garconniere:

bad-dominicana:

the plagiarizing-ass, faux-street, corporate-dummy andre the giant/OBEY/shepard fairey can kick rocks. people who root for these wanna-be street artists usually dont know jack shit about the history of street art and dont bother to find out shit about shepard faireys known plagiarism among graff writers.

rooting for the fuckin millionaire posers who jack all the smaller, lesser known REAL street artists (andre’s dad is a publicity big wig and got him an in at corporations—he faked the funk the whole way and doesnt even do his own art, usually, most of the time he pays others to take the risk, the fuck is that shit?! hes a rich kid who got everything handed to him and gets credit for taking up POC’s art—- street art that gets them killed and jailed, and white boys like him venerated, w people of all colors wearing his hats and clothes that say “OBEY”. yeah thats the last person you should be fucking patronizing w such appeasements to their ego—a poser fucking plagiarist, appropriative upper class spoiled white boy? please DONT obey at all.),

observe all the “street cred” him and banksy get as they get as they go home to sleep in the comfy ‘burbs and lofts after all their exaltation for shit that gets the real innovators of that art form criminalized? banking on other peoples struggles and genius is what they are famous for. 

think about how 2 uppity white boys are the faces of street art…an art form started by POC.

what they are cheered on for is simply poverty tourism (coz for their types, visiting poor urban areas is what gives them cred, as if we dont fucking live there all the time), straight out plagiarism of artists of colors revolutionary images in addition to the appropriation of street art (in Obeys case and mind you he bit F.U.K.T.s line entirely too back when he first started. i cant even find links to it but if you dig you will find it) and urban cultural appropriation. shepards retort was he donates to african children and collabs w black people so he can steal as much as he wants from POC (including native american and other *tribal* prints to profit off w his clothing line).

come the fuck on. dudes the epitome of everything thats wrong w corporate-sanctioned art.

people act like hes “genuine” and “credible” and show off his tees like theyre counterculture when youre just rooting for the racist fucking system in the end. :|

reblogging to add links and more details: i’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, talking to graffiti artists in quebec city and thinking about the graffiti and stencils around the student strikes. but back to fairey: just the other day i saw a teenage kid with a hat with ganado print on it and was so dumbstruck to see the logo for OBEY on the back of it. and then i used magical google and realized they are some of the worst offendors when it comes to marketing their shit as “navajo” when it sure ain’t. just in case you need some illustrations for the more recent OBEY fuckery:

OBEY “navajo socks”

OBEY outpost shirt with “custom navajo embroidery” (my fucking ass)

OBEY “navajo dress”
i could go on and on but you get the point. this shit ain’t navajo, and marketing it as such is illegal, uncool, and borderline racist.

just a few instances where shepard fairey has ripped off other artists/photographers:

• ed nachtrieb
• dina douglass
• jack’d in da hood

great article here at justseeds.org:

shepard fairey, white entitlement and corporate interests (feb 2009)

monochromaticblack:

It’s really disgusting that rich traditional prints from various cultures and communities across the vast, big ass, huge ass continent of Africa have been imitated, cheapened, and reduced to a 90% cotton 10% polyester blend that means nothing to the people wearing them but an array of pretty colors and a guarantee to be “in style.” Oh and never are the specific locations from where these prints originated ever acknowledged. It’s always “African-Inspired.” African. The whole continent. Lol.

Dressing up in a “warbonnet” or in a “native american costume” is grossly problematic because Native American cultures are living, breathing current cultures that exist with white supremacy’s boot on their neck. Headdresses and traditional native pieces of clothing are items of cultural and/or spiritual/religious significance. They are not costumes, and non-Native people have no inherent right to them.

