workingitinportland:

A series of good tweets on the SNAP standards by Phoenix Calida, whom you should be following definitely.
the final tweet leads into this, which I thought was worth reposting: “Welcome to the commodity box program everybody. Native people can tell you there’s never been a consideration for food allergens or nutritional value, it’s just what the US government calls tough titties. The commodity program started when we signed treaties and were forced onto reservations and in return for land (which we had no real choice but to sign away under threat of murder), we would receive food and healthcare. The lack of food (in reality their attempts to starve us to death) is partly where the origin of fry bread came from. So this is a case study over a century in the making. The implementation is unfair, and it is unconscionable, and it is oppressive, but the reality is that this has been going on for a very, very long time.
This is just a singular example TO ME of why caring about native issues, experiences, and policy should be important to non-native people. This shit circles back around because guaranteed what gets done to native people will make its way to the larger population at some point. The point where I become bitter, angry, and resentful is when people express outrage that what’s been going on with us for centuries is finally happening to them. Whether it’s commod boxes or community displacement, if you’d look to history and the native experience, you’d see that what’s being done is a natural expression of what’s already BEEN done – to us. My point here is when you’re only outraged or educated on an issue when it finally impacts you, that means you intrinsically feel like dispossession, removal, abuse, disappearance, mistreatment, genocide, and colonization of the indigenous population is an “ok” and natural process – because it’s serving YOU. That’s the shit I’m not ok with.”