Cultural Appropriation and Responsible Eclecticism

Essay One in the Series “The Wilderness of Heaven”

Updated May 2006

Every ethnic community has a culture by which to define itself. People sharing a language, a sense of history, and mythic connotations have connections with each other that may run deeper than blood. Culture is deeply important to human beings, being the “glue” that holds us together. Without culture, we would be altogether different animals. Richer than blood, culture gives us a mirror upon which to look and see ourselves, and after which we model ourselves.

No less sacred than language or history to the cultural identity is religion. The rites we practice, the gods we identify with, and the myths we live by shape our entire society. Finding the truth of this is western society can be difficult. In the “civilized” world, talk of religion is often taboo, even scandalous. Because religion is highly personal, and we have adopted this “radical” idea of “political correctness”, religion has become one of those topics that is best left private, lest heated debates ensue or feelings become hurt. For perhaps the first time in western history, the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have seen a real upsurge of religionless people, individuals for whom the gods have no more important than leprechauns, fairies and grumkins. Those of us growing up in white-washed America, with little to no appreciation of history, might very well believe that religion has little to do with culture.

Historically, of course, this is grossly untrue. Some of our greatest art and even bits of language come directly from religion and myth. Man’s relationship with his gods, even a perceived relationship, has a long and tireless tradition in mankind’s history. Religion has become deftly interwoven in western philosophy, psychology and morality, even when the religion in question isn’t our own. Unquestionably, the relationship between culture and religion is symbiotic-separate them, and we would be left with very different animals.

In the United States, (and I daresay most of the western world, but as I have only lived in the US, I can only definitively speak for this country) religion is very often associated with Christianity, or perhaps, if one is feeling magnanimous, the Abrahamic faiths. Growing up inundated with Christian imagery and mythology, we become somewhat desensitized to it, especially since so much of Christian mythology has become sorrowfully commercialized. Christ on the cross, WWJD paraphernalia, Jesus in a manger-perhaps in another time or in another land these images would still speak to us, but now they are associated with pink Easter bunnies, evangelical teenagers and cheap plastic Christmas trees. It is no wonder then that people who have become disillusioned by traditional western mythology yearn to enrich their own spiritual practice with symbols, rituals and mythologies rife with meaning, and that haven’t been tarnished by imperialism and capitalism. (And you thought religion was just all deities and liturgy!)

Why Cultural Appropriation Happens

So we have the run-of-the-mill American seeker, devoid of fulfilling spiritual tradition and woefully ignorant of his own heritage and history (either by laziness, apathy, or, in the case of my African-American brethren, by thievery) he looks outside the boundaries of American culture and seeks to find fulfillment in other, more exotic, spiritual traditions of the world.

What many seekers (and Americans in general) really don’t understand, is that culture is holistic. It is ecologic. We do not live in Cartesian systems where we can extract something, analyze it on its own, and stick it into another mechanism to see if and how it works. Religion is more than just the relationship between an individual and a deity-religion is a method for building community, and when we begin to borrow religion, we are in essence borrowing community. When we take something which isn’t ours, whitewash it and call it by its original name, we commit the crime of cultural appropriation. We are invaders of community. We are thieves.

Before we can speak meaningfully about cultural appropriation, however, we have to unpack this idea a little bit more. There is certainly a difference between thoughtful intercultural sharing and reckless appropriation. (This idea is explored a bit more in the second essay of this series, Interfaith Exchange and the Overculture). Cultural appropriation is usually considered to be a majority group (usually Whites or otherwise Eurocentric folks) mining a minority culture for the jewels of its heritage for their own pleasure or benefit while the voices of that culture remain silent or silenced. I make a distinction between silent and silenced because one is willful and intentional, the other a byproduct of oppression. (1) A silent culture is insular, choosing to keep insiders in and outsiders out. Their voices are not heard because they do not want us to hear them. The latter group, however, remains unheard because of decades upon decades of ingrained institutionalized racism and prejudice that preclude minority groups from speaking in their own voice. A prime example of this silence can be seen in the area of Latino literature. While a few Latin authors have managed to make a name for themselves–Isabel Allende, Rudolfo Anaya, Laura Esquivel come to mind–the spirit of the Latino community remains largely unheard. Presumably this is not because Latinos neither read novels nor write them, but because American publishers have not deemed such a market profitable and therefore have willfully–though perhaps not maliciously–silenced the American Latino community.

