On Cultural Appropriation
Cultural appropriation is an issue for neo-pagans but the debate has become quite polarised and this can generate more heat than light. This issue matters because cultural appropriation needs to be considered whatever your spiritual path. Think of it as an ethical check, it may not apply to you but it is good practice to consider it.
On one level cultural appropriation is about power, it is the exploitation of someone else’s intellectual property without proper reference or respect. It is about taking what you want and redefining it as you wish. Some pagans do it and see it as freedom, the ability to reinvent themselves as they wish. This self-definition has been an important and positive aspect of neo-paganism with people discovering a new spirituality through exploration. But there are people who sell training, rituals and paraphernalia relating to minority cultures. This becomes an issue when those people are not and never have been members of that culture. Inevitably the current debate on cultural appropriate is couched in USAn terms and is embedded in a discourse about race that is very much about America. Can you simply choose to be a Lakota Indian shaman? The Lakota people would say you cannot! But they simply don’t have the power to stop you from saying you are and selling various services under that guise. That’s what I mean about this being about power. Trying calling yourself Microsoft when you aren’t and you’ll have lawyers on you so fast you wish you hadn’t. But a lot of indigenous communities lack the resources to protect their cultural heritage. There are people who will exploit that “brand” for personal gain. For an embattled minority trying to defend their traditions, symbols are particularly precious - sometimes those symbols are all you have left! We have to recognise that there are people struggling to keep their own cultures alive when spirit becomes just another business model, faith becomes fashion and the money isn’t going near the communities that it should. Participating in that does not require a malign intent. So for example the whole debate about the Washington “Redskins”. That name is presumably not intended simply to be offensive and there are fans who will wear the headdress who will deny that they are causing harm. Assuming the power to decide if you are or are not causing harm to someone, no matter what they say, is a good sign of an abusive power relationship. But what does that have to do with spirituality? I’ve been to pagan markets and fairs (occasionally “fayres” :) where you can by dream-catchers, medicine bags etc. I’ve gone online and seen people offering Sweat Lodges and Vision Quests. Is that ok? Is it very much different from a Washington football fan wearing a feathered headdress? Perhaps it is, it is certainly more complicated and we should not be careless of the danger of strip-mining someone else’s culture for that which we find valuable. Being alternative, educated or a bit of a hippy does not give you a free pass on ethics.
However;
As a pagan I also believe that I travel and meet spirits. Some of these are the same spirits that other people have met. I’ve known any number of pagans who (in my view authentically) have spiritual links outside of their own culture and expectations (“I was expecting to meet x but I actually met y”). This can come as a surprise to the pagan involved. I don’t view it as cultural appropriation but as authentic spiritual experience. Nobody owns the Gods.
I don’t view loan words as a form of cultural appropriation. Words migrate between languages for many reasons, English-English contains a fair amount of loan words from other languages, so a carpenter from northern England may refer to her “bayt” without ever realising the Hindi origins of the term. She is not engaging in cultural appropriation she has a good term to describe the practice of eating small amounts of pre-prepared food frequently over the day to maintain blood sugar during manual labour in the outdoors. The fact that it took me a long sentence to explain “bayt” shows the value of this loan word, it’s a useful concept with no easy synonym in English-English. In paganism it is hard now to find a better word than “totemic”, “tribal” or “tattoo” for the things they refer to. Alternatives do exist but they tend to have the same problems and languages have to evolve. If you have a good word for something, expect people to use it. There is a big difference between the use of loan words and the appropriation of imagery and ritual.
Unfortunately, this means some of the lines can be blurred but that doesn’t mean there aren’t boundaries there which should be respected.
Respect is strength.
Note: The illustration is an early example of cultural appropriation. In the first millenium B.C.E some rich Phoenician merchants used the symbology of Egyptian religion for decorative purposes in their mansions. This looks like an Egyptian cartouche but it is actually gibberish.
