(cont.) but i’m still very much of the opinion that nothing should be done to protect people from offending the people who actually adhere to the sects that hold these things ‘holy’. i don’t think there’s anything wrong with stereotypes, AS LONG as people are educated to know that stereotypes are just that. i very much agree that people should really buy the native american crafts from native americans (cont.)

(cont.) and not from huge morally indefensible companies like f21, who don’t give a shit about the people they take the inspiration for these things from. but just because one group of people consider something sacred doesn’t make it so. people should be allowed to desecrate whatever they want, as long as they never harm any humans, or destroy other people’s work (e.g. churches, burial grounds, temples etc.). i’m open to have my mind changed on this, though.

Okay.  To start, I think two things are getting mixed up in all of this:

1) cultural appropriation

2) ‘costumes’, ‘dress up’ and other forms of engaging in perpetrating stereotypes

Both piss me off, but they are not both cultural appropriation.  I’m not going to discuss the second point, just the first, because I think that’s where most of the ambivalence is in people who are just starting to think about this.  Most people already understand why playing ‘dress up’ using racist stereotypes is wrong…and if they don’t, I basically write them off as not worth the time.

Okay.  So, cultural appropriation.  I see two errors with your argument so far:

a) the appeal to common practice: people culturally appropriate all the time, thus cultural appropriation is okay and;

b) a misunderstanding of what ‘restricted’ means.

On the first issue, when cultural appropriation is taking place (as in, restricted symbols are being used/taken without permission), you cannot rely on the fact that it happens to justify it happening.  What I mean is, I’m arguing it’s wrong, and I’m not saying it’s just wrong when it’s native restricted symbols.  The fact that people do it anyway does not change a wrong into a right.  You would have to make an argument about why these symbols cannot be legitimately restricted in the first place.  What doesn’t pass the muster is saying, “well it’s wrong but other people do it so it’s okay for me to do it too”.  That’s the “he did it first!” defence that doesn’t save us as children either :D

Which brings us to b.  A lot of the things you discuss fall under the ‘costume’ category in 2, so we weed those out right away.  They aren’t cultural appropriation per se, and their level of offensiveness depends on the context (i.e. whether they perpetuate harmful stereotypes that are used to justify continuing oppression against a people).

However, while you may not be arrested for claiming to hold restricted qualifications (having an MD etc), you are nonetheless committing a fraud.  Most common law and civil law countries have specific Acts controlling certain types of professions…doctors, lawyers, architects, and so on.  These legislative regimes define who is eligible to become a member of these professions, what qualifications they must have, what obligations and duties apply and so forth.  Thus, not everyone can practice medicine, or law etc.  You can pretend to have these qualifications and you might even get away with it, but what you are doing is still probably illegal.

Now you can argue that anyone should be able to do these things and the restrictions are invalid…but I doubt you will.  There is a reason these restrictions are in place and most people can come up with good reasons for that without delving into the legislative history.

What you can’t do, is convincingly argue that because people are committing fraud by actually impersonating police officers (i.e. not just dressing up as a costume), lawyers, medical doctors and so forth, that this makes violating those restrictions ‘okay’.  That wouldn’t make any logical sense, if you actually understand and support why those restrictions exist.

Analogies are of limited use, unfortunately.  I gave analogies within western culture that would be understandable to settlers.  They are not equivalents to native cultural restrictions.  We don’t write elaborate Acts regulating who can be a warrior, and who can wear a headdress, and who can practice medicine.  Our cultural restrictions are expressed in other ways, and it’s not really that important for you to understand exactly how that works.  Not for this discussion.

It is important, however, to understand that these restrictions exist, and that they are not unimportant merely because you do not come from the culture, and do not understand the reasoning behind them.  An immigrant to Canada, coming from a nation where anyone can practice medicine (I doubt such a place actually exists though) cannot use this lack of restriction in his or home country to justify practicing medicine in Canada.  It would not be allowed.

