#mycultureisnotatrend

[smallamounts87]

Partial imitation of the Mohawk is still culturally insensitive casual racism against Native, Indian, or indigenous groups. Even if both sides are not completely cut down leaving hair only in the center.

[survivalarts]

#STAYREADY On smudging with sage & protecting indigenous practices: We honor and protect all indigenous womxn, children and 2spirit folks of all first nations and lands. Our Ojibwe Warrior sis @gedaagi_binesikwe has asked us to share this important knowledge concerning #SMUDGING and the appropriate protocols with social media, since it has been gaining popularity and being exploited by non-indigenous people and corporations like #sephora. We ask that folks DO NOT photograph, video, post or share their smudging practices and rituals online, as it is a disrespect to the spirit of sage. We also recognize that sage is an endangered plant native to Tongva / California lands, and encourage folks to always check the source of their bundles, or work to grow them on your own. Miigwetch Ogichidaakwe. 🗡️ Salamat Warrior Sis for this important message to the world. We also denounce the killings and kidnappings of Indigenous Womxn, Girls & 2spirits folks across Turtle Island and beyond. We say NO MORE MISSING, MURDERED, INDIGENOUS WOMXN #MMIW!!! #mmiwg #mmiwg2s If you want to support first nations, we encourage folks to share powwows, dance and drum groups like @officiannortherncree that have been made available online and those listed below. Please continue to share and help protect indigenous peoples, plants, and lands. Aho! @reclaimyourpower @beyondbuckskin @nativeapprops @tanksiclairmont @reallifeindian @keyaclairmont @osamuskwasis @hozhoniye @wakeahjhane @supamanhiphop @indigenouspeoplesmovement @indigenousaction @indigenousrising @frontlinemedics @indigenouscircleofwellness ⚔️⚔️⚔️ #StillHere #SurvivalArts #Ojibwe #RedLake #Reservation #Sage #WhiteSage #WarriorWomxn #ReclaimYourPower #Decolonize #StolenLand #CulturalApproproation #MyCultureisNotaTrend #MyCultureisNotaCostume #SurvivalArtsAcademy (at Worldwide) https://www.instagram.com/p/B_SKdYNAZJ-/?igshid=1v39yo8oa8slf

[thelotusloveproject]

Dress up, channel, masquerade all you want to..Get it in!!!! All I'm sayin' is this tho!!!!! #fukCulturalAppropriation #myCultureIsNotaTrend #tellYourFriendsDontPlay #myCultureIsNotACostume

[mixdgrlproblems]

I usually don't post things like this but I have been getting quite a few dm's about this store appropriating Bindi culture. The admin's block and delete all brown girls and supporters who call them out on it. Report or share. Spread the word. #BindiIsntIndie #MyCultureIsNotATrend #fashionfriday ❤️

[nevverlookbackk]

Reclaim the bindi. Because we all know who wears them better.

[blvckfemmemagick]

It's not like your ancestors almost wiped my #Ancestors out of existence or anything -_-#MyCultureIsNotATrend #OurCultureIsNotATrend #BlackAmericanDescent #nativeamericandescent #MaricopaTribe #Native #Heritage #Culture #BlackIndian

[mayramt]

"Uno no muere cuando quiere sino cuando puede/one does not die when one should but rather when one could"

[smallamounts87]

[affiakeys]

By Affia Keys Editorial fashion can exercise serious cases of distaste at times, and these images are no different. Steven Meisel is a world renowned photographer a veteran in the industry. If these are the people responsible for producing our most memorial media images web what help do we have to eradicate discrimination in our fashion industry. Is this what vogue depicts as fashion? Elizabeth Liza at the gloss states Fashion just loves to dress a white woman in a pastiche of expensive costumes of a different culture to make her seem exotic and sell a bunch of obscenely expensive clothes. Personally I could not have put it better myself. Saskia de Brauw is wearing clothes in the shoot from Saint Laurent, Comme des Garçons and Celine among others. The images feature the Dutch model Saskia de Brauw starring in the fashion story Abracadabra in the March 2014 issue. The racial familiarity may not be on a regular cycle yet they still appear despite protest and contest from readers. Saskia de Brauw is wearing clothes in the shoot from Saint Laurent, Comme des Garçons and Celine among others. My culture is not a trend, I could not put it any better myself on a recent trip to the British Museum I saw the term Aztec has been used since early colonial times to refer to the peoples settled around Lake Texcoco in the Valley of Mexico. The Aztecs ruled and forged an imperial dynasty based on military prowess and a network of trade and tribute that stretched from the Caribbean to the Pacific. They even built two large pyramids as shrines stood on a large pyramid. One dedicated to the ancestral god of war Huitzilopochtli, the other to Tialoc, the god of rain and renewal. History of Europe and Africa was based on colonization and profitable slavesteve trade. It's funny that my statement of Lion figures is being recognised again here.

