Prior to today, I had NO idea that Native American “fetishization” existed in Eastern Europe, or could be so endemic:
Scroll through the reader letter at the beginning of the post–it is painfully formulaic. The post itself is good, and I found this comment particularly interesting:
“The entire “dressing up as Native Americans” shtick is not only German: It is very prevalent also in all countries which were behind the Iron Curtain, which should tell you something. It is about escaping your surroundings and your situation and your life, “traveling”, which in a totalitarian state was impossible. All aspects of your private life were monitored and had to be approved off by the state in some form or another. Dressing up as an oppressed minority and as “the enemy” of the enemy (the US) was okay’ed by the socialist governments.” -KD
And from commentor PMS Rhino:
“Maybe if more white people realized that if we want to claim our own culture we’re gonna have to take the guilt and shame with it. And even, heaven forbid, do something about it.”
"Maybe if more white people realized that if we want to claim our own culture we're gonna have to take the guilt and shame with it. And even, heaven forbid, do something about it."
Yeah, I think this is really what a lot of this boils down to! Perhaps I’m wrong, but there just seems to be so little surviving healthy European culture. I know I’ve done a lot of online research into uncivilized/precivilized Europe and haven’t scraped up much more information besides some brief descriptions of tools and hypothetical sustenance strategies. I guess aspects of ancient cultures that can’t be dug up by archaeological research become invisible…
I know I’m mostly British and Irish and central european with some northern European as well. I would love to learn more about the cultures in these places that didn’t rely mainly on domestication. But I also I know I have to own the reality of my inheritance.
The European pagan and/or heathern revival seems to be going through some of the same problems. So little information about the original European religions remains, so most groups seem basically to be creating new religions inspired by the traces of the old. And the groups who are trying to recreate the original religions are very limited by the shortage of original material, and are essentially trapped in a fossilized form–unlike a living spiritual tradition.
Another thing that I find surprising about the East European “Wannabi tribe” folks, is that as I have continued to think about “White” identity, and the non-culture of the European diaspora, I have felt such a sense of loss of our original European cultural traditions. Why aren’t these folks in Germany, the Czech Republic, Poland and Russia not reviving their own ethnic heritage? Even after the cultural-sterilization of communism or socialism, there must still be more clues and traces of their ancestral history available to them, than are available to us in the USA or in the Commonwealth countries. Or is it that they too feel that what we think of today as traditional European culture is just too domesticated?
I totally agree! And that is something we are going to have to fight against. Just as tribal people of more recent times have had to fight against the horrible stereotypes of being savages or cannibals.
One thing that researching my Gaelic heritage has reveled to me, is that the Highland Scots were probably the last people of Europe (besides the Sami) to be subdued and domesticated. And that is why they had to deal with some of the worst prejudice and stereotypes compared to other Europeans.
When looking for the remnants of a “wild” European culture, one does not have to look as far in the past, in Scotland. But of course, there are an abundance of Scottish stereotypes one has to force their way beyond first–mostly due to Scottish culture being stolen, suppressed, appropriated, caricatured, and then re-marketed to those of Scottish descent, or anyone else who takes a fancy to it.
goblingirl - i have personally found some interesting things from looking at medieval herberia - basically herbalist guide books. some interesting traditions can be found, like that it was believed that one could not harvest wood from an elderberry tree/bush without asking permission first. depending on tradition, elves or other nature spirits were said to dwell in them, so presumably that is who you are asking. if you dont know, elderberry makes good flutes. since you have british ancestry, you may want to read ‘leechcraft’, a very good book that covers some english herbaria, talisman use, dream interpretation and more. another good source of actual nature worship traditions in england - wassail songs. unfortunately, the only wassailing songs to survive are blessings for humans and for domestic apple trees, but the whole ritual is preserved in song, so it seems pretty easy to me to make some more, using the format to honor whoever you want. its true that most traditions are gone, but most reconstructionists, in my view, dont look widely enough for sources of cultural information, choosing to rely on literature depictions of myth - like the eddas - which have some valuable information, dont get me wrong. they just dont say everything. But people rely on that, essentially copying the christian strategy of blind faith in textual knowledge and the idea that culture should NEvEr change, in order to be authentic. oral-based cultures always change and adapt to the needs and desires of the people. oh yeah, another good source of info about germanic heathenism, besides folk tales, which are an obvious source, is the mennonite healers who practice ‘‘braucherei’’. there is a new religion based on the heathen remnant elements in this folk healing system that they call ‘‘urglaawe.’’ it doesnt have all the elements of neo-norse asatru religion, but neither does asatru have all the personages and traditions that urglaawe has. folk tales help to flesh out the stories, especially about people like mother holle - who has the english - and norse- equivalent ‘hel.’ im not sure how to end this ramble, so i’ll just say that all is not lost! oh, also check this tribal map, if you happen to know where your ancestors were just before, after or during when this was made : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribal_Hidage I personally have found that Im likely “herefinna” tribal ancestry
[quote=“Peter Michael Bauer, post:15, topic:1637”]So, I was recently watching a video by a “rewilder” in which he used the Didgeridoo as background music. This made me cringe so hard.
Thoughts? Native Flute Music?
What is a eurasian equivalent?[/quote]
this might help as a starting point. Also, see ‘tabor pipe’ or ‘bagpipes’ for cross-country european instruments of the middle ages
Peter, fragments of bone flutes are commonly dug up around Europe, so there is definitely a very old tradition of European wind instruments.
