Introduction
Each of the various indigenous nations of the Americas have a unique understanding of themselves as sovereign peoples who can be identified by their shared ceremonial religions, histories, languages, and lands.[1] These four aspects of peoplehood can be understood to be mutually sustaining and interrelated through the everyday practices of mediation. Various media are used by each peoples to facilitate the maintenance of ceremonies, histories, languages, and land relationships. Particular mediations come to be associated with peoples and locations: wampum belts with Iroquois nations[2]; winter counts with Plains Nations;[3] totem poles of the pacific northwest; codices with Mayan; quipus with Andean, and so on. Graphic pluralisms[4] lend to the everyday construction of identity and nation because these representations both enact and signify relationships between ceremony, language, land, and histories.
Mediations of peoplehood, be it in material forms such as headdresses or bead work, or symbolic form, such as writing systems, or designs, are imbued with cultural value for the peoples who use them precisely because they contribute to everyday forms of indigenous identity building. For this reason, the appropriation of these graphic means of representation by people who do not understand what these particular media mean for the people who use them is a particularly troubled and troubling practice.
In what follows, we consider cultural appropriation of identity with the help of Adrienne Keene, Cherokee citizen scholar and blogger[5], who visited Northeastern University in January 2016[6]. After her talk, Ellen Cushman, also a Cherokee citizen scholar, visited with Adrienne to extend the discussion of the importance of indigenous mediations and their cultural appropriation, specifically as this relates to Cherokee identity.[7]
Mediations of peoplehood, be it in material forms such as headdresses or bead work, or symbolic form, such as writing systems, or designs, are imbued with cultural value for the peoples who use them precisely because they contribute to everyday forms of indigenous identity building. For this reason, the appropriation of these graphic means of representation by people who do not understand what these particular media mean for the people who use them is a particularly troubled and troubling practice.
In what follows, we consider cultural appropriation of identity with the help of Adrienne Keene, Cherokee citizen scholar and blogger[5], who visited Northeastern University in January 2016[6]. After her talk, Ellen Cushman, also a Cherokee citizen scholar, visited with Adrienne to extend the discussion of the importance of indigenous mediations and their cultural appropriation, specifically as this relates to Cherokee identity.[7]
Cultural Appropriation of Indigenous Material and Symbolic Mediations
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Mediations of peoplehood, be it in material forms such as headdresses or bead work, or symbolic form, such as writing systems, or designs, are imbued with cultural value for the peoples who use them precisely because they contribute to everyday forms of indigenous identity building. For this reason, the appropriation of these graphic means of representation by people who do not understand what these particular media mean for the people who use them is a particularly troubled and troubling practice.
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Cultural Appropriation and Cherokee Identity
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The appropriation of Indigenous identity in particular is a widespread phenomenon. Perhaps because the three federally recognized Cherokee Nations of the United States have name recognition, many individuals claim to be descended from a Cherokee ancestor. This is particularly troubling and contentious when scholars claim to be Cherokee, as in the very high-profile cases of Ward Churchill, and more recently Andrea Smith and her supporters. The mediation of identity is rooted in being and doing as a Cherokee person, however. [8] Yet, the situation of cultural appropriation becomes more complex when considered from in the reverse as Adrienne Keene describes.
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Implications
The form of these videos themselves raise an interesting question about the instrumental value of digital media which affords remixing of digital materials as though these materials could possibly be detached from the original place of their use. The question becomes are there particular mediations that are associated with an understanding of peoplehood that is global in scale? In other words, when the mediations themselves are so detached from the instrumental, cultural, historical, and place-based origins of their first use, do they still lend to an understanding of peoplehood?
Another implication for mediation studies suggests itself with any remixed video: if the very instrumentality of digital media distances sign from initial action does it also distanced the users from each other? What types of identity relationships are sustained when digital mediations — by their very instrumental nature — are dislocate from indigenous language, history, place, and ceremonial practice? A social obligation is built, maintained, and attached to particular forms of mediation for particular peoples. Yet, with remixed videos, the social obligation breaks down to nothing more than attribution, a cornerstone of notions of authorship so central to enunciations of knowledge in the imperial sense.[9] Digital remixes and cultural appropriations have profound implications for civic sustainability of global societies.
