LOWERCASE MOVEMENT: Canadian Professor Won’t Use Capital Letters Because of Indigenous Struggles
You might not want to use E.E. Cummings as an example to use lowercase. Not because of the fact that he did it for no reason, but because he used a ton of ethnic slurs in his poems.
I AM TEMPTED TO WRITE THIS WHOLE POST IN CAPITAL LETTERS. But I will not because I am a normal and sane human being.
Well, many would object to that last statement.
The lowercase movement is a thing, apparently. Honestly, I cannot get too mad at this Canadian professor because she has the most awesome last name I have ever seen.
Dr. Linda Manyguns (such an awesome last name), who serves as Associate Vice President of Indigenization and Decolonization at Mount Royal University in Calgary, will only use lowercase unless speaking or writing about Indigenous struggles:
we support and expand the goal of equality and inclusion to all forms of life and all people. we join leaders like e. e. cummings, bell hooks, and peter kulchyski, who reject the symbols of hierarchy wherever they are found and do not use capital letters except to acknowledge the Indigenous struggle for recognition.
we resist acknowledging the power structures that oppress and join the movement that does not capitalize.
the office of indigenization and decolonization supports acts that focus on inclusion and support the right of all people to positive inclusion and change.
Lady, give me a freaking break.
Um, can someone tell Manygunsthat E.E. Cummings had many ethnic slurs in his poems? He didn’t have a problem with capital letters. The tradition of using lowercase for his name came after his death because publishing houses published his name in lowercase. Even his wife got mad when someone said he legally changed his name to the lowercase spelling.
Bell Hooks chose to use lowercase for her name “to place focus on her work rather than her name, on her ideas rather than her personality.”
I don’t know why Canadian professor Peter Kulchyski uses lowercase, but whatever.
Manyguns complained:
Indigenous people have been actively engaged in a multidimensional struggle for equality, since time immemorial. we strive for historical-cultural recognition and acknowledgment of colonial oppression that persistently devalues the diversity of our unique cultural heritages.
these sites of struggle are generally found at blockades, where demonstrations against racism occur, where racialization and cultural domination, and discrimination leave the mark of imbalance and abuses of power. sometimes these sites generate media interest but interest is generally fickle.
the explicit demonstration and practice of aboriginal culture in everyday life or at places of resistance is called by academics ‘eventing.’
How about we educate people instead of tearing apart language and linguistics? She is the associate vice-president of Indigenization and decolonization. I don’t think she’ll face problems going forward with her plans.
I like her idea of planting a garden with Indigenous plants and implementing traditional languages into classes. That’s how you do it. You don’t do it with some stupid lowercase movement.
Stop trying to make people feel guilty for the sins of those in the past. I know Manyguns is in Canada, but plenty of people do the same in America. I refuse to feel guilt because of what white people did in the past.
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Comments
Idiot. As if anyone reads anything she writes.
My eyes rolled back so hard now I think they are stuck…
Did your mother tell you that if you made funny faces, the expression would stick?
😂
I always heard “I hope your face doesn’t freeze like that”
I thought that was only if the wind changes while you’re making it.
Why do people pay these sort of people for the their “thoughts.”
Amusement?
We’re getting cheated.
.
She midpeld it. She meant a lower CASTE movement. It’s an Indian thing.
Yes, she is an idiot. With a capital “I”.
So, she is an anti-capitalist.
🙂
Just another nonentity screaming for attention.
MuH sYsTeMiC iNdIgEnOuS rAcIsM!
In every sense.
When she demonstrates her commitment to the issue by refusing to interact with those individuals and entities who use capitalization then I might be willing to give her ideas a hearing.
Start with your employer, then your bank, then the street you reside, then your city, county and nation. Refuse to reside in, accept a salary or any support from entities that continue to use capitalization. Show us the depth of your belief via your actions, sustain that for a decade and then we can talk.
This is kinda funny, given that there’s a right-wing movement which does precisely that.
Of course, when they do it, “the FBI lists [them] among the top ten domestic terror threats facing the United States.” When Manyguns does it, she’s just everybody’s pleasantly batty wine aunt.
I’m still waiting for all the coaches and players to quit participating in all the professional sports that were invented by white men.
I saw this on Twitter and actually thought it was a joke. Now, I just simply shake my head and move on from the crazy.
So exactly how did people that died over 200 years ago personally harm you?
In protest of all the idiots who choose silly things to express their superior virtue over something, I will revert to stepping on cracks in the sidewalk during my daily runs. I’m sure my mother will understand.
But what about your grandmother? It’s her back you’ll be breaking after all.
Neither are with us so no backs are being broken. Virtue signalling for its own sake.
fight the power, baby.
So, capital letters aside, isn’t she really asking for whipipos help in reinvigorating her defunct culture?
After having adopted nearly all Western cultural norms and values, she somehow feels that its whipipo who have devalued her ethnic groups’ cultural additions.
It clear that no indigenous members today feel that their ethnic life values are so great as to wish to actually live as their ancestors did, without electricity, or anesthesia or smart phones, so what exactly is it she wants?