[creationismyprescription]

Native American culture is NOT A TREND.  Headdresses are NOT cute, artsy things to wear in photoshoots.  They are NOT hipster, NOT your culture, and NOT something to be so blatantly disrespecting. You are not cool, artsy, hipster, trendy, what have you for wearing a Native American headdress. You are racist. That's that. Headdresses are incredibly sacred, are carefully made, everything that goes into it means something, and are reserved for the highest members of Native American society. It is not anything less. It is incredibly important. Stop saying Native Americans need to get over it or I will rip your religion apart and tell YOU to get the fuck over it. It doesn't feel so good when it's attacking you, does it? Just have some respect for all cultures, please. It's really a lot easier to respect them than it is to not. Stop making yourself look so ignorant and hateful. I'm already losing faith in humanity a little too quickly than is probably healthy. 

[amoralhouseofcards]

privilege and guilt

I am currently in Winnipeg preparing for an exhibition, as well as another migration (that'll be three in 9 months) to Yellowknife.  During a conversation with the gallery directors for my exposition (that's what my dutch friends like to call them), I had mentioned my fanaticism for learning crafts, and watching videos of master craftsmen demonstrating skill.  I also mentioned that my current vein of fascination for Japanese craft videos was actually started from an interest in braiding Ceintures Flechee (Assumption sashes) that I caught during my first visit to Winnipeg, and that braiding was something I wanted to include with my exhibition.  Ceintures Flechee are symbolic regalia to the Metis (a unique culture that is a product of colonial Canada, a mix of native plains people and the French Canadian Voyageurs of the early frontier).

This, of course, prompted one of the director's to inquire about how I felt about cultural appropriation.  Normally, I don't give it much thought.  This isn't out of arrogance, but because normally the things I do and have an interest in are more likely to be crafts and methodologies that transcend cultural boundaries.  Braiding and weaving textiles certainly have unique cultural characteristics that set one style apart from another, but the act of producing textiles themselves are more mathematical and prone to certain limits.  For this reason, I tend to think of it in a similar way to patents and copyrights.  one cannot copyright a feature of a design that is integral to the function of an object. (a bike manufacturer can't copyright two wheels as an aesthetic design feature), nor can one patent an aesthetic intent (the same bike manufacturer cannot claim that a blue frame is a functional design feature that they invented).

Now, there might be a case in there somewhere for someone to point out that this is still wrong.  I'm not sure that I am, but I'm open to being convinced one way or the other.  In the interest to find out, I came across a blog called My Culture Is Not A Trend.  and I got stuck into reading it for a couple hours.  I do feel a little bit more aware of the issues and pitfalls of misguided (or even patently misanthropic) cultural appropriation, but feel no closer to knowing whether or not my interest in braiding could be construed as such.  

There comes a point in life when one becomes keenly aware of the catch 22 they're stuck in.  I am just about the poster boy for privilege in many ways.  I'm straight, white, male.  and I feel helpless about it.  This privilege has afforded me the opportunities to develop the critical faculties to see it.  While I don't have a full stock of faith in the institution of higher learning, I do believe that my education is a large part of why I have the capacity to see these issues now.  If I hadn't flexed this privilege, I wouldn't understand the privilege.  Now I get to pay off that privilege, because while the privilege provided the opportunity, I am not SO privileged as to get that education without going deep into debt.

So where does this leave me?  I am fairly ashamed of my culture.  I'm disappointed in capitalist industrialization, horrified by colonialization, and I want very much to apologize to anyone that suffers as a result of my privilege.  And even then, I'm worried that that's condescending.  I'm a poor artist, with very littel cultural attachment myself.  I'm not interested in being a Straight White American Male.  I don't feel that I belong within this "culture" that these traits are supposed to include me in.  I feel like a sheep in wolf's clothing.  However, having these traits makes feel like a hypocrite for having things to say about them.  Like somehow those unique and beautiful souls that don't share these traits with me will be suspicious of me no matter my behavior.

Man, I'd love to have a conclusion to this post, especially since its my first entry, but... hell, a conclusion is jus that.  Conclusive.  And I just don't think I'll ever be resolved here.  Come February I'll be in Yellowknife, and I intend on getting back to Volunteering for the blind (Thank you Visibility Scotland for taking me own for the brief time you did), and I hope that this will somehow bring me into closer contact with unique cultures.  That, aside from my cutie of a niece, is the main reason I agreed to move.

Please respond to this, challenge me (that DOESN'T mean insult me or treat me hostilely. I will treat all with respect, please do the same.), and help me open up things for more topics.  I would like to hone my writing skills (rusty after years of not doing so).  

[inhimthereisnoshadowofturning]

found this via mycultureisnotatrend. Lots of food for thought. I never viewed costumes like this. Very eyeopening.

