One difficulty with “indigenous” practices of consciousness and spirituality is that various indigenous cultures are highly divided on whether or not is is ok for non-indigenous people to have any standing or be allowed to practice or even speak on the topics.
While some Indigenous group may feel it is their responsibility to share their spiritual traditions (such as the Lakota with the Sweat Lodge and Sun Dance, etc) and they accept non-indigenous people into these traditions - on the other side you have very aggressive and sometimes violent opposition to any non-indigenous people practicing their sacred traditions.
There are Native American organizations that use intimidation and threats of physical confrontation, doxing and “cancelling” of those who practice Indigenous traditions, regardless of whether another Indigenous group gifted them.
Having witnessed what I have witnessed the past few years - I avoid practices that are rooted in cultural claims and instead invest time, effort and money into groups that do not make a claim to any cultural traditions.
Rather than “Indigenous”, I prefer to make reference to “Pre-Christian”, which collectively includes not just “indigenous”, but all the way from Celtic, Gaelic and Norse in the one corner of the “Old World” all the way through to South Asian, East Asian and then to the Pacific. Then extracting universalities or commonalities without a cultural linkage. This is sometimes termed as “technology”. If you strip the culture out of practices around the world and get the same exact methods that produce the same exact results, then it is a technology and not a cultural appropriation. A right Triangle is not Greek Culture and using Pythagoras’ Theorem is not cultural appropriation. Similarly, sweating in a steam bath is not cultural appropriation if the culture is stripped from it yet will always produce the same metaphysical results when combined with other methods - which is why dozens of cultures have traditions where people get together in a hot space and seat together. That is one example and there are dozens others.
Thanks, @LaWanna for your very richly crafted reply. I’m going to follow to reference to developmentalist.org and get back to you later on that.
On the factual matter of the Pontic Steppes, the allusion is to the origins of the Proto-Indo-European language family and groups like the Yamnaya culture. At that time in pre-history, genetic Europeans can un-ironically be described as “indigenous”. Also, the generally warlike, male-dominated practices of that time continued more or less non-stop through the millenia, with a secular trend toward more effective weapons and increasing mayhem right through through May, 1945. Putin evidently is nostalgic and wants to revive these traditions in the 21st century…
That’s why I brought up Jason Ananda Josephson Storm, Metamodernism: The Future of Theory. (Reference from John Vervaeke in a recent video here - so that’s the IT hook). Josephson Storm masterfully lays out the program of reconstruction that must follow deconstruction. This is purely academic - if you are primarily looking for life transformation or “waking up”, ignore this. But if your “growing up” process involves serious analytic approaches to humanities or social sciences beyond post-structuralist language games and the like, highly recommended.
Thanks for the reference.
My approach to decolonization is about process more than policy. In brief, colonization is a function power imbalance. The powerful impose on the powerless. Decolonization is the process of empowerment. In that sense, Integral can be understood as a praxis of decolonization.
On the level of policy, I follow Habermas in seeing the need to “decolonize the lifeworld” in the interests of promoting a healthy public sphere. The interview with Zachary Snyder just published in Integral Life last night really nails what I am seeing in this realm. Current “colonization” is mostly through the form of social media, advertising, and technically enabled propagandizing. To “decolonize” one must step away from the screen, drink tea, feel the wind on the face, hear the birds, and breathe. After we have done that for awhile, we will be in a position for a constructive policy discussion.
Indeed. So to tie together a few ideas - the second-tier regression to the “archaic” or the “magic” or the “indigenous” is about the need to get physically grounded in our bodies and in the body of nature itself. That is a cognitive and spiritual requirement for “waking up”. Unfortunately, Western Culture has buried the code for that sort of integral physicality so many layers deep, that effective methods are far more visible elsewhere. Hence Romanticism, exoticism, and a certain type of New Age sensibility that wants to appropriate tribal practices, but not always in the most respectful way.
