“Now she ventures upon the earnest movement, slightly upward and sidewise, in a circle. At length the song drops into a closing cadence, and the little woman, clad in beaded deerskin, sits down beside the elder one. Like her mother, she sits upon her feet. In a brief moment the warrior repeats the last refrain. Again Tusee springs to her feet and dances to the swing of the few final measures.”
From Zitkala-Så’s “A Warrior Daughter”
The passage that I chose is from a short story by Zitkala-Så. As a class we did not read this particular piece; I enjoyed her work immensely and found a treasure trove of her stories online, and this was one of my favorites. I like her stories because of her clean writing style, her balanced use of description and her vivid narratives, but I have to say a lot of my interest in them lay simply in learning about Native American culture and the stereotypes versus the reality. There were so many things, especially in “Impressions of an Indian Childhood” and "The School Days of an Indian Girl” that seemed like Native American cliche’s. For example the plain dwelling community, talk of her long dark hair, her soft leather moccasins, riding horses bareback. All of these iconic “Indian” images were an integral part of building her world. This interested me so because I loved learning that these things that are often poorly portrayed in media and modern culture, were really true and integral parts of Native American history. This sounds a little bit sad and conceited, I recognize that, but we see such a distilled and sort of, “easy access” version of this dynamic society that it is interesting to think about where these images came from. Furthermore, if we adopt Native American customs - dressing as an “Indian” for halloween, wearing a feathered headdress, getting specific tribe’s art work tattooed on, wearing Native American inspired clothing, etc - where is the line between appreciation and mockery? This question brings up the sticky topic of cultural appropriation. My experience with this word is that immediately people think that this is BAD. I am an avid user of tumblr and I see this phrase brought up without a lot of knowledge on all that it entails on everything from yoga, to dreadlocks to harem pants. Without going off on a long tangent, after giving this concept a lot of thought I realized (my personal conclusion) is that cultural appropriation is unavoidable, especially as an American. Our entire culture was built on borrowing and adopting ideas from other societies. Look at our cuisine, for example, there is very little that is fundamentally “American”, most everything has been taken from someplace else and grown into something unique to us over the years. It’s not necessarily “bad” or “good” but it is the way things are, and its seems silly to me to get so defensive in the vein of not culturally appropriating when it is inherent in our everyday life. In my video, I wanted to raise the same question to an audience. I chose footage that represents a contrast between traditional art and modern interpretation and practice. One of the big places that I observe Native American cultural appropriation is in the music festival sphere, especially electronic music. People gather together in these small “tribe” like communities, erect wigwam-like structures to wildly dance in to drumbeat-driven music. This is also where I see a lot of people wearing feathers and leather and big headdress. “Hoop Dancing” which is often done with a glow-in-the-dark hoop is often performed as well. I did not even know that this has its roots in Native American customs until this project. So, I present my footage in a compare and contrast manner. I don’t have an answer for the audience, I want them to come to their own conclusion of whether or not the appropriation presented is out of love or out of ignorance. I begin the video with the quote I have written above to set the tone, so to speak, but it is not meant to be an influence. Finally. I set the video to music from a group of three Native Canadians (I know there’s a bit of irony here, but bear with me) called A Tribe Called Red. They create dance music inspired from traditional powwow beats. The particular track I used was aptly called, “Electric Powwow.”
Here is a link to their website: atribecalledred.com And where I got the music from: soundcloud.com/a-tribe-called-red And the website with Zitkala-Så’s work: digital.library.upenn.edu/women/zitkala-sa/stories/stories.html And finally an interesting article on cultural appropriation if you’re not familiar: everydayfeminism.com/2013/09/cultural-exchange-and-cultural-appropriation/
Cast:Protea Productions
Tags:zitakala-sa, native american, cultural appropriation, a tribe called red, art outside, music festival, dance music, fire spinning, hoop dancer, hoop dancing, edm, school project, school, dj, live dj, live music, literature, drum and dancing