Native American Wannabes , OUR CULTURE ISNT A TREND Most of us could identify with any race or culture (though I have a light skinned ancestor), I simply identify my self as Native American. But why are accused of cultural appropriation when no one bothers to ask us what our culture or ancestry is anyway? It seems no one cares about our journey through life and expression because we tend look like the majority. It’s because what’s termed as “white” is the dominant culture. White settlers and colonizers forced their culture onto most everyone else. What is “standard” or “normal” - is default white culture. We can’t appropriate the dominant, especially if it was forced upon you. The term just doesn’t apply because of the power imbalance. Were Native American, and we should be fed up with the appropriation of our culture by those desperate to be trendy, hip, ironic etc etc . Being a Native American comes with a history of decidedly un-trendy events, such as the cultural genocide of an entire continent, residential schools, racism, stolen generations, and the eradication of entire tribes of people and their cultural traditions. This may seem, to be calling out those who might think that it is fun to dress like a native for a picture , or what have you. Just because its popular, doesnt make it right, and to me, it is just as offensive as blackface is to the African Americans. Although we are a mostly invisible culture, that does not grant anyone or everyone , the right to appropriate what little pieces of our past we have, robbing us of our dignity. Part of being seen as trend also makes an entire culture not only a commodity, but also something that people will (and can) tire of; therefore being disposable. And to me, that is quite unacceptable. Native American Wannabes First they came into our land and took the water, then our fish and killed our game….Now they want our religions as well. All of a sudden, we have a lot of unscrupulous idiots running around saying they’re medicine people. And they’ll sell you a sweat lodge ceremony for fifty bucks. It’s not only wrong, its obscene. Native Americans can’t sell our spirituality to anybody, for any price. This is just another in a very long series of thefts from our people and, in some ways, the theft of our spiritual beliefs , this is the worst one yet. They seem discontented with their own society, their government, their religion, and everything around them and nothing is more appealing than to cast aside all inhibitions and stride back into the wilderness, or at least a wilderness theme park, seeking the nobility of the wily savage who once physically fought civilization and now, symbolically at least, is prepared to do it again. In truth this isnt make-believe nor it isn’t just harmless fun: Native American societies can and do suffer the social culturally debilitating effects of spiritual trivialization and appropriation at the hands of the massive larger Euro-immigrant population which has come to dominate literally every other aspect of our existence. “They came for the land, for what , we grew or could be grown on it, for the resources in it, and for the clean air and pure water. They stole these things from us, and in the taking they also stole our free ways and the best of our leaders, killed in battle or assassinated. And now, after all that, they’ve come for the very last of our possessions; now they want our pride, our history, our heritage, our spiritual traditions. They want to rewrite and remake these things, to claim them for themselves. The lies and thefts just never end.” The process is ultimately intended to supplant Native Americans , even in areas of their own culture and spirituality. In the end, non-Natives will have complete power to define what is and what is not Native American , even for our people . We are talking here about a complete ideological/conceptual subordination of Native Americans , in addition to the total physical subordination weve already experience. When this happens, the last vestiges of a real Native American society and our birth rights will disappear. Non-Natives will then claim to “own” our heritage and ideas as thoroughly as they now claim to own the land and all God given resources. The point is that . There are lots of things the Native American peoples developed which were borrowed by Europeans, rubber, a wide variety herbs and treatments for medicines, sign language, agricultural methods used in bio-intensive and sustainable agriculture, french fries. The point is that some things are meant to be shared even land .., Others are sacred, and it’s disrespectful to glibly appropriate sacred things, particularly from cultures where those things have been forcibly suppressed or outlawed. It is also important to consider the history of how things get shared. I wear ‘western’ style clothing , dance ,work and speak English because my ancestors had our customs beaten out of them, they were forced to abandon traditional dress, speak only english , cut our hair and in the society. We live in where theyre are consequences that fall on individuals who dress or act too much outside of the mainstream. So when people imitate sacred dress they see in the media or in museums, they don’t consider that sacred objects ended up in museums because they were literally stolen from indigenous people who were legally prohibited from possessing them until relatively recently.” We should coexist and share without having to sacrificing, who and what we are . Cetan
Posted on: Thu, 18 Dec 2014 06:38:27 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015