As the group poured into the bar, we notice one frat bro wearing a plastic headdress, prancing around the bar to receive high-fives from other patrons, and make tomahawk-chopping motions with his arm. I would liken the scene to watching the Chief Illiniwek mascot frolic around before a University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign basketball game.

We took a few moments to collect ourselves, and then discussed what we should do? Should we engage? Should we leave? We all agreed that to say nothing felt wrong—how could we claim to care about Native issues but say nothing when confronted with blatant racism. To us, saying nothing felt like we were condoning cultural appropriation. One of our group members volunteered to speak with the headdress wearing frat bro to see if she could reason with him to remove the headdress. Unsurprisingly, as she spoke with him he became defensive saying something to the effect that he was Cherokee and it was therefore okay for him to wear a headdress wherever he’d like. Another female graduate student approached the frat bro. Again, he refused to remove the headdress. Soon after, one thing led to another and the fake headdress was snatched off of the frat bro’s head.

Our attempt at a rich dialogue about cultural appropriation devolved into a childish game of keep away featuring a handful of plastic feathers. The spectacle of three women nervously tossing around a fake headdress, and a frat bro stumbling around the bar to retrieve it, called the attention of the bar’s security team. An African American bouncer approached us about the commotion. We proceeded to discuss the offensiveness of the fake headdress. He agreed that the headdress was completely inappropriate. However, we were asked to return the remaining bits of the headdress and leave. We handed the mangled shards of plastic to the frat bro and we left.