This investigation contains words, images and videos which may be offensive to some readers

Feathers on TV

THE TV advertisement for the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and NatWest banks shows a child running around in his feathered headdress, a tipi standing next to patio doors as he recounts how his parents got a mortgage so “they could have me”.¹

An Enterprise car hire commercial also shows a child running around in a headdress, this time screaming and terrorising the staff as they talk about their great “US customer service” for UK rentals.²

New banking app B, from the Clydesdale Bank and Yorkshire Bank, sells itself on the premise that, “We aren’t born worrying about money”, showing children playing multiple fantasy roles from astronaut to criminals to knights, all crossing over each other. It includes youths with feathers in their hair and face paint running in a circle making “waw-waw” gestures with their hands to their mouths.³

Enterprise did not reply to repeated requests for comment. Ben Jun-tai, a spokesman for RBS/NatWest, said: “The outfit and props were simply to show a child having fun. As such I’m afraid we won’t be making any comment.”

In a response to questions, Carol Young, a spokeswoman for CYBG plc, the holding company that owns Clydesdale and Yorkshire banks, said: “The aim of the ad was to recreate the child-like world of play and, as you say, it depicts a range of scenarios involving some of the many games played by children. We would not able to disclose either costs or revenue.”

Is it harmless fun or using children to make money out of another culture? What is the definition of cultural appropriation? Why is wearing headdresses such a frequent target for campaigners and such an offence – both moral as well as cultural – to Indigenous communities? And could their use in the UK even be breaking laws?

Playing dress up

Chelsea Vowel is so used to explaining cultural appropriation to white people she’s a bit fed up with it. It’s usually the only interaction the majority population ever has with a minority – when the majority does something wrong and gets criticised for it.

Beneath the issue of headdresses, the most common point of contention, there are other objects and images taken from Indigenous peoples and used by others.

Ms Vowel said a key difference is between representation and appropriation, concepts that often get confused in the controversy over objects or imagery.

Representation might not use restricted symbols, such as headdresses, but it can be just as harmful by homogenising hundreds of different and distinct nations into one group, to be potentially ignored, marginalised, oppressed or killed.

Moccasins, feather earrings, the tipi – those would generally not be restricted as images, though aspects of tipis can also be sacred.

She explained: “Representation is dealing with things like unrestricted symbols, things that are not particularly sacred within the cultures.

“You have people who will dress up like that or use those symbols and what they’re doing is harking back to that homogenised Plains Indian sort of image that has been created by Hollywood. You’re not taking sacred symbols and mocking them, you’re perpetuating a stereotype that homogenises 600-plus different nations – very, very diverse nations.

“There are only a handful of Plains nations and somehow our symbols get used to represent all Native Americans or all Indigenous peoples in North America. And in doing that, in accepting those sorts of portrayals, people lose out on understanding our diversity, both in symbols and culture.

“So they won’t learn anything about the Inuit, they won’t learn anything about the Mohawk, they won’t learn anything about the west coast cultures – it’s just Plains Indians all the time. And that becomes an issue because we’re really invisibilised.

“We’re four per cent of the population in Canada, two per cent of the population in the United States. We’re a super minority. And yet we are the original peoples on those lands and nobody really knows anything about us, other than these representations.

“And we’re fighting back against that so intensely because we need people to see us. And they don’t see us.

“If we don’t present in that stereotypical form that even people in the UK are used to seeing, then they don’t see us, they don’t take us as authentic, they don’t understand that we’re actually present in the 21st century, dealing with very, very serious issues.

“Representation for us is such a problem because it hides us. And so that’s one issue. And it’s a serious one.”

Prof Daniel Garneau said cultural objects might be made by Indigenous peoples but the versions for public consumption would lack sacred elements and would be “policed” by members of the community.

“And then within those communities or outside those communities but membership with those communities, there are artists who are working not as cultural producers but may use their culture’s material in avant garde way and that might upset some elders and traditional people but usually they permit it,” he said.

“There are certain – at least where I’m from around here – protocols that permit artists from a community to do things like that, but if it went too far, you’d be corrected, [though] not in any kind of legal way.

“Then are prohibitions against Indigenous people from one community using the representations of another, so sometimes those are clan affiliations and sometimes they’re just any kind of representation. These are looser and more about being admonished or something.”

He said there was general agreement non-Indigenous peoples should not use representation from any Indigenous peoples.

But, he continued: “If, for instance, a white guy does a painting of a bear, bears aren’t Indigenous or wolves or eagles or anything like that – it’s the style that might have some pretty obvious lineage.

“There are all sorts of Indigenous crafters who are making Indigenous clothing and jewellery and they want non-Indigenous people to wear them and that can be cited as respectful. But clearly anything spiritual or sacred – which don’t include tipis – but pipes, anything to do with ceremony or regalia like headdresses, yeah, that’s probably going over the line.

“There are some things that are clearly offensive and they were intended to offend. There are other things that are clearly offensive and the person was clueless and usually they’re contrite when they understand that.”

Much like the “tipi folk” living in UK structures for decades as mentioned in Part 1, there are others in continental Europe “truly fascinated”, said Prof Garneau. But is that fascination a launch pad to learning more about Indigenous peoples?

“It’s probably unlikely to happen in those particular cases,” he said. “If you were serious about that and included contemporary Indigenous peoples or even people at a powwow or however they’re performing their culture, that would be interesting, but that aspect would be irrelevant in a setting like Britain I would think.

“The only reason why those things exist, would seem to me, is at a very low level as simply a rough signifier of indigeneity and not intended as an entry point to anything wider. And that’s why I would class it as a form of nostalgia for a white imaginary, rather than as something meant to be offensive or meant to be a gateway into contemporary indigeneity.”

Earning it

Unlike representation, appropriation relies on individuals – almost always claiming “freedom of expression” – to dismiss the original culture and use restricted symbols. And the example Ms Vowel consistently uses to teach this point is both military medals and university degrees: they have to be earned.

“You go to university, you get your parchment, that parchment is a symbol of what you’ve achieved,” she said. “And people will and can go out and replicate them, but at that point, when you start doing that, when you start faking parchments and you start faking military medals, you start running into criminal sanctions.

“It’s not just in poor taste at that point. You’re actually doing something actively wrong, you’re misrepresenting yourself in some way. And sure, people can get away with it, but that’s not the point. You’ve crossed a line there because you’ve taken a symbol that is only supposed to be applied to certain people and you’re faking it.

“And I think a lot of people, especially with military medals, they can understand right away why that’s offensive. They’re like, ‘No, that’s just wrong’ because it represents something really important.

“And go ahead and mock it if you want but don’t pretend that you’ve earned one.”

[Tweet ““And go ahead and mock it if you want but don’t pretend that you’ve earned one.””]

Ms Vowel readily admitted she would love to wear a Plains headdress, a beautiful item and important to her culture. But it’s restricted to certain individuals and she can’t.

“So it’s really, really galling to have someone from outside the culture who thinks that they can just do that, they can just put it on and it’s no big deal because they don’t have to follow our cultural restrictions,” she added.