Reducing Native Americans to a homogeneous group via costuming, or appropriation of items for fashion/status, supports a culture that has historically erased, and continues to erase them.　

in before anons asking me why i’m upset about that paget pic

• http://mycultureisnotatrend.tumblr.com/
• http://nativeappropriations.blogspot.com/　

mycultureisnotatrend:

adailyriot:

Pepper Ann: “Dances with Ignorance”

got this from feministdisney’s Q&A

“Pepper Ann was incredibly, well, racist, but the show “taught” her the right way/what she was doing wrong and why it was wrong, pretty well.    It would probably be pretty instructive for a lot of the people on tumblr claiming to “honor” native americans by dressing up as them etc.”

This is amazing!

This is brilliant. Kids TV needs to be this brave again.

racism-education:

I’m white and someone gave me a sari as a gift so can I wear it without it being cultural appropriation? I think it’s fine since I really respect and love the Indian culture and the beauty of saris- I’d be Indian if I could! Their clothes are gorgeous.

Anonymous

(putting this as a separate text post to make it easier for myself)

This is a tough question seeing as the sari was given to you. My first reaction would be to say yes, this is definitely cultural appropriation. However, I’m not entirely sure. I am half-Indian, half-black so I’ll give you my point of view on this:

The sari used to be very important and given a huge amount of respect within the Indian culture as a piece of clothing that deterred men from leering at women’s bodies. Now, though, it has almost entirely lost that aspect, although it still is a piece of attire that reflects and is deeply ingrained in Indian culture- but the garment itself does not hold religious value and is not a spiritual symbol like dreadlocks.

If the sari was given to you by a white friend as an ‘exotic’ souvenir from India, it is NOT okay to wear it. You are detaching the cultural significance of the clothing while simultaneously erasing the people of the culture whose clothes you are stealing.

However, if it was given to you by an Indian, it becomes more complex and is impossible to answer without knowing the situation. In general, Indians (in my experience) don’t mind if white people wear saris, as long as they were given one by an Indian to wear to a specific event (for example, an Indian wedding where 99% of the guests would be dressed in saris. An Indian might give you a sari to wear so that you don’t feel out of place or alienated). Consider the situation and think about it yourself, because I can’t give you my views on the topic without more details.

Something else: I think you also need to take a step back and consider why you love and ‘respect’ the Indian culture- a culture that is not yours- so much. There’s this deep-rooted idea in Western cultures that the East is full of mysticism and is arcane and exotic, to the point where the culture is fetishized. Is your curiousity actually obsession for and fetishization of what you think Indian culture is? Because you have white privilege. And your white privilege allows you to take elements that you like from a culture that you claim to respect- in this case, Indian culture- while both cutting out the people of that culture, for whom the sari is more than just a pretty decorative garment, as well as not taking in the rest of the culture and what that entails, especially for women.

You CAN appreciate the beauty of particular cultural items but you don’t have to wear it to realize its beauty. The problem comes when white people get so fixated on ‘loving’ the culture and its beauty that they forget about the PEOPLE of that culture in their misguided attempts to pay homage to it. The people, the clothes and the customs are all inseparably intertwined in a culture. Clothes are PART of the culture; they ARE the culture. Failure to respect that by destroying and breaking the bond between people and their culture is imperialism- handpicking parts of a culture that you like and taking them without giving any weight to the people they belong to is WRONG, and appropriation. Appropriation is racist.

dumbthingswhitepplsay:

soydulcedeleche:

Do you know who Native Hawaiians are? They are the poorest, most worse off ethnic group in the United States because when the U.S. stole, yes, STOLE the Hawaiian islands (Hawaii was a sovereign independent country) they were populated by Hawaiian Natives who were all killed off and/or stripped of their land, culture and language. Only in the 70’s were they able to reclaim whatever bits of their culture they managed to retain in secret but not before AMERICANS reduced it to Tiki culture and kitchsy exotic artifacts.

To this day these people are suffering with no end in sight and NO help at all. Most are homeless! Everything was taken from them and along came WWII and all the racist douchefucks decided to make Native Hawaiians sacred Tiki Gods just cute little souvenir relics. They created 34058948756 Hawaiian pin ups of which all were white women.

