The BGD Press (which specifically publishes queer POC)
****but if you want to directly support the people who make you free content, the next time your favorite fic writer or artists makes a crowd funding post, opens commissions, talks about their patreon/ko-fi, donate your money there!!****
for US based people who take an interest in guerrilla gardening, I highly recommend checking in with the Audubon Native Plants Database! planting anywhere and everywhere is great but you don’t want to do more harm than good by spreading invasive plants!
Can you elaborate the story of the ”Free Willy” orca (forgot his name). From my understanding the orca couldn’t survive in the wild and imprinted on hunans to the point that he seeked out human compaionship
Oh Keiko. His is a sad story. In 1979, he was tragically captured from his native Icelandic waters as a calf and, after bouncing around for several years, was sold to an amusement park in Mexico City that would eventually become Six Flags Mexico. It was here that he found fame as the star of Free Willy, a very sweet and very fictional story (a favorite of mine as a child!) that later spawned a trilogy, all while convincing the public that it’s easy to free a whale.
The tank you see in the movie is the same tank Keiko lived in during his time in Mexico. Intended to house dolphins, it was incredibly undersized, and the water was far too warm for an orca. Worst of all, he was isolated from others of his kind, with only the companionship of his human caregivers and a few bottlenose dolphins. The years of poor husbandry took their toll on poor Keiko, and he was lethargic and in ill health when his story because known throughout the world.
Although many parties were involved in what happened next, Warner Bros. studios (the filmmakers behind Free Willy) and the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS, my beloathed) were at the forefront. Once it became public knowledge that the real Willy was not, in fact, returned to the wild to live with his family and was still living in that too-tiny pool, many of Keiko’s fans (mainly children) began writing letters asking for their favorite cetacean movie star to be released.
Doesn’t that warm your heart? *she says sarcastically*
Some time—and an incident in which Michael Jackson (yes, that Michael Jackson) tried to purchase the whale for his personal collection—later, Keiko’s owners relented. It was decided by the newly formed Free Willy-Keiko Foundation, founded by Warner Bros. and cell phone mogul Craig McCaw (and still in operation to this day, unfortunately), that it was time to make fantasy a reality and set Keiko free. In 1996, Keiko was transferred to the Oregon Coast Aquarium for rehabilitation, where he would spend two years.
Under the quality husbandry and veterinary care Keiko received in Oregon, his health began to improve. In my opinion, this beautiful habitat, with trainers who loved and cared for him, should’ve been his forever home. One would think this was the plan all along, considering his trainers were still doing waterwork with him. That doesn’t exactly scream “this animal is a candidate for release!”
But the HSUS and Free Willy-Keiko Foundation had promised the children of the world that Keiko would return to the wild. Think of the children, people.
In 1998, Keiko tasted the crisp saltwater of the Icelandic seas for the first time in nearly two decades. For the next four or so years, Keiko lived in a sea pen, with the intentions of gradually habituating him back to his native environment. Over time, his trainers took him on longer and longer “walks” in the open ocean. One day in 2002, the walk didn’t end.
Keiko was free.
15 months later, he was dead.
The cause of death was pneumonia, the most common disease of cetaceans both in the wild and in human care. He was 27 years old (average life expectancy of a male orca is about 30 years).
Perhaps it would’ve been worth it, had Keiko spent those last 15 months with his long-lost family. But he didn’t. Though he was occasionally observed trailing pods of orcas, Keiko never rejoined a wild pod. Instead, he spent those 15 months traveling the coasts of Iceland and Norway seeking out the only family he knew. Humans.
Keiko would approach swimming children, allowing them to ride on his back as he had with his trainers over the years. He would follow boats in search of food and companionship, as his caregivers had interacted with him from boats during his ocean walks. These escapades became so frequent that the local government passed ordinances to stop its citizens from interacting with the whale. Although the HSUS claimed otherwise, Keiko was never again a truly wild whale. He was a whale dependent on humans, humans who ignored the advice of experts and tried to bring fiction to life. In 2009, the journal Marine Mammal Science did a retrospective review of Keiko’s rehabilitation and release. They determined it was a failure.
Despite this, Keiko remains a poster child for anti-zoo activists. The still-hypothetical Whale Sanctuary Project (my even more beloathed) uses Keiko as an example of why their experiment is a good idea, tugging at heartstrings of well-meaning animal lovers like HSUS did all those years ago.
In reality, Keiko was quite possibly the worst candidate imaginable for release. He was a fully mature male, with a history of poor health, who had spent decades in the care of humans with absolutely no contact with others of his kind since he was basically a toddler. The decision to release him was made entirely on emotion and carried out by movie executives and animal rights activists. For further insight into the political and financial woes of the release, I highly recommend Killing Keiko by Mark Simmons, one of Keiko’s caregivers throughout the rehabilitation process.
RIP Keiko. You were a beautiful, sweet man who inspired millions 🐳
children don’t deserve to be cared for because they’re cute and funny or whatever. they deserve to be cared for and loved and treated with dignity because they are human beings who are routinely abused and mistreated by the very people who are mean to protect them. period, end of story.
Anyways remember that time that JK Rowling, who has never spoken to an indigenous American person in her whole life, was like “but what if the Natives had four schools and they were also bloodthirsty savages who started the residential schools with their fictional beings as their mascots and Christians weren’t actually at fault” right at the time when we started getting some traction around getting recognition for the heinous crimes that were the mass graves of children, then went on to make a whole spin-off franchise in America using that “”“lore”“” and rhetoric, where the one wizard guy who tried to stop the Holocaust from happening was villainized and played by Johnny Depp (who played Tonto in the Lone Ranger and said he was going to buy the Black Hills and Wounded Knee and “give it back to Lakota people” then never did that at all) and who she later defended as saying he wasn’t a domestic abuser because she believed him over a woman who has since been proven to be telling the truth several times over?
The woman’s a violent colonizer.
Hello <3 I deleted this original post but in light of the fact that there’s a Twilight TV series reboot/spinoff in the making let’s talk about how these women are one and the same in their actions against indigenous American people!
Stephenie Meyer is a Mormon with Mormon views. Mormons have extremely racist ideology embedded within their religious texts about indigenous Americans and Jews - that indigenous people are quite literally the Actual Real Jews (I’m mixed, this is truly insane cult rhetoric). Through the decades the LDS church has successfully funded, advocated, and carried out forced conversion and cultural genocide. THEY ARE THE ONES ACTIVELY TRYING TO OVERTURN ICWA, THE INDIAN CHILD WELFARE ACT.
Are you seeing the pattern here? Are you seeing the undercurrent of antisemitism and anti-indigenous racist imperialism?
Get rid of your attachment to these franchises, stop making it a question of what media you will replace it with, get involved with US. We want your allyship and understanding more than these white supremacists even want to think about your humanhood.
