Should i wear feather earrings

So, basically this one minute clip is demonstrating a lot of the points I try to get across with this trend. And which American Indians are you talking about? What a novel concept. Exactly the same thing, right? The dominant culture can take what they want, use it as they see fit, and then ultimately throw it away.

So in one minute, the Today Show manages to condense millions of Native people into a single, incorrect, otherizing stereotype, encourage viewers to buy Native style jewelery from non-Natives, and minimize an important and sacred cultural marker of many tribes. Seems to me like a situation where a rising tide lifts all ships. The haiku has been traditionally written about nature and the place of humans within it. I am Cherokee, and I have a College Degree. History shows that some Cherokees were willing to drop their culture and blend in with the White people.

So, I am not against other peoples wanting to wear our tribal earrings, or other goods. So, some of your idealogy is your personal feelings, and how you feel about other white people. I feel you are starting to sound prejudice. I have a degree also, and some of your opinions do make sense, but now you are going too far. You are insane. I do agree to a certain extent with what Eric says about the haiku, but I think that you are doing an extremely important thing with this blog and that it should be commended.

It is my opinion that the best way to stop native appropriation is to educate, and to chasten someone for the statements they make is not going to help them learn this was in relation to the first two commenters, not you, Adrienne.

Then again, maybe I have no idea what I am talking about, and I am basically just trying to educate myself. However, even as a white, English woman, who is not affected by this personally, I can see why this is offensive and just plain disappointing to see. Actually, in modern Japan the haiku is not restricted to being about nature. Native American culture belongs, in spite of itself, to the American culture now. They could be accused of cultural appropriation. We find that many young white people are inspired by the clothing style of native people.

Although they don't go as far as revealing hair headdresses, many of them wear feather earrings. Is wearing feathered earrings a show of strength of the dominant culture or a sign of recognition and acceptance of the other? Is wearing feathered earrings culture appropriation? It all depends on why they do it! We can assume that people who choose to wear feather earrings associate themselves with native American culture.

This may be the case for some of them. However, we note that a large majority are not aware of this ancient symbolism. So why do they wear this feather jewelry? The beauty of feather earrings is enough to convince bohemian style lovers to get them. Why should we find meaning in everything?

People wear the clothes that they find beautiful and that allow them to express their personality. The feather remains a symbol of refinement and freedom in the collective unconscious. Therefore, without claiming to belong to a culture, a large proportion of people who wear feather jewelry aspire to these same values. We could almost speak of unconscious appropriation! A connection to the country? A call for unity? A protest against some action or policy?

Questionable fashion? The meaning varies though the symbol stays the same, and we can and do alter that meaning with how we use the symbol. We express different ideas with how we use the symbol, and we do not generally punish people for doing what they want with that symbol. If someone unfamiliar with Canadian culture were to decorate herself with a string of fake Victoria Crosses, the reaction would be different than if the same person draped a Canadian flag over her non-Canadian shoulders.

In the case of the Victoria Cross, there is a possibility that the person wants to make a statement about what the Victoria Cross represents. That would require understanding what the medal represents of course. Its meaning can vary just as much outside of Canadian culture as within it.

Canadians might be offended with how someone outside the culture uses the flag…but they can also just as likely be offended by how someone within the culture uses it. They represent various achievements made by the person who is presented with the feather. Being presented with a feather is a great honour. Many indigenous people will receive only one in their life-time, or perhaps never have that opportunity. It would be like wearing that Victoria Cross I keep mentioning. Someone outside the culture might not realise what the symbol means and perhaps would not call that person out in disgust for wearing it…but those from within the culture probably would.

It would be shameful. It also cheapens the symbols earned by others. Oh, those who earned the symbol would still know what they did, and that would never go away, but part of the power of a symbol is what it says to others.

These kinds of symbols are not for our own, personal recognition of our achievements alone. When everyone is running around with a copy of that symbol, then it is easy to forget that some people have to earn it and that it means something. In fact…when many people run around with copies of restricted symbols, there may never be widespread understanding that the symbol ever meant anything.