Your wealth and whatever power you might wield.
Who?
white people. I speak jive as fluently as June Cleaver.
Lol this is all
She could come up
With?
People like her bore me.
Oh no, I don’t think you are descended from people like her.
???
Abraham bore Isaac. And Isaac bore Jacob. Someone bore me and someone bore you. But I don’t think people like her bore you.
👍
No, Abraham begat Isaac. Sarah bore him.
I’m with Standish O’Grady, an Irishman who emigrated to Canada and wrote poetry about the place and then emigrated back to Ireland. He’s their E E Cummings.
well since you ask
…Here forests crowd, unprofitable lumber,
O’er fruitless lands indefinite as number;
Where birds scarce light, and with the north winds veer
On wings of wind, and quickly disappear,
Here the rough Bear subsists his winter year,
And licks his paw and finds no better fare . . .
The lank Canadian eager trims his fire,
And all around their simpering stoves retire;
With fur clad friends their progenies abound,
And thus regale their buffaloes around;
Unlettered race, how few the number tells,
Their only pride a cariole and bells ….
Perchance they revel; still around they creep,
And talk, and smoke, and spit, and drink, and sleep…
In short: a kvetch.
So she is doing something to bring attention to an issue that has no real net positive effect and cost nothing to give. But it does bring her the attention of a news article.
So, reducing the legibility of your statements as a means of drawing attention to yourself….
I wonder how that’s working for her? Does anybody bother with any of her ideas?
she should move forward and take on punctuation next
the racist use of periods commas exclamation points and dont get me started on semi colons
Hey, men can have periods too. And semicolon health is critical to a lowercase movement.
I suspect her periods stopped fairly recently.
Luckily for her, moron isn’t usually capitalized.
Why stop there? Let’s just do away with punctuation marks who needs them. wordandparagraphbreaksmustgo
“”Dr. Linda Manyguns (such an awesome last name),””
I doubt she lives up to it. Just because somebody is named “Smith” doesn’t mean that they shoe horses.
who cares. manyguns is probably as “indigenous” as african-americans are actually african. that is not in the least bit. But boy can both groups really push the victimhood nonsense.
As the author Thomas said at his bar mitzvah, “Today, I am a Mann!”
What did you say at your bear mitzvah?
Never had one. I’m lapsed.
Too bad. I know all the words to Hiber-nagilah.
His nose should run like the fountain pen he gave me.
@henrybowman
That’s hilarious!
So she writes like a kindergartner?
In my experience kindergartners are more likely to use all-caps than no-caps. And to write some letters in mirror image. And if they’re learning to write Hebrew at the same time, they tend sometimes to forget which language goes in which direction.
These people are Nero……fiddling while Rome burns.
Nero-minded.
I’d like to ask Ms Manyguns where the indigenous people got their land from in the first place. Who did the indigenous peoples buy the land from?
She’ll undoubtedly tell you they sprang from the earth, right there, and have been there ever since. That’s why they kicked up such a fuss about Kennewick Man, and why they don’t allow genetic testing (which in turn is why the ancestry companies use South American DNA as a proxy for theirs, on the theory that South Americans migrated there from the north and are therefore genetically similar to their cousins who settled in the north).
crap like his is what led the valley-folk to kill all the mountain-people
do it in the name of heaven
you can justify it in the end
I may be confusing my 70’s cultural references.
Thanks to the upvoter who got the reference.
with that hat, am wondering whether she plays a martin or a stratocaster
“¡Ay, Cisco!”
She’s channeling Bella Abzug.
My money is on “She owns a D-35 not because she can play well, but because she can”. With that much virtue to signal, she has to “pretend” by purchasing the holy grail.
I wish I could “pretend “ my way to a Bechstein, Bösendorfer, or Grotrian-Steinweg. Alas….
i dEmAnD fOr ThE eiMiNaTiOn Of RaCiSm ThAt We CaPiTaLiZe EvErY oThEr LeTtEr. ThOsE wHo ReFuSe ArE RaCiStS nO ExCePtIoNs.
– SiGnEd PrOfEsSoR sMArTeStGuYoNtHePlAnEt
Never trust anyone whose ancestors stopped in the frozen north when they could have continued on to Malibu.
From there to Biscayne, Del Ray, and back to Bel Air. See the USA in several Chevrolets.
I can only imagine that the Eskimo and Inuit were out-competed for better lands and literally marginalized by peoples who forced them from more fecund digs. I don’t think anyone would have voluntarily populated the arctic.
Slurs in eecummings – poets use them because they have a performance to them, the same reasons that people should use them when the thought wants that performance.
A play of denotation, connotation, association and stock meaning.
Instead of no capital letters, she should sleep on the ground in a tipi like her poor ancestors. Show some spunk beach!
I was really curious trying to figure out what capital letters have to do with the struggles of indigenous people. After many hours of laborious reasearch I learned that indigenous people did not use capital letters in their writing. After a few more hours I found that they did not use small letters either because they didn’t have any writing. They appropriated it from European culture just as Ms Manyguns appropriated her name because indigenous people did not have guns either.