And here is where analogies just aren’t adequate.  You aren’t living in a First Nation community, and I am not saying that you have to in order for these restrictions to apply to you.  I think they apply outside our communities too, and not just because these lands are originally ours.  Our own people are not allowed to access certain symbols because within our culture they are restricted.  Merely living outside our culture should not extinguish the restrictions and open up the floodgates to non-natives, on precisely the basis that they aren’t us.  That is basically saying that the restricted cultural symbols of all other cultures you are not a member of are open to you (but not to the people in the culture).  And frankly, that would be fucked up. 

It renders the symbol meaningless, stripping it of all its cultural context…while at the same time, the people using it claim an affinity with the culture they are taking it from.  I’m sorry, but you can’t have it both ways.  Steal our restricted shit, and don’t care…but don’t pretend that it honours us or that it is anything less than theft.  (I say this in general, I’m not directing it at you).

And like I say in the longer article, don’t get hung up on the word ‘sacred’:

I do not care if you are religious, spiritual, or atheist.  These are choices you make, and I respect them.  However, because of the turbulent history of religion in western settler philosophy (and in many other parts of the world, from whence Canadians come), the translation of terms from our languages into the word ‘sacred’ can sometimes cause trouble.  Let’s talk about that for a second.

I feel that when other cultures discuss ‘sacred’ things, some people feel obligated to reject or elevate those things because of how they feel about their own religious traditions, or their atheism.  The issue gets confused as being about ‘religion’, when that is not necessarily what is going on.

Usually when we say ‘sacred’, there are more complex terms in our own language that apply…all of which basically mean to impart that the thing in question is ‘important and meaningful in a specific way’.  When you see the term ‘sacred’, please remember that.

Also, desecration of the restricted symbols of oppressed peoples is inherently harmful, as it bolsters already institutionalised systems that continue to oppress us.  For many years, we were denied our cultural practices and our symbols by law.  We were punished for wearing these items, practicing our ceremonies, speaking our languages and so on.  That has changed, but now we see these things used against us in new ways.  Used to stereotype us as all being the same, fitting into ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ caricatures, erasing our actual traditions and culture.  Our symbols and ceremonies are being taken up by people who feel that they do not have to abide by the restrictions, and so these people (being much more numerous than those within our cultures who are allowed to wear/do these things) get to basically define what the symbols/ceremonies mean.  That is cultural erasure and it continues the process of cultural genocide. 

I’m not talking about moccasins or feather earrings.  There are many items within our cultures that are not restricted and can be used by non-natives.  That does not mean it is all up for grabs, and it certainly does not mean that taking restricted things is not harmful, or somehow an exercise of some noble human right.

I hope  that clarifies things more for you, whether you end up agreeing or not.  Also, you  might consider this….oppressed peoples, colonised peoples, do not have the institutional power to do what you claim should be done freely.  We cannot appropriate the restricted symbols of settler culture, because we would be punished for this.  I don’t want us to have some ‘equal right’ to do this mind, you, but the power imbalance involved should not be forgotten.

It’s gendered in the sense that certain things are based on being male or female, but it’s not sexist.  Sexism (like racism) is systemic power imbalance.  Prejudice or discrimination based on one’s sex/gender, which negatively foster conditions where one sex/gender is elevated at the expense of the other. 

When you come from a culture where the feminine has for so long been subjugated and denigrated, while the masculine is elevated and celebrated, of course it is difficult to understand how gender roles are not necessarily based on power inequalities in other cultures. 

Remind yourself of one very important thing:  European cultural values are not universal.

These are the cultural values that have been imported to the Americas, and continue to dominate the socio-political structure of the Americas.  Nonetheless, our socio-political structures also exist, but are not understood by most non-natives except through the lens of that European culture.  (So basically, not understood at all.)