So how to proceed? One approach is to critically reappropriate the relevant technologies from the West itself. See the work of Fr. Richard Rohr for example. Or just go full on Eastern, as many in the Integral community do. Or - and this takes some careful balancing - learn what you can from indigenous communities, but be sure at the end of the day you are drinking from your own well. Re-engaging with pre-Christian paganism is a good move in this regard. Beyond that, I find it valuable to delve into deep anthropology and the primordial formation of culture itself. Johan Huizinga’s classic Homo Ludens was a valuable read in this regard.
I don’t think anything necessarily has to be appropriated or misappropriated. If we go forward with the idea that, for example, using the number 1 is not cultural appropriation from the Arabs and that using non-number zero is not cultural appropriation from the Indians, it’s then possible to go one by one through different practices and establish what belongs to everyone and what is culture trappings around it.
My big pet peeve in 2022-2023 is that several Indigenous Native American groups currently seem to be claiming that sweating in any steam-filled, domed structure is cultural appropriation, which I just flat out say is absurd. I think there has to be a certain degree of push back against extreme claims such as this and not just cave in to white fragility. Sweating in a steamy room is a global practice, and the most energy efficient structure is a dome. It’s absurd to claim a domed structure to steam-sweat in is culture. While in that steam room I am going to breathe certain ways that facilitate certain states of being. I will vocalize sounds that create vibrations in specific parts of my body. If I start to get dizzy I will press my forehead to the cooler earth. And so forth and so on. None of what I describe is culture. Every human on the planet sweats, breathes and vocalizes sound.
There are many other examples of Indigenous people overreaching claims of cultural appropriation, as in the use of certain plants. It isn’t cultural appropriation to burn sage, for example - sage has been globally available for thousands of years. Nor is it cultural appropriation to leave a pile of salt outside the front doorstep. I have no idea where that one came from, but when I use both sage and salt piles I notice cockroaches are never seen in the house again - a huge and obvious difference in a tropical climate. I don’t need to do any drumming or dancing or chanting - just burnt sage and piles of salt do the trick. I did a little mini science project on several places I lived and the results are amazing. I’ll let people use culture to explain why, and that can vary around the world according to culture. I just know it works like 1+1=2.
Yeah. If I were the caving type, I would not be bothering with Integral or other metaframeworks. You are highlighting the contradictions that ultimately reduce postmodernism (green altitude) to nihilism and cynicism. To go forward as a species we have to go beyond that mindset.
As you rightly point out, cultures have been borrowing from each other since time immemorial. I do sympathize with “cultural appropriation” complaints in the narrow analysis of relatively rich groups figuring out how to commodify other group’s cultural productions. Royalties, maybe? Permissions? Fair enough. But my family enjoys sushi and anime. I don’t feel the need to apologize to Japan. Nor am I offended that Japan loves baseball. Cultural exchange like that is frankly vital to any common human future.
In the real world of Native American tribal organizations (been working with them off and on since the '80s), what they want mostly is sovereignty, self-determination, economic development, environmental mitigations, and repurchase of as much ancestral land as they can get their hands on. They run serious businesses and they hire smart lawyers to litigate. They win a few and they lose a few. There are a lot of non-tribal members who want a piece of the tribal action. So “who’s in” and “who’s out” is a big question.
Against that background, I would no more want to show up at a native ceremonial occasion than I would want to crash an Italian wedding or some kid’s bar mitzvah. If invited - sure! But … boundaries … respect … dignity …
The whole “woke”, “white fragility” complex is its own thing. That’s only indigenous to ivy-covered halls. Here’s a fun insight that came to me very recently in the context of listening to John Vervaeke reverse engineering enlightenment through cognitive science. The whole rhetoric of “dismantling”, “disrupting”, “deconstructing”, etc. is very, very similar to what Vervaeke describes as the shamanic or philosophic or gnostic practices for attaining higher consciousness. The ordinary mind must be dismantled, disrupted, in effect deconstructed to make way for expanded awareness. So the “woke” are actually encouraging us all to “wake up!” That’s why I was chill with “interrogating my whiteness”. The unexamined life is not worth living, after all. But … deconstructor … deconstruct thyself as well!
