This was ZESTY!!! Full of the many questions I've had. Does appropriation only run one direction or is any piece of culture that is not directly lived, considered appropriation? I think the latter. I think it covers urban NDNZ (did I appropriate or adapt current slang?) not living rez (I'm white but lived on a reservation with a local family, so I can use rez as I lived a very rez life during that time, yes?) And I think of this in that I live and work in another culture that is not my own. Saving for privacy/ personalization, cannot I write about it? I also think of larger questions such as have Christians appropriated Judaism or have non-Jewish people appropriated Messianic Judaism? And where does adpatation begin and appropriation end? Russia's Peter the Great (or Terrible, depending on whether you were a slave or not) built the entire Russian navy system off of the Dutch. Where he apprenticed for many years. I'm open to navigating these finest of lines...But what of imagined lives? Are those appropriated?
Also, what a wild ride of the mind and heart with those two calls!
A writer can write about anything they want to. That's the starting point of any discussion of appropriation. In thinking more about my essay, I focus on the thought, "When folks decry cultural appropriation, do they ponder all the ways in which they appropriate culture?"
So I have a question...Can a white female professor, whose mother worked on the Navajo reservation as a nurse, who taught her daughter to be racially aware, teach a novel by you or any other native and be "called out" for cultural appropriation? This is the academic world right now.
Not to worry, Sherman. The A.I. Chatbots will soon be able to write a new version of War and Peace (or whatever you may have in mind) in under 1-minute, convert the characters to whatever race you want, make all the serfs into happy goth heroes, and add a few twists that Tolstoy never dreamed of. All you have to do is ask. In the future (now), no one will be offended by any book or poem. Controversy will not be a word. So you might want to consider a new field of work. Myself, I am thinking of going into subsistence chicken farming, although the last time (as we may have previously discussed) my sole chicken (a bantam hen runt of which the males are known for their aggression) went across the street, every day, and laid her eggs in my neighbor's yard, before coming home to roost. Apuckolypse Now. The treachery. The treachery. Btw, this was composed by A.I.
Look at how I owe to Indians that I settled a nettling fear that I have no heart because the times camping in the i-5 corridor when i ran across a porcupine I hated not saying the right words. But by some byway of Indian humor i remembered in Quaker meeting that my eyes beamed my respect into his. In an over literal response to the subject, it is a question stuck in federal ministrations and a picture of foot dragging while indian life goes on that the possession of eagle feathers is a settled in court but still unenacted stuck thing. In the name of tribes being respected for adopting who they want, Extra tribal members are disallowed to have found feathers for singing ceremonies. Everybod feels welcome at the pow wows , there could be more times and places to send each other the thought which is simply akin to " this is your world". It's your world.
This juxtaposition, though. What a beautiful piece. I have dreams of the New Yorker and semi-colons. The "Comma Queen" memoir is on my nightstand.
While I've never gotten a phone call from the New Yorker, I know those prison phone calls well. One of my most beautiful voicemails I've kept is from M.; I was recording our phone conversation with TapeACall and somehow my line dropped but he was able to keep on talking. It's uniquely heartbreaking to hear someone trying to reach you when you can't just... call them back.
Some day I'll have to tell you the story of my mysterious Aunt Bonnie! She spent every summer for years in South Dakota on a Lakota reservation. Got sober for a Vision Quest. Growing up, I was in awe of the teepee she brought back and set up in my grandparents' backyard overlooking a man-made lake in an upper middle class suburb of DC. She's only now started sharing more of her stories with me. I wish she'd write them down.
I've been thinking of getting a small tattoo on my left shoulder. It would be the four directions wheel, four colors and two eagle feathers. I have a grand niece who is a talented artist and tattooist. But I hesitate for two reasons. I feel it would be cultural appropriation, it is a native symbol and the only native I have in me is the fact my father lived on the Klamath Rez for a couple of years when he was young. I probably won't get the tattoo, I've never gotten one, so why get one at my age?