In our cultures, women and men are equals, and this is not something we struggled to achieve after centuries of enforced inequality.  Let that be your starting point for figuring it out.  It would be pointless for me to give you examples, because it’s going to to take you a long time to accept what I’ve just said as possible, coming from where you come from.

Fuck everything about this.

Ah yes, Edmonton.  Still sucking ass and treating us like shit.  Fuck you.

Welcome to the 21st century, where this shit is still going on.

A former employee of the Edmonton Police Service says racist behaviour of her colleagues and her boss forced her from her job.

“I was told by my sergeant within the victim services unit to be less aboriginal at work,” Kathleen Sawdo told a shocked Edmonton police commission Thursday night.

“I was told that my appearance, photos of my children and regalia at my desk — a blade of sweetgrass and a bough of cedar in my office — was culturally aggressive, assertive and obtrusive and I was told my co-workers in the unit found all this to be offensive.”

Sawdo was a civilian employee in the victim services unit at the time.

She complained about the reprimand, but no one was disciplined, she said.

Instead she was isolated from her team and forced to leave the southeast division and work at headquarters downtown.

“I went to work everyday in fear, with no support,” Sawdo said.

A promised cultural sensitivity session was never held, she said.

She was bullied by her co-workers to the point she quit in March 2011 after almost one year on the job.

Sawdo also accused her colleagues and bosses in victim services of failing to engage or support the aboriginal community in the city.

Although most of her clients were aboriginal, she was dissuaded from helping them, she said.

“Given the attitude and behaviour of victim services employees, very few received the support they deserved and are entitled to,” she told the commission.

“I had to sit there and listen to victim advocates take a look at the name ‘Cardinal’ and say, ‘No, they’re aboriginal,’… and refuse to send out a victim impact statement,” Sawdo said.

“I’m sorry, I’m ashamed,” she told commission members. “I’m ashamed of your service and that needs to be fixed.”

It gets me every time.  Grand entry. I’m okay, it’s just a little moving.  The posting of the flags.  Swelling feelings all messing up with my breathing. The POW/MIA flag, hot damn I’m tearing up, the salute, the veteran’s song and I’m pretending there’s dust in my eyes.  It doesn’t matter how many times I see it.  I’m always a bit of a wreck for a few minutes after.

I am firmly anti-war.  I am anti-imperalism, anti-colonialism.  I respect our warrior traditions, but I do not support the subjugation of peoples in the name of economic or political hegemony. 

I’ve had people claim that this actually makes me pro-war.  Allow me to chortle, yes chortle I say!

But I do struggle somewhat with my ideology, versus my reality.

I’ve met a fair number of Canadian soldiers.  From Elders to folks my own age, native and non.  I can’t stand what the young ones in particular are involved in.  I can’t stand how some people demand you honour soldiers and never ever question what they do.  I can’t stand people demanding that you believe these people are doing it for you and your freedom.

Yet when you talk to soldiers, past or present, on a one-to-one human basis, things are different.  Most of these men and women have really thought about what they are doing, and why. When I talk to a soldier one-on-one, I don’t find the mindless thug I expect, though I certainly believe they are out there.  More often, I find someone who is very much aware of the inherent problems with the system they are fighting within, but who has chosen to do their best within it anyway.

Ultimately, I do believe that we need warriors.  I do not necessarily agree that they need to be doing the work Canada and the US has them doing, but let’s get back to the personal. 

Indigenous people have consistently put themselves at risk in Canada and the US to fight in wars alongside people who had no respect for them.  People say they fought for their countries, but I’ve heard it said, they fought for their Nations.  Our Nations. 

When Cree men became warriors, in the old days and sometimes even still today, their community would hold a funeral for them.  They would give away their possessions.  They would surrender themselves to death.  No light thing then, to be a warrior.  Not an easy choice, not a glorious one, not a cool or fun thing to do.  A very serious decision.  

Our people did it again, and again, even though they would come home to a country that treated them like second class citizens.  A country that stole their land while they were off risking their lives, only to give it to non-native veterans instead.  They did it, even though they lost so very much.

