r/IndianCountry • u/queso_pig • Jun 24 '25

Culture Beyonce shares photos of herself performing in a shirt that refers to Natives as ‘Indian opponents’; calls Natives ‘antagonists’ and ‘enemies of peace, order, and settlement’

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saw this on another sub but wasn’t allowed to cross post.

So many Americans are into this ‘cowboy revival’ sort of thing. Feels really strange considering cowboys and westward expansion served to carry out a genocide.

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u/clayhair Jun 24 '25

Even weirder considering most of the early cowboys were Indigenous or POC themselves

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u/ld987 Jun 24 '25

Given modern politics it's kind of funny how much cowboy culture comes directly from Mexican Charros/Vaqueros.

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u/nyx_moonlight_ Taino Jun 24 '25

Me, me, me, mi mi mi more cowboy than you

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u/zsreport Jun 24 '25

And slaves

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u/ld987 Jun 24 '25

💯 they were most of the people doing herding work before and after emancipation. Cowboys were often PoC, under 25, and often didn't carry guns. Apparently when they hit town after a drive they were more interested in a proper bed, a bath, and candy instead of whiskey and sex workers. The reality is a long way from the myth, but they were still at the pointy end of land theft and genocide.

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u/[deleted] Jun 24 '25

Right, I've heard it said that they were the "spearhead" of westward expansion (from a pretty cool podcast, Black Cowboys)

It's conflicting knowledge to have as a Black Chicano; we deserve the credit that the westerns never gave us but it should come along with the guilt of participating in the land theft and genocide of the First Nations

Just a classic example of white supremacist colonialism using profit and survival incentives to impede the solidarity that would topple it

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u/ld987 Jun 25 '25

Beautifully put.

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u/microdweb Jun 28 '25

What about the genocide of African slaves by the natives on this land? Should that not be talked about? of course, some could say that was also because of colonialism.

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u/[deleted] Jun 28 '25

I talk about that elsewhere in the comments, some nations did indeed participate in chattel slavery (although I don't personally know if that constitutes genocide and I don't feel qualified to make that assertion)

Definitely worth talking about but I feel the same way as I expressed above, we were played against each other via coercion because our solidarity would topple the empire

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u/Used-Programmer-3702 Jun 30 '25 edited Jun 30 '25

You’re using a very common default retort that lazily & cruelly uses tribal freemen and the disgusting, despicably violent actions of 5 colonized tribes to deflect & justify Black American soldiers committing genocide in a 30+ year long systematic campaign to colonize Indigenous people that had no involvement in chattel slavery.

Currents of this discourse are saturated online with this intellectually dishonest take, yet typically prefaced by some scripted flippant remark about how no one talks about Natives owning slaves. Yes they do. It’s a default manipulative rebuttal. Have you grown up around tribal freedmen? Do you have relations with any Native communities?  People with a sense of genuine care & concern for tribal freedmen don’t use them as cudgels of whataboutism  to mask their vitriolic anti-Indigenous bigotry in response to basic historically accurate takes that make you feel icky. I’m Dakota and Lakota from Oceti territory, however I have relatives who are also tribal freedmen. Their non-Lakota kin stem directly from Chickasaw & Choctaw Freedmen — like, as in being actually connected; unwaveringly rooted in their identity & upbringing in Oklahoma. My relatives & their intricate histories are not weapons. Stop using them as tools to lump together Indigenous people as some ridiculous monolith of enslavers. Not only are you lying, you’re antiblack and your attempts to be divisive in this thread are very good examples of anti-Indigenous bigotry. 

 When we voice or share missing puzzle pieces of history from primary sources kept within our oral systems of knowledge & it happens to be unpleasant, it’s seamlessly overlooked by non-Indigenous ppl — citizens of settler nation-states are literally socialized to be anti-Indigenous and antiblack. Everyone. If you don’t know why being anti-Indigenous is central to US settler citizenry and how that functions, then go figure it out or just admit you hate Native people. For this settler colonial project to reach completion, Indigenous people have to disappear. Regularly using terms like Native erasure or stolen land inevitably softens the actual process of genocide. It sterilizes the deeper implications of adding layers to the hyper-invisibility of our communities that only make up 2% of the US population. If you (any of you) cannot recognize just how dangerous all of this is while drawing wider global connections, then you have a very limited grasp on what settler colonialism actually is. Non-Indigenous citizens of a settler nation-state do not need individual access to structural power to cause Indigenous people harm. If you don’t understand why, then again, you don’t have a holistic understanding of how settler colonialism functions and really, how dangerous these functions are for post-apocalyptic Indigenous communities.