And now Pin Up culture continues to usurp Native Hawaiian dress, Gods and general aesthetics shamelessly. Grass skirts, leis, Hula, Tiki Gods, their bright floral prints, etc. They have been reduced to just that….As if they arent real, valuable, horribly oppressed people with a rich language, culture and customs. Its a slap in the face from the same careless white people who didnt give a fuck about them and left them dying and on the streets without anything.

Everywhere you look Asians are claiming to be “Hawaiian” and everytime you look up a photo of  Hawaiian you are liable to find nothing but tan asian people and not one single Native Hawaiian. Basically asians immigrants to Hawaii have also appropriated Hawaiian culture and identities and are now even perpetrating as something they arent and further obfuscating Hawaiians plight.

Everytime some douchefuck with no Native Hawaiian ancestry (or 1/16th of it) who happened to be born in Hawaii insists on being called Hawaiian it is SPIT in the face of REAL Native Hawaiians. Hawaiian is an ethnicity, a nationality, a culture. Either you are born one or you arent. Being born in a Sioux reservation wouldnt make you Sioux by birth, either.

And no Samoans arent the Natives of Hawaii! Native Hawaiians are Hawaiis natives. Samoans are the natives of *gasp* SAMOA!!!!! Right race, wrong nationality. Hawaiians are polynesian and do look alot like Samoans, the Maori and Tahitians, who, not surprisingly have also been raped and pillaged by white colonizers. However they DONT look at all asian unless they are mixed with them. Get a fuckin clue, people.

Some are still even ignant enough to try to argue Native Hawaiians dont exist because thats like calling yourself Californian. Yeah, if California was a sovereign country before maybe there’d be a comparison, assholes. How do you just erase an entire ethnic group like that?

There are less than 3000 Native Hawaiians left at this point. I am sure in just one generation when they are finally dead and gone the U.S. will suddenly recognize them and give them useless scraps.

Its the plan.

Don’t be an ignant douchefuck. RESPECT people and their culture. Read. And not just what seems convenient to you, either. :)

For all the white people living there who cry about how mean all 3000 of those people are oppressing them.

(Source: bad-dominicana)

deluxvivens:

moniquill:

bittybandolero:

nativevoice:

Culture by greyshine on Flickr.

ovaries.

I need to reblog this again to point out just why I love this particular picture so. That thing he’s holding? Yeah that’s a roll of packing tape in a plastic holder. That’s a thoroughly mundane, inarguably ‘modern’ artifact. Let me tell you why that’s important.

Many of the most famous and ‘iconic’ vintage photos of NDNs are from the body of work of Edward Curtis. You probably recognize some of them:

Thing is, Edward Curtis was a fucking lying liar about NDN lives.

Curtis documented some aspects of the customs and lifestyles of American Indians of the trans-Mississippi West. The publication of Curtis’s work, highly romanticized and most craftily staged, exerted a major influence on the image of Indians in popular culture. Curtis is reported to have retouched some of the photographs in order to remove modern objects, adding to the popular illusion of Native Americans as a primitive people.

VS

Yeah, see how that second photo is deliberately sepia-toned and how the clock between the two individuals has been removed because it’s ‘too modern’? Fuck that shit.

That image up there is of a child in full tradition regalia…carrying a roll of tape. Because that child exists today in the modern world where tape is a thing. That regalia exists -today- and is not a ‘historical costume’. My love for that image is the same as my love for things like this traditional elk hide hand drum painted to look like Captain America’s shield by NDN Etsy Artist JBear:

Or this kid in Superman Powwow Regalia:

(Photo of Brandon B at the Red Paint Powwow by R. Lohr)

Because NDNs are modern, living people influenced by modern pop culture. It’s what makes things like traditionally-beaded sneakers so awesome:

(Beaded sneakers made by Elizabeth Doxtater, Mohawk)

We are here, living -today-. Sometimes we own clocks and carry tape and reference cheesy summer movies and wear sneakers. And when we do these things, they are NDN things.

omg the superman. omg.