“Well no, they don’t have to – we have no way to coerce people – we have to convince them that it’s not okay.”

False representation as different roles or statuses in the UK, rather than races, has been subject to court cases and public backlash.

A 26-year-old man was found guilty of impersonating a police officer in Scotland and pulling over drivers with flashing lights, when in fact, he was a stripper.⁴

In 2010, a man attended a Remembrance Day parade wearing medals he was never awarded. He was arrested and later pleaded guilty to “unlawfully using military decoration”. The 1955 Army Act stated it was an offence to “falsely represents himself to be a person who is or has been entitled to use or wear any such decoration, badge, stripe or emblem”.⁵ The US has a similar act, the Stolen Valor Act against those trying to “gain recognition or prestige” by wearing awards they weren’t given.⁶

Fake university degrees have been a frequent target of immigration officials and right-wing media outlets, but fake qualifications also come up in court cases.⁷

But both impersonating someone of a particular role or status, or claiming fake qualifications, are offences in the UK only for those recognised roles. Because Indigenous peoples are not recognised, their military statuses or qualifications can’t be impersonated.

The UK signed the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) in 2007.⁸.

Article 11 states: “States shall provide redress through effective mechanisms, which may include restitution, developed in conjunction with Indigenous peoples, with respect to their cultural, intellectual, religious and spiritual property taken without their free, prior and informed consent or in violation of their laws, traditions and customs.”

And Article 31 states: “Indigenous peoples have the right to maintain, control, protect and develop their cultural heritage, traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions, as well as the manifestations of their sciences, technologies and cultures, including human and genetic resources, seeds, medicines, knowledge of the properties of fauna and flora, oral traditions, literatures, designs, sports and traditional games and visual and performing arts. They also have the right to maintain, control, protect and develop their intellectual property over such cultural heritage, traditional knowledge, and traditional cultural expressions.”⁹

Cultural objects have been part of Indigenous life since the beginning, but also became part of their economies, even more so when colonialism began and there was a tourist desire for what outsiders decided was stereotypical.

But the need to feed foreign lust for “other” was the fault of the colonialism too, which destroyed the original North American economies, explained Ms Vowel.

“In some cases you have whole areas where the majority of people who are self-sufficient are artists,” she said. “So yes, of course, we’re producing and have been for a long time, for the western gaze, but trying to also integrate our own culture into these art forms.

“Those things are for sale, but I think they’re also attempting dialogue. When you’re looking at things that we’ve created, there’s a lot of culture embedded in those objects and we’re trying to share a world view, and I think that gets missed because it’s just looked at as ‘cute’ and ‘primitive’ and all of these other disparaging words that are used to downplay our artistry.

“The fact that sometimes some of those things are commercialised, people get the sense that, well, everything is commercialised. But that’s not true at all.”

Ms Vowel said the imagery used in Indigenous commercialised products is very deliberate and careful. While it would be possible to find Indigenous peoples selling headdresses, that doesn’t mean it’s okay to buy them. Often masks or totem poles, for example, are made without sacred images, she said, but the general public would not tell the difference.

“It’s part of a collective culture, it’s not an individual culture – an individual person cannot give you permission to access restricted symbols,” she asserted. “Restricted symbols – symbols that are only available to certain people within our culture – those things don’t tend to become commodified.

“You have people who are taking our symbols or taking the symbols that they think we have – because it’s not always accurate representation – and commodifying it and making money off it and we don’t benefit in any way and it doesn’t increase understanding about our issues, it doesn’t increase understanding that we actually exist as people in the 21st century. It doesn’t do anything for us.

“And then you have people who are actually ripping off our sacred symbols and that’s actively damaging us in an even worse way. Because it’s taking things from us, the items, the symbols, the ideas that we have restricted and it’s just giving everybody free reign to access things, which is something we certainly don’t consent to.”

There is no outward signal to Indigenous peoples that majority cultures want to learn about the minority cultures they are picking and choosing from. The message received, said interviewees, is: “They don’t care about us.”

Activists and artist RJ Jones said: “Because if they did care then they wouldn’t have used the design in the first place because they would have done the research.

“It’s like the headdress – people are using it for fashion but it’s not at all fashion. Headdress is Plains culture and people using that excuse, ‘Oh I’m part-Native too’, the nation you are ‘part of’ probably didn’t even use headdress, so again, there’s that discrepancy inside of culture itself.

“People are wilfully ignorant because they don’t want to have, I guess, the consequences of knowing that they screwed up.”

The Spread of ‘Chief’ and ‘Red’

The Exeter Chiefs rugby team have used the logo of a headdress-adorned chief to propel their marketing and turnover from £19,200 the year before the name change from Exeter Rugby Club in 1999, to £13.2 million last year.¹⁰

When asked about by Tomorrow about their name, logo, merchandising and how much of their growth could be traced to the use of “Chiefs”, the club declined to make any comment.

Though the uses of Indigenous identity for sports team names and logos are considerably more rare than in the United States, the most prominent dispute over the issue is not unknown: Washington DC’s football team.

On June 18, 2014, the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) of the US Patent and Trademark Office cancelled the Washington football team name “Redskins” and logo as a registered trademark because it was “disparaging”.¹¹ It was the second time they had done so, having a previous ruling overturned. Past imagery used by the team included a tipi on the team’s programmes, headdresses as part of the marching band uniforms, and the “Dancing Indians” or Redskinettes.

In its 2014 decision, the TTAB stated the term “is and always has been a racial designation” and “refers to the real or imagined skin color of Native Americans”. It was not in a dictionary prior to 1966 and thereafter only as an offensive term, and it has been subject to opposition campaigns since at least the 1960s.¹²

The TTAB found that through national organisations, at least 30 per cent of Indigenous people in the US found the term disparaging.

It went on: “Thirty percent is without doubt a substantial composite. To determine otherwise means it is acceptable to subject to disparagement 1 out of every 3 individuals, or as in this case approximately 626,095 out of 1,978,285 in 1990. There is nothing in the Trademark Act, which expressly prohibits registration of disparaging terms, or in its legislative history, to permit that level of disparagement of a group and, therefore, we find this showing of thirty percent to be more than substantial.”¹³

“There is an overriding public interest in removing from the register marks that are disparaging to a segment of the population beyond the individual petitions.”¹⁴

The ruling was upheld by a district judge in July 2015, then struck down by the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals in December 2015. The US Supreme Court declined to hear the case but will instead rule on a similar one, which could affect the Washington team.¹⁵

In the UK, a trade mark similarly can’t be “offensive”¹⁶ but the “Washington Redskins” remains a registered trade mark in the UK and across Europe through a German firm.¹⁷

And in August 2016, an application was added to the register from the NFL trade marking “Hail to the Redskins” on clothing and “education and entertainment services”.¹⁸

In contrast, the US state of California has banned the word and any teams will be unable to use it from January 1, 2017.¹⁹

Prof Garneau said there were mixed opinions on some logos and team names contrasting ones such as the Cleveland Indians and Washington Redskins, both “clearly offensive – they’re meant to caricature, not to respect”.

