Above image is a pride flag with every color band represented by a NASA image. White is Earth clouds, pink is aurora, blue is the Sun in a specific wavelength, brown is Jupiter clouds, black is the Hubble deep field, red is the top of sprites, orange is a Mars crater, yellow is the surface of Io, green is a lake with algae, blue is Neptune, and purple is the Crab Nebula in a specific wavelength.
just to clarify, this means that any information regarding:
BIA-funded K12 schools
BIA-funded educational programs, namely tribal adult ed funding and the Johnson O’Malley program (which provides critical funding to fill in deficits for Native students; the idea is that because Native families do not pay property taxes on their tribal land, those students don’t “contribute” money to their local school district, so the feds chip in to cover the difference…JOM pays for things like after school programs, school supplies, libraries, etc for K12)
BIA law enforcement on tribal lands
questions on potential policy changes
current issues/bills in Congress that would affect Indian Country
other federally-funded programs, like funds from OVW to support tribal domestic violence programs (which it sounds like Trump is working on cutting)
the relationship tribes have with federal law enforcement and public lands management (like the national parks)
tribal government petitions/communications to the federal government
etc, all must be approved by Trump’s staff before being sent to tribal leadership. effectively this means the BIA can’t really do their job at all, because they have to be in near-constant communication with tribes at many different levels (for example, when i worked in a tribal dept of education, we frequently contacted BIA for meetings, advice, interpretations of grant stipulations, etc)
so basically this puts tribes in a very difficult situation by keeping them in the dark, and it further erodes whatever shreds of trust we may have had with the federal government. the only reason for this ban on communication without approval is that there is information they don’t want BIA to give our leadership??
Photographer Jenny Miller was moved to create Continuous by the struggles that she had growing up and coming out, the lack of accessible queer indigenous role models, and the need for healing of indigenous communities through decolonization.
Miller is a gay, Two-Spirit photographer. She grew up in Nome and Fairbanks, and currently lives with her girlfriend in Anchorage. Miller understands herself as an amalgamation of her parents’ feminine and masculine qualities. “I think I have a perfect mesh of my mother and my father. And I express them equally, in a way.”
Continuous began to take shape in 2012, while Miller was studying Photomedia and American Indian studies at the University of Washington. Miller was inspired by a class that featured indigenous people who identified as LGBTQ and Two-Spirit, and discussed indigenous gender roles, which are generally understood to have been less rigid than those instituted by colonizers.
Miller realized that the indigenous queer community needed to be more visible, to provide strength to, and role models for, indigenous people who did not yet know who they were.
Jenny Miller received a 2016 Annual Humanities Grant for her project, “Continuous,”** a photographic portraiture series documenting the experiences of Alaska Native LGBTQ | Two-Spirit peoples from distinct tribal backgrounds. The photographs, accompanied by short personal stories, written by the highlighted subjects, will explore what it means to be Alaska Native LGBTQ | Two-Spirit, celebrate individual and cultural identity, and engage viewers in an educational dialogue. Ms. Miller calls both Nome and Fairbanks home, though her mother’s Iñupiaq heritage connects her to Wales, Alaska as well. Drawn to photography from a young age, Ms. Miller graduated from the University of Washington with a BFA in Photomedia and a BA in American Indian Studies.
Read More at Alaska Humanities Forum **The project was first titled Shapeshifters, which Miller hoped would evoke spiritual changes, people shifting between binary gender roles, moving to fulfill their individual desires, and adapting as they figure out who they are and how they want to move through the world.As the project matured, Miller realized that the title did not work
Jenny also came out in an article in Alaska Dispatch News several months before her portrait series was displayed. Read that article here.
There are currently a total of 17 portraits/stories being displayed at The Alaska Humanities Forum in Anchorage till February 7th.
Sediment swirls in Bear Lake caught the eye of an astronaut aboard the International Space Station last year. Bear Lake is situated in the Rocky Mountains, on the Idaho-Utah border. The eddies in the center of the lake are each about 3 km across and are likely the result of inflow from the lake’s tributaries. Silt and sediment picked up by the rivers and streams gets deposited into Bear Lake, revealing the turbulent mixing of tributary waters with those already in the lake. (Image credit: NASA; via NASA Earth Observatory)
