Inappropriations



Every so often, the universe comes along and offers a cogent example of something that has been kicking around in my brain for some time but never quite articulated.

I have been enjoying Al –Jazeera online for the past few months, especially since I have soured on the right-wing collaborationist drivel being espoused by the Globe and Mail. I particularly enjoy their take on North American news, coming at it as they do from an outsider’s perspective...which is pretty much what you could say of indigenous people in the West these days. We stand on the outside looking in, refugees in our own homelands.

Al-Jazeera did a really good piece just recently on the issue of the wider culture appropriating aspects of indigenous culture. It’s here at http://stream.aljazeera.com/story/native-american-bloggers.

They actually talked a woman who has an entire blog dedicated to the issue, and I love the name of it: My Culture is Not a Trend - http://mycultureisnotatrend.tumblr.com/. She handily takes to task, deconstructs, and instructs the blogverse about why appropriation is totally inappropriate.

I have been having difficulty a lot lately with appropriation of native culture. Maybe it’s because of my age; maybe it’s because I am spending a lot of time in my own head decolonizing my thinking and looking at the rest of the world with an increasingly critical eye, but I do not have a lot of time anymore for appropriated imagery and find a lot of it racist and insulting. I always felt that, and it’s a measure of how decolonized my thinking has become in that I now constantly question the motivation behind it. Suffice it to say that I don’t deal very well anymore. It constantly amazes me to watch how much the wider culture commodifies EVERYTHING, including our clothing, our symbols and that final colonization, our spiritual practices. I used to tell myself that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but in light of the extreme power differential in our relationship to the colonial occupiers, this is not flattery but appropriation.

The thing that bothers me most, I have to say, is the dominant cultures’ effort to lump all North American indigenous people into one amorphous “native American” group, practically fetishizing Plains Nations culture in this way. Using their symbols and dress seems to have become a shorthand for lumping all indigenous nations under this banner, and if your nation does not follow those pre-conceived notions of what it means to be “Native American” , then you are somehow “less” of an “Indian.”

This is especially true if you are a Kanienkaha’keh in Canada -- we don’t do the sweatlodges or burn sweetgrass or eat bannock. We have longhouse, we burn tobacco and we eat scone. But other than giving the world the Mohawk hairstyle for that fighting warrior thing and lacrosse, most people know nothing about our culture. The only thing they know about our culture is how damn ornery we are, and how active resistance has become pretty much our trademark in Canada. Most people don’t know that the term “bury the hatchet” is Iroquoian, because we buried our hatchets at the base of the Tree of Peace when the Peacemaker gave us the Great Law, or that “caucus” is a term meaning “meeting of good minds”. Caucus is central to modern democracy, and yet no one knows this. Or that the American occupiers stole the symbol of the Eagle for their fledgling nation, holding in one of its talons arrows that had always symbolized the Five Nations of the Iroquoian Confederacy. Now that is some serious-ass appropriation!

I am following both My Culture is Not a Trend and another cool blog, http://iamnotamascot.blogspot.com/. It makes my heart happy to know there’s other NDNs out there, critically thinking and questioning EVERYTHING with some humour but with the attitude of, “Enough with this shit, I’m not taking it anymore – I’m gonna educate you and tell you WHY it’s wrong.”

Because if you really wanted to channel the North American indigenous culture, then you have to take on the genocide, the suicides, the violence, the alcoholism, the diabetes and the heart disease, the poverty and the lack of education, housing, clean water and the denial of economic opportunity. If you really want it, that’s what it means to be indigenous along with our awesome clothing and spiritual means. We deal with the aftermath of colonialism every damn day.

So all you people wanting to wear the lastest hipster-styled headress or moccasins made in Taiwan -- think you're strong enough for that?

Popular posts from this blog

I Have Been "Kissed By Lightning"

Image
I finally got around to seeing Shelley Niro’s feature film, “Kissed By Lightning.” It was actually on the The Movie Network’s OnDemand service, which pleased me to no end. I was hoping it would be visually stunning and provocative, the way all Shelley’s art is, but this – I have to say, I am feeling teary-eyed and awed after seeing it. The images haunted my dreams all last night and I woke up thinking about the film, which gave me the impetus to write this blog. I think everyone who ever wanted to know about Iroquoian philosophy and our values should watch this film. It was gentle and almost whisperingly quiet, the way Shelley’s art is, but it crept up on me and infused me with its lushly filmed, stunning visuals and the serene poetry of the story. Ostensibly the story of a woman’s journey through grief, it is actually the story of The Peacemaker and Hyenwatha, the two founding figures of our political and spiritual lives. The League of the Haudenosaunee could not exist without this...
Read more

Listen, All of You

Image
Sewatahon'satat. That’s how we always start a story. Tonight I want to tell you my story, my deep dark confession about being Kanien'kehakeh in 2011. About living here in Ateròn:toh, thi s place you call Toronto. This word means, “There are trees standing in the water.” Our elders argue about what the actual translation is, but I like this particular version.  The Haudenosaunee, or as you name us, the Iroquois, had moved south of Lake Ontario to consolidate our considerable power in the wake of the Beaver Wars. When we would return to  Ateròn:toh  in our war canoes, the giant elm trees that grew to the edge of the lake would mirror themselves in the water and you could see their reflection for miles out. This image manifests even now. When you cross the waters of Skanadariio, the Handsome Lake, you can see the towers of the city shimmering in the water. People think this is Mississauga territory. The joke’s kind of on you. The Mississauga were here ...
Read more

In Which I Review Joseph Boyden's The Orenda

Image
When I was about 12, my dad took me and my brother and my little sister on a historical tour of Ontario. We visited Fort George then up to Kingston to Fort Henry and the landing where Molly Brant came after fleeing the Haudenosaunee homelands in New York State. My dad is an amateur historian, and his focus is on Haudenosaunee/European relations in the 17 th  and 18 th  centuries. You’ve not lived until you’ve seen him at one of those funky re-enactment gatherings they have in upstate New York – but I digress. Then we travelled north to Midland, to visit Sainte-Marie-Among-the-Huron. I remember it was a beautiful early summer day, with the sky so blue. I ignored the carefully rebuilt European houses and chapel and instead spent all my time wandering through the reconstructed longhouses. I have long been fascinated with our ancestors and the way they lived their lives before contact. I remember my dad had to coax me away from the longhouses so we could go on the tour. We ...
Read more