But he said some voices fewer representations of Indigenous peoples could also be problematic.

“I don’t think representations of Indigenous people are always and only racist. They’re usually problematic and can be in poor taste,” he added.

The Exeter Chiefs chose their name in 1999 with fans then adding the “tomahawk chop” chant and Devon Teachers Rock Choir even perform a mock, Indigenous-style backing for the team. The video has since been removed from YouTube following a press query by Tomorrow. A copy was made before it was taken down and a short clip made for evidence.²⁰ Both the chant and “chop” appear ripped from the Atlanta Braves baseball team, both widely condemned in the US for being offensive.

Were the chant in Scotland and at a football match, it might fall foul of the Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications (Scotland) Act, based on it being “behaviour that a reasonable person would be likely to consider offensive” on the grounds of race.²¹

Debbie Kent, for the choir, told Tomorrow by email: “The Devon Teachers Rock Choir prepared the Tomahawk Chop specifically for a pre match pitch performance for the Exeter Chiefs Premiership Rugby Club on Sunday 20th March, 2016. This is the only time the chant has been performed by the choir.”

The Exeter Chiefs, said Dr Pratt, might argue they are “honourable”, as the Washington team claim, using the “power of the chief and his presence giving people strength as a community”.

But she has attended games where fans do the “chop”.

“I’ve been to a couple games and they start in the stalls going ‘woo woo woo’ doing a chop on their arm, like a scalping chop or something, and it’s really rude and I think that people just don’t see it,” she said. “They’re not aware that there are people in that audience who are finding that offensive. They just don’t know.”

But she admitted she did not take advantage of the British Museum visiting Exeter Museum with their “Warriors of the Plains” exhibition, to begin some education and at least stop the “chop”. “That would be a start,” she added.²²

“I’m truly on the side that we can mediate, that we can find a solution, something that’s acceptable to everybody.”

While the Washington football team is still promoting its trade mark, the Streatham “Redskins” ice hockey team announced in 2015 they were dropping their own name. The team did not reply to press queries but in their original press release, they stated:

“A lot has changed since those days in the 1970’s where a set of replica Chicago Blackhawks jerseys influenced us to call ourselves the Redskins. This was done at the time with the best of intentions as it invoked a sense of fierce warriors and was way before any negative or divisive connotations were associated with the name.

“As a progressive and forward looking team who want to attract new supporters, encourage more local kids to join our junior club and create a positive image for ice hockey within our great city we have decided to drop the Redskins name from our team at the end of this season. We have not taken this decision lightly and realise that many of our long time supporters may not agree with the change, but we hope they will understand.

“We must point out that it is not our intention to take sides in the Washington Redskins NFL debate. America is not England and Washington is not Streatham. It is about making the correct decision for us and not to dictate policy for anyone else.

“We have had no pressure to change the name from any politicians, councillors, sponsors or press here in the UK so the decision is ours alone and we wish to make that clear.”²³

Advertising as racism

At the 2015 Christmas German Market in Glasgow, Scotland, figurines were on sale of “Red Indians, £22 each”, bulging, cartoon-like eyes, sitting cross-legged with a pipe on their lap. The woman behind the counter could not explain their origin, merely that they came via her boss in Germany.²⁴

Nearby headdresses, often in bright rainbows of colours, hanging on walls like scalps, are easily available in the Eurasia Crafts shop²⁵ in the centre of Glasgow amidst dreamcatchers, T-shirts with Indigenous figures staring off into the distance, and objects from multiple other religions and mythical creatures such as dragons.

Less than 10 minutes walk from the shop first opened in 1971 is the birthplace of Canada’s first prime minister, John A Macdonald. He was committed to the assimilation of Indigenous peoples and was superintendent general of Indian affairs during the push to ban their culture, such as traditional ceremonies and more. It is increasingly argued he is guilty of “cultural genocide” if not genocide more widely.²⁶

Eurasia Crafts did not reply to requests for comment. Glasgow City Council confirmed they had received no complaints about the store, nor about the Christmas German Market items through their trading standards department.

Why are headdresses and the debate about appropriation something that continue to be the subject of debate, beyond, for example, a lack of clean drinking water in Indigenous communities or murdered and missing Indigenous women? Ms Vowel had a theory.

“It’s one issue that actually impacts non-Native people,” she said. “Drinking water on reserves doesn’t affect non-Native people – you’re not on reserves, you have fine drinking water.

“All these other issues, they’re horrible and you could look at them and be like, ‘Oh that’s terrible’ but it doesn’t actually impact non-Native life.

“But the issue of can you access these symbols? Can I wear this? Can I do that? That impacts on people’s lives; that touches them personally.

“Because it’s closer to them, that’s what they talk about and that’s what they feel strongly about because all of a sudden it’s about them.”

She continued: “It’s interesting that this issue is sort of the wedge into the feelings of non-Natives. Because it seems like a sort of a pointless issue. Like we keep going around it and it’s like why is this even important? But it’s the one intersection between our culture and how non-Native people feel about themselves.

“It’s a weird wedge. But I feel if we can get people to start thinking about it in more nuanced ways, then they will start to see the range of other more important issues out there, and then start to make the linkages about how those things actually do affect them, just not as directly, personally.”

[Tweet “”It’s the one intersection between our culture and how non-Native people feel about themselves””]

The examples of the RBS/NatWest, B app and Enterprise ads with a child in a headdress made Dr Pratt uncomfortable.

“The words ‘Native American’ or ‘Indian’ are never mentioned, so in a way that’s even more ignorant, because it’s not even acknowledging that this is a real culture,” she asserted. “It’s just this is what kids do and they can goof around and do whatever they want and that’s really freedom.

“An ad like that, I don’t think people understand how insidious media is in their lives, how it’s a drip, drip, drip of this is the right way to do things, the nice mother stays at home and looks after the kids, the father that goes out to work, the nice little kids who do what they’re told – it’s so invasive into our lives and to have something like a culture stereotype inside it, what would just be a pretty banal ad, is really potent.

“There’s a lot of Native American people [in the UK] and they see that, but they’re such a small community that they just think one voice in the middle of the field isn’t going to make any difference. And so I think yeah someone needs to stand up and say something, otherwise it will just carry on.”

She added: “I think there is this view that the Native American has gone. They are not part of our society anymore, they are some past culture that’s gone into the setting sun or whatever cliché. I really think people think that, and that’s really sad.”

Shelley Niro was even more blunt: the advertising is colonialism and racism.

“When I see something like [the ads], especially from a Native point of view looking at non-Native imagery, it is colonialism,” she said. “It’s a construct of that whole idea of, ‘Let’s go conquer some land and we’ll bring back the goods’.

“There’s a certain feeling of possessiveness and ownership and those symbols that are shown like that, it’s like, ‘These are ours now so we can do what we want’. And I don’t think Britain would really look at that and have a discourse around the whole imagery.

“It is about ownership and possessiveness and making it okay to play with kind of imagery. In the end, it’s really racism.”