[blvckfemmemagick]

#MyCultureIsNotATrend #OurCultureIsNotATrend #BlackAmericanDescent #nativeamericandescent #MaricopaTribe #Native #Heritage #Culture #BlackIndian

[theconzor-blog]

i just drew this like a boss

[caiju]

mycultureisnotatrend + insomnia = thoughts

So I went to sleep at around 10:30 tonight and woke up a little past 12am, and it is now 3 and I'm wide awake. Lovely. But I did end up finding a tumblr, mycultureisnotatrend.tumblr.com, that is kind of interesting.

It can mostly be summarized as a native woman taking issue with the hipster fad of appropriating (trans: "picking and choosing certain parts without consideration of the whole") native culture. I was rather fascinated because I was almost entirely unaware of this phenomenon (really, I was. I've seen the neon-colored feather headdresses in Hot Topic, and my reaction was "... What could the purpose of that possibly be? Who would buy that?" (The answer is: ""Fashion," and hipster douchebags.") 

So I went reading merrily along, educating myself and cringing every time she answered a question from a clearly-white person who was defending the practice of appropriation. 

I did eventually find a mention of Pocahontas. Now, when I was a kid... oh man. Pocahontas was possibly my favorite movie ever. I think it came out when I was in preschool, so I of course had the lunchbox and the thermos and yes, the Pocahontas costume. No headdress/war bonnet, but I do believe I attended a cowboys-and-indians themed party and there are pictures of me at said party with lines of face paint and maybe some beaded jewelry; pretty much the stuff that would send this particular blog into a tizzy if I wore it now.

The thing is, though, I wouldn't wear it now. I wore it when I was a kid, because children play dress-up and copy what they see in movies and in picture books, not what they see in reality.

My mom has to get some props here. She bought me the costume and the lunchbox and the Pocahontas video on VHS, yes, and I believe she did all these things for the right reasons. Disney movies, and childhood, are about simplicity and magic. I was way too young to fully comprehend the complete depth of the issue. But my mom is a smart lady, and I'm going to guess that she was uncomfortable with the Disney white-washing of the truth.

I remember her telling me that the story in Pocahontas, the movie, "Wasn't how it really was in real life" and explaining that Pocahontas had been a real person. She also took me to the largest spring Pow Wow in Southern California. (We had fry bread and watched dancers with hoops; the former was delicious and the latter was amazing to watch.) She bought me books (SO many books) about real native cultures, many of which I still remember to this day, like 'Children of the Earth and Sky,' 'The Legend of Bluebonnet,' 'If You Lived With the Cherokee'-- and a lot of others whose titles I can't recall but whose content made an impact on me. She didn't draw any direct parallels between Pocahontas and real native people, and she made sure I knew that Pocahontas (the movie) was just a story, and that there were real people with a real culture who were not. 

I think that's ultimately the responsibility of a parent-- understanding your child's worldview and making edits when they are important and necessary. 

My point is, basically, that knowing the reality behind a culture that has become popular will, generally, prevent you from being an ass. (By the fifth grade when we were doing fake-Thanksgiving, I didn't understand why half of us had to dress up as "Indian" even though none of us were native. But I was kind of a literal kid.)

I can only imagine how frustrating it must be to be native and have to deal with what's going on in pop culture right now. (I, like most white Americans, am descended from a native person. But I think the fraction is like 1/32nd. The numbers aren't important, but the story they tell is that the last person in my family to identify as native died so long ago that I never even met her. I'm not sure my dad met her. So yeah, I have no claim to "being native.") I think the problem with "white privilege" is that we don't understand that we have it, we don't understand that others don't, and we don't put much thought into it.

And I'll give the hipsters that sometimes it can be an overwhelming concept. I'm sure my mom, when she was tasked with a blonde-haired, blue-eyed four-year-old wanting to dress up as Pocahontas, felt like she was in a little bit over her head. But that doesn't excuse you from trying to not be an asshat. Seriously, making a concerted effort will make all the difference. It will stop you from making a headdress out of glowsticks. It will prevent you from drawing lines on your face because it makes you look exotic and sexy. And sweet god, I hope it will keep you from doing either of those things while posing with a whiskey bottle, seriously. 

Denying that white privilege exists is stupid. I've had this argument with some of my friends before, and it's not one of those "agree to disagree" things. It exists. In America, at least, it exists. If someone calls you out on your behavior and suggests your behavior is bad because of said privilege, the least you should do is consider the possibility that they are correct. You know how when you were a kid and you saw your aunt at Christmas and she was all, "Look how tall you've gotten!!" You didn't argue with her, even though you didn't feel taller. And then lo and behold, at your next doctor's appointment you found out you'd grown two inches in the past year.

So now my eyes are tired and I'm wondering if I could ever write a Sociology paper about this stuff but I'm only on page 9 of MCINAT and I want to keep goingggg. maybe tomorrow. 

It's late, I ramble. My points in summary! 1) Native appropriation: It's a fashion thing now, apparently. 2) Good parenting is teaching your kids about reality. 3) White Americans are possibly the least qualified people ever to judge what is and is not racist, and should conduct themselves as such.