That's right, we said TAXIDERMY.
Here's how they presented this "product" to their hipster audience:
"We are EXTREMELY excited to add to our shop a brand new product. Meet, The Viho, our Native American Indian Chief Wall Bust.
Visit him here:
https://www.etsy.com/listing/107069188/faux-taxidermy-the-viho-indian-chief
We adore him and think that you all will, too! Happy (almost) Friday!"
AND this from their website: "White Faux Taxidermy brings you the best quality and lowest priced white resin animal heads. We specialize in white deer heads, moose, and more..."
http://www.whitefauxtaxidermy.com/
Aside from being incredibly culturally insensitive--this is in violation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Article 31:
"1. 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."
Contact them, and demand that they remove this "product" and issue an apology:
http://www.whitefauxtaxidermy.com/contact
Email:
info@whitefauxtaxidermy.com
Mailing Address:
White Faux Taxidermy
105 S. State Street Suite 409
Orem, UT 84058
We're grateful to member Kerry Edwards, for bringing this to our attention.
The Indian chief is, as usual, stereotypical. The implications of grouping an Indian with a bunch of animals as trophies are obvious. You'd have to be pretty dense not to see the problem immediately.
But I doubt anyone could bring a case under the UN Declaration. This is a generic chief like a million other such stereotypes in our culture. It doesn't belong to any one particular tribe. It probably doesn't qualify as intellectual property.
This bust reminds me of wooden Indians and Indian mascots. I've compared these and other stereotypical chiefs to trophies before. They're all about remembering the past--in particular, America's God-blessed conquest of the Indians.
Now White Faux Taxidermy has made it explicit. Collect and own your own Indian chief. "Honor" the past by ignoring the present. The Indians put up a worthy fight, thus proving
For more on that subject, see Smashing People: The "Honor" of Being an Athlete.
But I doubt anyone could bring a case under the UN Declaration. This is a generic chief like a million other such stereotypes in our culture. It doesn't belong to any one particular tribe. It probably doesn't qualify as intellectual property."
ReplyDeleteYeah, it's a nice idea, but I think we are better off not taking it literally, with its demands of turning generic ideas into controlled "intellectual property".
Worldwide and throughout history, society and culture have evolved exactly due to openness of what this declaration wants to control.
If this declaration had been strictly enforced over the years, no one would be using fire anywhere in the world due to the requirements of paying some African tribe exhorbitant royalties, and human language would be limited to smiles and frowns due the copyright nightmare of having to worry about using words that came from this or that language originally.
And there'd be no historians or ethnologists or anthropologists or griots or bards, as these people could not write, sing, or talk about anyone's history or "traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions"
Thankfully, Article 31 is just a recommendation, with no force in law. Imagine what a nightmare that would be, and the mega-fascist police state that would be required to enforce pretty much all of it.