Required Reading

‣ Darcie Little Badger, a Lipan Apache novelist, pens a personal essay in the Texas Observer about the repatriation of an elder's remains to her tribe, which is not federally recognized. She writes:

A small group of people were already waiting, ranging in age from children to elders. Some wore traditional regalia. Others, like my brother, wore casual clothes. We were all there for one reason: to protect our sacred land. A drum circle played, the burial ground was blessed in our traditional way, and then I was asked to speak. As I stood before my community, I noticed a stack of rocks at the edge of el cementerio. Residents of Presidio had returned the sacred stones, it seemed, wanting to make things right. “We are resilient as these stones,” I said. Then the work began.

We picked up the litter, the cans, the wrappers, then returned the stones to the graves. Kids carried pebbles. My brother, who worked at a Target warehouse, carried a boulder. By the end of the day, the burial ground was clean, respected. There was still work to do, but I was confident that it would get done. The sacred land would be protected. That’s when hope sparked within me. Maybe the Lipan would be alright someday. 

Yet I knew there was still a long way to go. We might have land for our ancestors, but what about the living? And how could we help our ancestors who’d been unearthed and taken away? Some volunteers in our tribe are working on federal recognition, but that will be a long and complicated process. Once again, I felt powerless. But my mother had hope. Shortly after the blessing ceremony, my mother called again. She asked, “You know those 700-year-old remains from Presidio? … She’s our distant relative.”

‣ Rapper Noname shot to fame a few years ago, but her commitment to political education and community remains as sharp as ever. For the Los Angeles Times’s Image magazine, Christopher Soto spoke with the musician about rap, poetry, and reading:

Recently, we met at the Radical Hood Library, where ferns hang from the ceiling and posters on the wall celebrate Black love. The bookshelves are organized with titles such as “Femme Labor,” “Abolish Prisons,” “Español / Spanish” and “Settler Colonialism in Occupied Americas.” Noname wasn’t the first person in her family interested in the intersection of literature and movements for Black liberation. Back in the 1990s, her mother, Desiree Sanders, began running Chicago’s Afrocentric Bookstore, which provided access to a broad range of books by Black authors. For Noname, her book club and library are a continuation of her mother’s legacy.

‣ It's been four months since Gaza solidarity protests swept across US campuses. Even though the story was everywhere, Felipe Rendall explains in FAIR that much of the media coverage excluded the voices of the students themselves:

FAIR examined how often key corporate media discussion forums contain student and activist voices. The Sunday morning shows (ABC’s This Week, CBS’s Face the Nation, NBC’s Meet the Press, CNN’s State of the Union and Fox News Sunday) brought on no students or activists, opting instead to speak primarily with government officials.

The daily news shows we surveyed—CNN’s Lead With Jake Tapper, MSNBC’s ReidOut, Fox News‘ Hannity and PBS’s NewsHour—were slightly better, with six students out of 79 guests, but only two of them were pro-Palestine protesters.

The op-ed pages of the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today and Wall Street Journal featured two students out of 52 writers, only one of whom was a protester.

‣ BBC’s Yogita Limaye recently spoke with survivors of an August 5 attack on a Rohingya community in Myanmar, where armed groups and the nation's military alike continue killing civilians in what human rights groups have long deemed a genocide:

Most of Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslims live as a minority in Rakhine – a Buddhist-majority state, where the two communities have long had a fraught relationship. In 2017, when the Myanmar military killed thousands of Rohingyas in what the UN described as “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing”, local Rakhine men also joined the attacks. Now, amid a spiralling conflict between the junta and the AA, which has strong support in the ethnic Rakhine population, Rohingyas once again find themselves trapped.

Despite the risk of being caught and returned to Myanmar by the Bangladeshi authorities, Rohingya survivors told the BBC they wished to share details of the violence they faced so it would not go undocumented, especially as it unfolded in an area that is no longer accessible to rights groups or journalists.

“My heart is broken. Now, I’ve lost everything. I don’t know why I survived,” Nisar says.

‣ This story of a Marxist journalist stumbling upon a duffel bag full of documents belonging to the Heritage Foundation (of Project 2025 notoriety) is genuinely unbelievable. Will Sommer reports for the Washington Post:

“It’s not like I found secret internal documents about Project 2025,” Harris said. “It’s not that crazy; it’s like, ‘Whoops, they left this out.’”

Judging from the reactions Harris received on X, though, the real prize appeared to be the bag itself. Harris said he soon received more than a dozen direct messages from interested buyers offering hundreds of dollars for the bag — “I need that bag! Let me buy that bag!” Harris initially considered auctioning off the bag, without its contents, to raise money for charity.

He figured the bag could make for a wry conversation piece.

“Just showing people when they come by your crib, like, ‘Look what I got,’” Harris said.

‣ Activist Moya Bailey offers a refreshingly nuanced take on misogynoir (a term she coined) and Kamala Harris, explaining that "we don’t have to insult her intelligence, make her the country’s mom, or discuss her romantic history" to critique the candidate. She writes for Yes! magazine:

“She would rather address, in the summer, a sorority—a colored sorority—like she can’t get out of that,” Fox News host Brian Kilmeade said. “So that’s her decision, and that’s her decision to back up the protesters.” Kilmeade has claimed he said “college” and not “colored,” but the resulting dustup directed attention away from the goals of Harris’ eventual meeting with Netanyahu.

Harris further removed any doubt about her stance when she formally denounced D.C. protestors at Union Station who, along with the lone voice of dissent, Representative Rashida Tlaib, D-MI, wanted to make clear their opposition to the genocide still unfolding in Gaza. At a stump stop in Detroit, Harris even silenced pro-Palestinian protesters. “You know what? If you want Donald Trump to win, then say that,” she said. “Otherwise, I’m speaking.” Her unwavering support for Israel amid its genocidal assault on Gaza raises more questions than it answers about what the left can actually achieve under a Harris presidency.

‣ Olympics withdrawal is real! Thankfully, we've got Hector Vivas's fascinating layered photos from the Paris games to tide us over till next time:

‣ A brilliant scheme to get Amazon to pay to fill potholes:

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C9Sg99coe76/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

‣ This clip of Marina Abramovic is making the rounds, and it's the epitome of Barbie summer vs. Brat summer:

‣ A certain chubby little cubby all stuffed with fluff just had a birthday to bookend this Leo season, and the New York Public Library shared some photographic gems in his honor:

https://www.instagram.com/p/C-72m_WshlN/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

‣ Looks like somebody ~brushed~ up on their art puns:

https://www.tiktok.com/@izzyinthecity_/video/7403477126470503723

Required Reading is published every Thursday afternoon, and it is comprised of a short list of art-related links to long-form articles, videos, blog posts, or photo essays worth a second look.

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