Yes, it could! Also, in regard to your most recent post, the Hemingway House is now a place for research and retreat for selected scholars and writers.
I’m in Oaxaca de Juarez, Mexico. Very tired. I agree with everything you said. You should see the appropriation going on here. Everyone is an expert. I just want to lie down I have three dental appointments. He screams at me.🚶🏻♀️🚶🏻♀️🚶🏻♀️🐇😷
And, hey, I'm giggling because I posted a link to this essay on my Instagram and, so far, it might be my least-liked and least-commented-upon post ever! I think folks, even my fans, are scared of these questions!
Anybody can write any book they want to! A few non-Indians have written great books about Indians—Craig Lesley and Tom Spanbauer come to mind. And, hey, world literature is overflowing with cultural appropriaters who've written good and great books, and beyond that, some of our very finest literature. So what's the key in dealing with cultural appropriation? Write a great book!
Ah, "the buzz of wry existentialism"--love it. You'll probably catch some shit for this, but I certainly see where you're coming from. And to the extent that you write from the urban Indian perspective, as in "Indian Killer" (probably still under appreciated--if "appreciated" is quite right here), I do NOT think you're "appropriating." You've been living that life for years now. Did I ever mention that I'm at least 1/8 NA? (That's "Not Applicable," not "Native American.)
Just fine here--retired from UI about 5 years ago to no ballyhoo at all. Still writing one thing or another, of course. Georgia's first full-length book of poems, "Body Be Sound" will be out in September, published by a press in Maine. What are you up to?
You contain multitudes (to be a thief who steals from Walt Whitman)-- surely your range is vast, receiving calls from NYer and WW State Penitentiary in the same day is unique ....and I think that's what makes your writing so vital and vivid. Your questions are probing and I think about cultural appropriation often. Should we try to create borders for the territories of the imagination? Probably not--the verbal or visual artist should be able to travel anywhere and spin their magic web. Superior art will come from those who have lived the described life deeply and genuinely and ultimately the one who is derivative will lose value because of being unconvincing ....Culture transcends race or ethnic background then, subsuming class and geography in its limits as well?? And a professional suburban black person cannot write of the inner city black experience???? This creates so many boundaries it is anathema to the imagination .... and would make creativity so entangled and problematic people might be afraid to write a,poem. I can't frame a quick response to your challenging essay except to say it raises many questions that should be asked and dealt with.
My late grandfather was a graduate of Leavenworth at Kansas with a Federal degree in Moonshine. I grew up on descriptions of what it was like being in solitary confinement, carved out of the foundation rock underneath the prison during the 1920s. That and a lot else would come out now and then in little bits. And, of course, instead of the hardened monster of convict cliches that I never met, it was my grandfather who told me the stories, and he was always generous and forgiving and nice to me though he hardly had two cents to rub together, and the law continued to plague 2 of my uncles for years.
Thanks for reminding me of him. And thanks for your open heart-ed, wonderful and inclusive writing.
Poor people or hard up against it people, it's always seemed to me, are very much the same wherever you find them. They're not fairy tales or walking illustrations of some kind, but they are a little magical just by being alive. And in that way, maybe, they're the same even if they're not identical.
This was ZESTY!!! Full of the many questions I've had. Does appropriation only run one direction or is any piece of culture that is not directly lived, considered appropriation? I think the latter. I think it covers urban NDNZ (did I appropriate or adapt current slang?) not living rez (I'm white but lived on a reservation with a local family, so I can use rez as I lived a very rez life during that time, yes?) And I think of this in that I live and work in another culture that is not my own. Saving for privacy/ personalization, cannot I write about it? I also think of larger questions such as have Christians appropriated Judaism or have non-Jewish people appropriated Messianic Judaism? And where does adpatation begin and appropriation end? Russia's Peter the Great (or Terrible, depending on whether you were a slave or not) built the entire Russian navy system off of the Dutch. Where he apprenticed for many years. I'm open to navigating these finest of lines...But what of imagined lives? Are those appropriated?
