suggested reading

The thing about cultural appropriation is that the appropriator does not have to face the same consequences that we do for practicing our culture or faith. For them, it is an accessory that can be taken on or off at will, while for us, it is a way of life. …in a society where immigrants and communities of color are marginalized at every level, we can’t pretend that power relations do not exist when we have this conversation about appropriation. Sharing and exchanging cultural and spiritual practices is great, but it gets more complicated when we’re not all on equal footing. It gets more complicated when meaningful things are taken, commodified, and exploited for a profit, with little respect shown to the community they were taken from.”

~ Sonny Singh Brooklynwala, “Turbans on the Runway: What does it mean for Sikhs?”

 

General Understanding of Cultural Appropriation:

On the Appropriation of Native Culture and Spirituality:

On Gender and Two Spirit Identity:

On Orientalism & the Appropriation of Eastern Forms of Culture and Spirituality

Tools for Teaching About Cultural Appropriation:

On Día de los Muertos in the Bay Area:

our writing on this theme

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The Wolf I Feed.

Cultural Appropriation, Problematic Holidays, Reflection, Therapy, Healing, and Whiteness

The Wolf I Feed.

The replacement of real indigenous stories with Christian-influenced, western moral tales is colonialism, no matter how you dress it up in feathers and moccasins.  It silences the real voices of native peoples by presenting listeners and readers with something safe and familiar.  And because of the wider access non-natives have to sources of media, these kinds of fake stories are literally drowning us out. – âpihtawikosisân There is a story that we keep getting told. A lot. It is about two wolves. In different spaces- as a student I was recounted this by a teacher, […]
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Ask First! A Better Practices Guide for Indigenous Engagement

Cultural Appropriation, Labor and Work, Reflection

Ask First! A Better Practices Guide for Indigenous Engagement

Sneak peak with context and description by Dixie Pauline: This Better Practices Guide is a collaborative effort between event producers, community organizers, and Indigenous leaders. It’s still in DRAFT form and only a portion of it is presented here so be sure to keep an eye out for the document in full released this December. Gatherings * Festivals * Conferences * Action Camps * Ancestral Arts * Protests * Ceremony * Water & Land Protection/Defense * Climate & Environmental Justice * Antiracism * Human Rights * Sacred Sites * Permaculture Whether we acknowledge it or […]
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A Letter to White People Using the Term “Two Spirit”

Cultural Appropriation, Gender Identity, Labor and Work, Reflection

A Letter to White People Using the Term “Two Spirit”

Thank you for taking the time to read this. This letter was written by white allies in support of certain Native members of our community who have already put a lot of time and energy into trying to explain why it’s a problem when people without Native/First Nations heritage use the term “Two Spirit” to describe themselves. We know that you care deeply about this issue because you are still reading this letter. This means you have not yet closed your mind to what we are saying. Let us begin by acknowledging that we live […]
indigenous resistance

9 actions and resources for Thanksgiving, from Catalyst Project

Cultural Appropriation, Problematic Holidays, Reflection

9 actions and resources for Thanksgiving, from Catalyst Project

Today as many people around the country are gathering and sharing food, many more are also talking about the origins and mythology of thanksgiving, a feel-good story of settler benevolence designed to obscure the real history of land theft and genocide.  More than any other time, except perhaps during the 1970’s and the height of the American Indian Movement, people are talking about and showing up for Indigenous struggles. Imagine we all did the work today so that future generations look back on this time as the moment when non-native people changed our understanding about […]

“Appreciation or Appropriation?”

Every year at the How Weird St. Faire in San Francisco, several Howard St. blocks transform into a magical sweetly freaky village of dj stages/floats, art in alleys, local designers, mythological realms, fabulous costumes.  Streets taken over for public creative expression, dancing on the concrete in the sunlight is a beautiful thing. One of my favorite things. This year, amidst the dazzle of many outfits, I was repeatedly struck by how many people were wearing large feathered headdresses (along with hot pants, platforms, ironic t-shirts, etc.).  White people dressing up in Plains Indian style war […]
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Curriculum Offerings

"White Womanhood", Allyship and Solidarity, Anti-racism Practice, Cultural Appropriation, Privilege Systems

Curriculum Offerings

As part of our organizational sunsetting process, we lovingly offer selections of our workshop curriculum to you and to your communities. Like dandelion seeds taking flight on the wind, we hope these educational tools serve you and take on new, emergent lives. The workshops below are a handful among many others we offered in the dozen years of White Noise. We have lightly polished them up in the hopes they are available (and legible!) for use for both newer and more seasoned facilitators.  We welcome you to adjust and shift what we’ve offered to meet your […]
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Racial and Gender Justice Halloween Action Toolkit!

