A little more on cultural appropriation

[witchsistah]

I'm posting this here and nowhere else because this was the only pagan space I've seen this topic taken seriously and actually discussed and not dismissed out of hand. Anyone can TRY to post this elsewhere if they want. Good luck with that.http://www.

Comments

[smarriveurr]

There's never an online discussion of any kind without the extremes, though. That's the nature of the beast. If you're looking for discussions about how cultural appropriation operates on the non-pagan scale, though, you'd have to look for a community that discusses issues of race and culture, rather than a pagan discussion community.

Likewise, seems to me that the answers to your questions are pretty much specific to the context. Each act has to be considered in its own right, and for its own history. There's no general answer beyond the obvious ones, so moving past the obvious ones pretty much requires concrete examples - and people tend to use "what I do" as a concrete example, which in turn makes any discussion of that example a touchy, defensive thing.

The sad fact is that there are few if any public examples of good cultural immersion. They're drowned out by examples of doing it wrong - which people somehow still feel the need to defend. Part of it is humility - the more humbly you enter into learning about a culture, the less likely you are to crow about what you've learned and publicize it, the less likely you are to sell it. Since really learning about a culture starts with humility, you're just never going to see as many examples of it being done right. Those folks are quietly carrying on with their practices.

You have to understand, as well, that people do not notice subtle issues of privilege. Sometimes you have to be smacked over the head with something obvious before even admitting the issue exists. Any number of less egregious boundary cases lead, not to argument, but to just being discounted and ignored as a PC crackpot. It's easier to establish that you're not from the theoretically extreme opponents will try to paint you into - again, you responded to this clearcut case of profiteering with the point "Using this specific article as fodder for the argument that eclectic appropriation of any religious/spiritual tradition outside of its place within a culture and that culture's language is stealing and is always wrong is, in my opinion, unfairly loading the argument."

So, even starting from the clearcut case of someone doing something obviously and extremely wrong, the OP still got a response painting the post as huffing and puffing and trying to blow the whole eclectic house down.

[beanrua]

I can absolutely see your points regarding public examples of "good" cultural immersion *and* issues of privilege. Perhaps it is true that the conversation cannot be held without involving ourselves in the extremes of what is obviously profiteering.

So if we are going to talk about it, let's not just do the backstroke in the superficial and older piece that we started with. If we really want to address how absolutely *abhorrent* her practices are, let's get down to it.

This piece from the National Review Archives talks about the general problem of impersonating Native Americans on any level, which makes a very strong statement for issues of privilege:
http://www.nationalreview.com/flashback/miller200601271228.asp

Here's another well done article from 1992, by Helene E. Hagan, printed in the Sonoma County Free Press:
http://www.sonomacountyfreepress.com/features/spirg-hagan.html

You want to discuss Lynn Andrews directly? Then let her OWN WORDS hang her, which were recorded in a podcast this March. I could listen to about, oh, 10 minutes of this before I couldn't take any more. How many times can she use the word "sacred" in a sentence?:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/Hotel-Infinity/2009/03/25/LYNN-ANDREWS-joins-hosts-Carolyn-Ferris-and-Bill-Moore-at-Hotel-Infinity

Again, if we are going to really have a discussion, let's get to some real meat. Chapter XIV of The State of Native America: Genocide, Colonization and Resistance (South End Press, 1999), is entitled The Great Pretenders: Further Reflections on Whiteshamanism.
http://books.google.com/books?id=rgO3XR2MRSsC&pg=PA403&dq=The+Great+Pretenders+Further+Reflections+on+White+Shamanism&ei=mKrsSfSnCo3WzAS4zug-

I'm certain the OP would have gotten more from *me* if more was provided besides the title "A little more on cultural appropriation" and this specific article from 1994. Let's look at the situation in 2009, where this woman is still doing a booming business and getting her books published. $850. for her latest New Mexico retreat. Hell, I can tell you that every single person, presented with the whole of the issue, will not fail to agree that Andrews is a complete and utter fraud. There is little debate to be had.

Here's a actual question: what does cultural appropriation for profit of specifically Native American culture mean for us as pagans living on this continent? I'm certain that I, for one, have had to watch what I do and talk about, and try to figure out what is shit and what is shinola.

Further, let's get more radical with the questions. Do people of non-Native descent even have any right at all to find ways of interacting with this land and all the powers in it? If my native plants are used in NA ritual, am I limited to using them in ritual (when I know what they should be used for), just because my ancestors stole the land from under the rightful owners of this country? What is "fair use" in this case? There aren't clear answers to these questions...but the debate of such can serve to open minds to other points of view.

[smarriveurr]

This feels uncomfortably like thread necromancy, given the age of the discussion, but the reply notification managed to get buried in my inbox until I went to do some housekeeping recently, and I hate when people drop out of a conversation to avoid dealing with a reasoned argument. I want to make sure you know that yours is exactly that, and I wanted to dispell the impression of dodging it.

At this point, we're probably both too far out of the mindset of the original discussion (I know I am), but I felt that I should at the least acknowledge that your points here are solid, and the questions are certainly worthy of discussion. They're good, hard questions, so they have no easy answers, and I'm not sure whether the debates could be saved from inevitable derailing, but it's something I'd personally like to see discussed by those with better sense than myself.