So during the posting of the flags, during the veteran’s song, and during every opening and closing prayer that honours our veterans, I listen without conflict.  I have no respect for war and for those who ensure conflict will never cease.  And I will say what I think about the kind of people that the armed forces tends to attract, but when it comes down to it, I respect our aboriginal veterans.  I respect our warriors.  And when we’re one-on-one, I’m open to respecting the non-native warriors too.

ozonebaby:

Great creator of being …Grant us one more hour… To perform our art…And per-fect our lives~

This needs a totem pole, a tipi and an igloo to round it out, methinks.

hardboiledandwutnot:

kamen-rider-equine:

thatsjustprime:

dobbaaa:

no words omg

Female martial artists are scary as fuck

… That is a Sentai-level finisher at least!

No. That’s an Ultra finisher.

This is what I do when people ask me if I pay taxes.

What do you know about farming among the Prairie nations?

Here’s what I knew.  I knew that after the annihilation of our main economic base, the buffalo, native peoples in the Prairies were encouraged to become farmers.  I knew that ‘experts’ were sent by Indian Affairs to teach on-reserve populations how to farm.  I knew that were specific provisions in the Treaties to provide the people with farming implements and seeds:

the following articles shall be supplied … four hoes per family …two spades… one plough for every three families…one harrow …two scythes and one whetstone, and two hay forks and two reaping hooks [etc]…

…. for each Band, enough of wheat, barley, potatoes and oats to plant the land …also for each Band four oxen, one bull and six cows; also, one boar and two sows, and one hand-mill…

(A Treaty 7 farm.)

I knew that many people considered us ‘wholly unsuited to farming’, believing us lazy, shiftless and much too nomadic to prosper in such ‘civilised pursuits’.  This sentiment in particular was hammered into my head and soul via a thousand comments from teachers, brief textbook descriptions and newspaper articles that mentioned us at all.  Although I believed that indigenous peoples are perfectly capable of farming (just look at the many nations who were doing this long before settlers came along to ‘teach them how it’s done), I nonetheless half-accepted the idea that here on the Prairies, perhaps we just weren’t capable of shifting from a buffalo/trapping/fishing lifestyle to a farming lifestyle with any great ease.

Perversely, the above knowledge existed along-side my familiarity with the farming prowess of any number of Métis and First Nations families in Treaty 6 area and beyond.  In fact, many Métis families pride themselves on coming from hard working, self-sufficient and talented farming stock, so the stories are not hard to find.  In addition, there is good evidence that First Nations in the Prairies were not wholly unfamiliar with farming pre-Contact.

However, I never once read about this or any of these farming families in the textbooks, nor did I hear any ‘expert’ admit their existence.  Thus I suppose I felt that our own understandings carried less weight?  The ‘official’ story supplanted my own family’s history.  Maybe these families were merely exceptions to the rule.

Cui bono (to whose benefit)?

An important fact that gets lost or distorted when indigenous peoples are discussed by settler texts and educators is the issue of ‘for whose benefit’?

(Duncan Campbell Scott, poet and Indian Agent. “Scott truly believed that the only “authentic” Indian was a pre-contact Indian. In other words, Scott perceived the Indian of the past as a “noble savage,” and the Indian of the present as merely in the way of progress.”)

For many years, it has been asserted that virtually every government program designed and enacted by Indian Affairs was ‘for the benefit of the Indians’.  This has been the official position for everything from the creation of the Gradual Civilisation Act, to the creation of the reserve system, to the institution of Residential Schools.  Clearly, as facts emerge and become more widely known, this official position has been altered.  Officially, Canada no longer asserts that Residential Schooling was a positive endeavour, nor that the High Arctic relocations were carried out in the best interests of those who endured them.  Nonetheless, the belief that Canada did its best for indigenous peoples, good intentions always at the forefront, remains, deeply entrenched in the socio-political consciousness.

