Indigenous Feminism and Cultural Appropriation

by Guest Contributor Jessica Yee

Last year, a friend of mine told me that actress Juliette Lewis started up a band and that their sound was seriously a rockin’.

I was like “Really? Cool!” since I’d always appreciated the versatility Lewis demonstrated in her acting craft with movies like “The Other Sister,” “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?” or even “Old School.”

Off to Google I went searching for her website, when I came up with this image:

Oh no, not again.

Another appropriator.

A quick glance at their website and various other fan photo materials reveals even worse.

So then I typed in the words “racism” and “Juliette Lewis and the Licks” since I know sumbody’s prolly talkin’, and I came up with this open letter crafted online to send to her:

(Sent to the myspace account of Juliette and the Licks, in response to Ms. Lewis’ feathered-headdress-as-rock-and-roll-image.)

Hi Juliette (or if not Juliette, Hi Whomever Is Reading This Message),

Someone recently called to my attention how you use a feathered headdress as a part of your “Rock and roll warrior” image. I checked out your website and myspace – it seems like you’ve been using it pretty extensively, and how other people are imitating it at your concerts.

Heads up – the way that you are using of this symbol, which is a clear (and from the gist of what I read of your comments, intentional) reference to “native americans,” is careless and really pretty disrespectful.

I’m not writing this message to jump on your ass, or pretend like I’m some superior person. I have nothing to gain from that. And this has nothing to do with whether or not I like your work (from what I’ve heard, it sounds reasonably cool – kudos for following a different path).

I’m putting this out there because I can’t complain about anything anyone does if I’m not willing to back it up with some action that seeks to change things. And you should have a chance to learn about what people are saying, and change the behavior and (more importantly) the system that supports it, if you are so inclined.

You’re in a position to be heard by a lot of people, and the image you’re putting out there takes advantage of the painful history of native americans in this country without paying any respect to it. This is problematic in the extreme. (And I say ‘native americans’ specifically because your feathers refer to an idea and not any real tribe or nation, from what I can tell.)

You go, you person out there!

But it’s not like this all isn’t a usual occurrence. We in the Native community have to witness this with every kid who dresses up like Pocahontas on Halloween, or every time we turn on the TV to watch the Redskins, Braves, or Indians play. In fact it’s been going on for so damn long that we’re kinda the only race who it’s still happening to on this extreme, public level, to the point where the fight has basically died down. Or has it?

What I find most interesting though about all this imagery, and in particular Lewis’s choice of dress with her band, is actually coming from my raging feminist point of view. In an attempt to appear strong, raw, and unapologetic, people, and in this case, a woman, feels like she has to appropriate Native culture to a pretty extreme extent in order to do a good job of it.

And, as an Indigenous feminist myself, I’m at a crossroads on how I’m feeling about that, because I’m someone who recognizes that the strong, raw, and unapologetic womaness (or feminism for that matter) that permeates mainstream activist movements, in reality was rooted in Indigenous, matriarchal cultures around the world. (I’m tired of having to justify the matrilineal/matriarchal wording battle folks; women had respected positions of power and significance in leadership roles in lots of our societies, so let’s just stick with the matriarchy one, mkay?)

Although you might never even see any of that coming from many of the public awareness campaigns that exist in our communities to, for instance, stay away from drugs and prevent domestic violence. What I see most often are these docile, gentle images of woman and baby saying “Don’t do this, we’re precious!” which while I truly believe are totally valid and worth having, I’d be lying if I said that it wouldn’t be nice to see some of that brute strength and sheer fighter style representation coming from our own community, with our own women seen doing it.

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