it.
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