If the conquerer – and their descendants in the British advertising world – get to decide who is Indigenous, their looks and their culture, how do Indigenous peoples define themselves against that onslaught?

PART 3 – Dress for the part

This investigation contains words, images and videos which may be offensive to some readers

Dress for the part

The TV advertisement is meant to elicit a shuddering sense of cold, where pizza is the source of comfort and warmth.

Amid swirling snow – a sight admittedly comparatively rare in the UK – the booming and ominous voice states: “Deepest winter and the Inuits [sic] must survive on whale blubber, harvested in warmer months” before immediately becoming chipper: “But there’s no such hardship for the Johnstons of Claremont Road, who’ve ordered Domino’s Winter Survival Deal.”

As the white family tuck into pizza, the camera pans up to show “Inuit” licking their lips at the scene.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA)¹ in the UK said there had been no complaints about the RBS or Enterprise ads in Part 2 of this investigation, nor any promotion for the Hibou wallpaper in Part 1 nor the Exeter Chiefs team.

But in January 2015 a complaint was made about the Domino’s “Winter Survivor” ad and its depiction of Inuit.

In an email statement, press officer Matthew Wilson said the complaint was not taken forward to a formal investigation stage and the case was closed.

He said: “We have received one complaint about this ad. The complainant challenged whether the ad was offensive because it depicted Inuit people as ‘disadvantaged’ and whether the ad was misleading because it implied Inuit must survive the winter on whale blubber.

“We carefully assessed the complaint but concluded there were not grounds for further action. We did not consider the ad was likely to provoke serious or widespread offence on those grounds and would likely be interpreted as a humorous reference to the exaggerated name of the offer, the ‘Winter Survival Deal’, rather than a comment on the Inuit people or their lifestyle in real life. 

“We also noted that Inuit people do consume the blubber along with the skin of the Bowhead whale in a delicacy known as Muktuk. On that basis, we did not consider that there were grounds to launch a full formal investigation.”

Tomorrow asked Domino’s whether the actors were, in fact, Inuit and how the ad was taken forward. They did not reply to those questions or suggestions the actors were Asian, but they apologised for any offence caused.

Louise Butler, brand and digital communications manager, said in an email statement: “Our winter advert intended to be light-hearted in humour and so we would like to apologise if this has caused any unintentional offence.

“We undertake substantial advance consumer research and go through a strict regulatory approval process for all our adverts and at no point was this raised as a concern. Domino’s will also be using a fresh creative for its adverts this winter onwards.”

Domino’s did not confirm how much money was earned from the campaign, though press reports in 2014 suggested there was a 10.8 per cent boost in sales from the “Winter Survival Deal” push.²

Inuk heart surgeons eat pizza too

Whale Blubber is good,” said Brandon Pardy, an Inuk author, negotiator and hunter currently working for Labrador’s Inuk MP Yvonne Jones in Canada’s capital, Ottawa.³ “I don’t know what the relevance is and I don’t know why you would call that a hardship. Eating county food isn’t a hardship.

“I suppose it is very much easier to order Domino’s than the hardship of having to go to the grocery store too, or fetching your own eggs if you have hens that lay eggs. I don’t know if one’s culture should be deemed a hardship.”

Originally from Cartwright, Labrador, named after Nottinghamshire’s Captain George Cartwright, Mr Pardy said the Domino’s ad is not the worst he’s seen and the use of Inuit in advertising is less common in North America than it once was, though there are still points of contention such as the “Edmonton Eskimos” football team and the recent controversy over Ungava gin.⁴

Mr Pardy refuted the ASA statement about the Domino’s ad as “factual”, arguing that just because a people do eat a food, does not define them solely by that fact. And eating food from the land is still an important part of life, especially when imported food from the south costs extreme figures – for example, $20 for 2L of orange juice.

“There are thousands of Inuit in urban centres now, and they wear suits or they wear construction clothes and stuff like that,” Mr Pardy, 38, told Tomorrow via Skype. “And even if it were factual, do we call all Americans fat eating a burger just because one or two does?

“Just because some people in Vietnam wear the rice pointy hats, is that really appropriate portrayal of Vietmanese, just because some still wear a hat in the rice paddy doesn’t mean they all do. And it is demeaning to even imply that.

“It’s part of a continuing culture that Inuit still eat county foods and we are very proud of that and in fact a lot of times we don’t have a choice. Like eating seal, that’s actually a requirement to get your nutritional intake for the year.

“So while it might be factual that people eat walrus or whale, they also eat Domino’s, Inuit eat Domino’s too, and tacos and oranges.”

[Tweet “”While it might be factual that people eat walrus or whale, they also eat Domino’s””]

Food security is a significant issue in northern regions currently, not just for the cost of getting goods from the south, but the energy requirements for heating stores and refrigerating items. But assimilation policies have also forcibly moved communities, removed children to residential schools and the care system, restricted hunting or even killed sled dogs, changing fundamental ways of life.

Those policies were matched by “guides” from the government where “your King” instructed western practices of eating food, maintaining homes being good parents.

“You must have food. You must have clothing. You must have dog food. You must have foxes with which to trade. Hear then words of wisdom showing how you may always have a good supply of these things,” reads “The Book of Wisdom For Eskimo”, published in 1947.⁵

Mr Pardy said relocation of communities was one of the most devastating of many policies against Inuit. When Inuit are then made fun of in commercials, it feeds ignorance and far more serious problems than a pizza commercial, such as access to clean water and a suicide crisis in many communities.

“It’s a respect thing, for any group of people,” he said. “In Canada there’s only 60,000 Inuit so we don’t have that much political power, particularly, to address all of these issues. And I guess that’s one of the reasons why it’s easy to make a caricature of Inuit or First Nations.

“There’s 500 years of history, or 1000 years if we count when we interacted with the Vikings, where power’s been taken away. So when you make a caricature of any people, whether that’s a trans person or Vietnamese, anyone … if we made fun of British, like Austin Powers – ‘All British have bad teeth and glasses and have ridiculous exaggerated accents and only eat bangers and mash’ – aren’t we past the era of that?

“It’s fine if someone makes fun of themselves, but Inuit aren’t in deerskins only having hard winters sitting around chewing the fat – that’s not all we are. And if you lock us in history like that, then it diminishes the fact that we have doctors and lawyers and somebody that’s just finished open heart surgery on you might be Inuk and they might want to go home and eat some Domino’s because they’ve had a really hard day.

“It rolls into the entire history of subjugation and having power taken from us and caricatures. I don’t want to speak for all Inuit either in this regard, but it’s just disheartening when you see it like that.”

‘Forced into being white people’

Just like the Domino’s ad mades assumptions about Inuit dress and food, there have been continual efforts and policies to force actual Inuit to be more white.

And the white majority keep using Indigenous symbols and items for dress and promotion. So what are Indigenous peoples expected to wear? Are they free to dress as they like, or must they conform to the ruling cultures, who themselves can do as they please?

Dress traditional ways and fail to be taken seriously. Become white and be questioned why past ways were abandoned.

“If I go and I speak – and I do lectures in academia – do I wear my Native regalia or do I wear my academic regalia?” asked Scott Frazier.