I definitely agree with
My deep dive into the world of decolonization, anti-racism, gender theory, etc. was occasioned by the mandate for screening for knowledge of these topics among candidates for a technical teaching position. My initial reaction to the job posting was WTF does any of that have to do with technical education? Using a more '80s vintage of multi-culturalism, I had been working (successfully) with very diverse students for a long time. Now I was trying to grapple with post-structuralist CRT and figure out how to align that with STEM. Institutionally, women of color now constitute the majority of administrators in my supervisory chain and the office of equity is extremely prominent in setting the tone for everything. So I faced the existential choice of putting cotton in my ears or trying to find some legitimate synthesis. Went with door #2 …
What rocked my world was the emotional impact of this body of literature. Not the impact the authors were looking for, to be sure. I gave up guilt- and shame-based consciousness in therapy 30 years ago, so not going there. What bugged me was the way this literature plays on my preferred turf, meta-historical analysis. But why did it feel so personal? Eventually, I realized there was some classic transference-counter transference going on. Both in me and in the authors I was reading. It was the sort of co-dependent fandango I thought was over for me decades ago. Although my developmental psychology was quite rusty last year (much more updated now), I knew enough to realize that sort of mutual shadow projection is the stirrings of something bigger wanting out.
I revisited some of the authors again, and this time resolved to read not with the head and only with the heart. The social science claims may or may not have been BS, but I listened to them like a parent listens to his kids - proud of their efforts, not so critical about the results. What clicked for me was the realization that this was meaning making in action. They were thoroughly trashing my preferred world view, true, but they were also creating their own incipient world views in the process. It was like beaks cracking through egg shells. The upshot of all that is I needed to find a new equilibrium that would restore my own intellectual coherence while making room for the developmental processes of others around me who were clearly on parallel, but also different, tracks.
So a couple things about this … going all angry white guy on the Intellectual Dark Web was never an option for me. My legit multiculturalism from way back when prevents that. (Dare I say, my old school greeness). So what happened for me was like what happens when teenagers start getting too close to the mark with their passive aggressive probing. You need to become a clearer, more definitive sort of adult. One with a more robust structure that can hold the emerging energies of those who challenge you for all the right reasons. The challengers don’t really want you to fail as a role model. They want you to convince them 1) that you really do care and 2) that you are worthy of emulation when they come into their own. (Understand, the CRT authors in question are in fact adults. But I’m a generation older and not ready for scrapping just yet. The personal challenge was - what do I still have to offer to this coming generation?)
All this makes me want to keep looking harder at first tier to second tier transition. There is a definable process in there. Can’t quite articulate it yet, but it’s like a statue in the block of marble wanting to be freed from the stone. Also, there is now on my desk an outline treatment of “the horizontal dimension within each altitude”. Breaking news: people of color aren’t following white male developmental pathways, at least not in some literal way. There are different civilizations out there and there are diverse people of all types in what used to be known as western civilization. When you disaggregate developmentalism by geography, class, and culture, you can find a bunch of parallel tracks. That’s the new world view I needed to articulate to restore personal order - a Piagetian accomodation allowing for the smooth assimilation of globally scaled diversity and equity.
One thing that is so difficult for me to convey to White people is that our stories are not all the same. It’s not an emotional annoyance I have really. It doesn’t have an emotion except a kind of dry humor. But I do get a bit annoyed and want to roll my eyes up by the simple inconvenience when talking to white people who have only recently begun examining these issues. By recently I mean within the past 30 years. I mean, any white person who didn’t look at these issues around 1992 or so and projects onto me that I have not already owned these Issues I just want to roll my eyes at.
The interesting thing is I tend to not get the same thing with minorities. There must be some kind of subtle subconscious messaging that newly aware White people are still oblivious to.
Then there is the darker aspect of white people - again - exploiting minority issues to give them yet another “one up” status and privilege and yet another opportunity to speak down to others. The problem with wokeness is when white people wear it as a merit badge and use it to talk from a pedestal, down to other white people but are so tone deaf they don’t see their own absurdity.
I’m not going to give woke bonafides or a woke resume for myself, lol. That also is an aspect of white fragility. My words either speak true or they don’t and the color of my skin or whatever exraneous matters I have become aware of or not isn’t relevant to whether or not the words are valid.
