My Little Pony Tales

Continuing our journey into Pony History, we’ve got the first few episodes of the second MLP TV cartoon, which is often mistakenly believed to be G2’s cartoon when G2 in fact didn’t have its own cartoon at all.

Plot description from Wikipedia:

The series followed seven young female ponies who live in Ponyland, a society of anthropomorphic ponies. They are: Starlight, Sweetheart, Melody, Bright Eyes, Patch, Clover, and Bon Bon. They live like humans as they attend school, frequent the local ice cream shop, enter talent contests, and even roller skate. Some of the girl ponies begin to show a romantic interest in the male ponies, Teddy, Ace, and Lancer; they even go on dates with them. In contrast to the previous series which focused on ponies and humans, the new series centered only on the ponies. Each episode featured at least one song performed by the ponies.

IMDb’s plot description, curiously, appears to be for the wrong series? Dunno what the deal with that is.

The Owl House

Plot description from IMDb:

Accidentally sent to the world of the Boiling Isles before a trip to summer camp, a teenage human named Luz longs to become a witch and is aided by rebellious Eda and pint-sized demon King.

Content warnings for My Little Pony Tales include:

• FLASHING LIGHTS
• PROMOTION OF EATING DISORDERS
• Natural disaster: flooding
• Sad animals, animals dying, cooked alive or otherwise in peril (sometimes in a character’s imagination)
• Bees and other bugs
• Slipping down a steep slope
• Stereotypes of Polynesian cultures
• Bullying

Content warnings for The Owl House include:

• Implied child abuse and domestic violence
• Stand-in for alcohol
• Animal abuse, death of a pet
• Stalking
• Bugs, bees, spiders, and snakes
• Characters are drugged
• Potential sexual harassment
• A character’s mouth is covered
• Body horror, bodily transformation
• Children in peril
• Et cetera

You may wish to read a more comprehensive list of content warnings here:

• https://www.doesthedogdie.com/media/79293
• https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8050756/parentalguide/

My Little Pony Tales was made on Lenape land

My Little Pony Tales was produced by Sunbow Productions, with animation production outsourced to Seoul-based AKOM. Sunbow Productions was headquartered in the Chanin Building on the island of Manaháhtaan in the east-central part of Lenapehoking, the unceded homeland of the Algonquian-speaking Lenape (Delaware) people. Manaháhtaan is specifically part of the territory of the Munsee division of the Lenape people. The island’s “sale” to Dutch colonists in 1626 was illegitimate to begin with. Following from that the island’s later conquest by the British Empire and now its present-day administration by Seppoland as a borough of New York City are also illegitimate.

The vast majority of Lenape people today live in diaspora. Three of these diaspora communities — the Delaware Nation in the Wichita homeland, Delaware Tribe of Indians in Wažaže Mązhą (Osage homeland), and Stockbridge-Munsee Community in Omǣqnomenēw-Ahkew (Menominee homeland) — are among Seppoland’s federally recognized tribes. Among the Lenape who fled to the Canadian-occupied parts of Anishinaabewaki and Haudenosauneega, the Munsee-Delaware Nation, Moravian of the Thames First Nation, and Delaware of Six Nations are currently recognized by the Canadian government. There are also many state-recognized and unrecognized tribal organizations in Lenapehoking proper, however these are all seen as fraudulent by the Delaware Nation.

The Owl House was made on Tongva land

The Owl House was animated at Disney Television Animation’s studio in Tovaangar, the unceded homeland of the Uto-Aztecan-speaking Tongva people. More specifically, the animation studio in question is located in Glendale, Los Angeles County, near the historical Tongva villages of Wiqanga, Tujunga, Hahamongna, Ashwaangna, and Maungna, between the Verdugo and Santa Monica mountains whose springs had long provided fresh water for the Tongva. The streets of Los Angeles were built by the slave labor of Tongva people arrested by settler police for “vagrancy and public drunkenness” after Seppoland annexed Tovaangar without treaty. The Tongva people today are still unrecognized by the governments of California and Seppoland.

California Natives who did sign treaties with Seppoland never had those treaties ratified. This lack of Indigenous treaties in California presents unique legal challenges for the state’s Natives compared to Natives elsewhere in Seppoland.

Conclusion

The economic prosperity of New York City and Los Angeles that allowed animation industries to develop in these cities necessarily has its basis in the continuous and systemic disposession of Natives from their land that I’ve just described. The Native groups in these areas had no say in approving the construction of the animation studios or production companies in question, and see none of the profit generated by the cartoons drawn on their land. And although piracy avoids putting money directly into the pockets of settler capitalists, unpaid fan labor such as pirate uploading still contributes to the overall values of the intellectual properties in question, just as any other labor adds to the value of any other commodity.

The Lenape and Tongva peoples still exist and still live in their homelands today. They still fight, as they have for centuries, to exercise their sovereignty over their homelands and their resources. These nations are not monoliths nor are they in any way static: these nations are stratified by class like any other nation under capitalism, they adapt new technologies to their needs like any other nation, and like any other nation they have individual members intersected by every axis of oppression and each with their own individual perspectives.

Here are some relevant charities:

• https://lenape.center/donations
• https://www.tongva.land/

I would also recommend listening to “An Indigenous Perspective On The Chicano Movement”, as it is very relevant to the topic of Mexican colonization of the Southwest and its lingering impact on the settler-colonial contradiction in e.g. Tovaangar today.

SOLIDARITY WINS THE FREEDOM OF NATIONS!