“I always choose the coat and tie. My grandfather was one of the first Native American medical doctors and he wore a necktie every day of his life.

“When he got educated, you would have never seen him wear a feather or a buckskin or anything like that – he was educated. There is that group of Indians, like my grandparents, they were forced into being white people. They were not allowed to be Indians – it was either that or be killed. So they chose survival.

“I have to respect my elders, my grandparents, I have to respect what their wishes were and I don’t have any war deeds so I can’t wear a war bonnet or any of that. I can’t participate in some of the things that a lot of people do, just because I am not a veteran.”

Britain has long had fascination for observing, capturing and cataloguing everything, including Indigenous peoples. They were viewed from a position of comfort, sometimes literally as well as racially.

In 1710 Queen Anne brought four emissaries over from the Six Nations of the Grand River in Ontario to the UK to formalise their alliance against the French.

She was so taken with the Haudenosaunee representatives – dubbed “kings” – she had them painted by John Verelst, in a combination of western trappings and traditional items.

They were depicted as both warriors but sitting peacefully as allies. But they were also unique as paintings, with imaginings of Indigenous people usually done from afar and without any direct interaction.

The relationship at the time was, in theory, nation-to-nation, epitomised by the Two Row Wampum representing two ships, or nations, sailing side by side, separate yet equal.⁶

But as part of the envoys’ visit, a performance of Macbeth was stopped part way through so the guests could be put on stage and the audience could watch both theatre and spectacle.

When the National Portrait Gallery in London hosted the exhibition “Between Worlds” in 2007 featuring the four portraits, Keith Jamieson from Six Nations took the opportunity to remind Britain of the original relationship.⁷

He stated: “We, the chiefs of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy Council in a full session at the Onondaga Council House, Grand River … would like to take this opportunity to remind our English allies that these portraits are an expression of our sovereignty as nations and that we ask the Crown in Britain to remind their representatives in Canada of the commitments that we have together.”⁸

If the UK has forgotten that relationship, are Indigenous peoples still just something to be watched on stage, now translated to TV commercials?

“Things like headdresses, have such a strong impact,” said Dr Pratt, who was involved in the Between Worlds exhibit. “They are so beautiful to see, they’re delightful, they’re colourful, they’re majestic, but they don’t just happen by going into a shop and buying one – these feathers were earned feathers and people who wore them traditionally were very few. Very few men could achieve that.”

Ms Niro was also involved in the exhibition when the “Four Kings” were loaned from Canada. She said the representation of the envoys and also Joseph Brant was about power and control.

“It just seems like it’s done in such a way that it’s precision in how you’re accepted and when you’re not accepted, that it can be used and then it can be abused,” she said. “The imagery and what it stands for – it’s like a play of power. And it’s up to the dominant culture if they’re going to decide if you’re important enough to have a painting done or they’re not going to bother.”

And she sees a link with the commercial examples of today: “I think those symbols are known and what they represent because people never question them. Why is it so important to be on a wall in a child’s room? It’s something that Indian artists have been working against for many years.”

Why are the British still fascinated with dress and traditions their representatives and successors in North American continually worked to outlaw and ban?

“I think it’s one of those European phenomena maybe,” considered Dr Pratt, “and maybe in all societies, that the strange or the real, if you like, opposite of yourself or who you think is opposite, you’re really tempted by something that seems to challenge the very foundation of who you are because they are so different. And of course difference is always constructed.

“So the men who are on the stage were probably wearing suits, they were probably covered, they probably didn’t have a lot of feathers, they were probably made to look much more acceptable. But having said that, their skin was darker and they probably had some body adornment maybe, things like tattoos which come off.

“There’s an element, ‘Yeah, this is a gentleman but not a gentleman’. It’s the world-turned-upside-down kind of element and a lot of people have linked it to revolutionary thinking, that people explore this because they’re unhappy with whatever’s going on in their own society.

“They’re looking for a way to turn things around but they don’t know how to do it, so looking at another culture is a way of imagining yourself into the position of revolution and so the 18th century is a really big time for people being fascinated with all kinds of people and they just were going for the whole primitivist angle to see what they could find out about themselves.

“It’s a self-interested, ‘I’m going to put on feathers and see what it would feel like and then maybe I might even become wild, I might even become primitive and that would be really exciting’.

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“And it probably goes both ways. Native people are fascinated with English culture or white culture – however you want to term it. It’s the ‘other’, the person who isn’t like you and you want to know more about it and play with that and see what it feels like to be in the other person’s shoes.”

Dr Pratt added: “But there is appropriation too. So I think there’s that careful line that you need to walk, you can’t totally appropriate somebody else’s culture and make it your own – that’s really dangerous.”

Does a headdress matter if there’s no clean drinking water?

Interviewees for this investigation acknowledged there are much more pressing concerns for Indigenous communities. People are dying because they are Indigenous and all the majority sees are images of headdresses or old Westerns aired on TV.

As of August 2016, Health Canada reported 132 water advisories affecting 89 Indigenous communities, plus another 26 advisories in 22 communities in the province of British Columbia as of September 30, 2016.⁹

Some of those communities have been forced to boil their water for nearly 20 years.

Rates of disease are higher, rates of incarceration are higher and disproportionate, rates of suicide on and off reserve are higher, thousands of Indigenous women have gone missing or been murdered in the past 20 years with little or no justice or even attention from authorities. Those are all contemporary problems exacerbated by or stemming from past crimes against Indigenous peoples.

So does ripping off headdresses or tipi wallpaper really matter?

RJ Jones admitted there was perhaps a generational gap when dealing with the subject of appropriation, something young people see readily online but older generations put as a lesser concern against other concerns.

There are double standards for those who use headdresses, explained RJ, such as happily repeating the “drunk Native” stereotype while they themselves wear headdresses at festivals full of alcohol. They want the image without considering the causes or addressing solutions.

“They’re willing to hold on to those stereotypes of us too,” said RJ. “If you’re going to take something then maybe educate yourself on the actual issues.

“Cultural appropriation is important to stand up against. Even though it always seems like an uphill battle, it’s against something that I feel is important to talk about.

“But in my parents’ generation too, they would be like ‘Oh you guys should be focusing your energy on something else’. I’ve had older people tell me stuff like that. But why do I have to focus on other things? How I’m represented in the media, by the masses, is important and I don’t want to be misrepresented.

“I hate that we have these images that are just a complete joke. People are not taking us seriously because of these images. Or they’ll take our images but they don’t want to take the suffering that comes with it.”

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For the older generation, the objects may be offensive but there is a recognition the commercial uses can be avoided, and there are bigger problems.

Mr Frazer agreed those wearing headdresses or using a tipi are more interested in appearance than understanding. He doesn’t waste time getting upset about someone making money from, for example, a camp ground where there are tipis to rent. Yet he questions himself what is important to protest.

“I just don’t stay in those kind of places,” he explained. “I’ll go to a motel before I go to a camp ground with a tipi in it. It’s just because they don’t understand what that thing was, what that is. They think they’re just utilising the romantic image that Hollywood has designed.