Also, what a wild ride of the mind and heart with those two calls!
A writer can write about anything they want to. That's the starting point of any discussion of appropriation. In thinking more about my essay, I focus on the thought, "When folks decry cultural appropriation, do they ponder all the ways in which they appropriate culture?"
Right on, thanks (speaking as a white woman and the kind of writer/editor who gets semicolons). But I don't think all writers are thieves.
Somewhere there is somebody who'd call you a writer thief, maybe?
So I have a question...Can a white female professor, whose mother worked on the Navajo reservation as a nurse, who taught her daughter to be racially aware, teach a novel by you or any other native and be "called out" for cultural appropriation? This is the academic world right now.
Anybody can teach any novel they want to!
Not to worry, Sherman. The A.I. Chatbots will soon be able to write a new version of War and Peace (or whatever you may have in mind) in under 1-minute, convert the characters to whatever race you want, make all the serfs into happy goth heroes, and add a few twists that Tolstoy never dreamed of. All you have to do is ask. In the future (now), no one will be offended by any book or poem. Controversy will not be a word. So you might want to consider a new field of work. Myself, I am thinking of going into subsistence chicken farming, although the last time (as we may have previously discussed) my sole chicken (a bantam hen runt of which the males are known for their aggression) went across the street, every day, and laid her eggs in my neighbor's yard, before coming home to roost. Apuckolypse Now. The treachery. The treachery. Btw, this was composed by A.I.
Hahahaha
Great piece Sherman. Brings so many different thoughts and emotions I can't corral them to write anything down... I'll just soak awhile in the art.
Thank you! I await your thoughts.
Look at how I owe to Indians that I settled a nettling fear that I have no heart because the times camping in the i-5 corridor when i ran across a porcupine I hated not saying the right words. But by some byway of Indian humor i remembered in Quaker meeting that my eyes beamed my respect into his. In an over literal response to the subject, it is a question stuck in federal ministrations and a picture of foot dragging while indian life goes on that the possession of eagle feathers is a settled in court but still unenacted stuck thing. In the name of tribes being respected for adopting who they want, Extra tribal members are disallowed to have found feathers for singing ceremonies. Everybod feels welcome at the pow wows , there could be more times and places to send each other the thought which is simply akin to " this is your world". It's your world.
This juxtaposition, though. What a beautiful piece. I have dreams of the New Yorker and semi-colons. The "Comma Queen" memoir is on my nightstand.
While I've never gotten a phone call from the New Yorker, I know those prison phone calls well. One of my most beautiful voicemails I've kept is from M.; I was recording our phone conversation with TapeACall and somehow my line dropped but he was able to keep on talking. It's uniquely heartbreaking to hear someone trying to reach you when you can't just... call them back.
Some day I'll have to tell you the story of my mysterious Aunt Bonnie! She spent every summer for years in South Dakota on a Lakota reservation. Got sober for a Vision Quest. Growing up, I was in awe of the teepee she brought back and set up in my grandparents' backyard overlooking a man-made lake in an upper middle class suburb of DC. She's only now started sharing more of her stories with me. I wish she'd write them down.
A teepee in DC! There's a rhyme for ya!
Ahahaha! DC Teepee, how I loved thee.
Hahahahahaha
I've been thinking of getting a small tattoo on my left shoulder. It would be the four directions wheel, four colors and two eagle feathers. I have a grand niece who is a talented artist and tattooist. But I hesitate for two reasons. I feel it would be cultural appropriation, it is a native symbol and the only native I have in me is the fact my father lived on the Klamath Rez for a couple of years when he was young. I probably won't get the tattoo, I've never gotten one, so why get one at my age?
My Dad had a few dozen tattoos, including some jailhouse ones, so I'm tattoo-averse. But get what you want!
Thanks Sherman, I will continue to think about it, I know what my grand niece’s advice will be
The fateful answering machine message. That blinking red light could sometimes change your whole life!