And that is exactly where we are at with so many symbols from cultures other than our own. No understanding of all what they mean, and if they are restricted or not, and why.

Ha, okay, of course I have more to say on the subject. But it really can be as simple as asking sometimes, or even just doing a little research on the ye olde interwebs.

Moccasins are not restricted in my culture. They are often beautiful works of art, but they are not symbols of achievement beyond the amazing work put into them by the artisan. The sash has become a symbol of identity and achievement. Perhaps it was not always that way, because in the past it was a very utilitarian thing used to carry all sorts of things including infants , or tie your coat together, or what have you.

Before I go on, I want to discuss something. I do not care if you are religious, spiritual, or atheist. These are choices you make, and I respect them. As I note above, this is not just some religious mumbo-jumbo with no further meaning.

The tattoos are specific symbolic representations of relationships, often kinship relationships. They are designs with restricted, important meaning. But they are nice. And humans like nice things and want them for themselves. So when non-Maori started copying these tattoos, a decision was made to promote kirituhi. More importantly, the decision to create a non-sacred version of the tattoos was made within the culture. It is very likely that not every Maori person agreed this should be done at all, but you will never have complete agreement in any community.

I would be uncomfortable wearing a sari. For one thing, I have no idea how to put one on and would end up looking terrible…. Amazing fabrics I can drool over all day. Yet my discomfort is not really about how to wear them, nor is it based on the sari being a restricted form of dress, because as far as I know it is not. I would feel uncomfortable because I know very little about the cultures from whence the sari comes.

I have not attended an Indian wedding, or other occasions where wearing a sari makes sense. Nonetheless, my lack of any real connection to Indian cultures makes the entire thing awkward. Other people have experiences with and within the culture that mean they can wear the sari and not feel strange. I think that some people from outside a culture can have legitimate access to these things, without it being cultural appropriation. But it is a minefield, because thoughtless cultural appropriation of meaningful symbols is still very much the status quo in settler cultures.

Thus it is still more reasonable to assume someone has little real understanding of the culture from the symbol originates from, than to assume they have a meaningful connection to that culture.

This can be very frustrating for people who have learned a lot about another culture, and who are even integrated into it. But until things change, and thoughtless and even mean-spirited appropriation is a fringe behaviour, this is something you may have to live with if you do not come from the culture you so admire.

That there are examples of people with legitimate access to the cultures of others, does not mean you personally are not engaged in cultural appropriation if you do the same as they do.

The bastardisation of geisha culture is not a happy history, and these abuses do not mean that the symbolism has lost meaning within Japanese culture even if some Japanese play into the stereotypes.

To put it another way, just because many people before you have ignored the symbolism and importance of geisha styles of dress, does not mean it is okay for you to do so. There are many other beautiful, unrestricted Japanese styles that you can access an integrate into your own personal style. Recently on tumblr, a platform I am still getting to know, there was a concerted effort made by aboriginal people to take back certain categories which were seen as misrepresenting indigenous culture.

Tumblr is a vast blogging site that consists of nearly 40 million blogs and over 15 billion posts. Anyone can post whatever they like to Tumblr, although most posts tend to be images. And bloggers can tag these posts by subject matter, thus enabling other users to browse all posts on Tumblr by tag. For many Natives, it was a very frustrating experience to click on tags such as Native American and find the material to be mostly very UN-Native. The tags were filled primarily with images of non-native hipsters in various stages of being clothed and soberness wearing headdresses, skewed ideas of natives, dream catchers, that damned two wolves story, and other racist stereotypical imagery of Native Americans and First Nations peoples.

The tag that ought to belong to us, and that ought to help us find each other, was being used by others, slapped insensitively onto images and ideas we actively dislike. The emergence of social media platforms like tumblr, Facebook, twitter and yes, blogs, has created amazing possibilities for aboriginal people to combat centuries-old stereotypes and misconceptions. However, we are up against the sheer volume of those stereotypes and sometimes it can feel like a losing battle.