The issue in my pet peeve this year isn’t whether or not white people can “crash” a ceremony. That’s kind of a straw man. Obviously they (we) can’t. Events are generally held on private property or have some other restriction of attendance that is established by the organizers. The issue is whether or not it is ok for - as an example - for Native Americans to show up or threaten to show up on my property and disrupt my ceremony and harass my guests because they feel that us sweating in a steam-filled domed structure is harming them spiritually. Or because they feel non-Native Americans burning sage is harming Native Americans spiritually. Or because they feel that other Non-Native Americans in other venues are harming Native American’s spirits because Non-Native Americans are doing any other ceremony. It even goes down to Native Americans wanting to forbid Non-Native American organizations from using certain colors as symbolism in ceremonies. Not unique colors, but universal colors like red, yellow, white and black. So because Native Americans use black, white, yellow and red as symbiology in their spiritual ceremonies, some Native American Organizations claim that people using those universal colors in spiritual ceremonies are harming their spirituality - and therefore they feel it is legitimate to threaten and forbid any use of what they perceive as “their” symbology.
I just think it’s all absurd but unfortunately the majority of the woke population seems to want to cave to the absurdity, and yes attempt to project something onto me.
This hasn’t yet reached the Indian community yet (South Asian Indian). Fortunately Indians are not threatening to protest outside Kundalini Awakening Workshops or Tantra Sex Festivals (lol), or dox organizers and attempt to get them fired from employment and so forth. Yes, Yoga has been completely misappropriated and Tantra ridiculously so. But the answer is not to forbid mention of Chakras by non-Indians, nor to forbid use of Red-Orange-Yellow-Green-Blue-Indigo in ceremonies attended by Non-Indians and threaten physically or economically any who organize such events.
This is the spiral that the awakened community is headed toward. We are going to have to decide this now or later. How ridiculous do we let it get before we just say “no”.
I would say that this will impede “The Highest Stages of Conscious Development”
Understood. Racialized categories in general conceal as much as they reveal. That’s why I’m not in love with constructions like “BIPOC”, “Asian”, “Latinx”, or even “white”. All of those are hugely diverse within themselves, not to mention everyone mixed race (which is most us on some level).
Apologies. Just a metaphor for boorishness. I have a few alternative metaphors in mind, but in the interests of being less boorish myself, those metaphors can remain unspoken.
Understood again. I’m used to thing sort of thing from the French, for example. (Be careful what you call your cheese!). Or Donald Trump ('nuff said). It’s a clear case of overly broad, litigious overreach. Actually, it sounds like “cultural appropriation” to me. Ridiculous, non-sensical, harassing, extortional lawsuits are MY native culture. How dare they!
Don’t get too comfortable with that! Seattle just passed anti-discrimination legislation to protect the Dalit. Can reparations for authentic Tantric practitioners be that far behind?
It’s a terribly tangled ball of yarn. Let me try to untangle it, lol.
I think as a society and as people aspiring to be “Integral”, we have to make clear distinctions.
Protecting people from discrimination based on their genetics is what America is supposed to do. So I see protecting Dalit from discrimination as actually covered under the Constitution. We shouldn’t actually need more elaboration, but if another law is passed saying a specific group is protected that already should be protected - I see that as one thing. It is only making the 14th amendment more clear.
On the subject of appropriation, I think we have to reconcile Green altitude desire for equity with Orange laws, and it’s completely possible to do this I think. Under trademark laws, it’s completely legal to claim ownership over names and terminology, but not universal things like colors. I can copyright a logo colored a specific way, but not the color itself. It’s also not possible to copyright a process, like a breathing method. So Wim Hoff is completely within his legal rights to take Tummo breathing methods and call it the “Wim Hoff Method” - and I can in turn take his method and call it the “Ultimate XXX Breath Method” - or whatever. It is not possible to copyright ideas, procedures, methods, systems, processes, concepts, principles, or discoveries. It is possible, however to copyright terminology used in these. Going back to cheese, you can make whatever kind of cheese you want - but there is strict control over what you call it. You can call your creation swiss cheese because that is a category, for example - but not Emmenthal because that is a brand.