I don’t think they had hats like that either.
Thinking is racist, or something. Consider yourself cancelled!
She is darn lucky that Canada abolished the death penalty because this is a capital offense.
This is what passes for an ‘adult’ in Canada.
If that doesn’t work she’ll hold her breath until she turns blue.
“ If that doesn’t work she’ll hold her breath until she turns blue.”
In metric?
Let me just express how sorry I am that 234 generations ago my ancestor stole someone’s orange and ate it.
I will now do penance for the rest of my life – ruin my kinds and grand kids lives – and feel guilty about it to the extend that I will give away my money and my home to someone who is more worthy than I am due to the horrible sin of my great x233 grandfather.
I just hope that at least one of the kind people here can forgive me – for this abomination. And I hope I inspire others who may have ancestors 50 or more generations ago to commit some form of personal hari-kari.
please forgive me if i slept through prof. manyguns’ lecture, but did the egyptians use capital letters in the hieroglyphs? if so, did it stop them from expelling the indigenous israelites from egypt?
in terms of modern day communications, where most indian tribe names have been westernized, there seems to be a mandated reintroduction of more traditional spellings and pronunciations of tribe names. For example the cayuga nation is now the Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫ perhaps prof. manyguns needs to drop the capital letters so that she will have more diacritic in her character encodings.
(signed) professor fewbullets
1. The Israelites were not indigenous to Egypt. (At the time they were called `Ivrim (“Hebrews”), because they had originally come from `Ever.)
2. The Egyptians did indeed expel them in the end, but they would have willingly left on their own; they’d been wanting to leave for decades, and had been demanding it for a year, and it was the Egyptians who were preventing them.
Y’all are cracking me up!
Thanks for the laughs!
˙uʍop-ǝpᴉsdn ƃuᴉɥʇʎɹǝʌǝ ǝʇᴉɹʍ llɐɥs ᴉ ʇnq ‘sɹǝʇʇǝl lɐʇᴉdɐɔ ʇsᴉ- ƃuᴉsn doʇs ᴉ llᴉʍ ʎluo ʇou ‘lɐnpᴉʌᴉpuᴉ pǝɥsᴉnƃuᴉʇsᴉp sᴉɥʇ ɥʇᴉʍ ʎʇᴉɹɐpᴉlos uᴉ
What a great example for students to use proper grammar, punctuation, etc in their communication. Some educators I’ve encountered don’t like the creeping of text shorthand into everyday script.
Typical Affirmative Action hire, above criticism, demonstrating stupidity.
I evah degnahc ym dnim. morF won no lla sdrow tsum eb delleps sdrawkcab ro esle uoy era a tsicar. dnA uoy lliw eb dellecnac fi uoy eergasid. timbuS togib!
Ixnay.
Ekat a eenk, geb, doog yob, lrig, revetahw.
Shaka, when the walls fell.
What a fraud. I noticed the “I” in her paper
must confess reminds me of several futile attempts by our scoutmaster to teach us the smoke signal alphabet–despite his enthusiasm, we never got past the letter ” g ”
how anyone was able to communicate in such a medium escapes me even today
Cree-mojis.
They didn’t. I’ve never heard of the “smoke signal alphabet”, but I’ll bet it’s something invented out of whole cloth, within the last century.
American Indians used smoke signals only for very elementary messages, such as “We’re here”, or “Danger”.
Ambiguous attribution. Native refers to legal jurisdiction. Indigenous refers to native sex and conception past the first generation.
Looks like a nut, is a nut.
I must admit that I am disturbed by your lack of sensitivity Mary Chastain. In your article you referred to Dr. Linda Manyguns using capitalization for her name.
Please, in future refer to her as dr. linda manyguns; you can use correct capitalization for the rest of your writing!
Although, on second thoughts, you should probably drop the honorific as well; surely she wouldn’t want you to use that for the same reasons she opposes capitalization!
.
Um, what? srsly, this bull excrement counts as scholarship?! For most of history Indigenous people have been actively engaged in the same struggle as everyone else was — to grab as much stuff and territory as they could from those weaker than them, stop those stronger than them from grabbing their stuff and territory, and killing as many of the enemy as they could.
Also, is she speaking only about American indigenes, or about all indigenous people, in which case is she aware that the Jews are the indigenous people of what she undoubtedly calls “palestine”?
Capitalization is not a power structure. It’s part of a linguistic organization structure known as grammar. I think this luvvy* has conflated capitalization of words with accounting capitalization in which business costs are recorded as assets rather than expenses. It sounds like money so it must be bad!
*She looks wealthy, or at least very comfortable. She’s definitely had some botox and her look is definitely curated, probably thanks to the Sundance catalog. Her real Indian name is Thirsts for Attention.
“Indigenous people have been actively engaged in a multidimensional struggle for equality, since time immemorial.”
So, forever, meaning well before Europeans arrived.
Also, couldn’t this be said for every group of people everywhere?