It is one thing to not believe this to be true, and it is another to understand exactly to what extent ‘for the benefit of the Indians’ is a lie.  We are still taught that the numbered Treaties were signed for our benefit, to address the desperate situation so many indigenous peoples found themselves in when the buffalo were exterminated over a few decades.  And if you read correspondence from First Nations leaders at that time, our need is absolutely evident:

“…Our country is getting ruined of fur-bearing animals, hitherto our sole support, and now we are poor and want help – we want you to pity us. We want cattle, tools, agricultural implements, and assistance in everything when we come to settle- our country is no longer able to support us.

Make provision for us against years of starvation. We had a great starvation the past winter, and the smallpox took away many of our people, the old, young, and children. …”

     – Chief Sweetgrass 

Nonetheless, the numbered Treaties undeniably benefited the Canadian government far more than they have ever benefited us.  These Treaties opened up unimaginably vast tracts of land for settlement in return for a pittance.

I do not belabour this point without reason.  “For whose benefit” cannot be a question that is pushed aside or believed to be of secondary importance.  Keeping this in mind, I want to turn to the push to create farmers out of the people of the Plains nations.

Lost harvests

As with so many issues facing aboriginal peoples versus non-aboriginal peoples in this country, the level of control the government has and had over the lives of each must be contrasted to see a clear picture.

(For an excellent resource on the topic.)

The Prairie reserves were created in the 1870s, and at this time settlers who chose to farm had very little in the way of legislative regulation to contend with.  In contrast, the Indian Act micromanaged reserve life to a level incomprehensible to those who have not experienced it.  This micromanagement of course included all facets of reserve agriculture.  To whose benefit, this extreme control?  History stands witness to the fact that it did not benefit First Nations.

What happened?

Many reserves were located in areas not suited to farming, and many grain seeds and farming implements promised to First Nations never materialised.  In addition, natural phenomena such as floods and frost turned a bad situation even worse.  Agriculture on the reserves took a back seat to focusing on increasing numbers of settlers flooding into the Prairies.

However, even with these impediments, farming was at first very successful in a number of First Nations communities (p.5-6):

During the early 1880s … many First Nations farmers were successful in competing in the farming economy along with the non-aboriginal farmers.  Utilizing newly developed dry land farming techniques and acting as a collective, many First Nations won local prizes and awards for their crops

Stolen Harvests

(I’m getting the feeling you weren’t sincere about wanting us to become good farmers?)

Despite the lack of any real effort to support reserves in implementing an agricultural lifestyle, many First Nations managed, through communal effort, to make it work.  You might expect that the federal government would be pleased by this, but instead, it went out of its way to sabotage these efforts by implementing a number of harmful policies (from the previously linked document, pages 5-8):

1. severality – reserve farmland was divided into 40 acre plots and no one farmer could own more than 160 acres.  The intention was to promote ‘individualism’, directly undermining successful collective efforts.  Also, any ‘left over’ land could be surrendered and made available for sale to non-natives.  
2. peasant farming – this is when ‘experts’ were sent in to teach native farmers what to do. The purpose was to reduce output to subsistence levels, essentially just enough to support a single family.  Thus expensive large-scale machinery would be unnecessary, and aboriginal farmers would become ‘more self-sufficient’ by using peasant-methods of production instead of the more advanced techniques they’d been using.
3. the pass and permit system: these systems restricted the ability of  First Nations peoples to leave the reserve, as well as severely curtailing their ability to sell their products or purchase farming implements.  In essence, these systems ensured that aboriginal farmers could not compete with non-aboriginal farmers.

The Greater Production Campaign

The early twentieth century saw attention focused further abroad as WWI broke out.  At the same time, great efforts were made to first lease and then alienate reserve lands for cultivation by non-natives. The Greater Production Campaign was announced in 1918 at the end of the war.  During this time, vast amounts of Indian lands were already being taken up and provided to settler veterans resulting in significant erosion of aboriginal lands.  (This, as aboriginal veterans were denied benefits afforded to their non-native counterparts, and often left without ‘location tickets’ which would have entitled them to settle back on their home reserves.)

