Native Appropriations, Fashion, and Evo Morales's 10 Commandments

Native people and friends filled the pews and stood along the walls of Reed College chapel on Wednesday, listening in rapt attention to Louie Gong (Nooksack), Adrienne Keene (Cherokee Nation) and Jessica Metcalfe (Turtle Mountain Chippewa) discuss U.S. companies who "are guilty of misusing Native American sacred iconography," and pointing out who is doing good work. I'll simplify the argument as good -vs- bad.

According to the panel, these shoes are good.


And this outfit is bad.

Why? They seem so similar. Both are items of clothing manufactured in factories (probably in China). What's the difference?

The shoes are good because they were painted after-market by Louie Gong, a Native Artist. But the totem pole outfit is bad primarily because it was designed by a non-Native artist.

Appropriation of Native imagery is an insult to Native people. I agree. Gong argued that we should only buy Native iconography directly from Native artists. That sounds like a good idea.
But it's not the end of the discussion. What about when Native American artists are appropriating from Native people in other parts of our Mother Earth, Pachamama?

Here's a "good" story the panel presented, which I find has "bad" hidden within it.

Back in September Paul Frank threw a racist powwow fashion event and sold tee shirts about it. Both Jessica Metcalfe and Adrienne Keene wrote blog articles protesting this appropriation of Native sacred iconography, asked for apologies and Jessica suggested that Paul Frank collaborate with Native designers in the future. To their great surprise the president of Paul Frank talked with them on the phone, apologized and agreed to hire a Native designer to its team.

Of course Metcalfe and Keene celebrated this great victory of having Native voices heard by someone in the oppressors' power structure. Perhaps it will even be co-panelist Louie Gong who will soon be designing for Paul Frank. While this does indeed seem like a cause for celebration, can it actually be a cause for concern?

What if we ask who manufactures Paul Frank products?

It turns out that at least some of Paul Frank products are made in China — most likely by oppressed Native people.

A quick look at Naomi Klein's book No Logo quickly sickens the heart of anyone who cares about our human family. The documentary "Manufactured Landscapes" shows us how we as consumers are unwillingly oppressing our brothers and sisters. Capitalist globalization (including Paul Frank) is appropriating Native people's labor in China and elsewhere to manufacture commodities for consumers to buy, and generate profits for the 1%.

Native Chinese peoples, especially young single women, are driven by desperation to go to barricaded fortresses of Free Trade Zones and offer long hours of exhausting labor in exchange for un-nourishing food, overcrowded shelter, and a mere pittance of money. Suicide is rampant in the Free Trade Zones. But China is not alone. Capitalist globalization has a domino effect on oppression. China then oppresses Taiwanese with Free Trade Zones there that demand structural adjustments, much like the International Monetary Fund demands from colonized Native peoples in Third World countries around the world. Structural adjustments that allow imports of products from more powerful countries, which will cripple then eliminate local production. This is an economic colonization that creates dependency.

Doesn't this sound familiar? How different is it from the way colonizers have treated Native people for centuries? If we didn't give in to bribes forming dependency, then we were kidnapped, enslaved, slaughtered, or relocated.

Relocated like the desperate Native people in China, Taiwan , Nicaragua and elsewhere, whose labor and bodies have been relocated into Free Trade Zones to grease the wheels of capitalism.
Is it truly something to celebrate that Paul Frank will collaborate with a Native designer? No. I argue that it is a cause to mourn — for Paul Frank now has the blessing of Adrienne Keene , which allows the company to continue oppressing Native people in Third World countries who have been driven by desperation to work in factories in Free Trade Zones.

By the way, Native designer Louie Gong suggested boycotting Pendleton because they are not Native owned and have been appropriating Native designs for more than a century. The audience gasped. Meanwhile, Gong specializes in painting Native designs on shoes, especially canvas tennis shoes. Where are those shoes manufactured? You guessed it. Most likely they are made in China.

What ethical difference is there, if any, between a non-Native appropriating Native iconography, and a Native appropriating the labor and lives of Third World Natives in Free Trade Zones to produce his or her designs? Are we unintentionally adopting the same mindset as the oppressor?

I suggest that instead of competing to get to the top of the heap on the sinking ship of globalized capitalism, we could better honor our Native Traditions by looking to the sustainable wisdom of our ancestors, like our brothers and sisters are doing in Bolivia.

President Evo Morales is the first Indigenous president in the Americas. Recently he proclaimed a new era, Pachakuti, in his December 21, 2012 speech, Manifesto of the Island of the Sun . In this speech he spells out 10 Commandments for dismantling capitalism and for living well based on ancestral wisdom.

I greatly admire Louie, Adrienne and Jessica's struggles to protect, revitalize and disseminate Native culture and identity. And I hope we will each read and reflect on President Evo Morales's speech, reconsidering what is truly worthy of celebration.

Article first published as Appropriation of Native American Iconography in the 21st Century on Blogcritics.

