What is Cultural Appropriation?

Cultural appropriation is the practice through which a culture, spirituality, religion, language, or practice is co-opted, contorted, and taken by a dominant culture, oppressor, or colonizer to be assigned a new significance and used for their own purposes. Appropriation relates to cultural imperialism which is similar in that they are both forms of domination and oppression through which one culture is promoted as superior and other cultures are repressed and viewed as inferior (often indigenous cultures).

Dressing up as an "indian" is a form of cultural appropriation in which outfits and clothes regarded as sacred within Native American culture are disrespected and used to perpetuate stereotypes, discrimination, and oppression.

Why do people dress up like "indians"? 
To play a character, to "go crazy," to wear a "fun costume," and to be "wild like savages." All ideas that play into negative images and ideas of Native Americans and only help to create and maintain an environment in which it is permissible to disrespect Native American culture and people.

Whether it is wearing blackface or dressing up like an "indian," cultural appropriation is not only disrespectful and offensive, but it is inherently violent, demeaning, and oppressive.

Why is cultural appropriation so pervasive here at UC San Diego and what does that say about the environment and community here?

For more on cultural appropriation check out: 

- Native Appropriations: But Why Can't I Wear a Hipster Headdress? 

- Spiritual Appropriation As Sexual Violence by Andrea Smith

- Bitch Media: Feminist Intersection: Ke$ha and the ongoing cultural appropriation and sexualization of Native women

- Feministing: When Cultural Appropriation Goes Too Far

Native American Cultural Appropriation at UCSD Sungod Festival

URGENT: Please forward this to as many people as possible to make people aware that these actions should not be tolerated. Please view attached photo. This is just one example of what took place during Sungod.

To whom it may concern:

On Friday May 14th, 2010 at UCSD’s annual Sungod Festival, UCSD students dressed in mock Native American attire, including, but not limited to, painted faces, feathers, and headdresses. This act is disrespectful and degrading to the traditions and culture of Natives as the attire is sacred to many Native American tribes. Acts like this perpetuate negative stereotypes of Native American culture, breeding the insensitivity and misunderstanding that is already plaguing our university. Actions should be taken to properly educate the UCSD community (students, faculty, staff, and Alumni) on Native American culture and issues. As students at UCSD we should not have to see our cultures mocked and ridiculed during a student sponsored event taking place at our university.

Native American students were forced to witness these acts of disrespect and see their peers mocking and degrading what is considered to be sacred attire in many of the Native American cultures. Though the university was awakened to issues of diversity and campus climate at UCSD in the past few months, based on these numerous incidents of disrespect it is apparent that the university needs to take more action to promote diversity and cultural awareness among the UCSD community (particularly with regard to the Native American community with whom the university has had a long history of discontent).

The denigrating acts are a product of the ever-diminishing Native American presence on UCSD: UCSD’s Native American undergraduate population is less that 1%, there are few (if any) Native American Faculty, there are very few classes taught on Native American issues and there is still no Native American Studies Minor. These are just a few factors that allow acts of ignorance such as those carried out during Sungod to take place.

While the Native presence at UCSD is small, there is no excuse for the lack of knowledge and representation that the students and local Native American community feel from the university. The university needs to increase their efforts to outreach to the local Native American community. Members of the Native American Student Alliance have worked to bring the American Indian Recruitment (AIR) Program to UCSD. While we would like to see this program flourish at UCSD, it is difficult to do so without the university showing that they would like to see a strong Native presence at UCSD. With the repatriation of local Kumeyaay remains, more classes centered around Native American Studies, increased Native staff and faculty and the institutionalization of the AIR Program at UCSD, the overall tolerance and knowledge of Native American issues will improve along with the current campus climate issue.

Given the recent humiliating incidences of cultural insensitivity at Sungod, the Native American Student Alliance strongly urges the UCSD administration to hold a meeting in order to address the pressing issues of the UCSD Native American community as mentioned above and discuss more specifically the ways in which these goals can be carried out. On Friday May 21st members of the UCSD Native American community will be meeting with UCSD administration to address the recent developments in the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) with respect to the “culturally unidentifiable” remains. We strongly suggest that our meeting take place in conjunction with, if not immediately after, the meeting discussing the remains.

Sincerely,
UCSD Native American Student Alliance

UCSD Women's Center presents: The Different F.A.C.E.S of Feminism

Join us at the F-Word Symposium: The Different F.A.C.E.S of Feminism!

3-7pm Monday May 17th, 2010

UCSD Price Center Ballrooms

Breakout Sessions Including:
- Racism 101 for Well-Intentioned White Folks with Inga Muscio
- Feminism, Women of Color & A New Way Forward with Rosa Clemente
- Intersectionality in Feminism with Sara Kaplan, Ph.D.
- Women of Color & Student Voices in Organizing
- Allyship & Organizing Strategies

Banana Split

By Thomas Curry, University of St Andrews Student

Yesterday my flatmates and I were idly wandering round the chilled isles of our local supermarket buying a couple of essentials for our weekly shop and, though I’ll admit there isn’t anything particularly striking about us doing just a routine food shop, it did really get me thinking. Whilst picking our way through the fruit and veg section we almost automatically grabbed a bunch of fair-trade bananas, sure they might have been a couple of pence more than ordinary bananas, but it really was only a few pence, and it’s worth it. After lugging it all back home and bundling everything in the fridge however I was struck by the fact that, out of everything we’d bought, as far as I could tell, it was just that one bunch of bananas that was fair-trade. We hadn’t really looked at the packaging when choosing a couple of different teas, and I couldn’t find anything on our wholegrain rice to say that it was fair-trade either. There seems to be a slightly inexplicable focus on the need for supermarkets to source at least one type of fair-trade banana, but when it comes to tea, coffee, rice, or fruit juices I don’t even realise that what I’m buying most likely isn’t fair-trade at all. When I think about clothing too, I try to make sure that what I’m wearing is made of natural fibres, but I wouldn’t even know how to go about checking whether the cotton or linen being used in my clothes is purchased fair-trade. Organic? Sure that’s a bit easier. I can think of a few places that produce organic t-shirts, or make jeans from organically grown cotton, and most supermarkets offer a good mix of organic and non-organic produce, but fair-trade is so much more difficult to get hold of. It’s a bit disheartening to think about how easy a change it would be for companies to, well, pay their employees just a little more change, whether it be per sack of rice, or bag of tea leaves; but rather than letting apathy set in, we, the consumers need to stay positive and create a market for fair-trade products in all we buy. If we start demanding fair-trade rice, if we start asking sales assistants ‘is this shirt fair-trade?’, then hopefully the change that we’ve managed to bring about in the increased availability of organic produce will be replicated in an increased availability of fair-trade goods. We’ve managed it with bananas after all, shouldn’t we have a crack at cotton, rice and a whole host of other essentials?