"Cultural Appropriation"

[The Grand Nudger]

Hmn, trivializing a sacred object is a real problem, but stealing and exploiting sacred objects of other cultures...the very essence of cultural appropriation......isn't?  Something seems amiss.

You are trading on multiple connotations of the words stealing and exploiting. If Ghuongzhou Trading Company makes dream catcher earrings in no way does it impoverish any Native American. Even if Ghuongzhou took advantage of the opportunity to make a ton of money selling dream catcher trinkets it doesn't mean Native Americans cannot keep for themselves the meaning they assigned to dream catchers. Nor are Native Americans prevented from continuing to use dream catchers in traditional ways. They have lost nothing and no one can take anything away from them.

That is how symbols work in a free society. People get to decide for themselves what things mean to them and express themselves however they choose. It is only in totalitarian societies where people are told what they must think things signify and what types of expressions are permitted.

Some native americans seem to disagree.  Again, a convenient position for a raider.  In examples of historic cultural appropriation..the victims -did not- either legally or effectively, enjoy the right of free expression themelves, in any case. You could only be talking about what the dominant, oppressive culture claimed as it's own rights in response to such an accusation and about what they felt justified in doing with their posession of the other cultures paraphernalia. Again, part of the distinctly colonial relationship invoked by the term.

/ shrugs