Got this nice message.
---------------
Your site inspired me to write an article; enjoy!
"The Fine Line: Between Partnerships and Plunder"
- Robert Animikii Horton, Anishinaabe, Rainy River First Nations
Many of our generation, partnerships built and cultivated and maintained across once great ethnic and cultural divides and boundaries, speak and aspire to ideals; the ideals of circumstance, progress, and improvement in days ahead where the fires of justice extinguish the dark dusk of inequity. However, those placing value and promise on the benefits of future partnerships and collaborations across the cultural and racial rifts to create and shape a world that yields most painfully to change may continue to find, upon these lands and abroad, both the intentional (and unintentional) sabotage of the wondrous mechanisms found in shared aspiration; in which this sabotage is Theft.
Let us reflect and apply the legacy of memory; the multigenerational bandit mask (not of heritage but of conduct of character) has been passed to a successor numerous times; Indian Agents wore the cloak of thievery towards our traditional means to govern, the Churches and Residential Schools stole our children and family legacies, the Federal and Provincial powers continue to seek to plunder our traditional territories, and modern times reveal a pilferer functioning in the same light as the suit and the black robe; appropriating the most sacred of what we have left and what each past malefactor sought to take; culture.
Today’s thieves, whether they realize or not, have assumed duty to finish what those that came before started; to appropriate, to exploit, to steal, to acquire, to minimize, and capture a sacred culture; for personal, obsessive, or profiteer reasons.
The issue of "culture-vulturing" and cultural appropriation remains a strong issue of ethics, decency, and injustice; likewise a matter where such exploitation continues fanning the flames of mistrust within a great number of our People across the ethnic line; stifling progressive partnerships of many due to the unsavoury greed of a few; both greed of capital in exchange for “plastic shaman” services and personal opportunism and ego due to inadequacy, lack of moral compass, or the vain wish to be reborn within an objectifying obsession and fascination.
The same suits and black robes of yesterday are those that adorn bandit masks in the eyes of many today; the self-absorbed tie-dyed hipster invading ceremony, the New Age appropriating "Shamanic Healer", the swank “visionary” self-promoting himself as an elder and a majestic, the fraud without roots but claiming self-styled wings as he who is called “Dreams of Eagles”, the profiteering non-indigenous self-nominated “vision quest guide”, and those that live out their romanticized fantasies by minimizing a People and a culture down to the jewellery one makes and sells, the “Indian at heart” they claim as a “should have been”, or the sports team logo upon one’s chest. It is not limited to these examples, but facts are facts;
Thievery is thievery.
Appropriation is appropriation.
Exploitation is exploitation.
Minimization is minimization.
Objectification is objectification.
Frauds are frauds and facts are facts.
Meaningful partnerships are based in respect, integrity, ethics, and trust.
We all deserve such and a future based upon such ideals. If we truly collectively wish to close the divides born of rooted mistrust, efforts must be undertaken and responsibility assumed to uproot the continued mistrust by separating the past victimization and thievery from the present and a future of more of the same. The grave-robbers of yesterday are those that pilfer the mounds of memory today for personal gain. If memory and continuity of culture equates survival; than the clumsy digging of open-pit mines into the sacred by the selfish is a significant disrespect to the very survival some wish to unjustly cling to and drain from.
Such flagrant opportunism minimizes another People and culture; minimizing much from the respective levels of sacred cultural autonomy of protected foundations for our future generations of our People; down to the parallel of mere Halloween costumes which sacred ceremonies, teachings, and cultural affinity can simply be worn by the self-justified, the ignorant, the most well-intentioned, or those that claim they do not know any better.
It is my contention that it is not only a slight against our ancestors, against our true spiritual leaders, and against the cultures that are pilfered by such characters; but against our Nations, as well; as the very foundations of our Nations, our culture and spirituality, are undermined and trivialized by such.
And again, mistrust caused by few eviscerates much promise of personal and collective investments towards many seeking effective partnerships and valuable progressive relationships; potential is lost.
So exploiters, exploiting due to personal obsession or profit; If you truly value progressive partnerships and work towards a more just society for all, built of integrity and respect for many rather than the betterment of few; then hang up the delusion, the illusion, and the thievery, Plastic Shamans. Plunder Divides Partnerships. Culture vultures, stop picking the bones of ancestors clean, because one who appropriates for the reason that they “love the culture and respect the Native”; neither loves or respects the exploited any more than the pornographer loves and respects the actress.
No matter how one justifies or pacifies;
Exploitation is exploitation.
Facts are facts.
