Old Natives lecture young Burners

An article describes how the tension over the Visionary Village's "Go Native" party escalated into a cultural conflagration:

Burners Torched Over Native Party

Local Native Americans go to war against insensitive Burners and win.By Wednesday, March 25, Native Americans across the country were seething on the comment boards, especially IndyBay.org—a popular web destination for alternative news and culture. American Indian Movement West member Mark Anquoe, a 39-year-old San Francisco resident, said he'd never seen such a swift reaction. The Burners touched a third rail when they invoked the Native American Church, which has had to fight for legal status from the United States for years. The costume discount, lumping distinct tribes in with each other and the promise of debauchery next to sacred Ohlone land, only added gasoline to the inferno. Commenters demanded that the event be canceled, started a petition amongst rights groups, and some began threatening Visionary Village with arson and rape.

Anquoe said the sum of the Burners' actions turned them into a focal point for latent Indian rage over things as broad as the Cleveland Indians mascot and the Boy Scouts. "This is so many different levels all at once that the whole community from everywhere went up in flames all at once," he said.The conflict reaches a climax with a meeting of the minds:On Friday, March 27, IndyBay reporter and UC Berkeley attendee Hillary Lehr proposed a meeting of both sides in Mosswood Park to work out their differences. Visionary Village leaders "Caapi" and Byron Page attended the meet with Anquoe and others. The Native Americans persuaded the Burners to come to the Intertribal Friendship House on International Boulevard in Oakland that night. There, they got blasted by Natives young and old for their party idea.

"They were brave for even coming," said Anquoe. "They saw the real tears of the people there and saw the heat of people's anger. The Village Elders demanded a cancellation. There was a ten-year-old girl sobbing in front of them."

Caapi and Page offered to cancel the event to wild applause, but the Native Americans planned on showing up Saturday night anyway. The event had been promoted for a month and they wanted the chance to talk to whoever showed up dressed in "native costume." More than twenty partygoers would arrive Saturday night, some in pattern-printed Hopi T-shirts or rustic, Andean fabrics and cuts, but all of them fled after hearing what was transpiring inside the Bordello.

Within the dark, labyrinthine walls of the 140-year-old former brothel, old Native Americans were lecturing young Burners on what it meant to be Indian. Lit by dim lamps under red glass lampshades, tribal elder Wounded Knee DeOcampo—wearing a black T-shirt that read "original landlord"—stood over performance artist "Cicada" in her sparkly, sheer scarf and layered hipster garb, lecturing her about his grandmother's forcible kidnapping and rape at white hands.

"There's a lot of pain," he said. "I don't want you to agree with me, I want you to understand!"The organizers apologize, but some still don't get it:[F]or every apology, the group often inserted a foot into its mouth. Some Burners said they'd been trained by shamans to build altars, others sang racist childhood songs, or noted the lack of Native Americans at Burning Man (which occurs on an Indian reservation). Others asked for Indian help with their Burning Man projects, prompting a Hopi woman to go off.

"I'm trying to articulate my feelings as best I can without completely losing it," she said. "What we do is not an artistic expression. And you don't have artistic license to take little pieces here and there and do what you want with it. That's something you people don't understand, probably never will understand.Comment:  I wonder if the Burners were singing Ten Little Indians. If so, that must've been an intentional taunt, not an innocent mistake.

Supposedly the organizers' biggest mistake was invoking the Native American Church, which the article called a "third rail." But no one has said why they made up a false claim about the party's benefiting the NAC. Why not make up a false claim about a more innocuous cause--e.g.,the American Indian College Fund? Better yet, why not use the party to benefit a real Native cause?

Needless to day, the Natives who threatened arson and rape were wrong to do so. And that seems like a gross overreaction to the organizers' offenses. This is far from the worst case of cultural appropriation we've seen.

I also don't agree that non-Natives should never produce art involving Natives. If we prohibited that, we wouldn't have Edward Curtis's photographs, Kevin Costner's Dances with Wolves, or Tony Hillerman's mysteries. To me it's all about how well it's done, not whether it's done.

For more on that subject, see Is Cultural Appropriation Okay? and Mascots = Appropriation.

Below:  "Two Visionary Villagers (foreground) welcome Morning Star Gali to the talk." (Photograph by David Downs)