while I am not a religious person (i come from a mixed family so i was raised as everything and nothing), I am still offended by the existance of Christmas here. I would rather see nothing about christmas, than the tasteless, cold, chinese-style (by chinese-style i mean ostentation to the max with as many lights as possible) decorations that are hung from every corner in a money-hungry effort to attract consumers into business establishments. (and i thought the US was capitalist)

In Europe, people have killed each other for centuries, and may kill each other again, over small differences of grounded cultural belief which they believe/d to be linked to blood rights to religion.

There is no such thing as “blood right” to anything, not language, not culture, not religion. While I am completely against cultural imperialism, and cultural appropriation as a means of cultural domination, I think it is equally dangerous to assert that ONLY the Lakota have rights to their rituals, because that also justifies that ONLY the possessors of whichever religion by blood or by birth have the right to control those ideas, and that their anger and genocide of people who are “other” is cannonized by a blood right rather than an out-dated cultural norm.

If a person is willing to learn a religion and integrate a culture personally I see nothing wrong with learning a religion like a language. Someone who learns a language from birth will naturally have a better integrated and more complete relationship with that culture than someone who learns it later in life. I see that the problem is much the same with religious-cultural-appropriation.

Most people who try to learn a second language never really integrate into the language or learn its place in the culture from which it comes and therefore use it badly. But their mis-use (unless in very high volume) does not corrupt the implicit grammar of the language for the native-speakr.

That is the problem with religious appropriation as well. People don’t learn, and therefore corrupt the practices they are doing, like the mothers in your article. But they do not corrupt the original practitioners’ practice. The problem perhaps is their relative visibility, but even that… If it opens awareness of others to begin looking at the real depths of that practice– and it probably does– I cannot see it as evil or unjustified.

If they did that same ceremony and didn’t credit its source, I would find it more insulting.

As the Catholic Church in Mexico and South America has co-opted many native-traditions and denied the roots of them, and thereby their cultural independence from the imperial dominator– the Spanish over-culture. Or as many Mexicans also practice the “Quinceañera” unaware of its root in the Jewish-converso’s tradition of Bat-mitzvah. Those are TRUE denials and obfuscations of minority cultures.

Not integrating the basic mechanics of language, art, religion, or any other cultural element within oneself means that the results don’t reach the depth of spiritual achievement.

That in and of itself is sad, but i don’t think that it is motivated by a sense of cultural imperialism, but more a desire to find what one is missing.

I haven’t read the whole article yet, and while I think that you raise a lot of very good points, I think that some things upon investigation are more universal than you think. Your example of “smudging” for example, while apt ignores the idea that the herbs used in smudging have particular properties.

Sage is a very strong herb, and useful for particular things, just as salicylic acid (from willow bark, or other tree bark originally) commonly known as aspirin is useful for a particular thing. Sage just happens to be good for a certain kind of cleansing and awakening of spirits in a place that frankincense is not good for.

While appropriating Lakota words for a cultural ceremony as you describe is CERTAINLY questionable, and might not work for someone who was not Lakota, I would argue that the use of herbal properties in and of itself is NOT cultural appropriation, because it is using an “empirical” property of those herbs.

- Åsne

I have many friends who burn sage, read runes, or marry in a church with idea of what they are ascribing to when they do. But, where are America’s myths? Where are our customs? If myth is as Joseph Campbell in Myths to Live By says it is, myths and the customs and rites that go with those help define a person within a societal framework. They also provide an individual within a society the construct to be an active participant in that community to continue in that society as a contributing member. But first and foremost he says that myths have evolved because man recognized his own mortality and wanted to rise above the finality of death. Having said all that where do the individuals of mainstream America who are not religious participants find the support to live in the framework of the society. The seeking culture of America (and as you state the Manifest Destiny aspect of this) strives to find something meaningful in a culture where little is. On top of that the diversity of the people of this nation excludes one set of spiritual customs or mythos. So what are the myths of America? Is there one that can give all inhabitants a sense of belonging? It would seem that those who are apporpriating others’ traditions are those whose answer would be no, there is no such thing in America. or if there is it is one I wouldn’t subscribe to.

I like the term responsibly eclectic and the call to look deeper into other cultural traditions so that we may use them as a reflection of our own.