Cultural appropreation/westernization
Ok, first
I get why it confuses people. Why it is hard to understand what they are, why both are bad, and why both are veiwed as crimes committed by those of European decent.
Cultural appropriation almost always is comes with a general ignorance.
Seeing a small mandala designed to look Native hanging on a cars rear view mirror and being told that it is a dream catcher is very much like seeing an Ahnk in someone's car and having them claim that it is a crucifix. Is something that would upset most Christians.
Now, regardless of ethnicity, a dream catcher only belonges hanging in your car if you sleep in it.
Doing otherwise shows at best ignorance of what it is and a blatant disrespect and insult at worse.
That the items commonly sold as dream catcher's and Native mendala's aren't is in many ways worse because the owner believes that they are.
Westernization has long been a way of actively destroying other cultures. The adoption of western way usually includes the lose of traditional ways. A forgetting of where they come from or an out right abandonment of those ways. In the past it was actively forced onto other cultures by actively removing children from generally safe loving homes and placing them into boarding schools in which they would be stripped of everything that was native and forced to dress and talk like westerners. If they didn't they would be beaten.
Adaption is viewed by traditionalists as a betrayal of everything they are.
Sadly,
Westernization = europeanization = romanization.
The anchant cultures of Europe went threw this same thing, done the same way under Roman rule.
Their descendants then tried to do it to just about everyone else.
The Romans had a couple of thousand years to do this and native traditionalists and afraid that in a few generations their traditional culture will also exist only in text books.
In many ways both are very bad for these outside cultures.
Simply put they do not want their tradions mocked or distorted nor do they want to become us.
I get why it confuses people. Why it is hard to understand what they are, why both are bad, and why both are veiwed as crimes committed by those of European decent.
Cultural appropriation almost always is comes with a general ignorance.
Seeing a small mandala designed to look Native hanging on a cars rear view mirror and being told that it is a dream catcher is very much like seeing an Ahnk in someone's car and having them claim that it is a crucifix. Is something that would upset most Christians.
Now, regardless of ethnicity, a dream catcher only belonges hanging in your car if you sleep in it.
Doing otherwise shows at best ignorance of what it is and a blatant disrespect and insult at worse.
That the items commonly sold as dream catcher's and Native mendala's aren't is in many ways worse because the owner believes that they are.
Westernization has long been a way of actively destroying other cultures. The adoption of western way usually includes the lose of traditional ways. A forgetting of where they come from or an out right abandonment of those ways. In the past it was actively forced onto other cultures by actively removing children from generally safe loving homes and placing them into boarding schools in which they would be stripped of everything that was native and forced to dress and talk like westerners. If they didn't they would be beaten.
Adaption is viewed by traditionalists as a betrayal of everything they are.
Sadly,
Westernization = europeanization = romanization.
The anchant cultures of Europe went threw this same thing, done the same way under Roman rule.
Their descendants then tried to do it to just about everyone else.
The Romans had a couple of thousand years to do this and native traditionalists and afraid that in a few generations their traditional culture will also exist only in text books.
In many ways both are very bad for these outside cultures.
Simply put they do not want their tradions mocked or distorted nor do they want to become us.