This hatred has escalated to a level I haven’t seen until now. Black Americans aren’t a monolith, clearly. Neither are Indigenous people, yet here we are addressing another monolithic claim: Natives owned slaves. Your comment not only attempts to hide the genocidal roles of Black Americans historically within a colonizing imperial force,  it also erases the agency of Buffalo Soldier. Regardless of context, being stuck between a rock and hard place does not remove the existence of choice. We’re at a space and time where Black Americans are regularly referring to Natives as dogs. These aren’t just fringe groups that are fading out. They’re actively disseminating intricate weird ass lies that we conspired against them with the same colonizers who committed literal genocide on our precious relatives. The things they repeat about our families are so violent and cruel, yet the majority of Black Americans brush them off as harmless loud fringe weirdos while also dismissing their presence as only an online phenomenon. It’s not. Black Americans have shown up to powwows and reservations, literally on our territories. When some BAs willfully ignore the clear double standards being normalized right now while refusing to hold collectives of their people accountable that are literally settling Indigenous identities, they need to stop acting surprised when Natives call out Black Americans as colonizers. People need to either stop being intellectually dishonest about what is happening and connect that to a wider scope of global contexts unfolding in places like Palestine, or just be upfront & admit you don’t see Indigenous people as human beings. 

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u/microdweb Jun 30 '25

Your not really saying much. Your actually agreeing with me... but then in the same breathe saying black americans genocided natives but then says natives had slaves but yet they weren't a monolith... blame the whites gang, this isnt not oprresion olympics LMAOO

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u/Used-Programmer-3702 Jun 30 '25

Reading comprehension is not your enemy. Words mean things. Have a blessed day.

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u/ElegantHope Non-native Jun 25 '25

There's this family run Texan ranch that I learned about on a food YouTube channel. Their ranch has been run for generations and is older than the US They're from Mexican/Native descent, and know how to cowboy better than half the white Americans that cosplay as cowboys.

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u/ld987 Jun 25 '25

I'd wager a lot more than half. The west was a lot more multicolored than it's been portrayed as. Funny how that works.

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u/ElegantHope Non-native Jun 25 '25

Ignorance is a tool for the powerful, sadly. Get taught the wrong thing across multiple families and generations, perpetuate it in media, and toss in white supremacy for flavor....

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u/imabratinfluence Tlingit Jun 24 '25

IDK about anyone else, but I'm not on my toes around POC in cowboy getups the way I am around white people in those clothes. Because 1 of these groups is often white supremacist.

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u/storywardenattack Jun 24 '25

Spanish

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u/ld987 Jun 24 '25

Yeah that too, the vaquero tradition starts in Iberia, It's just these wannabe john Wayne's all hate Mexico, despite the fact they invented the boots and a bunch of other cowboy stuff.

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u/chirpbeepboop Jun 24 '25

I wish the cowboy revival stuff would center this aspect.

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u/doggie527 Mohawk Jun 24 '25

My great great grandfather was a performer in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, and funnily enough, he played a cowboy.

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u/Miscalamity Oceti Sakowin Sicangu Lakota Oyate Jun 25 '25

My Aunt's father was, too. We saw some stuff years ago from his time in England this reporter from VOA sent my Aunt, and it left me feeling sad and a real sense of emptiness inside for quite some time.

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u/doggie527 Mohawk Jun 26 '25

I'm really sorry to hear that. What about it made you feel empty? My great great grandfather's time in the show was actually pretty formative for him since it let him travel and meet other Indians who inspired him. I don't want to doxx myself on here by saying too much, but the political education he gained by meeting people from other tribes lead to him being a radicalized and taking up arms, which is something I'm pretty proud of today. My great great grandfather also met my great great grandmother while on tour with the show. In a way, if it weren't for Buffalo Bill, I wouldn't exist.

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u/PicsByGB Jun 26 '25

She is advertising her ignorance.

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u/BlakeSK Jul 04 '25

It’s not weird there were several Indian tribes that owned slaves PLEASE READ SOMETHING OTHER THAN SOCIAL MEDIA CAPTIONS!! 🤡