Bicycle Dream Catchers and Cultural Appropriation

*** After a lot of intense community discussion, I have realized that ultimately, this was not ok for me to do. 

The answer is that it's not about me. It's not about stifling my voice, or my spiritual journey.  It's about listening. It's about the fact that when I speak, my voice is amplified by my privilege. And out of respect, I need to modulate my voice. And when someone tells me that something I'm doing is violation, it is my job to listen and respect - not to start explaining to them why, "well actually, I have every right to do this thing [insert examples of every time I try to call-out a guy for violating my boundaries and he gets defensive]".   

Here is a link to my full apology to the community who called me out. ***

About a month ago, an invitation to something called the Pedalers Fair floated through my Facebook.  Ooooh, a bicycle-themed craft fair!  That's some hot shit!  And at that point, an art project idea that had been bouncing around in the back of my head popped-up and demanded attention.  "Bike wheels!  Dreamcatchers!  Make dreamcatchers out of bike parts and they'll look super awesome!  Make me, make me, make me!!!"  I am unemployed right now so I really had no excuse not to.  And, with a vague email to the organizers about how awesome my art is (I'm actually still a little surprised that worked...), and $65 later, I am suddenly on the hook to make enough artwork to fill a booth at a craft fair for two days (just to clarify, I've never ever sold my artwork before...).  Whooo!  A deadline!  I love deadlines.  For some sick reason, deadlines and motivation are inseparably yolked in my brain/being/existance.  One does not work without the other.  Anyways... 

So... I set about making a bunch of dreamcatchers out of bike parts. And they look totally effing awesome (here's a link to the whole gallery).  And about halfway through the project, I actually took the time to stop and think about what I was doing.  I had taken the composition and style and device of a dreamcatcher out of its original context and meaning, and used it for the basis of my art.  And that's fine, right?  No art is really original, and all art steels from the past, and a celebration of cultural memes within art is a great thing, right?  Except that cultural appropriation feeds cultural genocide.  And cultural genocide is a real thing that happened.  That happens.  Is happening.  It is still happening right now, every day.  Except that I am a very privileged white lady with no real personal/spiritual ties to the people who originally made dreamcatchers.  Because native people have been undeniably oppressed by white immigrants to this country, and today I benefit from that privilege and I participate in the culture that perpetrates it.  Well, shit.    

What does cultural appropriation really look like?  Well, it seems to have a lot of faces.  For starters, let's looks at something that is obviously obscenely racist: sexy indian halloween costumes, for example (the link is to a blog by Adrienne K, a cherokee lady who writes about cultural appropriation).  This here is an even better article she wrote about all about why it's racist.  It looks like the "bohemian" theme for Miley Cirus's birthday bash... 

And that pretty much says it all...

And this here is a blog post regarding cultural appropriation in fine art.  Which leads me to Gauguin In Polynesia.  Frankly, I can't find any articles explicitly discussing Gauguin's cultural appropriation (and/or racism), but I probably haven't looked hard enough.  Without going too deep into something that could be its own treatise, here's my thoughts; Gauguin In Polynesia museum exhibits have very carefully and proudly congratulated themselves for showing authentic contemporary artwork, parallel to Gauguin's paintings of Polynesia.  It seems to be an attempt to totally blow the lid off of the deception inherent in Gauguin's work, without actually talking about racism or cultural appropriation.  This feels deeply disingenuous and annoying.

But, but, but... my happy artwork is not cultural genocide is it (I ask, with big fat Disney princess eyes)?  Well, that is a gray area.  At the very least, this is something that I need to think deeply about as I move forward with my artwork.  

Where do dreamcatchers really come from and what is their context?  Nearly every article on the internet quotes the same couple of paragraphs from a book by Francis Densmore.

"In Bulletin 86, plate 24 from the Smithsonian Institute Bureau of American Ethology is a photograph of an early, authentic Ojibwe dream catcher and on pages 51, 53, and 113 she described articles looking like spider webs that were usually hung from the hoop of a child's cradle board.  She said that 'they catch and hold everything evil as a spider's web catches and holds everything that comes into contact with it'. These original 'dream catchers' were wooden hoops with a 3 1/2 in. diameter, woven with a web made of nettle-stalk fiber that was dyed red with the red sap of the root of bloodroot or the inner bark of the wild plum tree.  This information can be found in her book, Chippewa Customs, published by the Minnesota Historical Society Press (St. Paul) in 1929."