The Greater Production Campaign (p. 57) resulted in many amendments to the Indian Act, making it easier to alienate (take) lands that were not being cultivated.

(Cree farmer, File Hills Colony 1920)

Can we just take a moment to think about that?  The most unsuccessful First Nations were given land unsuited to farming, or were not given the farm stock, seed and implements promised in their Treaty.  When some First Nations did well despite this, an entire system was put into place to ensure their farming ability, including methods, would only be the most ineffective and small-scale possible.  After that, any lands not properly cultivated according to Indian Affair’s standards were essentially ‘up for grabs’ because the lazy Indians just couldn’t handle farming.

Oh yes.  That is bitterness in my tone.

Non-native farmers didn’t care much for the Greater Production Campaign as it applied to them, and it was pretty much scrapped in 1919.  It had held a mostly advisory role anyway.  On the reserves, however, Indian Affairs had absolute power via its office of the Commission for Greater Production up until 1924.

Sweeping and absolute power

The Commissioner for Greater Production was given the power in 1918 to use as much Prairie reserve land as he liked, and to spend Band monies, including all the profits from decades of agricultural efforts if he wished.  The plan was threefold (p.74 of last link above):

1. lease as much reserve land as possible to non-native farmers
2. create government-run Greater Production farms on reserve
3. stimulate agricultural activity among reserve residents.

No monies were expended to help individual farmers.  Most of the financial focus was on the Greater Production farms.  For example, a farm tractor was purchased for the Alexander reserve (near Onoway, AB) but it was not allowed to be used by native farmers and instead was given to a Mr. Laight who ran a ‘homestyle’ Greater Production farm there.

All purchases desired by individual First Nations farmers came out of their own pockets or Band funds and had to be approved by the Commissioner…approval that was often withheld.

(Cote First Nation, Sask 1982.)

Since no real effort was put into accomplishing the third goal of stimulating agricultural activity among reserve residents, it is unsurprising that it failed miserably.  Some managed to find part time work as labourers on their own reserves in the Greater Production farms.  The Greater Production farms enjoyed some profits, though not princely in sum (p.139), all of which went back into Indian Affairs coffers.

In addition, the lands on reserve which were taken up for Greater Production farms were not leased to paying tenants, and that loss of potential revenue is immense. Appendix B of the last linked document estimates what that rate of return would have been on a number of reserves between 1918-1924. The land had been released for production without fee during the war time period “as a patriotic gesture”, but its use continued long after the war ended.

Set up to fail

It is clear that the extreme interference in First Nations agriculture in the Prairies led to conditions which made it all but impossible for native farmers to succeed and thrive. As with so many other aspects of indigenous life in Canada, success in agriculture was met with policies which undid all those hard-won gains.  When racist opinion columns allude to indigenous ‘laziness’ as a reason for current levels of poverty, these facts are never mentioned.  It is doubtful that the authors of such vile screeds are even aware of the history.

It is time we are all made aware of the history.  It is time to put these lies to bed.  I don’t want another generation of native children growing up in the Prairies being told that their ancestors were too lazy and stupid to survive the horrific collapse of their traditional economic base.  The fact is, our peoples adapted swiftly to a set of completely new conditions, and we were damn good at it.

Our resilience and ability to adapt is constantly underestimated and glossed over.  We are seen as incapable of adopting new technologies, despite the fact that we have demonstrated again and again just how easily we do precisely that.

This centuries-long era of infantalisation can only end when it is recognised that we were adults all along.

Lol…did you just tell me to look on Wikipedia to find out what ‘chief’ actually means?  Hilarious!

I could care less where you come from or who you are.  You are using your poor understanding of native spiritual traditions to turn a profit which is in itself a violation of protocol.  Since I’m not an exploitative fraud, it appears we have very little in common. 

