The planned Rainbow
Family of Living Light gathering (herein Rainbow) in He Sapa, the Black Hills,
has caused serious tensions within the Oceti Sakowin. Many of us see the
Rainbow gathering as engaging in cultural exploitation, and some of their
activities as desecrating our holiest site by appropriating and practicing faux
Native ceremonies and beliefs. These actions, although Rainbows may not
realize, dehumanize us as an indigenous Nation because they imply our culture
and humanity, like our land, is anyone’s for the taking.
Nick
Estes and others, writing in Indian
Country Today. Read more athttp://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2015/07/14/protect-he-sapa-stop-cultural-exploitation
Some decades ago, I was
driving at night through the Black Hills. As a U.S. government official, I was on my way to testify in court
in support of an occupation encampment set up by members of the American Indian
Movement (AIM) on land controlled by the U.S. government.
As I drove, wisps of
snow blew across the beams of my headlights. In their delicate waverings they
seemed to assume ethereal forms that my tired brain linked to the spirit-beings
that surely inhabit the Hills. I felt a powerful sense of connection with the
people whose interests I was scheduled to address in court, and with their
ancestors.
So, was I engaging in
cultural appropriation?
Or what about, a few
nights later, when I doffed my clothes and entered a sweatlodge with some
Lakota and Cheyenne friends and colleagues, to sweat and sing and pray?
Hypothetically, what if
there hadn’t been any Lakota or Cheyenne people present? What if it had been
only a bunch of white-eyes, but we really needed a sweat?
On my office wall I have
an abalone necklace, give me by an elder in a tribe for which I worked once on
California’s northwest coast. By keeping it, am I appropriating the tribe’s
culture? What if I were to wear it?
Or what about the pile
of indigenous art and artifacts that we took out of my late wife’s office at
the National Park Service after her death? By keeping them, displaying them,
was she engaging in cultural appropriation?
I daresay she thought
she was showing respect for the tribes and communities and individuals who
produced the things. Plus she thought they were pretty, intellectually
engaging, and reminiscent of people and places that were important to her, and
that inspired her work. Was she wrong?
I can sympathize with
indigenous people – with people of any society or community – who get indignant
when “mainstream” society starts glomming onto their cultural symbols and
practices, in effect taking possession of them, distorting them, cheapening
them. But I wonder how far we can go in expressing and accommodating such
indignation without splintering into a formless hodge-podge of subcultures,
each viciously guarding its prerogatives.
I habitually wear
trousers, which at some point in the past my western European ancestors
appropriated from the horsemen of the steppes. My shrink recommends Buddhist
meditation. I’m typing these thoughts using Arabic script. I’ll be dining next
week at an Indonesian restaurant. Members of different cultures routinely mix
and match practices, cuisines, artifacts, bits of language. Our cultures change
as a result – always have, presumably always will, sometimes doubtless for
worse, but often, arguably, for better. Or at least for neutral.
I’m glad to have
tortilla and sashimi and borsht to eat, and I don’t think I’m appropriating
Spanish, Japanese, or Russian culture by including them in my diet. I don’t
think I’m appropriating Chuukese culture when I tell someone raan annimw for “hello.” Or maybe I AM
appropriating when I nibble another culture’s food, or butcher a word or phrase –
I’m using a bit of it, after all – but I don’t think I’m doing that culture
injury, or disrespecting it.
But it seems that a lot
of people would say I’m wrong. Or maybe I’m just missing something. What do you
think?