Cultural Appropriation, Gender Identity, Patriarchal Violence, Problematic Holidays, Reflection

Racial and Gender Justice Halloween Action Toolkit!

Ah the beginning of fall. The air is a little colder, the colors a little more orange, and there is no shortage of pumpkin flavored products. Yet there is one sign of the turning seasons that is truly unwelcome…racist, sexist, heterosexist, and colonialist costumes — already in full force in stores around the country. Enter into any Spirit Halloween store and you will find the full gamut of costumes perpetuating cultural appropriation, racist stereotypes, Indigenous erasure and hetero-misogyny. At a time when Black Lives Matter has become a resounding movement pressing for the safety, humanity […]

the april dialogue: understanding our ancestry

At our second White Noise monthly dialogue, we delved into the topic of ancestry with the intention of looking at how the histories/legacies of our (white/female) ancestors connect to the larger discussion we’ve begun. We began by checking in with affirmations about ourselves and about white women – something we committed previously to doing because we recognize how easy it can be to go instantly into denigrating ourselves and feeling over-responsible for all the problems of the world (something we, as women, have been very effectively trained to do — see the previous blog post […]
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Liberate Halloween Action Kit!

Cultural Appropriation, Gender Identity, Patriarchal Violence, Problematic Holidays, Reflection

Liberate Halloween Action Kit!

They’re ba-ack! (shudder) With Halloween quickly approaching, and costume shops like Spirit Halloween opening their doors, many of us are cringing at the thought of another Halloween full of racism, sexism, heterosexism and the full range of offensive apparel we annually witness. In response, we offer up a toolkit to those who wish to be a part of resisting the dominant paradigms that plague this season. Let’s make this be a season to reclaim and expand our expressive imaginations from being steered into narrow, tired, offensive and uncreative marketing channels. Not sure what exactly is so offensive about […]
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On “Sh*t White Girls Say…” : Making Microaggressions Conscious

Cultural Appropriation, Gender Identity

On “Sh*t White Girls Say…” : Making Microaggressions Conscious

A Youtube tsunami of sh*t all kinds of people say (and birds and wookies and beyond) has been flooding the internet.  Ranging from hilarious, brilliant and edgy to somewhat tired at this point, this formula has been a tremendously generative capsule to fill and spread, making us crack up by hearing things we’ve heard so many times with new ears, giving the familiar an anthropological twist.  One version of this creative phenomenon, “Sh*t _____ says to…_____” has also taken on a digital wildfire life of its own, sparked by graphic designer, video blogger and hair […]
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Confronting Thanksgiving

Cultural Appropriation, Problematic Holidays, Reflection, State Violence

Confronting Thanksgiving

“The killings became more and more frenzied with days of Thanksgiving feasts being held after each successful massacre. George Washington finally suggested that only one day of Thanksgiving per year be set aside instead of celebrating each and every massacre.” (Susan Bates) This is an updated repost from last year, to continue our commitment to raise awareness about the actual origins and impact of this holiday that many of us celebrate without a second thought and to confront the mythologies that encourage us to ignore the real history of Thanksgiving: We often think of Thanksgiving as a […]
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Liberate Halloween Action Kit!

Cultural Appropriation, Gender Identity, Problematic Holidays, Reflection

Liberate Halloween Action Kit!