But actions like that described above are not just a way of lashing out at people engaged in cultural appropriation. There is a real desire to get accurate information out there, for natives and non-natives alike to access.

When these people want to learn more about their own culture, they have to wade through so many inaccuracies that it can feel impossible at times to reconnect.

Non-natives with a real interest in aboriginal cultures face this as well. All the misinformation out there is a serious impediment to having Canadians understand who we are.

It is a serious impediment to understanding ourselves. You can even have a whole lot of it, legitimately and guilt-free! Notice that none of these places are going to sell you eagle feathers or war bonnets. Carvings, woven baskets, clothing…there are skills and training involved in producing this sort of thing that can be imitated, but not matched. Perhaps you should consider going without until you can. Buy a print. You can support aboriginal communities in a real, tangible way by supporting our artisans.

A lot of fakes are being produced both here in Canada and overseas. Yes, that shit is offensive. If you like our stuff enough to want it, then please. Get it authentically. Know what nation it comes from Cree?

Does it represent a traditional story, or a modern one? This is an informative post. It bothers me to see some of the examples in life. Great post. At least in the US, there is a law that prohibits non-natives from passing their work off as native. A little questioning will usually uncover the truth, however, and I would like more people to insist on authentic work by aboriginal artists, if aboriginal work is what they want. Thanks for posting this. I feel like I have a better understanding of the subject now.

This is fantastic! It looks so cool! There are probably still going to be people who could read something like this and just not care rargh , but I think that for at least some this might be the argument that finally penetrates and gets them thinking outside of their assumptions.

Mainly at pow-wows and also at some galleries and stores run by people from local reserves in my community growing up. Thank you so much for this! Having this baseline understanding will make things a lot easier. Why did you decide to put on that bonnet on and wear it to a concert? What was your motivation in this? What were you thinking? I really want to know. I want to know too. What was your mindset? Why, of all things to put on your head, wear an Indian headdress?

I looked twice, because I was wondering if he had written some political slogan on it, or if he had otherwise defaced it, but apparently not: the political commentary was presumed to be self-evident. I had no idea the place existed until a friend was showing me her tumblr page.

Not that I needed another on-line place to spend all my time…. Thank you for posting this. I was just talking with a friend about where the line was. I think this is a really useful rubric, but raises more questions than it answers. It does, however, provide a good ground for understanding what some of the key issues are and how to extrapolate to find the answers yourself.

Really, I just think this is fantastic and thank you so much for writing it. Thank you for this thoughtful explanation. I guess I can count myself as one of the well-meaning but bumbling white folk and this has helped to set me straight. I remember years ago a Native friend of mine telling me how she much she disliked people getting tattoos of cultural symbols- whether Native symbols or otherwise.

Reading this post finally sheds light on the issue and helps me to be more sensitive to it. Thank you. So lots of folks are looking to make some money on the back of this story. Today my nephew posted the story on FaceBook.

I responded with a link to your blog. One person in the discussion recounts his visit to a Cherokee Baptist Church in northeastern Oklahoma, very near the Cherokee Nation Tribal Headquarters. My issue with stories like these is that they are so vaguely attributed, and questionable in origin. Our stories come with provenance…as in, when we tell stories we say who we heard the story from, which community it comes from and so on.

The practice of passing on stories without provenance or making them up is in direct violation of our storytelling traditions, and is in itself problematic. There is obviously a culture clash in storytelling traditions, and while I can understand the Greek perspective, I lack the lived experience to understand the other side.

Sorry if that was long winded; stories and their transmission are fascinating to me, and I like all the perspective I can get. You learn them from someone who learned them from someone who learned them, in big long chains of stories. When someone who never was taught a story tells it, it breaks the chain and things get out of whack fast.