We commit cultural appropriation, then, when we give voice to a peoples culture, religion, or heritage and have not been invited to do so and in doing so are preventing the native culture from speaking for themselves.

Where do we draw the line, though? Is it cultural appropriation to use the charka system, for example? What about using sage to cleanse an area?

Before everyone begins pointing fingers at those who use the above systems, we have to ask ourselves a question: Are the practices/ideas involved specific to a culture, or do they transcend culture? In the case of the charka system, many would argue that regardless of one’s heritage and ethnicity, human people have charkas. White folks have charkas, and the Indians have charkas-the Indians just discovered them first. I tend to liken the charka system with mathematics-neither the English nor the Germans owns calculus (depending on who you think invented/discovered the system first, Leibniz or Netwon). Calculus exists. (Okay, so it’s not a perfect comparison, but you catch my drift.)

“Smudging” is a different animal. Many cultures cleanse and/or consecrate with smoke; this practice is not unique to the Native Americans. The Catholics, for example, have been doing it for some time. The use of sage in particular, however, could be argued to belong specifically to North Americans. However, one could also argue that sage was readily available, and therefore anyone who lives in an area where sage is readily available should feel free to use sage. I’m not going to take a position on this one; however, I do maintain that if you’re publicly consecrating your college campus with sage while chanting in Lakota, you are definitely guilty of cultural appropriation. (Unless you happen to have a damned reason for doing so).

Responsibility

That said, it is certainly possible to incorporate foreign ideas into one’s own practice without committing cultural appropriation. We are certainly not locked into the cultures in which we were born, or which we have been adopted into. Proper incorporation of foreign elements into one’s spiritual practice is what I call responsible eclecticism.

What exactly is responsible eclecticism? By responsible I mean two things: responsible in one’s research, and responsible to the community from which the individual is borrowing.

Before one deigns to extract elements from a foreign culture, the first thing to be done is to gain a deep respect and appreciation for the culture. The more we respect the culture from which we borrow, the more likely we are to preserve its integrity. Through research and study, hopefully not only will we gain an appreciation and respect for the tradition, but we will also begin to appreciate the complexity of the culture from which we borrow. As we discussed earlier, religion and culture and deeply intertwined. We cannot borrow elements from Hinduism, for example, without taking the time to learn about the culture which birthed this tradition, if for no other reason than to recognize the elements in the religion which may be by-products of an underlying social or political structure. (Case in point, the infamous thou shalt not suffer a witch to live “translation” in the King James Bible.) If we commit ourselves to a deep, holistic understanding, we are better prepared to make responsible choices in our eclecticism.

In addition to better understanding the culture we are borrowing from, gaining a holistic knowledge of the culture helps us to identify motifs and threads in our own cultures that parallel the practices that we wish to recreate. Cultures don’t exist in vacuums, and while there are certainly practices and beliefs that are unique to a certain people, the similarities between tribes of people often outweigh their differences. Just because we have become numb to our own culture doesn’t mean that we can’t rekindle appreciation for our own heritage by examining the way of other people. In my study of Judaism and Kabbalah, for example, I was able to gain a better appreciation for my own Deity, for postmodern western philosophy and ecofeminism, which are largely products of (or at least greatly affected by) my own culture and heritage. Once we strip away the dull tarnish of our culture left by industrialization, domination hierarchies and ethnocentrism, we can begin to remember what is so beautiful about our histories, our stories, our gods and our traditions. It becomes even more likely, then, that we won’t feel the need to lift a rite or practice from another group of people lock, stock and barrel; rather, we will be able to take the concepts behind the practice and either infuse those ideas into a practice already common to us, or create our own.

The idea of creating our own sacred activities, stories, and rites befuddles some seekers. For some reason, many of us cling to the idea that if something wasn’t passed down through the generations, it isn’t holy yet. It’s too mundane. But creation is a sacred process, and in the act of willful creation, where we take good ideas and mold them in the fashion of our culture and heritage, we begin to align ourselves with the gods of our people.