“What do you want to waste your time on? Traditions? Or stereotypes? Or you want to put in time for the people if you want to heal them from that or do you want to heal them from alcoholism? We, as Indian people, have serious issues that really do need attention and they do need people on the ground and if they’re tied up in cultural pieces then that cultural piece better be significant.”

Mr Frazier maintained that multicultural Indigenous peoples are left to walk in their cultural world and in the enforced white world.

“There’s only a very, very small group of people living in an Indigenous way on this planet anymore,” he said. “A lot of us are driving cars, a lot of us have eyeglasses, a lot of us have cell phones, which stands to reason as the Native people in the Americas – the Indigenous people, the American Indian as they were called – we were very adaptable.

“We adapted everything that was shown to us as a tool, whether it was a gun or a horse, an automobile, we adapted to them, we absorbed them into our society as well.

“For myself, I don’t really get upset with too much of some of the stereotyping because it’s been done so long. But I think the United States is in a position right now where if something is inappropriate people point the finger, whereas 10 years ago they wouldn’t say anything.”

He continued: “It’s truly a different situation to have, say, your neighbour put up a little tipi in their backyard for their kids and to go into someone’s private home and see that in somebody’s room as their wallpaper.

“I’m not offended by any of it because art is art and a tipi and many of our sacred items have been utilised in art by our own people, and I don’t buy those things and that’s the way for me to fight against those stereotypes.

“I just don’t put my money into any of those things. I wouldn’t buy wallpaper with tipis on it. And I’ve had tipis in the past and it’s a novelty now, it’s not a lifestyle.”

Britain doesn’t just have individuals pretending to be Indigenous.

Dr Pratt said, contrary to perception, there are Indigenous peoples from North American in the UK but Britons are “just not looking”. Yet it can still be problematic at times for those living abroad but seeking to practice their ways, being criticised for “diluting” or “blending” the culture.

She explained: “We’ve done it our entire history as Native people, we have borrowed, we have switched, we have changed, we’ve manipulated all through our history.

“And I think there’s this kind of last gasp of the authentic: who is the authentic Indian and looking for that like it’s some kind of nirvana or some kind of badge that is going to protect you.

“Unfortunately cultures need to change, they cannot stay ossified, and for the Native American there has been a huge ossification of trying to keep the language going, trying to keep the practices going, trying to stay true to our ancestors and our grandparents and the people who taught us.

“But it’s just not possible. Some of the animals are gone, some of the plants are under threat – we can’t live in a bubble anymore, even if we ever did.”

Dr Pratt said she herself had sometimes failed to understand the meaning of her Dakota identity. Simply having “status”, as she does, doesn’t alone make an Indigenous person, she said.

In 2015, she helped set up the first horse dance in more than 70 years, reviving an old ceremony – but only after two days of testimony on the “women who have lived, breathed and cried and bled there because they face it every day, they can’t walk away from it – they can’t go to a powwow one week and have fun and go back to some other kind of life. They have to live in poverty”.

She was also involved in setting up the first Kunsi-Unci Society, the Grandmother Society on the Crow Creek [Indian] Reservation.¹⁰

“The reason that we formed the Kunsi was that we need to support each other,” explained Dr Pratt. “We can’t be isolated and really the grandmothers are the backbone of the people – they are the things that are holding everything together. And the grandmothers are raising the babies, they’re teaching the language, they’re remembering the stories, however distant and fragmented that is, it’s still being transferred.

“My view is people who want to dress up or want to come and have a weekend, just understand what the reality is and try to inform yourself before you do things – try to learn what the traditions mean.

“Why are we coming in a circle? Why do we face east? What are the colours, what do they mean for this particular ceremony?

“And the language itself is very beautiful. Like we’re trying to re-instil it by using the term Tunwin [pronounced Too Ee] is your auntie, Unci is your grandma, and calling each other those names because it re-instills those relationships that are so broken.

“And I am an outsider but I made the move, I made the effort to go and see people and listen. I learned a heck of a lot.”

The language and culture shows signs of resilience and renewal, but in the face of overwhelming oppression. Mr Frazier said in the past, the “outside world misunderstood Indigenous humility and compassion as weakness. And that’s something that we still have. The culture is robust. It’s not something that a person a hundred years ago would recognise – there’s elements that they would but there’s a lot of elements that they would not – I think there’s a big problem in maintaining the language in a lot of the tribal groups”.

He continued: “I would love to have been able to speak my own language but my grandmother forbade it in the house. We would be educated and with the prejudice and racism we would have it no more.

“We would be educated and we would not be hunted or abused like they had been in her time and so … she’s gone, I still have to acknowledge her wishes because she wanted it that way in my life. I did not learn the language.”

Recognising yourself doesn’t come from a headdress in the mirror

Mr Frazier said he doesn’t consider himself Indigenous anymore. Some of the identity comes from self, some from others.

“I mean, I take a shower everyday indoors,” he said. “But I am related through DNA to a group of people that had met the government and had signed treaties and we’ve evolved to a point.

“One of the questions is who am I and who are we and what’s our relationship to the planet, if not the universe? I think there are a lot of kids my age, maybe in their 60s and 70s, we went and we sat with old people and we listened to them talk and we asked them questions like that. And so it’s now time for us to start talking about these things to the youth.

“Some of the questions I think people my age are wrestling with are, ‘When do I become an elder? When is my story important? How can I help the tribe? How can I help the youth?’

“You’re always defined by others, what they think of you; they define you in a way that helps you identify who you are.”

To see yourself, it can’t be in the mirror – it has to be in the earth, in the reflection of water. For those laying claim to that culture, there is a lack of understanding of how frequently access to the land and water was and continues to be taken away.

“To identify who I am, if I want to see my image, I need to go and face the water or look at my face in the water at a spring or in the river and that will identify who I am,” said Mr Frazier. “When I try to identify myself, I can only make myself into a mistake.

“One of the things that’s really destroyed most of our culture is that the government put water into our houses and we don’t remember that we actually have to go to the river and get the water – and that’s when we quit looking at our own image,” he said.

”When we put all these comforts in here, that’s what seduces us into losing our culture, because we no longer connect to the land and we don’t connect to the water.

“When it rains we run inside. Now, if you were in a tipi and it rained, you would hear the water – you would hear those raindrops and every one is different.

“That’s been hard on our identity because for one, we want to be equal to the white guy and the white guy has many more advantages than we do.”

Mr Pardy said apart from ignorance several time zones away in the UK, it is also present locally. He was asked while at university in his own province if he lived in an igloo.

“We have modern telecommunications and stuff like that, but people still ask those questions and ads like [Domino’s] and all of them really don’t help,” he said. “It perpetuates the situation.”

The expectation of culture and dress is part of efforts to keep Indigenous peoples in the past and limit their future.

“People want to see Indians wearing headdresses, walking around in feathers – they don’t want to see the guy in a three-piece suit arguing a case representing water rights,” said Mr Frazer.

