Hi, I'm a Native American, and I'm fed up with the appropriation of my culture by those desperate to be trendy, hip, ironic etc. “First off, this is anonymous only because I don’t have a tumblr account. My email is lilliancrow@gmail.com :)
I’m white and I live in the United States. A few months ago, I was accepted for a job at the Neah Bay Elementary School on the Makah Indian Reservation in Washington state. I had only a textbook past-tense grasp on Northwest First Nations cultures and practices, and I knew nothing about the Makah people as a distinct tribe except that they were whalers. Before I moved out here, I researched more about the Makah Nation, and eventually I stumbled onto this tumblog and other sites like it.
People will do anything to deny their prejudices and privileges. I like to think that I’m an intelligent, forward-thinking woman, but at first, reading about how I’ve been casually racist in my thoughts and actions? I resisted it. I didn’t want to believe that I was wrong, that my entire culture had raised me on varying degrees of bullshit so thick I couldn’t tell the BS from the truth, and that I’d believed it. I was always unsettled by Native mascots, I knew that the more ridiculous representations were false, I never played Cowboys and Indians or “played Indian” at summer camp or school – how could I be part of the problem?
What’s so insidious about appropriation is how much it CAN seem harmless. There are so many (bullshit) excuses – it’s a way of appreciating another culture, you aren’t actively harming anyone, you just like the aesthetic (and this aesthetic just *happens* to include the timeless “Noble Savage” stereotype.) It’s harmful because it doesn’t seem like it should be, but really looking at it, it’s harmful because there is nothing even remotely OK with the dominant culture cannibalizing pieces of the cultures it tried so hard to destroy and vomiting sacred items back out as mass-produced kitschy crap. When you’re exposed to enough of that kitschy crap, that is what that culture comes to represent. It’s just another form of erasure.
A few months ago, I understood none of this. I get it now. Thank you.
The work you’re doing here is amazing and the message is so, so important. I don’t want my kids at the elementary school growing up in a world that sees them as racial caricatures, sees their culture as something to be fetishized and marketed, and ultimately sees their people as existing and belonging in the past tense. They deserve so much more than that. They’re living in a better world than their parents and grandparents, but there’s still a long way to go.
I think hatemail means that you’ve struck a chord. The intelligent ones are angry because they’re deep in denial and don’t want to admit to themselves that they’re wrong, though they’re smart enough to understand on some level that they are. The stupid ones are so trapped in their prejudices that it’s worthless trying to change them, but the noise they make only draws more people to your blog. Let ‘em make noise! No matter how pissy they get, you’re still in the right, and that’s something they’ll never have. Keep at it, you’re so much stronger than than the ignorance you’re up against.
Best wishes,
Liz
- Thank you Liz! This was so incredibly eloquent, and touches on everything I’m trying to achieve, but articulated far better than I’ve been able to, till now. I wanted to spread the message, so I’ve taken it out of the “ask” medium. I’m grateful that you’re in education. It’s clearly where you belong.