Haida, Wakashan, Salish groups. Cree people from younger generations now talk this way, for example. I have a very negative opinion of these developments, wrt to Cree contexts. The Greek tradition is importantly informed by Writing, right?

When you write something down, ownership and provenance issues shift quite substantially, since the story is now an Object. Most oral cultures work roughly in the ways aboriginal cultures here in North America work. This is why the writing down of sacred texts sometimes causes such troubles. For example, thanks to the anthropological work done by Swanton with the Haida back in the day, Robert Bringhurst can hop on over to a library, pull the texts, and republish them in whatever way he wants.

Complete with his own pompous commentaries and wildly-inappropriate critiques. This violates all kinds of Haida cultural practices. There is no ownership, really — only provenance, so for the old Cree tellers, it was perfectly fine to tell them to Bloomfield. My own opinion is that, if you devote yourself, you can probably put yourself into that chain of provenance — reconstruct or resurrect it. At least, I hope so for the sake of modern Cree young people who have no stories to tell. Ownership vs.

Am I on the right track? Do you ever contact the sellers of these items to let them know it is inappropriate?

Why or why not? The two I linked to? I only have so much patience for this sort of thing. More often however, I get to listen to delightfully obnoxious justifactory nonsense and the sellers go on doing the same old thing. At the same time, the cartoon figures that were used for merchandizing were designed and manufactured in China. That should all be illegal. Could you break down your name phonetically for me? It would help me memorise the spelling…. Thanks so much for this.

In terms of your analogizing the misuse of other symbols like the Victoria Cross etc. People who put crucifixes in bottles of urine are not catholics, for example, and do not respect what the crucifix means to catholic people.

Hence, the appropriation is on the same frame as it is in the aboriginal situation — an outsider or outside group misusing a symbol for their own entertainment. Hardly a helpful argument.

Mmmm, I think the comment was an attempt to bring in the history of colonialism and margnialism I deliberately did not discuss, as I think this has been discussed better elsewhere and I was hoping to add something slightly different to it.

I was actually glad you avoided that issue in your post. I mean, what did they do for 10, years before the British government forced them into treaties in what is now called Canada? Wait around for the King of England to recognize them? In particular, this respect is lacking for things that have to do with the spiritual side of human life, which people now view as non-existent, I guess, having forgotten most of the reasons people that came before them decided that.

As such, they will never get any respect now. Aboriginal beliefs and expression are not by any means alone. People from an Islamic perspective are barely allowed to exist, much less have their cultural expressions respected. Western tourists happily tromp through Buddhist temples with their shoes on, asking who they can pay to light some joss sticks while Richard Gere expounds on his fancy understanding of Tibet. Madonna note the name, obviously puts a tilaka on her forehead and offends the entire Hindu word.

Half the western world likes to Riverdance to their newfound Gaelic Spiritualism and get drunk like a leprechaun on St. I think the way to combat aboriginal appropriation is to hit the root, not the branches. The modern solution is to bulldoze over these significant differences sometimes literally. Every group tries to re-invent the wheel and fight alone and each other. Except in doing so, they twist it out of all recognition. Specifically, the hyperindividualism of the movement, its emphasis on personal growth, and its profound materialism show the influence of the industrial capitalist ethos.

While the New Age valorizes a distorted Westernized vision of Indianness, for example, it pays little heed to the historical presence or contemporary dilemmas of Native Americans. Although I think there are a lot more upper-class whites in the New Age groups than perhaps is thought — check the prices of popular indian stuff on the west coast, for example.

The elevaters are sometimes the worst to sort out. My mumbo-jumbo comment was both about people who reject anything religions out of hand because of their own cultural feelings about religion AND to those who dabble in new-age spirituality.

Sounds ominous Mr. The asymmetries of history are very much the point that your line of reasoning refuses to take seriously. With the indigenous peoples of Canada, the asymmetry is extreme, and I find all of your arguments on the matter logically flawed.