The cultural assimilation of Native Americans has been occurring for a years, but it seems to have gained a lot of attention recently with models in the Victoria Secret fashion show wearing what looks to be and what was meant to be Native American headdresses. It's not just Victoria Secret, the Native American "look" has always been popular for halloween costumes and we even seen what looks to be a Native American woman on the packaging of Land O' Lakes butter. When doing this our culture takes on the invisibility of whiteness. We see the white race as "normal" and we are making the Native American race seem "different." While some people see taking on the Native American "look" think that it is cute and fun to dress in, they don't understand that they are dehistoricizing and stripping Native Americans of their culture. This is called Assimilation. We need to realize that dressing up as another culture is not okay. When doing so we should really think in their shoes and think about how it would feel if someone dressed as us mockingly.
Helen,
ReplyDeleteThis is a good cultural studies critique that uses the concept of whiteness and assimilation well. This type of "dress-up" also assumes that someone's ethnicity and culture can be boiled down to a costume that others can simply put on.
What always surprises me about the way Native American culture is treated is the way in which it’s thought of as being one culture all together when in reality each tribe has its own traditions and culture that set them apart from each other. The full feathered war bonnets that we’ve all seen in movies were mainly worn by the Great Plains tribes like the Sioux and Cheyenne tribes and around the late 19th century other regions wore them to attract tourists that assumed they all wore them. While the full feathered war bonnets were worn by a lot of tribes there were never the most common head gear worn but since that’s what was presented to the general public that is what most people associate with Native American culture.
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