As noted on the excellent blog, Beyond Buckskin, Etsy is a breeding ground for pathetic cultural appropriation.  You’re not simply creating little bits of art/jewelery, you are capitalising on distorted and false views of native americans.  You are perpetuating stereotypes and celebrating your own ignorance.  You are engaging in colonialism, right there on your little Etsy shop.  A tiny piece in a larger puzzle of non-natives dreaming up fantasies about us and presenting them to the culturally bankrupt.

You aren’t sorry about anything…your tone quite clearly informs the reader that you have no intention of stopping, and further,  you don’t really believe you are doing anything wrong.  You are that ignorant about our cultures.  You don’t even understand the words you are using to describe your ‘products’.  If you did, you wouldn’t use them.  If you were actually native, you would be able to say that on your page and not face violating the Indian Arts and Crafts Act (good thing you aren’t trying that).  If you had any connection to our cultures, you’d cut the New Age exploitative bullshit.  From your Etsy page:

According to Wikipedia the definition of a Secret Chief is:
A transcendent cosmic authority responsible for the operation and moral calibre of the cosmos, or for overseeing the operations of an esoteric organization that manifests outwardly in the form of a magical order or lodge system. Their names and descriptions have varied through time, dependent upon those who reflect their experience of contact with them.

Ugh.  Lemme guess.  You were an Indian in a former life?

So no.  I’m not going to take your false apology to heart. 

syntexis:

So, I know it’s cultural appropriation for a white person to wear a native head dress, but what about other races that are not native?

I ask this only because I never see anything about other PoC appropriating anything, and I’m an Asian girl that is genuinely wondering if it would be offensive to wear a native head dress.

I know that my race doesn’t REALLY change anything, and it would be offensive, but would it be less offensive?

Sorry, I’m being really inarticulate right now. Grr. Sorry, I sound really stupid :p If someone could bring some insight for me, that’d be great!

Thanks!

It’s cultural appropriation to wear a headdress unless you have earned it.  This goes for all people, other than those actually from within the culture where headdresses are worn (assuming the headdress in question is a restricted item).  Within the culture, wearing one without having earned it is not cultural appropriation…it’s disrespectful and likely to get you in trouble. 

In the Hall of Shame, there are a fair number of images of PoCs wearing headdresses or “Indian costumes”.  It strikes me as just as offensive, though clearly the context is different (historically and socially between PoCs and natives versus settlers and natives).

Today, the Hall of Shame hit its 500th image mark, bringing you visual examples of cultural appropriation and out-and-out racism.  The images are by far dominated by non-native women in headdresses.  The bulk of these are non-professional images taken at parties and festivals.  However, quite a few are professionally shot images for magazines or other kinds of photo shoots.  White women are the most represented, but there are also quite a few images of women of colour wearing these headdresses as well.

Then you have the really racist photos, which I think of as the ‘costume’ photos, where the people in question put ‘war paint’ on, ‘war whoop’, or engage in other clearly stereotypical behaviours.  It is difficult to tell where ‘fashion’  and ‘costume’ are separated, and a great many of the headdress pictures also include ‘warpaint’.  Playing Indian is apparently not just hilarious fun, it is also super ironic and cool. 

Then you have the ‘art’.  Depictions of non-natives in headdresses, on t-shirts, street art, tattoos and so forth. I would lovefor there to be some sort of psychological analysis done on this trend.  What the fuck is motivating these people?  What do they think these images mean?  Why are they impervious to explanations of why what they are doing is not okay?

Certain companies are really doing their best to tap into this bizarre market.  I have seen costume headdresses being sold around the corner here in Montreal.  Luckily I’ve yet to see someone actually out in public with a headdress, because I’m not sure I could contain myself.

I want this ‘trend’ to die quickly, but it seems to be on the rise instead. 

So this isn’t really a celebration of hitting 500 images.  More like a WTF, 500?