Is Obama's Call for Peace an Impossible Dream? (How global domestic abuse affects you, and what you can do about it)

How can we explain the stunned silence of the crowds when President Obama mentioned the word "peace" in his acceptance speech? Like an abused wife, have we become so accustomed to the control tactics of global domestic abusers that we now see abuse as normal and peace as an impossible dream?

Domestic abuse gone global. It's not just an intimate couple trapped in a cycle of abuse based on power and control, it's all of us in the world. Global domestic abuse. Domestic abuse tactics include:

• Isolation

o Controlling what we do, who we see, who we talk to, what we read, where we go (The Patriot Act and Homeland Security, and their counterparts around the world)
o Limiting our outside involvement (Creating a climate of fear of traveling to unapproved countries such as Cuba, and restrictions of movement for travel and immigration across the US border)

• Male Privilege

o Treating us like a servant (Wage slaves)
o Making all the big decisions (WTO, World Bank, IMF, etc)
o Acting like the King of the Castle (All those experts we are expected to believe)
o Being the one to define men's and women's roles (Women still do not legally have equal rights, and what rights women do have are being challenged every day)

• Economic Abuse

o Preventing us from getting or keeping a job (We've all seen this)
o Making us ask for money (Mortgage applications, car loan applications, Health Insurance applications, Social Aid applications, Student loan applications, Grant applications, etc, etc, etc)
o Not letting us know about or have access to the (global) family income (Rich getting richer and poor getting poorer)

• Emotional Abuse (Turn on the TV and you'll find all of these; hence the epidemic of mood-altering medications and suicides)

o Putting us down (If we're not an expert, our ideas don't count)
o Calling us names (Advertisements that imply "You're ugly, fat, unlovable!" etc, if we don't look like a model)
o Making us think we're crazy (Prozac, Paxil, Ritalin, etc.)
o Making us feel bad about ourselves ("You're a social reject if you don't have the latest iPhone!" or whatever)
o Playing mind games (Too many to list)
o Humiliating us (Airport security)
o Making us feel guilty (Mortgage foreclosures, IMF loans with harsh conditions)

• Coercion and Threats

o Making us do illegal things (Invading countries is not legal)
o Making us drop charges (US ignores the World Court)
o Making and/or carrying out threats to do something to hurt us (People jailed under the Patriot Act for just reading, talking, or not talking like Leah-Lynne Plante)
o Threatening to commit suicide (Suggesting that the world will end unless the economy keeps making the rich richer and the poor poorer)

• Intimidation

o Making us afraid by using looks, actions, gestures (Turn on the TV and almost everywhere we see something trying to make us feel fear, such as a news show about terrorists)
o Smashing things (Atomic bombs blowing up cities, etc)
o Destroying our property (Our home, the Earth, is being destroyed by transnational corporations)
o Abusing pets (Species going extinct due to industrial pollution)
o Displaying weapons (Selling and using weapons seems to be the number one industry: the military-industrial complex)

There's a lot more, but you get the idea. As you can see, the abusers are the super rich people who create transnational corporations that make the rich richer and the poor poorer, while buying up radio and TV stations and major newspapers to spread propaganda justifying the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer, and paying politicians to do their bidding. The victims of this global domestic abuse are all the rest of us: almost 7 billion people living on this globe.

When the abuser is an individual trying to control another individual, any domestic abuse hotline you may call will probably advise you to leave the situation and sever all ties, physical, financial, verbal, emotional, etc., with the abuser.

But when you're a victim of global domestic abuse, you can't leave the globe and go to another planet, as in Eric Frank Russell's 1951 science fiction classic tale of a Gandhian utopian planet, ...And Then There Were None. Like the Democrats, Republicans and other parties in Washington, and everyone on the planet, we all have to find a way to come together, dialog, and work things out. How can we, as President Obama said, "Do the painstaking work of building consensus and making the difficult compromises needed to move . . . forward?"

A huge first step would be for abusers to take a lesson from one of their own: the late transnational CEO, Ray C. Anderson. In his autobiography, Confessions of a Radical Industrialist: Profits, People, Purpose--Doing Business by Respecting the Earth, he shows how he woke up from being an abuser and developed empathy and compassion.

In the United Kingdom there is a program for abusers to learn how to accept responsibility for their actions and reform their ways. Perhaps they can take their program to corporate headquarters around the world, Wall Street brokerage firms, and government offices of obstructionist politicians.

In the meanwhile, we can each develop our own state of life. I feel inspired by these words of Daisuku Ikeda, president of the lay Buddhist organization Soka Gakkai International, which I jotted down during his 1990 live-simulcast speech from Los Angeles, California:
"When you feel entrapped by the chains of society, stand up with courage (compassion and wisdom) and your life will be as huge as the universe."



Article first published as Is Obama's Call for Peace an Impossible Dream? on Blogcritics.