"The common dream-catcher weave seen today is the traditional weave used for other articles, most commonly the hoop for the hoop and stick game of many tribes. Woven with strong rawhide with a hole in the center, a child would roll the hoop along the ground and another would try to throw a wooden spear through the hole in the center.  Stories of the dream-catcher legend that describe the dreams going through a center hole are of recent origin."

 From the website, www.real-dream-catchers.com

It would seem that the meaning of dreamcatchers is already muddled, but that doesn't make it less offensive to appropriate them.  But why are they so ubiquitous?  Why is it that they have become such a compelling cultural meme and spread so thoroughly throughout the aesthetic unconscious of American culture?  My answer is geometry.  Because geometry is EFFING AWESOME and obviously the Ojibwe/Chippewa people knew it before white dudes ever showed-up to steel their country and afflict them with 'civilization'.  . 

The dreamcatcher weave (well, the one that you see most often today) is an elemental geometric shape.  The word for it is a 'toroid' (which is essentially a doughnut).  And this basic shape is repeated over and over again in nature; pine cones, broccoli, sea shells, leaves, etc... Nature knows geometry.  No shit... But you know what's cool about the dreamcatchers?  It's not just drawing the toroid geometry... it's weaving it.  It's getting all up inside that shit and playing with how it functions.  And it's easy to manipulate.  And, no matter how you eff it up, it almost always works, which is fascinating.  So very quickly, you get to weaving cool funky shapes.  I'm not sure why it works, but I suspect it has to do with the math that this lady here is talking about... 

Conclusions...  I am not re-creating the tradition of dream catchers; I'm taking the aesthetic form of dream-catchers and making something removed from their original culture and tradition (not just the geometric weave).  Some key thoughts from a long discussion on Facebook...

"It seems like the point of the work is to to take a symbol of tribal community and perpetuate it using materials that are meaningful to the bicycling sub-culture, with the intent of applying knowledge from their way of life to your own -- to me that does the opposite of continuing the pattern of oppression... 

I'm guessing the Obijwe would be fine with it, but you might get flack from self-righteous haters within the dominant cultural group who want to keep the Obijwe way of life static in a museum case.

" - Adrian MacDonald (my brother)

This argument certainly resonates with me and my intentions.  In this age of open source [everything], the internet constantly serves to break down barriers of ownership, especially ownership of ideas.  "Everything For Everyone".  It is hard for a white kid, steeped in the politics of open sources-ness, to understand making a voluntary barrier on ideas - limits on cultural technology.  Much of my own anarchistic philosophies involve breaking down as many barriers as possible and a focus on individual autonomy.  But they also involve a drastic restructuring of cultural values.  It is possible to have equity within a system of inequity?  The circular question, over and over again, is "where to start?"  The chicken... or the egg?  Do we break down the barriers as a step towards equity?  Or do we work towards equity as the process of breaking down barriers?  And within the process of building equity, there are contradictions, paradoxes, and double-standards.  People in positions of privilege hate it when they get the short-end of a double standard.  We whine and complain and squirm "but it's no fair!!!"  But those with un-earned privilege have been benefiting from double standards all day every day, and we don't complain about that.  Contradictions and paradoxes and double-standards exist... people gotta deal with it.  

Most discussions I have had with people of color or people of native decent, who have spent any time thinking about this issue, expressed the plea/rebuke "just don't do it".  Expressed the heartfelt belief that there is no "non-damaging" way for someone of the dominant culture to appropriate from an oppressed culture.  This quote is the most eloquent, but I got this answer from a multiple people.  

"I think part of recognizing racial, class, gender, and sexual privilege is not only knowing when said privilege is coming into play, but being willing to not act on that privilege. Getting tribal permission could be one step in the right direction (many tribes do have processes for something like this). But honestly, while I know your heart is in the right place, I don't think there is anything you can say or do to make your art any less appropriative of a tribe's culture. So I think the best way to recognize and challenge your racial privilege in this case is to just not go forward with the piece, and find some other way to turn the bicycle wheels into art (which I think sounds like a cool idea, by the way). I think you've done a great job in illustrating the power inequality behind your work and, while I know it's a hard decision to make, I think the best solution is to just not do it." - Anna Hackman

The two answers don't feel parallel or analogous to me.  They respond to slightly different facets of a very complex question and I want to think that they are both right at the same time.  In this case, I am too emotionally  attached to the project to back out.  I have certainly modified the style of the work as I went to try and be less appropriative, but the echo of my original design intent is definitely still there in every piece.  I hope that by making reference to the origin of the dreamcatcher, I can show proper respect to culture I have appropriated from.