Me and White Supremacy, Day 13: You and Cultural Appropriation
I have practiced yoga for years, but only recently became aware of the way it has been culturally appropriated in the West. Like many Westerners, I thought of yoga primarily as a good workout. Then a friend invited me to a Sivananda retreat centre for a weekend. The first morning started with a solid hour of chanting and meditation, and I realized that I was sitting in the middle of a Hindu religious ceremony. Never, in nearly a decade of doing yoga up until that point, had I encountered any of its religious aspects before.
From there, I gradually learned that the way yoga is practiced in North America is one hot mess of appropriation. When I think of the various yoga studios I’ve visited over the years, I’ve seen dozens of statues of Shiva and Buddha placed in them as decorations, but I know the studios’ white owners were not Hindus or Buddhists. Why were the statues there? I learned that saying “Namaste” at the start and end of yoga classes does not happen in India (and that not only are Westerners using it incorrectly, we’re mispronouncing it as we’re using it incorrectly). Yoga has become an exercise in white privilege, as the yoga studio experience is expensive and difficult for BIPOC to access even though yoga is supposed to belong to everyone. Yoga retreats promote the same sort of white saviorism that is so problematic with short-term Christian missions trips. BIPOC do not feel like yoga is for them, and I have only ever had one yoga teacher of colour in all my years of doing yoga. Yoga products like t-shirts that say “Namaslay” and "Spiritual Gangster" not only appropriate from India, but also from African-Americans, and in a highly offensive way. Finally, as an aside, yoga seems to be for thin white women. It’s unusual to see any bigger-bodied people either as yoga instructors or students. I recently noticed that when choosing online yoga videos, I have a definite bias towards white female instructors over Indian yoga practitioners, which is pretty bad.
Saad asks, “What actions have you taken when you have seen other white people culturally appropriating? Have you called it out? Or have you used your white silence?”
Yes. The last example I can think of was back in January, before the pandemic started, when I went to a yoga class where a large portrait of Buddha was on the wall. I could have at least asked the owner if she was Buddhist, and if not, why she had put the portrait there. I thought about doing it, but I chickened out. I also noticed an ad for a yoga retreat on the bulletin board that promised an “immersive cultural experience” with the obligatory photo of a smiling white woman with her arm around a small black child. This bothered me, but I didn’t say anything about that either.
Saad also asks if there was ever a time if I was called out for cultural appropriation. I’m not sure if this counts as cultural appropriation, exactly, but it was literal appropriation. I was speaking with a First Nations woman who sometimes comes to my work to teach the students about indigenous issues. She mentioned that she had family members who used to forage rice around Rice Lake in Ontario.
I said, “Rice Lake! I know that place. We rented a cottage there last summer.”
The woman then informed me that this traditional foraging land had been appropriated from her tribe so that white people could build cottages on the shoreline, and now her relatives had nowhere to forage rice. That moment deeply shocked me. In what other ways am I totally unaware of how I have stolen from other people, however indirectly? If I hadn’t happened to run into her, I would never have known. I knew that I lived on unceded First Nations territory, but never for a moment had I given any thought to what that disruption actually looked like in terms of someone’s lived experience.
Going back to cultural appropriation, I can’t think of any ways I have profited financially from it. I have profited socially from being seen as a “person who does yoga” because it has helped build my identity as a healthy person (and that's a whole other kettle of fish and privilege).
I am now making more of an effort to seek out yoga teachers of colour as well as plus sized yoga teachers. When the pandemic is over I will see if I can find a yoga studio in Montreal that doesn’t engage in culturally appropriative practices.