A lot has happened in the last week re: the IT Rules, 2021! It may feel chilling, but mass awareness is the first step. This is an official thread of our resources on the Rules. Send it to anyone who wants to learn about them. This thread will evolve with updates over time.
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1. I was walking in the woods yesterday and I had an epiphany. It wasn’t one I wanted to have. I was thinking about today’s class, where we are reading Kimmerer’s ‘Gathering Moss’. I’ve taught Braiding Sweetgrass in multiple classes every year since 2016. It’s eminently teachable

2. Both books are beautifully written. Students uniformly enjoy them as assigned reading. They do a great job communicating to non-Indigenous folks the contours of basic Indigenous relationships to more-than-human beings. They’re wildly popular with white readers.

3. I’ve found Braiding Sweetgrass to be a great entry point for non-Indigenous folks to Indigenous scholarship. But this is where yesterday’s epiphany comes in. Neither Braiding Sweetgrass or Gathering Moss tends to the deep deep lineages of Indigenous scholarship in Canada or US

4. As the popularity of ‘Braiding Sweetgrass’ has soared, I’ve seen more and more white folks wax on about ‘braiding knowledge’. But they often don’t know any of the lineages of these concepts beyond what is presented in this one book. They confidently run with this.

5. Kimmerer does a commendable job of weaving in her own experiences, her family stories+nods to some very important knowledge keepers who deserve to be celebrated for their work. But Braiding Sweetgrass does not tend to the citational politics Sara Ahmed & others teach us about

TYPES OF SINS(PAAP) AS PER SKAND PURAN.

There are three types of Adharma- Sthool, Sukshma and Ati Sukshma. The group of Sins in the Sthul section carries you to Narak. These sins are committed through your thoughts, words and deeds.

It is of four types.

1)First is the sin committed by your mental state-
Thinking about woman other then your spouse.

A)Resolution to amass wealth from others.

B)Thinking ill about others.

C)Thinking of doing a forbidden or unworthy deed.

2)Second is the sin that you commit through your words :-

A)Talking irrelevant things.

B)Telling a lie.

C)Speaking harshly.

D)Talking ill about others.

3)Third type of sin is committed through your body actions-

A)Eating food not prescribed to you or forbidden.

B)Violence.

C)Eating fancier food.

D)Acquiring other's wealth.

So these twelve types of sins.

There are six types of sinners or Mahapatak

1)One not bowing his head in front of a temple.

2)Never praise Shiva.

3)People who behave untowardly way in front of Ishwar.

4)People who do not show respect to Ishwar, guru or one who are undignified.

5)One who do not behave properly.

6)One who is jealous of other bhakts.

Below is the list of sins which people may commit.

1)One who does not help a needy person or a person in pain,

Ok, I'll hop on this Elizabeth Warren/Native American testing bandwagon (gently and non-politically).

I've been a @23andMe customer for a while, and have followed their ancestry updates closely.

All is more or less as expected....except for this bit about Native American.

The family is almost completely composed of Spanish peasants (from various regions) who emigrated, along with a massive wave in the late 19th-cent./early 20th-cent., to Cuba back when it was a booming economy (richer than Spain's) and worth emigrating to (Communism killed that).

Also, the native population of Cuba was annihilated early on---was the first place the Spanish colonized after all. Having a native background in Cuba would be like having the same in, say, Massachusetts, particularly if you're (say) mostly Irish. Just really, really unlikely.

(Note: the North African/Arab background is less mysterious. The Iberian peninsula was part of the Muslim world for centuries. It would be odd *not* to have some Arab/Middle Eastern background coming from Spain. Given the family is mostly from Northern Spain, it's small though.)

I have a Spanish passport, have been back to the ancestral villages in Spain, seen the church where my grandmother was baptized, my grandfather told me stories about growing up as the child of Spanish colonists in rural Cuba. The native bit just clashes with all the family lore.