So I would make the case that the name “Tantra” could be controlled and people could be forbidden from using that term without permission. And also, the specific term “Sweat Lodge” could also be controlled, but the case seems a bit weaker because both those are very common words. It would be a stronger case to strictly control a Native American term for Sweat Lodge (Let’s say in the Lakota language, for example). But the actual process of sweating in a steamy room cannot and should not be forbidden to people.
The subject of Tantra also brings up another very dark topic, and that is a back door legalization of prostitution - which those who are privileged are allowed to pursue without being arrested. This comes in two different flavors. The first is rich old men can pay an incredibly high fee to attend a Tantra seminar or festival and during these events be assured a stead stream of sex, while pretty young women are offered “scholarships” and “internships” in exchange for learning the mystical art of f-ing and how to make a spiritual happy ending. Thus, they learn a trade and as a bonus, which is the second part of this - their trade of Tantric Massage is seen as a spiritual practice with a happy ending implied in the term, while their Asian counterparts will constantly have their massage parlors raided.
So we have to look at three things simultaneously here. The first - what is the legal aspect? The legal aspect is that no, nobody can legally nor should they be able to legally have exclusive control over a process. Whether it’s breathing or sweating or “sacred sex”. On the other hand, terminology can and should be controlled. In extreme (but common) cases fewer people would go into an exploitive environments just because the venue has taken a name that means something completely different from what it actually is. Or, yes - even a minimally deceptive act like going to an exercise studio to exercise because you believe it is an ancient practice from the East when in fact it’s probably just exercise 90% of the time. Third, in the case of Tantra - are actual laws being broken and / or people being exploited in ways that are clearly illegal but they get away with it because they are economically and racially privileged?
The way I see things - and I know and recognize that people do feel very strongly in opposition to my view, but this is where I do stand on the issue, and what I will say when I speak on the issue:
Nobody has a right to exclusivity on any spiritual practice either from a legal standpoint nor from a Metaphysical standpoint. As an example, I completely support a man like Wim Hoff taking practices, making a trade name and selling those practices. And also, anyone can take those practices and pass them on without paying Wim as long as they do not say “Wim Hoff” when they do pass it on. I think the same thing should be the case with Yoga and Tantra - go ahead and do contortions but the term Yoga should mean what it is supposed to mean, or go ahead and have “sacred sex” but don’t use the word Tantra because that word meant something completely different for 20,000 years. Tantra can and should be a controlled term, especially in light of the exploitation and actual illegal activities that are rampant in the Western corruption of the term. Then back to Native Americans - they do not “own” sweating, dancing, Jungian Archetypes, universal symbolism or all primary colors along the visible spectrum of colors.
I think all these issues will need to be resolved and reconciled before we begin to presume that we are approaching “The Highest Stages of Conscious Development”.
Thanks much! I learned a lot. Very lot.
Here is a musical example that runs parallel to your analysis. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ytoUuO-qvg&t=1s
Niall Ferguson lists “property” as one of the 6 “killer apps” that allowed the West to colonize the world. If colonized peoples “appropriate” Western property law for their own empowerment, that is certainly fair enough. In fact, I would argue it is both appropriate and essential that everyone everywhere has access to levers of power like lawyers, contracts, deeds, copyrights, trademarks, etc. I would argue that these are no longer strictly “western” ideas but have become globally distributed. The Integral civilization of the future will require a lot of sharing like that.
As for the details of your analysis, I bow to your considerable expertise. The Adam Neely link above can serve as metaphorical confirmation that I feel what you are saying.
Yes - what’s interesting in that case to me is that what I see as the absurd position initially won but then was later reversed on appeal (if one of the comments is correct). The path forward isn’t linear but meandering with lots of back and forths. Fortunately Katy Perry could afford the lawyers to defend the reasonable position.
I also read a bit of Niall Ferguson’s biography on Wikipedia. I wasn’t familiar with him .