“And that’s one of the problems we have is that our identification – to be in this society and the economics of it, you have to wear the three-piece suit. Nobody would want to listen to you if you had a headdress on until you get into the mass media. Shoot, everybody remembers the Indian guy who’s dressed up.”

Mr Frazier said these issues of culture and language have at times been used to fragment and distract with internal arguments while land or rights are taken.

“We’re such a small voice as from the United States,” he said. “Worldwide we have a bigger voice but nobody’s listening to Indigenous people. So I think what happens is you look at the different types of approaches to community and I think Indigenous people have always been looked at as inferior and the outside culture coming to study has always been superior.

“And I think that’s bound to change. Indigenous people are starting to see themselves as equals, if not superior.”

If Indigenous peoples are superior, why are governments still promoting the original defeat and destruction of their communities? How are British names part of controlling stolen land? And who is making money from that?

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PART 4: Teaching how to name – and claim – land

This investigation contains words, images and videos which may be offensive to some readers

Teaching how to name – and claim – land

In quiet suburban Silvertonhill Avenue in the town of Hamilton, Scotland, there lies Chatelherault Primary School and its nursery.¹ And in front of that, a wooden tipi with holes cut to allow young explorers to weave in and out.

Children in the town can also buy an “American Indian Squaw” costume, sold year-round at Dazzle Fancy Dress – “includes dress and headpiece” with bow and arrow to “complete the look”. The outfit with a highly offensive term is made by Rubie’s in the US, a firm having exclusive rights to all Marvel and Disney characters as well as different race categories.²

For the adults looking to buy a tipi for their youngsters instead of a costume, an easy way is through a firm such as catalogue giant Argos, recently bought by supermarket Sainsbury’s. Within their training for staff is a cartoon figure, feather in his hair, one hand raised, saying “Woah there cowboy”.³

From young to old, Indigenous images and colonialism are engrained more deeply in education in the UK than just school yard equipment or corporate training.

Scotland’s government education agency has a dedicated website on the historic links between the nation and Canada, focusing particularly on the exploring and adventurous Scots and their successes in the “New World” in the face of adversary.

It also promotes Canada’s first two prime ministers, John A Macdonald and Alexander Mackenzie, but without mention of their impact on Indigenous peoples.

It boasts: “The Scots in Canada became fur traders and settlers, explorers and adventurers. They became successful politicians, led rebellions and incited uprisings. Scots built businesses, communities and were instrumental in the founding of the Canadian Confederation.

“Scotland was just one of the countries that contributed to Canada’s history, but for such a small nation it had a large impact.”⁴

And the limited lore of settling is set out as: “Many Scots, lured across the ocean by the promise of free land grants, discovered that the new settlements were still more than a thousand miles away.

“New Scots settlers were often afraid of the people of the First Nations. In Europe, the Indigenous People of North America were described as ‘Red Indians’, as savages, and tales of scalping and Wild West massacres were well known.

“In reality, many Native tribes had become accustomed to trading with Europeans. Although some groups were hostile to white encroachment on their traditional hunting territories, relations between immigrants and First Nation peoples were generally peaceful.”⁵

And Hamilton is one of hundreds of Scottish place names laid out in a map of all those across Canada bearing Scots identities, a city near to Six Nations of the Grand River.

The “free land” given to Scots and others was taken. And that legacy was firmly linked to those first claims of explorers centuries ago, usually cemented with new names to replace ignored Indigenous ones. The heritage of appropriated Indigenous place names, such as Oklahoma, Manitoba or Dakota, is usually overlooked.

Asking if nursery children were given an education about Indigenous peoples, South Lanarkshire Council’s head of education Tony McDaid told Tomorrow by email: “We have a wide range of outdoor play equipment at our nurseries across South Lanarkshire which is designed to encourage active and creative play, the wooden den at Chatelherault Primary is one such example of this and was put in place after the new school opened some 10 years ago it is very popular with the children in the nursery class.”

Argos did not reply to requests for comment and neither did Dazzle Fancy Dress.

Education Scotland, though their website states is is copyright of the Crown, said they could not speak for the Scottish Government on whether it recognised Scotland’s colonising past.

Tracy Reilly, communications manager with Eduction Scotland, told Tomorrow by email: “This website is in the process of transferring over to the Scottish Association of Teachers of History and they will make all future decisions on further development of the site.

“There are a number of resources on the Education Scotland website which explore Scotland’s attempts to set up trading colonies, and to settle new lands, for example in South America in the 1700s.”

Tomorrow also asked if any there had been any communication with Indigenous peoples about Scotland’s colonial education programme. Ms Reilly replied: “To our knowledge there have been no discussions of this sort.”

Why should UK education matter to Indigenous peoples in North America, or vice versa? And is history just history, or is it still dominating both economies today?

Doctrines of ownership

For many, colonialism is not some past event easily dismissed to history books and lecture theatres, particularly when Indigenous imagery is thrown back at those people most harmed by it.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Canada (TRC), which reported in 2015, called for an end to the concept of the Doctrine of Discovery, the historic basis for claiming North America and elsewhere, but linked directly by the commission to the deadly and destructive residential school system.

Its final report introduction bluntly states: “For over a century, the central goals of Canada’s Aboriginal policy were to eliminate Aboriginal governments; ignore Aboriginal rights; terminate the Treaties; and, through a process of assimilation, cause Aboriginal peoples to cease to exist as distinct legal, social, cultural, religious, and racial entities in Canada. Establishment and operation of residential schools were a central element of this policy, which can best be described as “cultural genocide.”⁶

There are 94 calls to action, many containing elements that have been repeated in demands from communities and activists and conclusions of many past inquiries and commissions. The sound of actual action has largely been drowned out by the noise of handwringing and stagnation.

At number 45 is the recommendation to reaffirm the original relationship with Indigenous peoples made by the British Crown.

It states:

“45. We call upon the Government of Canada, on behalf of all Canadians, to jointly develop with Aboriginal peoples a Royal Proclamation of Reconciliation to be issued by the Crown. The proclamation would build on the Royal Proclamation of 1763 and the Treaty of Niagara of 1764, and reaffirm the nation-to-nation relationship between Aboriginal peoples and the Crown. The proclamation would include, but not be limited to, the following commitments:

i. Repudiate concepts used to justify European sovereignty over Indigenous lands and peoples such as the Doctrine of Discovery and terra nullius.

ii. Adopt and implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as the framework for reconciliation.”⁷

The doctrine basically meant whomever found it first, claimed it, prompting the race for every corner of North America and elsewhere, regardless of existing populations. Similarly, terra nullius or “no man’s land” supposedly left the map open to claims.

That has been used as a moral and legal argument to force Indigenous peoples to prove they were on their own land first, and even then found it difficult to assert this by the set up of the system around them.

Very little if any land was actually ceded, a point increasingly recognised by groups and some governments, such as the unanimous decision by the council of the City of Vancouver in 2014, stating the city “is on the unceded traditional territory of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations”.⁸

The call to reject did not suddenly appear with the TRC in 2015. It was a point in the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples in 1996 nearly two decades earlier, with battles over the theologically founded concept tracing back much further.