Yes, it could! Also, in regard to your most recent post, the Hemingway House is now a place for research and retreat for selected scholars and writers.
I’m in Oaxaca de Juarez, Mexico. Very tired. I agree with everything you said. You should see the appropriation going on here. Everyone is an expert. I just want to lie down I have three dental appointments. He screams at me.🚶🏻♀️🚶🏻♀️🚶🏻♀️🐇😷
And, hey, I'm giggling because I posted a link to this essay on my Instagram and, so far, it might be my least-liked and least-commented-upon post ever! I think folks, even my fans, are scared of these questions!
Heading over to Instagram, didn't know you were on it.
I have a question (an honest question; not intentionally stirring any pots here):
Is there value in having a diverse cast of characters in fiction? If so, how does a writer balance that with cultural appropriation?
Anybody can write any book they want to! A few non-Indians have written great books about Indians—Craig Lesley and Tom Spanbauer come to mind. And, hey, world literature is overflowing with cultural appropriaters who've written good and great books, and beyond that, some of our very finest literature. So what's the key in dealing with cultural appropriation? Write a great book!
Ah, "the buzz of wry existentialism"--love it. You'll probably catch some shit for this, but I certainly see where you're coming from. And to the extent that you write from the urban Indian perspective, as in "Indian Killer" (probably still under appreciated--if "appreciated" is quite right here), I do NOT think you're "appropriating." You've been living that life for years now. Did I ever mention that I'm at least 1/8 NA? (That's "Not Applicable," not "Native American.)
Hey Ron, that has to be you. How are you? Diana Armstrong
Just fine here--retired from UI about 5 years ago to no ballyhoo at all. Still writing one thing or another, of course. Georgia's first full-length book of poems, "Body Be Sound" will be out in September, published by a press in Maine. What are you up to?
Also, these are the kind of questions that Indians always ask in private so I’m tearing down the curtain.
I am half-urban Indian!
We may not all be thieves, but we all remix.
Hahahaha. Yep!
I did my dissertation on remix in ELA classes.
You contain multitudes (to be a thief who steals from Walt Whitman)-- surely your range is vast, receiving calls from NYer and WW State Penitentiary in the same day is unique ....and I think that's what makes your writing so vital and vivid. Your questions are probing and I think about cultural appropriation often. Should we try to create borders for the territories of the imagination? Probably not--the verbal or visual artist should be able to travel anywhere and spin their magic web. Superior art will come from those who have lived the described life deeply and genuinely and ultimately the one who is derivative will lose value because of being unconvincing ....Culture transcends race or ethnic background then, subsuming class and geography in its limits as well?? And a professional suburban black person cannot write of the inner city black experience???? This creates so many boundaries it is anathema to the imagination .... and would make creativity so entangled and problematic people might be afraid to write a,poem. I can't frame a quick response to your challenging essay except to say it raises many questions that should be asked and dealt with.
My late grandfather was a graduate of Leavenworth at Kansas with a Federal degree in Moonshine. I grew up on descriptions of what it was like being in solitary confinement, carved out of the foundation rock underneath the prison during the 1920s. That and a lot else would come out now and then in little bits. And, of course, instead of the hardened monster of convict cliches that I never met, it was my grandfather who told me the stories, and he was always generous and forgiving and nice to me though he hardly had two cents to rub together, and the law continued to plague 2 of my uncles for years.
Thanks for reminding me of him. And thanks for your open heart-ed, wonderful and inclusive writing.
Poor people or hard up against it people, it's always seemed to me, are very much the same wherever you find them. They're not fairy tales or walking illustrations of some kind, but they are a little magical just by being alive. And in that way, maybe, they're the same even if they're not identical.
Whatever the weight, thanks, &
xo, for sure
Thank you, David. I grew up among poor reservation Indians and poor whites from mining, farming, and logging towns. We had tons in common.
This is beautifully felt and expressed. Thank you for this reflection. Open hearted is such a perfect descriptor.