Bagpipes actually originated from Roman instruments like the Tibia ( http://www.ancestral.co.uk/romanreeds.htm ). Interestingly, some of the early kings of the north-eastern tip of Ireland (which shared a common cultural heritage to much of the Scottish highlands–all part of the Dal Riada kingdom) were allegedly Romanized Britons, but the pipes probably spread around via many other paths.
I like to visit this website: http://www.ancientmusic.co.uk/instruments.html as they have some very nice examples of early instruments they have researched and made, (including bone flutes). I thought for awhile I might like to try and make a Germanic Lyre, but for now I have settled on playing around with a mountain dulcimer, as I already have access to one, and it is actually an instrument of the Gaelic Diaspora. (Of course I find that I am inclined to play it more like a sitar than a mountiain dulcimer, having dabbled in that many years previously–talk of cultural appropriation!–but again, I must refer to our common indo-european cultural roots, not to mention that music was especially prone to cross-pollination throughout Europe and Asia)
oakcorn, I had heard of elder branches being used for flutes, but had forgotten! The branches are poisonous though, which discourages me from trying to make one, without the proper instructions on how to do it. You have some other good info in your post, although it may take me awhile to digest it all. Thanks!
I’m working on my blog about this again. I’m changing it up a bit and going to turn it into more of a list of what is okay and not okay and why. I’ll link to this thread from my blog once it’s up. Should be here by next week.
Going back to the flute conversation, (do we need a new topic?), I just stumbled across the European answer to the didgeridoo: it’s the overtone flute, and it is so incredibly simple that it is probably the ancestor of all wind instruments. In Slovakia it is called the Koncovka, and in Russia it is the Kalyuka. I also saw it called a Shepard’s Flute.
Here it is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPJ8NotbjIA# . Larger versions sound more like a didgeridoo. And it can also be made as a vertical flute instead of transverse/horizontal.
And a musician in the German neo-folk band Faun plays one here at 1:36 minutes: http://youtu.be/JoNBzIYYvNw .
By the way, I just found some beautiful pieces of elder branch I’ll be letting dry out. I’m excited.
A friend sent me this article on appropriation the other day. I wasn’t expecting much since it was on Reality Sandwich, one of the worst sites of appropriation out there (in my experience).
The article is actually pretty decent. A few things they say are annoying, and they don’t get to the “research your own heritage” idea, but its a great start I guess.
So glad this thread is already here. Just got back from Saskatoon Circle and had a pretty frustrating discussion around CA there. One thing that I hadn’t been hip to, is that a lot of the stuff around buckskins, is specifically looking at the patterns/beadwork included on buckskins, where some white person found a book of buckskins, and copied a SACRED pattern onto their own buckskin. This feels similar to folks wearing war bonnets without having earned them.
Some other things that I heard people say could be summed up as:
“Yeah, but like some folks in Africa appropriated Christianity, so what’s the difference?” The difference is that colonized peoples using the culture of their colonizers, especially that of an inherently colonizing belief system, are doing something completely different than colonizers taking cultural aspects of colonized cultures.
“I just wish people would acknowledge my good intent.” That’s nice, but I will never place more importance on your good intentions than on the ill effects of your actions, and to expect colonized peoples to do this is nauseating.
I also kept hearing people using friction fire as an example that they were defending as being rooted in all human cultures, though it felt like a distraction to me as I’ve never heard anyone claim that White people using friction fire is CA.
All that said, I think there is a lot of complexity in this issue that I never see discussed. Questions I have:
What aspects of a culture are “ownable”?
What is the actual effect of any given act of appropriation?
Is subcultural appropriation as detrimental as a broader cultural appropriation?
In the end, I think it’s always going to be more interesting, and more helpful to have a broader discussion about the effects of any given act, than to just label something CA and end the discussion, though I don’t think that colonized peoples owe this to colonizing peoples at all.
People have been copying each other for thousands of years. There are respectful ways of doing that, and there are disrespectful ways.
I think that cultural appropriation is a weird issue. It’s a very recent concept and people love to blanket it onto all kinds of things. I think the concept is still defining itself, and its being defined by people using it, testing the limits of its reach and meaning. I think it really amounts to growing pains. It’s also a product of “mass culture” or even “globalization” where people think we are all one, and that everything is all good, so its totally fine to copy someone else. Of course, this isn’t the case, but most “white” people (a few rewilders even) think they are entitled to take whatever they want, without realizing their entitlement is an issue at all.
I personally don’t think that any aspects of culture are “ownable,” but that real, authentic culture comes from the relationship between people and the land base itself. The environment dictates how people should behave, and people come up with ways of teaching this to one another. Anything else is a product of globalization and excess wealth. Because our culture is so removed from the land, we have “art” for “art’s” sake. So we steal beautiful landbased art that is has meaning inter-woven with land-based living, like headdresses, and wear them as meaningless articles of beauty.
That all said, because I respect Native people, have learned most of what I know about this landbase from them or their elders, and have many Native friends that I care about and therefore do not want to hurt, I’m pretty good at avoiding what I think they would call cultural appropriation these days.
What is really damaging is “mis-appropriation” (which is what most people mean these days when they say CA). This is when the cultural element is transformed into a different meaning than the culture where it came from, thus, creating a false impression of the original culture or creating stereotypes that are incorrect. An example, is of course, the Native Headdress. Or Native Mascots. Or simply, continuing stereotypes like all Native Americans are wise and spiritual.
