"Cultural Appropriation"

[Thumpalumpacus]

None of those are examples of cultural appropriation. Those are examples of disrespect.

Don't conflate the two.

Is English your native tongue? If it isn't, how are you not appropriating, yourself?

 That's just my point a dream catcher in my culture is not just art it's a sacred ceremonial object . And using it as a wall decoration is as awful and disrespectful to it's role in my culture as the above .

I have no problem with some one speaking my language. (my non native relatives do) That's not the same as a dream catcher or a grave marker or defiling a wedding oath . Just as buying a leather jacket or a pair  moccasins is not the same .

Sacred, schmacred. The idea that how someone else uses something you consider sacred can be offensive is silly ... but I've heard of it before. Where? Oh yeah, when Muslims get pissy at people drawing cartoons of Muhammed, and sore about the Koran being defaced. If you want to think of something as sacred, you go right ahead and please your little head. You do not[/] have the right to tell [i]anyone else what is sacred.

If you want to be offended because someone else you've never met uses a dream-catcher differently than you, for decoration instead of ceremony, have at it. But at that point it's you choosing to take offense.

Let me give a real life example . I was dating a Chinese girl . And i brought here to my apartment (i was staying in Shanghai) and I was going to show her a neat object id bought in a market . So i brought her to apartment . and showed her the object a pair of pretty tiny shoes i had bought . upon looking at them she burst into tears . I asked her why . She promptly told me id bought a pair of lotus shoes . I asked her what was wrong with that. She then informed me of there significance as part of a disturbing custom called foot binding . I asked why this bothered her personally . She told me her grandmother(who she was very close with) had undergone foot binding it had messed up her legs and spine resulting in a slow painful death. So i got rid of them . These were not decorations and I refused to treat them as such . I instead bought a wall scroll of a tree one intended as a decoration .

What does that have to do with cultural appropriation? That was you trying to give a thoughtful gift and making a faux pas of it by not knowing that she had hurtful memories tied up with the object.

Cultural appropriation would be you wearing those shoes and claiming that you understood Chinese culture better for it.