Beneath Father Sky

Found this on Facebook! BOOST!

Ah, yes, the white guy is more educated on our culture than us and in a better position to decide for us what’s offensive. Well let’s go through his arguments here.

“And all the shapes and symbols on the headband are just simply triangles and things that don’t really mean anything, they’re just look kinda cool, I guess.”

Okay, except for the fact that those are

CLEARLY

LAKOTA

DESIGNS

AND THEY ABSOLUTELY HAVE MEANING.

But, no, go on. Educate me some more.

“Now in contrast a traditional ceremonial headdress of some Native cultures traditionally had very bright colors, a lot of white, they were never dark, never black, because black symbolizes death and it’s bad and traditional headdresses were never dark in color.”

That so? Which tribe are you speaking about now? Because I think you’re gonna have to

BE

MORE

SPECIFIC.

“So the only thing that my headdress has in common with a traditional ceremonial Native American headdress is its shape. Other than that it doesn’t resemble in the symbols on the headband. It is made from a different animal. It is dyed the wrong color. The shape is similar but everything else is totally different making it not a traditional ceremonial headdress.“

Seeing as we’ve just established why you’re wrong about almost everything, let’s talk about why that matters. Why is cultural appropriation bad? Well, it all starts with this guy name Raphael Lemkin. Who’s that, you ask? Why it’s the lawyer who first coined the term “genocide” and initiated the Genocide Convention where the term was adopted by the UN.

You might not be aware, but “genocide” means more than killing members of an ethnic group. It has to do with the eradication of that group. You don’t have to kill members of a group to eradicate them. This is why he devoted a lot of time to defining “Cultural Genocide,” which he emphasized as one of the most important aspects of genocide. Cultural genocide is a deliberate attempt to destroy the culture of a people. He also defined several ways this could be done:

desecration and destruction of cultural symbols (books, objects of art, religious relics, etc.)

loot destruction of cultural leadership

destruction of cultural centers (cities, churches, monasteries, schools, libraries)

prohibition of cultural activities or codes of behavior

forceful conversion

demoralization

All these things, of course, have been carried out against Native American peoples (as well as all other aspects of genocide, including physical and biological.) But I want you to take special note of the first bullet there.

DESECRATION OF CULTURAL SYMBOLS

Taking a cultural item, ie a headdress, stripping it of its meaning, and subverting it into a new purpose? Absolutely a desecration. What you’re doing here is a component of genocide.

To let Raph himself further explain, ‘the destruction of cultural symbols is genocide.’ To destroy their function ‘menaces the existence of the social group which exists by virtue of its common culture.’

I don’t care how much you want to believe ”[Native American Culture] is not relevant to this argument.“ You are blatantly taking our cultural objects and robbing them of their meaning. Stealing and subverting our culture is an act of genocide.

‘Jedi Killer’ (Kylo Ren) concepts by Christian Alzmann

A mini project done on Lakota Identity with some fellow students at Oglala Lakota College.