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

[keastree]

Political Correctness and White Guilt have nothing to do with Paganism or the worship of the Pagan Gods. I see no value in telling someone who might have read a Lynn Andrews book and had a life changing moment that leads them to productive relations with the Divine, that they are basically wrong, and a thief.

Sure, I detest people who commercialize the spiritual and religious. I do think that on average, they water things down to a saltless soup. But I cannot deny the occasions where I have met someone who read something atrocious like the Frosts, and come away better for it.

[witchsistah]

By "White Guilt" if you mean self-indulgent hand-wringing without any act of change behind it, then I agree with you and even extend it to not helping much with anything.

If by "Political Correctness" you mean "having to bother actually listening to marginalized groups once in a while" then I do not agree with you. I don't see how treating marginalized communities and cultures as your own Pier One is serving any deity.

I see no value in telling someone who might have read a Lynn Andrews book and had a life changing moment that leads them to productive relations with the Divine, that they are basically wrong, and a thief.I'll refer you to this quote in the article

[muddyslush]

If by "Political Correctness" you mean "having to bother actually listening to marginalized groups once in a while" then I do not agree with you. I don't see how treating marginalized communities and cultures as your own Pier One is serving any deity.

This. How many times have I seen the discussions about who gets to call themselves Wiccan, and how this or that group feels about it, and what are appropriate rituals and methods to become part of a Wiccan group, and what is or is not oathbound...

And yet, when First Nations groups ask for the same kind of respect for their cultural boundaries, it's completely unreasonable.

[keastree]

It's not unreasonable for the Native American tribes to ask for respect for their cultural boundaries. However, those boundaries still remain largely undefined past the idea that "any curiosity about our culture and beliefs is unacceptable"--which is never going to work.

[twisted_times]

That article makes me twitch for so many different reasons. I'd no more wish to misappropriate a living, breathing, culture of deeply held spiritual and religious beliefs than I would wish to borrow the Crown Jewels and proclaim myself Monarch. I really don't understand the mentality of those who do... O_o

[witchsistah]

Not only "borrow" the Crown Jewels, but SELL THEM and keep every cent of the profits. The folks you stole 'em from? Huh? Who? Never happened!

[twisted_times]

I know exctly what you mean.

Then again, I have a belief system that is copylefted and is indended to be stolen, reshaped, reworked, assimilated, queried, lost, found, improved, discarded, buried in a peat bog for six months and then recycled into firelighters... ;p

[oxystat]

"about how the witch hunts repressed the European medicine ways, what many of us call the Craft of the Wycces.

Begging, borrowing, or stealing is no way to reclaim those ways, or to heal our loss. A key to making the Circle whole again is to reestablish connections to our ancestral heritages. Grounded in this way, we will be in a better position to build a multicultural Goddess movement based on mutual respect and consensual sharing."

WTF?

I hope the rest of the article was better researched and written than this part.

[shapeshft]

I thought many other parts of the article were much better. Yeah, the part you quoted made me do a double-take.

[uncledark]

Sadly, the historical research of the article is wanting in a few places.

Fortunately, the basic message of it stands even when the shoddier bits of history are excised.

[brock_tn]

While I don't see eye-to-eye with Max Dashu on a number of subjects, in this case she's dead on.

Lynn Andrews is to native beliefs as Crystal Light is to organic fruit juice. I think we own one of her books. The last time I saw it it was propping up a table-leg on an uneven bit of floor...

[beanrua]

I have a bone to pick with this

[uncledark]

I think the positive lesson to sift out of all of this is that respect for the culture from which one is borrowing, and honesty about one's sources and relationships with those sources, is key in diferentiating between cultural borrowing and cultural appropriation.

I worship Dionysos. I do research in ancient Greek sources about him, his myths, and the way the ancient Greeks related to him. I use this material in my worship.

However, I don't claim to be Greek (ancient or modern), nor do I claim that my practices are the same (or even usefully representative) of ancient Greek religion.

This is different than what Lynn Andrews and her ilk do, which is to do some research in a culture not their own, then turn around and claim that their work is the real thing, and deny/attack any critics.

To borrow respectfully is to be willing to be called on one's mistakes.

[beanrua]

I agree with you. I think we would be considered the "middle" in this debate. There are numbers of people (I recall one Gaelic spiritual group, which I will not name) who are very against any appropriation of belief, symbolism, methodologies, etc. out of the culture and language that they are practiced in. There are purists who maintain understanding of these things cannot possibly be achieved without being fluent in the language, and I found it to be a powerful (but flawed, IMHO) argument. There is also the politically based postion that appropriation for a culture under siege is to further work to erode the culture into extinction. This is the position I saw in play here, mainly because of the title of the post "A little more on cultural appropriation."

[luwana]

There are purists who maintain understanding of these things cannot possibly be achieved without being fluent in the language, and I found it to be a powerful (but flawed, IMHO) argument.

Compared to the African Kemetics, that seems almost liberal x_X

(I've seen 'purist' Kemetic groups maintain that anyone not descended from African stock cannot have a relationship with the Kemetic Gods, claiming it's impossible)