Chief Wilton Littlechild, PhD, is not the image of a tribal leader that Western culture has promoted. He is an attorney who works with several government programs to lift up the cause of indigenous Canadians.
One of the most popular stereotypical depictions of a Native American (never mind that many very distinct tribes fall under the Native American label) is the “Indian Chief" An older brown-skinned man wearing a crown of feathers has been a symbol in US advertising for decades. This image is still the face of many schools, universities, and professional sports teams around the country. This is cultural appropriation. The image of the leader of a Native American tribe is reduced to a cartoon character and is considered a caricature and nothing more. This damages the authority of tribal leaders and erases the original culture by turning it into a stereotype.
Chief Wilton Littlechild, PhD, is not the image of a tribal leader that Western culture has promoted. He is an attorney who works with several government programs to lift up the cause of indigenous Canadians.
Meditation is free and is not exclusive to any religion. The for-profit secular use of the practice is how appropriators blocked access.
The mindfulness movement has incorporated meditation in many ways. It disrespects a number of religions in the process. The trends in mindfulness and meditation are all about teaching Westerners how to improve themselves by becoming more aware of their bodies and environments. This is done in posh retreats, expensive workshops, and with all types of fad products intended to aid in the meditation process. The problem is the ways in which meditation is practiced-by Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, and even Christian practitioners-requires no special tools or spaces. Meditation is practiced by everyone who wants to do so, without a fee. During these sessions, meditation is approached as a sacred ritual done without selfish motives attached.
The mindfulness movement cashes in on religious rituals, and in doing so makes them not so sacred to the people appropriating. As with other culturally appropriated religious rituals, connection to the cultures is severed, and it becomes not a sacred religious practice but a trend.
As citizens of a global community and as fellow human beings, Americans have the obligation to question cultural appropriation as soon as it is revealed. Avoiding new cultural experiences is not the answer. The universal support of other cultures, their foods, fashion, and activities is needed, especially in an increasingly globalized world. It is also important to educate others on the dangers of cultural appropriation. This duty to question means looking for all the characteristics of cultural appropriation before trying a new food, fashion trend, or activity. Failing to do so could result in danger that affects the global community in a number of ways, including erasure, distortion, deprivation, and whitewashing.
One of the most dangerous effects of cultural appropriation is erasure. When an element is taken from one culture and appropriated by another, parts of that origin culture are stripped away. Those parts are replaced by the dominant culture’s idea of the element, an idea that can be more connected to the profits it makes than the culture it came from. The origin culture’s connection to the element can be erased by the dominant culture’s profitable idea. Soon, people either don’t connect the original culture with the element or believe the origin culture uses that element in the way that the dominant culture does for profit.
Erasing a culture’s connection to an element makes it easy to rewrite the purpose and meaning of that element. For example, making cornrows a new hairstyle erases the centuries of African people using them for status symbols, communication, and accessories.
Another reason to question cultural appropriation is to prevent distortion. Think of the sweat lodge rituals. American culture has taken the practice and stripped it down for luxury, relaxation, and entertainment, distorting the original use into a mainstream and elite practice instead of a sacred Native American one. Unlike Holi and color runs, the connection between Native American tribes and the sweat lodge practice remains. However, unless a person is determined enough to go online to search for the origins of a sweat lodge, the mainstream idea will continue to be of a general sauna treatment. Who performs the sweat lodge practice, how, and why become questions that are answered with a simple search, but are not necessarily made readily available to the culture at large.
Another important reason to question cultural appropriation is that the massive popularity of a thing could deprive a culture from its use. This is especially true after a dominant culture like white American culture has used it up. When something is taken for use by the trendy icons, it can become unavailable to the origin culture.
Consider the case of bluefin tuna and the cultural appropriation of sushi. Popular love of sushi has boomed over the past thirty years, making bluefin tuna-a staple of the dish-an important fish. Prices for the fish rose to extreme heights. In 2013, a sushi restaurant owner named Kiyoshi Kimura bought a 489-pound fish for $1.3 million!1 At that price, bluefin tuna became the jewel of the sea. Today, its numbers are dwindling so much that the Japanese government heavily regulates who can fish the bluefin, how they can catch it, and when they can fish for it. This will conserve the fish, although Western demand for sushi rages on.
The tuna market grew immensely when Westerners discovered sushi. This caused overfishing and competition for the traditional fishermen in Japan.
The problem is, sushi is a food the Japanese have been eating for centuries. Generations of families used to fish for bluefin tuna in the traditional boats and using a pole and fishing line. The fishermen were called the ippon-zuri.2 They took some of the catch home to prepare and were able to sell the rest to help provide for their families. Today, however, the licensing required to catch the restricted fish is very expensive. Even then, the ippon-zuri are competing over a much smaller population of fish with people who have no care for the culture but are after the million-dollar tuna. No traditional fishermen can compete with this. Many have given up their businesses and moved on.
Cultural appropriation deprived the ippon-zuri of a job that many families have held for generations. The profits off the tuna made it the target of Western fishermen with more advanced resources. The bluefin was overfished because Western cultures took the Japanese dish sushi and made it a trendy food. In doing so, they drastically increased the demand for the sushi. Commercial fishermen came in with nets, traps, baited lines, and tech that wiped out the population. In the end, Japanese culture is being deprived of a practice (fishing tuna) and a delicacy (the tuna).
