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Cultural Appropriation: Reckless Borrowing or Appropriate Cultural Sharing Religious Education Dept, UUA |
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Cultural Appropriation: Reckless Borrowing or Appropriate Cultural Sharing Religious Education Dept, UUA |
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In the wake of the march protesting the Cleveland Indians' baseball team's misappropriation of native american symbols and names, Jacqui James opened her workshop on cultural appropriation in a standing room only conference venue. The UUA's Anti-Oppression Programs and Resources Director in the RE Dept., Jacqui introduced the Rev. Danielle Di Bona, VP of the Diverse Revolutionary Unitarian Universalist Multicultural Ministries (DRUMM), who is a member of the Wampanoag Native American tribe; and Mr. Young Kim, second-generation Korean-American and member of the UUA's Nominating Committee.
Though Rev. Di Bona began her remarks with a disclaimer: "North America has more than 500 tribes, and we do not speak for each other," and added that she is not a spiritual leader of her tribe, her words were potent. "These cultural symbols and practices form the community and are formed by the community, over millenia. It is how the world view of a people is expressed.
"When UUs pick and choose from these things, it trivializes their spiritual practices." She stressed that the context in which cultural symbols and practices are expressed is extremely meaningful. "The specificity [of their use] is so complete, that visiting Native Americans do not participate in another tribe's rituals, and to do so would be perceived as foolish. "I would not even practice the rituals of my own tribe, because I am not an elder or spiritual leader." If this is true of her own people, then the use of these things by others who share no cultural context is seen not only as particularly foolish and inappropriate.
"Not all of this usage is inappropriate, though" she said. "Some taped music, written prayers, that kind of thing, might be alright, but "it's not right to fool around with it. If it's not in context, if the user is not walking with us, if the user is not part of our struggle, then it is presumptuous."
Jacqui James then turned over the workshop to Young Kim. "I didn't understand what all the fuss was around cultural appropriation until I heard about the town of Pekin, Illinois, which fancied itself a sister city of Peking, China. Their sports team was named the Pekin Chinks, and that's when I got it."
Young was interested in the reaction to this issue that many people in the majority culture seem to have. One UU, who had spent her childhood in Cleveland and who'd seen the Indians baseball team several times each year in her childhood, reacted to the Cleveland Indians protest as "a waste of time." "This shocked me," he said. "But then I began to remember happy times feeding ducks with my father. When I returned home after feeding ducks with my young daughter recently, my wife criticized me," because of the environmental damage and the problems it causes with animal behavior. "I got angry in a disproportional way," and he tried to find out why. "After some reflection, I decided it was because it made me feel like my innocence was being stripped away." It is this kind of association, he believes, that makes some people have the strong negative reaction to protests about this misappropriation.
He pointed to a common approach to Buddhism that many UUs have. Echoing one of the points made by Rev. Di Bona, he said, "They sort of pick and choose from among wildly unrelated pieces of Buddhism: a little from Tibetan, a little from Chinese, a little from here, a little from there." This was offensive and presumptuous, he said.
The seminar lead then turned to Ms. James, who reminded us to "think about honoring differences versus appropriating them: the more of the latter, the less we know." Rev. Di Bona pointed out that there is no such thing as an all-encompassing Native American spirituality. "The Lakota people have been using the ceremonial pipe since about 900 AD; the beginning of that use is a recorded, real event" in the Lakota history, but many other Indians are often improperly shown as using the ceremonial pipe. "There is a similar history with the Cheyenne regarding their use of sacred arrows. No group has the right to usurp these sacred symbols, to imitate their use without real understanding."
Some of those in the audience voiced a concern about how this would impact the occasional UU use of things like the Flower Communion, or even the singing of African-American spirituals, and a lively discussion ensued.
Some online resources were described:
- The Sonoma County Free Press has a section about cultural misappropriation at http://www.sonomacountyfreepress.org/features/spir-genocide.html
- "Some Readings on Cultural Appropriations, Native America, and the New Age", by Diane Bell, at http://www.hanksville.org/sand/intellect/NAbibBell.html (if inaccessible, try Google's cache)
- "Wanting to be Indian: When Spiritual Teaching Turns Into Cultural Theft", by Myke Johnson, at http://www.dickshovel.com/respect.html
Reported for the Web by Dwight Ernest
General Assembly 2001 · Program Grid
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