They’re ba-ack! (shudder) With Halloween quickly approaching, and costume shops like Spirit Halloween opening their doors, many of us are cringing at the thought of another Halloween full of racism, sexism, heterosexism and the full range of offensive apparel we annually witness. In response, we offer up a toolkit to those who wish to be a part of resisting the dominant paradigms that plague this season. Let’s make this be a season to reclaim and expand our expressive imaginations from being steered into narrow, tired, offensive and uncreative marketing channels. Not sure what exactly is so offensive about […]
Indian Princess

Halloween Action

Cultural Appropriation, Problematic Holidays, Reflection

Halloween Action

This Halloween, the White Noise Collective conspired to take creative action to counteract the unquestioned, blatant, “it’s-just-a-joke-can’t-you-have-a-little-fun!?!” racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, and cultural appropriation that parade as “costumes” in consumerist capitalist culture.  Drawing on our Liberate Halloween Action Kit from last year, this year we came up with a design-your-own creative costume station, with the intention of setting up in front of a local Spirit Halloween store (one of the most obvious corporations perpetuating oppressive stereotypes through the mass sale of highly offensive costumes).  We would invite people to our station, distribute literature about cultural […]

dialogue notes on this topic

Though many of the themes from the monthly dialogues are represented in our blog posts, those posts rarely include all of what was discussed.  Find the notes here from each dialogue raw and uncut. We share them (with names omitted) in an effort to be  accountable and transparent to our larger community, accessible for those who are not able to attend, and saved as archive to return to and draw from.

May 2018: Not Othering Our Ancestors

Dialogue Description: As the US grapples and often fails to meaningfully reckon with its history, what does it mean for us to reckon with our own familial and collective histories? What place do different forms of memory work have in anti-racist practice? How can we support each other to challenge the historic amnesia in the process of different European immigrant groups assimilating into whiteness and learning to uphold white supremacy? Which ancestors do we know about, from any generation – who are we ashamed of, proud of, curious about? Who do we turn away from, and […]

March 2018: Spiritual Bypass and Racial Justice Accountability

Dialogue Description: Spiritual bypassing “is the use of spiritual practices and beliefs to avoid dealing with our painful feelings, unresolved wounds, and developmental needs. Aspects of spiritual bypassing include exaggerated detachment, emotional numbing and repression, overemphasis on the positive, anger-phobia… and delusions of having arrived at a higher level of being.” How does spiritual bypassing show up in obvious and subtle ways to undermine our understanding of and response to racial and gender injustice?  Do our pursuits of a solid spiritual ground ever keep us from accessing honest emotional or behavioral responses to oppression, our […]

June 2017: White Feminists and the Use of Intersectionaility: Critiques from Feminists of Color

Dialogue Description: In this movement moment, the term intersectionality has entered increasingly into popular consciousness. In this dialogue, we offer a space to reflect on the histories and ongoing formation of the term, centering Black feminist thought. As a collective focused around questions and complexities we often talk about as ‘the intersections of gendered oppression and white privilege’, we want to investigate our own uses of intersectionality, paying attention to possibilities of co-optation and appropriation. Some key questions: In this time of increasing politicization, with many white feminists utilizing intersectionality as a framework, how can we […]

November 2014: Relationship to Land

Dialogue Description: Moving from the “horrors of October” to those of November, we will take this time together to examine national mythologies that continue to justify colonization. We will also question our relationships to land, here in the Bay Area, California and beyond. What histories shape the present? How do patterns of displacement repeat at home? What are ways we can support each other to intervene into this holiday, which some are calling to be renamed as a national day of mourning? Suggested reading: The Last Thursday in November Control of Ancestral Remains Dialogue Notes: […]

September 2014: Cultural Appropriation of Yoga and Buddhist Traditions

Dialogue Description: While cultural appropriation was a term originally used in response to the cultural theft of Native traditions that was happening in the (land called) US as part of settler colonialism, the term is increasingly being applied to any instance of a dominant group (usually white, western) practicing, wearing or profiting off of the traditions of a more marginalized or exploited cultural group. We’d like to ask ourselves: How is the practice of yoga and Buddhism by members of dominant white/western culture a form of cultural appropriation? What are the impacts of practicing these […]

April 2011: Exploration of Ancestry

Dialogue Notes only: At our second White Noise monthly dialogue, we delved into the topic of ancestry with the intention of looking at how the histories/legacies of our (white/female) ancestors connect to the larger discussion we’ve begun. We began by checking in with affirmations about ourselves and about white women – something we committed previously to doing because we recognize how easy it can be to go instantly into denigrating ourselves and feeling over-responsible for all the problems of the world (something we, as women, have been very effectively trained to do — see the […]
attend a future dialogue