But perhaps the most pragmatic reason for responsible scholarship is to ensure that you’re “doing it right”. You do yourself a disservice if you only understand a system half-assed, and begin incorporating what you think you know into your spiritual practices. If you begin to work with Orishas, for example, without having done your homework, you may be in for some big, life changing surprises, and not necessarily changes for the better. When we come into contact with foreign cultures, we have to be prepared to understand those cultures and their practices on their own terms. It is tempting to view other communities through the lenses of western philosophy and culture, but to do so would be a grave mistake. It is impossible to take our point of view out of our experiences, of course, but with ample study and research, we can begin to gain something closer to a native understanding of the system we are working with, and only then can we expect to gain even close to the full benefit of the materials we are borrowing.

The second notion of responsibility, being responsible to the culture from which we borrow, can be more difficult for people to understand, especially for Caucasian middle America. The majority of spiritual seekers in North America are white, heterosexual, middle-class individuals, and as such, most have no real understanding of what it means to be a minority, to be in danger of losing one’s culture and/or community. It is difficult for many of us to understand that no one is entitled to the practices and ceremonies of other peoples. No one is entitled to free access to the inner workings of any religious and/or cultural society. The sense of entitlement that most American seekers feel stems from living as the majority culture that takes what it wants from whomever it wants, and spreads its culture, language, and traditions to every land it has ever explored. “Manifest Destiny” has, in fact, infiltrated our very way of thinking, such that many of us look to the sacred traditions of the world and think, “I can have that!”

But in being responsible to the communities from which we borrow, we must recognize that we are not entitled to the rites and traditions of cultures that did not birth us. We are not entitled to take something from someone else, whitewash it and proclaim it the same as or better than the original. When we do that, we slap that community in the face, because we say to them, “This used to be yours. It used to define you. Now it is ours.” That community, especially minority communities already struggling to maintain a unique identity, becomes that much closer to being absorbed by the dominant culture.
(Traditional Wiccans should have no trouble understanding this point, as it is very similar to what they argue is happening by the influx of so-called “fluff bunnies” and eclectic Wiccans.)

When we borrow elements from another culture, we must be responsible in how we handle those elements. In private, before ourselves and the Divine, we can do pretty much whatever we like. If I want to run around my backyard wearing nothing but a bindhi, making random sacrifices to Isis while calling upon the Orishas for possession, I’m not really hurting anyone (although I’m sure the gods are laughing their asses of at the prospect). What I do in the privacy of my personal worship is totally up to me. But the minute I decide to take these borrowed practices public, the moment I decide to portray practices which are not mine and which I have no right to lay claim to, I am denigrating someone’s community.

In some ways, it is a lack of creativity and a sense of disconnection that leads many people into the arms of cultural appropriation. Sweet sixteens and baby showers seem trite, conventional, and commercial-and without a doubt, they can be. Devoid of any spiritual underpinning or mythic imagery, these rituals downspiral into nothing more than vapid get-togethers centered around sugary cake and plastic gifts. In an effort to recapture the mystery and the magic of the baby shower specifically, some women turn to the sacred ritual of the Blessingway, a traditional Navajo mother blessing ritual. They gather in a backyard in a California suburb, bedecked in sarongs and Birkenstocks, eating vegan food and drinking lemonade, and call themselves performing a Blessingway. Then they put up a website with pictures and everything, and any fool doing a google for “Blessingway” can find this ritual. It’s dishonest. It’s dishonorable. It’s uncreative and silly. The idea of a mother blessing before the birth of an infant is a beautiful one, and easily incorporated into any existing culture. But to frame it as a Blessingway, when it is clearly something else, is stealing-and it is hurtful to the community which birthed that sacred ritual.

If we would be responsibly eclectic, if we would add meaning and substance to our religious practices and ceremonies, let us look to other cultures to gain inspiration to create our own rites and rituals. Let us educate ourselves about the spiritualities of other people not so that we can pilfer their practices, but so that we can look deeper into our own heritages and enrich our own myths with actions sacred to and meaningful to us. Let us forge a relationship with our own histories, our own myth and culture, that we might enliven it, enrich it, and carry it forward for the betterment of the future generations of our own people and communities.

Endnotes:(1) I use the word oppression here trepidantly. Perhaps a better phrase here would be “byproduct of a structure of willful apathy and ignorance”, yet this phrase doesn’t quite seem to stress the very real harm that has come to many minority peoples as a result of White hegemony. Although the concepts of White hegemony are central to the concerns of minorities and to the academic study of cultural appropriation, a deep exploration of this subject is beyond the scope of this paper.

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