Niall Ferguson is a well-published historian with a generally conservative bent. I am inviting those with liberal and radical leanings to get more integral by incorporating a different point of view (or at least considering it).
I’m citing Ferguson’s book Civilization: the West and the Rest. This is an exploration of WHY the West came to dominate. Ferguson acknowledges that there was plenty of dark side to the colonial era, although for many tastes, perhaps Ferguson does not paint that picture quite darkly enough. My citation of Ferguson is in the interests of larger questions such as - is the West over already? Is the world really westernizing? Will the global South and East be absorbed into the West? And perhaps most pertinently, at a species level, which civilizational techniques are “best of breed” and most suitable for our future sustainability, regardless of provenance?
Ken Wilber absolutely has been key to making Eastern spirituality more available to serious people in the West, and he is to be thanked and honored for that. The discussion we are conducting here is framing appropriate methods and boundaries for incorporating indigenous experience into a larger Integral vision. The contribution of shamanism, for example, needs to be handled differently than the contribution of Buddhism, for a contrasting example. That’s why we are worrying questions like “who owns the idea of a sweat lodge”. It’s a serious question that needs a serious answer. In my view, a certain type of indigenous sensibility is vital to us all, but how we journey to find that sensibility matters quite a bit.
I like reading different perspectives on history. There is what happened, and there are many different lenses to view each event through.
But my financial background drummed into me “past performance does not guarantee future returns”.
I don’t think we can evaluate the future in terms of East and West - those are terms left over from a prior epoch when the world was flat. The next step in evolution or invention is always unimaginable to the previous step. The “best of breed” of the future will be a quality we cannot currently conceive.
On the topic of Indigenous, I might bring up the Hawaiians - who are going in the opposite direction, and I feel in a good way. They are opening up schools for all children to teach anyone who wants their children to receive their culture, and encouraging the parents of those children to also learn with their children. More and more I see blond haired blue eyed parents teaching their children Hawaiian language and culture. This was a conscious decision by the Hawaiian community after discussions, disagreements and power struggles over many decades, and yes some still oppose it. But the momentum is headed in that direction. My personal opinion is that there is actually something Metaphysically different about each Island in the Island chain, but that’s woo-woo talk, lol.
Yeah. I’m pretty skeptical about long range projections about the trajectory of history. But, we have serious matters to attend to right now (climate, war, pandemic, poverty), so “best of breed” to get things done in the short- to intermediate-term - what other choice is there? My interest in the indigenous is specifically on the matter of climate. We need an approach that involves circular economic flows and co-participation with nature. My perspectival view is “we are all indigenous” to this planet. To make that stick however, now comes the hard work of realizing what that means procedurally and propositionally.
Yes, the 1960-70’s sci fi Oddesey of colonizing the Solar System is now obviusly not going to happen in 2001. I completely agree with the need to find a new economic system.
Wow, you guys have really been going to town with this conversation; feel I’ve missed the party 
.
I have a few things to add. First, a link to a recent article on the word “woke,” FWIW. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/woke-is-just-another-word-for-liberal/ar-AA18U8uo?ocid=hpmsn&cvid=1fa8fddb235148949c80e798a3b52b52&ei=22.
Secondly, I wanted to speak to the situation of some American Indians and groups excluding non-indigenous people from particular native ceremonies or practices, and the anti-social types of behavior that may accompany this. While this is not my way, nor the way of many native spiritual leaders, it does indeed occur, and if I were to identify any “positive intent” behind this, it would be something along the lines of these particular people trying to communicate (in very inappropriate and separatist and even, according to Ray’s statements, intimidating or violent ways): “we’re not over it yet”–“it” being the historical happenings for which there is still a lot of pain and anger, that pain and anger and indeed, grudge, passed from generation to generation through stories. The hard-core stance could be something along the lines of these people saying: “fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.”
My words are in no way meant to condone the anti-social behavior; I do not. While I have not witnessed the types of behavior Ray has described, I have no reason to doubt him, and, I have myself personally wrangled with a few Indians about the separatism and exclusion of non-indigenous people from certain ceremonies. But I do think it’s important to try to see what’s at the bottom of the behavior, and while we could just dismiss things as “wokeness” or regressive (and transgressive) consciousness, a little more depth is usually called for if we want to better understand motivations and people.
