page_title: Cultural appropriation
section_title: Indigenous cultures
hierarchical_section_title: Cultural appropriation / Examples / Indigenous cultures
caption_attribution_description: English: On verso of photograph: Mrs. Thomas Burke (left) and her mother (?), Mrs. John J. McGilvra (?) (right)PH Coll 727.822 Subjects (LCSH): Burke, Caroline; McGilvra, John J., Mrs.; Women--Washington (State)--Seattle; Ethnic costume--Washington (State)--Seattle Caroline Burke was the wife of Thomas Burke after whom the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture is named. John J. McGilvra, whose wife Elizabeth is at right, was (like Thomas Burke) a prominent Seattle lawyer and businessman important in bringing railroads to Seattle.
context_page_description: Cultural appropriation, at times also phrased cultural misappropriation, is the adoption of an element or elements of one culture or identity by members of another culture or identity. This can be controversial when members of a dominant culture appropriate from disadvantaged minority cultures.
  According to critics of the practice, cultural appropriation differs from acculturation, assimilation, or equal cultural exchange in that this appropriation is a form of colonialism. When cultural elements are copied from a minority culture by members of a dominant culture, these elements are used outside of their original cultural context—sometimes even against the expressly stated wishes of members of the originating culture.
  Cultural appropriation is considered harmful by various groups and individuals, including Indigenous people working for cultural preservation, those who advocate for collective intellectual property rights of the originating, minority cultures, and those who have lived or are living under colonial rule.
context_section_description: Among critics, the misuse and misrepresentation of indigenous culture is seen as an exploitative form of colonialism, and one step in the destruction of indigenous cultures.
  The results of this use of indigenous knowledge have led some tribes, and the United Nations General Assembly, to issue several declarations on the subject. The Declaration of War Against Exploiters of Lakota Spirituality includes the passage:
  We assert a posture of zero-tolerance for any "white man's shaman" who rises from within our own communities to "authorize" the expropriation of our ceremonial ways by non-Indians; all such "plastic medicine men" are enemies of the Lakota, Dakota and Nakota people.
  Article 31 1 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples states:
  Indigenous peoples have the right to maintain, control, protect and develop their cultural heritage, traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions, as well as the manifestations of their sciences, technologies and cultures, including human and genetic resources, seeds, medicines, knowledge of the properties of fauna and flora, oral traditions, literatures, designs, sports and traditional games and visual and performing arts. They also have the right to maintain, control, protect and develop their intellectual property over such cultural heritage, traditional knowledge, and traditional cultural expressions.
  In 2015, a group of Native American academics and writers issued a statement against the Rainbow Family members whose acts of "cultural exploitation... dehumanize us as an indigenous Nation because they imply our culture and humanity, like our land, is anyone's for the taking."
  In writing about Indigenous intellectual property for the Native American Rights Fund (NARF), board member Professor Rebecca Tsosie stresses the importance of these property rights being held collectively, not by individuals:
  The long-term goal is to actually have a legal system, and certainly a treaty could do that, that acknowledges two things. Number one, it acknowledges that indigenous peoples are peoples with a right to self-determination that includes governance rights over all property belonging to the indigenous people. And, number two, it acknowledges that indigenous cultural expressions are a form of intellectual property and that traditional knowledge is a form of intellectual property, but they are collective resources – so not any one individual can give away the rights to those resources. The tribal nations actually own them collectively.
caption: White people dressing in Native American outfits (1909)
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