*** This post is a lot of defensive justification for being called out on things I actually already knew were bullshit. I'm keeping it up as an act of transparency, and also because I hope that the whole process I went through might be helpful for anyone else in a similar position as me, struggling with similar questions. HERE IS A LINK TO MY FOLLOWING APOLOGY ***
So questions of cultural appropriation have come up again, surrounding some artwork I have made
(original post and links to the art here).
And in general, the contention that people seem to have is with this part here:
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.
People say, "and yet you did it anyways, and you are full of racist, colonialist bullshit." At first, I felt hurt and defensive - mostly because a lot of me agrees with them...
I really want it to be a "complicated, fuzzy gray line".
But let's get one thing straight: I'm not arguing that I'm not racist. That's a given. In fact, I'd go ahead and say that I and every single person in my family is racist. This is not to assume that we are bad people, or that we made a decision to be that way. But that we are programmed by the dominant culture to make certain assumptions about reality - about human nature. To make certain assumptions about people of different ethnic and economic backgrounds.
And the question is how do I, as an individual, take responsibility for that?
But please, for a moment, allow me to step back from the issue of my individual privilege. Because in the case of me, a white middle-class artist, there is another layer - the layer of my spirituality. The layer of my own ethnic cultural heritage. I am a witch. I am a worshipper of the earth, and of nature, and the energy and animals of this greater, living organism. When I pray, I pray to Gaia. Some would call me pagan (a word that simply means "not christian").
And where are my own religious traditions, where are my holy people? Where is the unbroken line of wise-women and healers? For the most part, it doesn't exist - or it is so deeply hidden underground that I haven't been able to find it. They were burned. Burned at the steak. Hunted down and murdered by the Spanish Inquisition. My people were amputated, violently, from their relationship with the
land, and convinced that our religious rites were evil devil worship.
Our wise women were turned into the most reviled, most shameful villain
of stories and fairy tales: the Wicked Witch, ugly, unlovable, evil.
And for me, as I and many, many others work to resurrect my own cultural heritage... the heritage of wise women, the heritage of knowing the land in which I live, and having a relationship with the spirits here... I often feel like a feral child. Like one who has been running out in the wilderness, lost and starving.
When I have had the honer to participate in religious ceremonies of native people in North or South America, I often had the feeling of being indulged by gods... by civilized adults who have taken pity on the feral child and allowed them to come inside. I do not intend that to sound petulant at all, either. I am learning more and more to shut up, listen, and observe. Learning more and more to see the subtleties of the ceremonies, to see how the seemingly small details of a ritual make a big difference in the flow and control of energy.
Learning to see how spiritual knowledge is the technology of an advanced civilization.
Why do I, as a white woman, need to look to the religious ceremonies of indigenous people? That's "their space". Am I fetishising their culture? I am certainly on an ongoing journey to resurrect my own cultural heritage of tribal nature worship. I work on this every day, and I participate in larger communities of people who identify as witches, identify with the heritage of European paganism. But in the ceremonies we make, I often feel a sense of... hmmm... a sense of not knowing what we're doing. Making things up as we go along. And there is a precious holyness to that, too. It is precious and exquisite and perfect, and there are so many wise women that I have deep respect for as my elders and teachers. But there is still that feeling...
And in many of the indigenous ceremonies I've been to, there is this deep
knowing. A certainty, that I long for. The certainty that comes from an unbroken chain of ancestors, of knowing your family line so far back it goes to your creation story, and being taught the ceremonial protocols of that family. The certainty of knowing how things work, of understanding the flow of energy.
And in some ways, indigenous people have that privilege over the colonialists - the privilege of belonging to the land. I am very conscious of the genocide, conscious that so much has been lost, conscious that the genocide against the indigenous people of North America is
still going on. Conscious that many, many people of indigenous decent feel ripped away from their culture, and children are stolen from their families.
And the dreamcatcher... that shape... I think it is the shape of the universe... I think that shape is a geometric representation of the math that holds reality together...and I want to investigate it the best way I know how - through artwork.
But the idea that I am taking up the space of others whose voice is suppressed is intensely compelling to me, and I want to take that lesson to heart. Again and again I learn the lesson of "shut up, listen, observe."
As for those dreamcatchers: I am not going to make myself famous with them, and "indigenous looking art" is not going to by my identifying style as an artist (nor was that every my intention). But I'm not going to destroy them, and I'm not going to stick them in a hole. Maybe they exist for the purpose of provoking uncomfortable conversation.