I can also look at the behavior in different (stage) lights. Is there not something akin to “animal territoriality” involved? Is there not a false perspective on time, i.e. the past = future? Is the doxxing or cancelling and other such behaviors simply war paint and war dances in new forms? Are these behaviors an Indian version of “the vengeance of the Lord is mine”? Is the separatism not based on the idea that because non-indigenous people look different on the outside, they must be different on the inside? How does the American idea of ‘ownership’ and ‘personal property’ enter in? And is the separatism/exclusion an attempt at personal/tribal/cultural empowerment (through decolonization)? All of the stages live inside us.
As sociologist James Davison Hunter (who popularized the term “culture wars”) has said, culture is about what is sacred to us and what is pure and what is polluted, and each person, collective, even each mini-culture, has its ideas of what is transgressive of boundaries and a violation of the sacred. So we have (Christian) bakeries that refuse to make a cake for a gay wedding, based on their idea of what is pure in their sacred culture, and what is polluted. The Supreme Court has upheld their right to do so. And we have some Indians who exclude non-Indians from their sacred culture, based on their idea of what is pure and what is polluting, and what is, to their minds, perhaps akin to the processes of colonization: “We’re not over it yet.” “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.” Everything gets politicized these days.
According to Daniel Mengara, using works written by Chinua Achebe on the early colonization in Africa, the colonization process has 5 steps or stages: exploration, expropriation (taking away land, property, culture, etc.), appropriation (without consent, putting to use what has been taken for one’s own purposes), exploitation, and justification. What is called “cultural appropriation” is viewed as ominous by some people/groups because appropriation is in the context of the larger process of colonization, and as I said, some people truly are not over it yet.
Of course there is! As there should be. For the same reason I have exhibited classic “Get off my lawn!” reflexes from time to time.
Looking very meta-theoretically at all the granular content you and @raybennett have shared, my understanding of the “indigenous” (related to Gebser’s “magical”) is a consciousness that is hyper-localized and hyper-participatory with nature in a very specific biome. The lifeworld of the indigenous is rooted in a way most of us can only imagine. Against the backdrop of the global climate crisis, then, indigenous consciousness becomes a precious resource that is “best of breed” for any sort of deep ecological awareness. Now … we all know what Western culture does with “resources”. So I’m not really asking anyone to “get over it.” Really, rather the opposite. We all need rooted, traditional peoples of various types to create structure in the maelstrom of high-tech globalization. I don’t want to appropriate anyone’s anything. But I do want to network with all of them. If indigenous peoples are willing to open ports on their cultural firewalls and provide APIs for the rest of us to interact with content of their choosing, I consider that a service to greater humanity. And in the interestsof circular economics, there should be flows of valuable contributions back to the rooted indigenous to make these sorts of relationships sustainable.
@LaWanna
I want to clarify my point a bit. It’s not exclusion that I am opposed to. I think it’s perfectly acceptable for a group to draw a line somewhere to be exclusive. Well, most of the time. I’m not in favor of keeping people out of neighborhoods or restaurants based on race - but 90% of the time I’m ok with exclusivity of most varieties.
What I am specifically opposing is when people say they own a practice or part of a practice and no one else may do it, even if they go somewhere else - or no one else may use symbolism that they believe they own. Even when there is archaeological evidence to suggest that Europeans did these very same practices before Christianity.
Here are some links to what I am talking about.
https://www.spiritprotection.org/take-action
https://ictnews.org/archive/looking-horse-proclamation-on-the-protection-of-ceremonies
All this would be well and good if not for one thing: They are encouraging people to actually physically show up and try to physcically confront anyone doing these things anywhere.
I don’t have a link for actual violence. It’s just in my awareness of reading about it 20 or so years ago.
I’d also have to do a bit of digging to find anything about the doxing and trying to get people fired fromt their jobs. I think that was a verbal pass-down.