"Recently, I’ve seen a lot of people walking around with feathers in their hair, and it kind of pisses me off. Maybe you haven’t noticed the recent hipster trend of appropriating Native traditions, but being of Native descent and having been raising in a pro-Native household, I sure as hell have.

And to be fair, it’s not just white college-aged hipsters anymore. As Adrienne Keene, from the blog Native Appropriations, points out, everyone seems to be doing it. Keene’s list of offenses includes everything from Outkast’s 2004 Grammy Awards performance of “Hey Ya” and Ke$ha’s recent American Idol display, to—get ready for it—Native American costumes for your Chihuahua. And we all remember Tim McGraw’s epically offensive 1994 single entitled “Indian Outlaw.”

And really, these isolated incidents are much less reflective of American (meaning all of the Western Hemisphere) feelings on Natives and First Nations than, for instance, major motion pictures such as Avatar and Twilight. Films such as these are far more detrimental to the perception of Natives than, say, some dippy little idiot parading around on a stage for a show that no one seems to watch anymore.

There is also the problem of sexualizing Native women. I remember going to the movie theater to see Pocahontas when I was about ten years old. My mom marched us out of that theater hopping-mad because of how the Native women were portrayed. This issue actually goes beyond Native lines to include anything “exotic.” Over-sexualization is a problem with which any ethnic woman can identify. Take, for instance, Disney. While Disney over-emphasizes the femininity of all its princesses, Pocahontas, Jasmine, Tiana, and Mulan are all particularly busty and, for some strange reason, generally seem to be lacking clothing that actually fits and covers their bodies comfortably."

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Sheena Roetman: Mockery of Native heritage only perpetuates Native issues (The GSU Signal 4/19)