Cultural Challenges

You know, Appropriation

Well, I should say misappropriation. I feel like I need to address this for communal reasons. I wish to ward off being attacked. I explore a lot here, but I also have complex trauma. While I have training in mental health, I also have my own set of diagnostic labels. It’s because I’m trained that I at least have some familiarity with therapeutic practice. I also know a lot of that practice doesn’t work real well for lots of people. There are reasons for that. One of those reasons is culture.

I know we now live in an age that it’s becoming more difficult to talk about honest historical events. There are disquieting concepts like white privilege, male fragility, and cultural appropriation. I’m one of “those people” who recognize the United States is founded on a history of ethnic cleansing, people displacement, land conquest, extraction, and exploitation of nature. Nature includes humans. It’s a domination based society more than anything. It has had not only an addiction to domination and rule, it has had a real habit of stealing cultural creations, appropriating it to itself, and then erasing the people from whom those aspects belong. It’s taken cultural appreciation, sharing, and learning from one another, and turned it into a weapon of extinguishment and even extermination. I acknowledge this. This mentality exists in the mental health profession and permeates aspects of science.

In my own healing journey I’ve found many things that have and are meaningful, come from other places and people. I believe a lot of humans in America have lost a deeper meaning of cultural practice found in dance, creativity, and nature. I long to come home to a sense of place [land], a sense of cycle [nature], and a sense of rebirth [renewal connection - think life transitions]. I long for more really.  It calls to me in the mist of a place that possess no time.  I’ve turned to my own ancestry to find some space. But it too was wiped out by empire and Christianity.  My family lines are both victim and complicit perpetrator.  It’s unsettling.  No, it’s terrifying.  Now I’m left with re-creating that space from bits and bobs.  I don’t want nostalgia.  There isn’t any.  There is no retreat to an idealized past.  It doesn’t exist.  I don’t want pity. My family has made the bed I know lie in. I’ve needed the wisdom of the earth and its peoples.  I’ve tried to relocate myself to my own family line, but wisdom is nearly gone.  I need brothers and sisters of all life to repair the shit show. I’m not afraid to admit that. It’s my turn to shut the fuck up and listen.

For me, that means cultural appropriation accusations sit on the crusty edge of trying to rewrite a nightmare to find those places I long for in my own life.  But it isn’t just my own life that is involved.  My life is entangled with all life.  There are consequences that reverberate down streams of water I don’t even know exist.  I must be careful.  I must learn to walk and live wisely.  I need help.  A lot of help.  I get that help from people who are sharing their ways online. I’m not stealing. I’m listening to teachers who share their ways. Getting help from a lot of what is described as American culture ignores both the denial and death spiral of that culture from its deep disconnect and under care. It’s a zombie culture. What life comes from it anymore? I’ve given up.  

I don’t wish to rob anyone in my own barren lands. Instead, I wish to learn and appreciate. That means recognizing and retaining the cultural practices that have been shared with me by people in those cultures. I may grasp their hands, but it does not make me a member of the tribe.  Doing Kintsugi will not make me Japanese.  Learning from various native people about land, won’t make me a member of their tribe.  It just means my perceptions have broadened in learning a set of practices that stop me from being a destructive banshee [an Irish borrow but then I have got ancient Irish blood in my mutt self].

Embrace the paint is a perfect example. It’s inspired by the practice of Kintsugi, the art of repairing pottery. As I presently understand it is part, or at least linked to, the concept of Wabi Sabi. Let me make this clear. It does not make me Japanese and it never will. It has simply inspired me to appreciate and reconnect to myself, what has been lost, and how to repair and find beauty in imperfection and impermanence. While I don’t follow some kind of traditional Wabi Sabi practice, it inspires my own reflections and creates a space to re-build my own path. I am grateful for the wisdom. It is not my wisdom. I can only share in the wisdom and honor the elders who have shared it with me. It shows up in my art.

I work with symbol and metaphor all the time.  When another culture shows up, it’s often out of respect for the impact.  It’s way is helping me find my own and I wish to honor it even if I’m only inspired by it.  The metaphors are deeply hidden in unseen places.  I work with the Clay template on Squarespace because people are often clay in my arting.  I have headers with font names like Shadow into Light for specific reasons.

At the end of the day, I wish for wisdom and the ways of various people’s to decolonize me, not the other way around.  I have little to offer other than listening and honoring the people who deserve it.  They are healers.  I recognize them.  I humbly ask for that space to learn and create while I appropriate the healing in the ways of being human.

See here for a better conversation.