Another implication for mediation studies suggests itself with any remixed video: if the very instrumentality of digital media distances sign from initial action does it also distanced the users from each other? What types of identity relationships are sustained when digital mediations — by their very instrumental nature — are dislocate from indigenous language, history, place, and ceremonial practice? A social obligation is built, maintained, and attached to particular forms of mediation for particular peoples. Yet, with remixed videos, the social obligation breaks down to nothing more than attribution, a cornerstone of notions of authorship so central to enunciations of knowledge in the imperial sense.[9] Digital remixes and cultural appropriations have profound implications for civic sustainability of global societies.
Endnotes
[1] Tom Holm and J. Diane Pearson and Ben Chavis, "Peoplehood: A Model for the Extension of Sovereignty in American Indian Studies," Wicazo Sa Review 18, no. 1 (2003): 7-24, retrieved from https://muse.jhu.edu/.
[2] See Cushman, Ellen. "Wampum, Sequoyan, and Story: Decolonizing the Digital Archive." College English 76, no. 2 (2013): 115-35. Otto, Paul. "Wampum, Tawagonshi, and the Two Row Belt." Journal of Early American History 3, no. 1 (2013): 110-25. And Margaret Bruchac. “On the Wampum Trail,: Restorative Research in North American Museums,” retrieved from https://wampumtrail.wordpress.com/
[3] Zhang, Jane. "Lakota Winter Counts, Pictographic Records, and Record Making and Remaking Histories." Archives and Manuscripts 45, no. 1 (2017): 3-17.
[4] Bender, Margaret. "Reflections on What Writing Means, Beyond What It "Says": The Political Economy and Semiotics of Graphic Pluralism in the Americas." Ethnohistory 57, no. 1 (2010): 175-182.
[5] See: Adrienne Keene, “Native Appropriations,” retrieved from http://nativeappropriations.com/
[6] For more background on the visit, see “Dr. Adrienne Keene on Cultural Appropriations, Indigenous Social Media and Responding to Racism” https://www.northeastern.edu/cssh/csdi/2017/02/27/dr-adrienne-keene-on-cultural-appropriations-indigenous-social-media-and-responding-to-racism/
[7] Videos of the original January 2016 visit between Ellen and Adrienne are available at: https://www.northeastern.edu/cssh/csdi/2017/04/18/in-conversation-with-dr-adrienne-keene/
[8] Cushman, Ellen. "Toward a Rhetoric of Self-Representation: Identity Politics in Indian Country and Rhetoric and Composition." College Composition and Communication 60, no. 2 (2008): 321-65. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20457062.
[9] Mignolo, Walter D. The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options. Latin America Otherwise: Languages, Empires, Nations. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2011.
[2] See Cushman, Ellen. "Wampum, Sequoyan, and Story: Decolonizing the Digital Archive." College English 76, no. 2 (2013): 115-35. Otto, Paul. "Wampum, Tawagonshi, and the Two Row Belt." Journal of Early American History 3, no. 1 (2013): 110-25. And Margaret Bruchac. “On the Wampum Trail,: Restorative Research in North American Museums,” retrieved from https://wampumtrail.wordpress.com/
[3] Zhang, Jane. "Lakota Winter Counts, Pictographic Records, and Record Making and Remaking Histories." Archives and Manuscripts 45, no. 1 (2017): 3-17.
[4] Bender, Margaret. "Reflections on What Writing Means, Beyond What It "Says": The Political Economy and Semiotics of Graphic Pluralism in the Americas." Ethnohistory 57, no. 1 (2010): 175-182.
[5] See: Adrienne Keene, “Native Appropriations,” retrieved from http://nativeappropriations.com/
[6] For more background on the visit, see “Dr. Adrienne Keene on Cultural Appropriations, Indigenous Social Media and Responding to Racism” https://www.northeastern.edu/cssh/csdi/2017/02/27/dr-adrienne-keene-on-cultural-appropriations-indigenous-social-media-and-responding-to-racism/
[7] Videos of the original January 2016 visit between Ellen and Adrienne are available at: https://www.northeastern.edu/cssh/csdi/2017/04/18/in-conversation-with-dr-adrienne-keene/
[8] Cushman, Ellen. "Toward a Rhetoric of Self-Representation: Identity Politics in Indian Country and Rhetoric and Composition." College Composition and Communication 60, no. 2 (2008): 321-65. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20457062.
[9] Mignolo, Walter D. The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options. Latin America Otherwise: Languages, Empires, Nations. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2011.
