Cultural Appropriation

take my skin colour too

and my dark brown lips

take my self-hatred because i don’t fit into the euro-centric ideals of beauty

take the oppression too

take the history of colonization that has devastated my country

and the drones that currently devastate my country

take all the bad stuff too

not just the pretty, shiny, sparky bits

What isn’t cultural appropration:

OH WOW! This style is so cool and original and bold and new and epic.

Native Appropriation Soup: Pac Sun, Harry Styles and Ralph Lauren Latest Offenders, By Danielle Miller

Our cultures have been the scapegoat for colonizers to feel exotic and rebellious since days of the Boston Tea party. When we challenge appropriation we are challenging the privileged colonizer identity which has been upheld since the origins of America. One of the modern depictions of erasure is the Native skull aesthetic. I already went into ways these pictures are problematic in past articles about Kanye West. To sum it up, an image which celebrates genocide is never acceptable.

The use of cultural symbols for profit with no involvement with the communities is an act of exploitation. These celebrities and corporations won’t touch any Native issues with a fifty foot pole but they will put on a Native headdress in a heartbeat.

These acts of appropriation don’t simply boil down to unoriginality or aesthetic choices. That becomes evident when you see certain historical policies or interactions of the United States and Native communities reflected within clothing designs. One flagrant example of this was when Gap came out with “Manifest Destiny” shirts. When the company received complaints the designer Mark McNairy even had the nerve to tweet “MANIFEST DESTINY. SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST”. While he may have thought his assertion of conquest was clever he sure was quick to apologize when there was large outcry. (He was hurt for the wrong reasons, because of the fact his feelings were hurt over being called racist). That’s just one example of white supremacy showing.

Sexualizing native women is also another dynamic of conquest. Pac sun sold Yeezus shirts and has now taken things a step further by selling shirts with a sexualized Native woman (from the brand Riot society).

Complete with all the typical pan-Indian type sentiments the shirt depicts a woman with a headdress and war paint and is even labeled “Tribal girl tank top”. The shirt also comes up after the search term “Aztec”. This same model was also used on another shirt; the war paint was photo shopped onto the image. (Brownie points for originality!) When Natives on twitter left negative reviews on the website it seemed that the reviews were just deleted. Pac Sun’s twitter also gave native twitter users no response.

The most recent attempt was a collection by Ralph Lauren which pictures the typical skull and headdress. Most alarming for me was a tee shirt picturing a Native man in regalia with an eagle over his shoulder, a banner with the words “sacred hills” going across. This design is potentially symbolic America’s presence and ownership over the black hills. Its common knowledge that the United States stole land from natives; but many of the general public isn’t even aware that the Black Hills was promised to the Lakota in the Ft. Laramie treaty of 1868.