Lowrider Librarian

Buy this book for your Library An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846-1873 (The Lamar Series in Western History)by Benjamin Madley is a book that should be in every library in the US.  This book covers an essential history that has heretofore been neglected save for a few works such as Murder State . Series:  The Lamar Series in Western History Hardcover:  712 pages Publisher:  Yale University Press (May 24, 2016) Language:  English ISBN-10:  0300181361 ISBN-13:  978-0300181364 Product Dimensions:  6.1 x 1.8 x 9.2 inches The book covers the history of the genocide of Indigenous peoples in the state of California from 1846-1873.  During this time, the book traces the beginnings of the genocide from scattered massacres to full scale state and federally sponsored militia and military massacre campaigns.  The sheer brutality and callousness against the indigenous people of Califor...

This is a video I created (with help from the school's video production team) for my introductory Information Literacy class. It was meant to broach the subject of Culture and Information Literacy. It can be used to generate a discussion or as a reflection writing assignment catalyst. I would LOVE feedback on this please.

The Other Slavery:  The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement In America by Andrés Reséndez is an important book that you will want to add to your library collection. Hardcover: 448 pages Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (April 12, 2016) Language: English ISBN-10: 0547640986 ISBN-13: 978-0547640983 Product Dimensions: 6 x 1.5 x 9 inches It is important in several areas: History Economics Law Political Science It sheds new light on so many areas. It shook my understanding and revitalized my resolve to learn as much as possible about the history of our country and of the genocide that took place and in many ways is still taking place against indigenous people.  For instance, I had no idea that smallpox did not hit the Caribbean until a full 26 years after Columbus' invasion.  This gives new light to the claim that the majority of these Indians died from disease.  These people were murdered or worked to death. The book cov...

This talk was given on 4/20/2016 at PCC for Whiteness History Month at PCC. It is based on my trilogy of blog posts on the history of Whiteness in the US. Here are links to the posts: Colonialism and Whiteness: A Legacy of Brutality http://lowriderlibrarian.blogspot.com/2016/02/colonialism-and-whiteness-legacy-of.html Slavery (a Tool of Colonialism) and Whiteness: a Legacy of Brutality   http://lowriderlibrarian.blogspot.com/2016/03/slavery-tool-of-colonialism-and.html    Embedded #Whiteness: A Legacy of Brutality  http://lowriderlibrarian.blogspot.com/2016/04/embedded-whiteness-legacy-of-brutality.html    Here is the talk: I would love to know what you think about the talk, the concepts and the imagery. Please comment. Thank you,  Max 

Colonialism and Whiteness This is the first post in a series of blog posts that seeks to understand the development of Whiteness in the Americas from colonialism to today.  These blog posts are short necessarily short and are not meant to be exhaustive, but to give the reader an idea of where Whiteness comes from and how it appears in our culture. The need for these posts came out of the backlash against Whiteness History Month at Portland Community College this April, 2016.  Casta Painting A Casta (Spanish:  [ˈkasta] , Portuguese:  [ˈkastɐ, ˈkaʃtɐ] ) was a hierarchical system of race classification created by Spanish elites (españoles) in Hispanic America during the Spanish colonial period . The sistema de castas or the sociedad de castas was used in 17th and 18th centuries in Spanish America and Spanish Philippines to describe as a whole and socially rank the mixed-race people who were born during the post-Conquest period . These...

Libraries and the Fight Against Terrorism Libraries can and should be an important weapon against terrorism.  "Librarians are soldiers in the war against ignorance!"  Racism is fundamentally ignorance which leads to hate.  This is a call out to all librarians to help end the ongoing terrorism against people of color in the US. People of color in the US live under a state of domestic terrorism.  This terrorism is conducted via many official channels.  The education system, law enforcement, healthcare, judicial system and other aspects of the state have been and are used against people of color in the US. The terrorism we experience on a daily basis meets ALL the criteria below:  "Domestic terrorism" means activities with the following three characteristics: Involve acts dangerous to human life that violate federal or state law; Appear intended (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by ...

Here is a link to the presentation with notes:

In the US, every piece of information and every bit of knowledge we have has been mediated through a White-Supremacist lens--this is especially the case the more educated an individual is in the US. It usually doesn’t matter what the ethnicity of the creator of this knowledge is, nor what their first language is because they have been educated in a system that is fundamentally White-supremacist. It takes much work and effort to even attempt to break out of this colonial mind set. #InformationLiteracy #education #EthnicStudies #Libraries #Information #knowledge #colonialism #21stCenturyEmpire

Mel Gibson--Stick to Mad Max, Jesus or Braveheart! by Max Macias "A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within." Will Durant Quote This quote above begins Mel Gibson’s newest work, Apocalypto. These words can be interpreted to mean that the Mayans and all Nican Tlaca cultures got what they deserved. Contained within this moral judgment is the justification that we received what we deserved as well. This is to say, the descendants of the savage ‘Aztecs, Mayans, and other Indians of the Americas’ are in their present social situation because of their past actions and rightfully so. This justifies the way things are and serves to build hatred against indigenous peoples, but more importantly it can also weaken our own self-worth. Some people will say that Apocalypto is just a movie, but it is not just a movie--this kind of work can and should be defined as propaganda. When you see something w...