#native appropriations

Still with this?

-As always: You can check out a great, kind, loving, careful breakdown of cultural appropriation versus celebration from Métis writer Chelsea Vowel (including encouragement to appreciate and buy beautiful moccasins, beaded jewelry, etc. from native-owned businesses. Like almost everything you can imagine or dream of wearing or owning except actual specific, sacred war bonnets. Just this one thing. Just one. No? Seriously?) 

[âpihtawikosisân]

-Also: some recommendations for non-First Nations headdresses to appropriate. 

[lowbrow 4 life]

But really. Still? Imagine, even if this weren’t offensive to anyone, it’s 2017. Fashion editorials and band photos have been co-opting this look, barely altered, since at least the 60s (maybe we should be thrilled the model isn’t topless?). Try something new. Get out more. 

 I had heard a lot of these concepts surrounding Native Appropriations before. Ones that I feel are important, but I appreciated having them laid out and connected to other important topics. The idea of power as being a key important part of appropriating other cultures is something that I’ve heard before, but less so have I concretely connected it to settler colonialism.

I connected it better when Adrienne read a quote from Ijeoma Oluo

When well-meaning white people say, “Help me define cultural appropriation so I know what to do and not to do,” what they are actually saying, even if they aren’t aware, is, “Help me understand how to continue in this system of privilege and oppression without feeling bad.”

-Ijeoma Oluo: When We’re Talking about Cultural Appropriation We’re Missing the Point

To me this connected cultural appropriation and the power dynamics of settler colonialism to “settler moves to innocence” from Decolonization is Not A Metaphor. It’s a way for settlers trying to rid themselves of settler guilt, without actually putting in any work to help native people. Allowing issues that affect Native people to persist without being effected, something that native people don’t have the privilege to do.

Something that I thought connected this well to Episode 3: Native Mascots, Really Still? and More Than A Word was that when talking about Native Appropriations in native communities, Adrienne was met with the response of “Why does this matter.” I think there was a similar response portrayed in the issue around Native sports mascots. Where people wanted to address the “real issues” that were faced by native communities: the issues that were life-threatening or bigger issues. Just like in the mascot issue, the issue of Native Appropriations is very tied to the big issues.

I thought that one connection that was made was particularly insightful to me. The appropriation of native cultures and “playing Indian” for Halloween costumes led to the sexualization of those costumes, and the sexualization of Native women that is contributing to the high violence, sexual assault and epidemic of missing and murdered native women. Its kind of shocking that something that settlers do so thoughtlessly has such withstanding impacts.

People ask why Native Appropriations matter and the above example is a good reason. But I also think that it doesn’t have to be that big. It doesn’t have to directly be contributing to native people's deaths to be harmful and bad, and something that shouldn’t be done. Because taking culture, ignoring protocol around sacred things, stealing, is bad even if it wasn’t a part of the larger settler-colonial structure.