Indigenous Rising

ndnprincesses:

On March 14, 2014, this post was made suggesting that the Tumblr native community start a “girl gang called the NDN Princesses,” and based on the positive response, it is becoming a reality.

What’s the point?

The NDN Princesses are here to stamp out racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, body shaming, etc., especially as it pertains to indigenous women and non binary people. 

What do NDN Princesses do?

• Make YouTube videos (on a group channel) in support of indigenous people, especially women, non binary people, NDN youth, two spirit, and LGBTQIA+ people.
• Write articles/commentary or make graphics in support of the same issues for the NDN Princess Tumblr and Facebook group/page.
• Print out flyers to paste around their respective area where it is safe for them to do so in order to promote visibility.
• Promote awareness for indigenous issues and support indigenous media and art (NDN films, books, TV shows, music, etc.) to combat whitewashed media.
• Wear badass denim jackets/vests to show off your NDN royalty status.
• + More to come! If you have an idea for how the NDN Princesses can promote indigenous rights, shoot us a message!

Who can be an NDN Princess?

Anyone who is indigenous and identifies as female or nonbinary can be an NDN Princess. 

Why “NDN Princess”?

The term “Indian princess” has been popularized in the media, especially after films like Disney’s Pocahontas and Peter Pan. It promotes a harmful stereotype of native women as well as inaccurate information about indigenous social/governmental structures, and is a term that’s regularly used by white women playing ~Indian dress up.~ The term “NDN” is a reclamation of the word “Indian,” but also serves as an acronym for the phrase “Never Die Native.” So “NDN Princess” is a reclamation of the phrase “Indian princess,” to reassociate it with real indigenous women who won’t stand for bigotry, inequality, and stereotypes.

Okay - so how do I join?

Right now, there’s no formal structure, and we want this to be open to all indigenous women and nonbinary people, so just shoot a message to this blog to show your interest! As our first “official” statement we will compose a mission statement explaining who we are and what we stand for, and we will compose a video where NDN Princesses who have video cameras read out parts of the mission statement, so if you have good quality videotaping equipment and would like to be in our announcement video (for YouTube), let us know that too!