Though previously advocating and benefiting from the doctrine for centuries, churches have made statements again in recent years. In 2010, the Anglican Church in Canada repudiated the doctrine⁹ as did the World Council of Churches in 2012.¹⁰ The Catholic Church in Canada repudiated the doctrine in March 2016.¹¹

Simply rejecting the principles doesn’t turn back the clock on everything justified under them for centuries. And it remains a basis for law in the US, for example, with a decision in 2005 City Of Sherrill V Oneida Indian Nation Of NY¹²

Despite recent statements, there are hundreds of years of land ownership preceding them. The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP),¹³ adopted on September 13, 2007 by the UN General Assembly, insists Indigenous peoples have the right to “redress” for land that has been “confiscated, taken, occupied, used or damaged without their free, prior and informed consent”.

The UK signed the UNDRIP in 2007 but had tempered its support at the time it didn’t apply to “historical episodes” or to “national minority groups” within its borders or territories. Karen Pierce, Britain’s deputy permanent representative to the UN in NY, added that, “United Kingdom had, however, long provided political and financial support to the socio-economic and political development of Indigenous peoples around the world.”¹⁴

If indeed there has been benevolent help from the British state, it has not hindered the argument from many Indigenous groups in Canada that, failing legal successes within North American borders, they should be able to apply directly to the British Crown, the original signatory of treaties.

British classrooms, however, taking their guidance from the state – the Crown – are clearly reminded Indigenous people who “won”.

Education Scotland’s website promotes John A Macdonald as a famous Scot in Canada.

Last year, the chief justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, Beverley Mclachlan, stated: “The objective was to ‘take the Indian out of the child’, and thus to solve what John A Macdonald referred to as the ‘Indian problem’. ‘Indianness’ was not to be tolerated; rather it must be eliminated. In the buzz-word of the day, assimilation; in the language of the 21st century, cultural genocide.”¹⁵

If British students don’t learn about the symbols and cultures they’re making use of, with the full backing of the state, where does that leave Indigenous peoples?

Symbols or humans?

Why should the public care about how companies sell symbols to them or about government narratives in schools? For Chelsea Vowel, it’s a simple question of humanity. And it’s frustrating.

“At this point what I have to do now is convince people that we’re human, that we’re worthy of respect,” she said. “And that’s always a weak position when you have to convince other people of your humanity. And that’s what we’re often forced to do, and I really resent that.

“Why should British people care? Well, they don’t have to care because they have all the power to not care.

“But I think if people in the UK want to understand their own history a little bit more then they need to understand why these images become so pervasive – these specific ones, these Plains images in particular. And it’s an interesting history because it really is based on deliberate commercialisation. Those images were used as propaganda to get settlers out to the west.”

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Posters are easy to find – in museums on both sides of the Atlantic, in antique shops and online – with the government promotion of “free land” in Canada available for a new life and the Dominion trips by sea, then across the west by train. As Ms Vowel described it, “Come look at our chiefs, come look at the bison and come look at these tipis”. The images today are the same, this time about consumption of culture rather than the land, now all taken for generations.

“People in Britain and in Canada like these images because it sort of makes them feel nostalgic,” she continued. “It’s like, ‘Ah, this is part of our history, Indians are part of our history, this is exciting’.

“But it has to go beyond the fetishistic happiness of seeing these images into the deeper, darker parts of the history.

“In coming over, in looking at that propaganda, coming over, getting land for free, the incredible displacement, the death toll that happened because the Plains were cleared, deliberately cleared, for British expansion – that has to be acknowledged.

“You can’t just take the fun bits and leave out the all the awful things that happened because those awful things that happened are still having an impact on our health and our education, our access to water, our access to human rights.

“It really comes down to if you’re a so-called civilised people that care about human rights, then you have to start looking at how you violated human rights. You have to start confronting the evils of the past and how those evils have reverberated through time. And take some responsibility for that.

“And nobody wants to do that because that’s really uncomfortable. Why should you have to account for something that was done hundreds of years before you were ever born? Except you’re still benefiting from it.

“Canada continues to have great trade relationships with Britain, our resources keep getting shipped over there, there’s still pretty strong ties between us and all of that is done without the consent of Indigenous peoples.

“I don’t know. You can’t convince people to care. They’ve just got to learn enough that they start seeing things are so wrong that they can’t avoid it anymore.”

The relationship between Canada and Britain is certainly historic, but not only limited to the past.

The Royal Bank of Scotland, profiled in Part 2 with their ad showing a child in a feathered headdress and a backyard tipi, also has a heritage section of its website. Amongst the select items promoted from their archives is a past constituent of the bank, Glyn, Mills & Co,¹⁶ and a loan invested “in the development of a whole country” of Canada. Glyn, Mills, Currie & Co was “joint London agent to the Dominion of Canada” and the Province of Canada before it since the 1830s, and was joint banker to the Grand Trunk Railway, states the website.¹⁷

Tomorrow asked RBS, given the bank’s direct role in expanding Canada on originally Indigenous land, what bearing did this have the ad design choices? RBS did not answer the question.

The bank was also recently named for a connection to the disputed Dakota Access Pipeline, a project which has drawn more than 200 Indigenous tribes together in protest and resulted in clashes with heavily armed police. Scottish Green Party MSP Ross Greer wrote to the party to ask about their involvement, but RBS said it was in the past, stating: “RBS has never had a banking relationship with Dakota Access LLC. RBS provided financial support to the parent company of Dakota Access LLC but have since exited the relationship.”¹⁸

Apart from banking connections, Tomorrow can reveal one of Britain’s largest pension funds hold investments in the Dakota project and others. The Strathclyde Pension Fund (SPF) hold shares in oil firm Phillips 66, which has a 25 per cent stake in the Dakota pipeline development. SPF has more than 200,000 current and past employees of local government with £17 billion in investments, including Phillips 66 shares with a market value of $3.3 million. The fund also invests in Unbridle Inc, which is behind the Northern Gateway pipeline, and TransCanada Corp, which is involved in both the Keystone XL and Energy East projects, all fiercely opposed by Indigenous groups.¹⁹

In response to questions from Tomorrow, an email statement released by SPF stated: “Strathclyde Pension Fund is a signatory to and active participant in the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment and has appointed independent monitors to ensure these principles are adhered to by its investment managers.

“The fund takes its social responsibilities seriously and is recognised as an investor showing leadership both nationally and internationally in actively engaging with the companies in which it invests, in order to challenge them to address risks and improve performance. This covers a diverse range of issues, from executive pay to environmental performance, and does include the rights of indigenous peoples.

“These particular stocks are not direct investments by the fund, but are held passively through an index tracking portfolio – which does limit the influence the fund has, in comparison to direct investments.

“However, the fund notes the concerns raised and is currently seeking further information from the portfolio manager and its responsible investment advisors.”  

As well as the financial investments by the UK into North American resource extraction and development, the import of those goods continues to grow, with Canada exporting more than $12 billion worth of goods to the UK in the past year, much of it resources from the land.²⁰

And the UK is still sending over new immigrants. The 2016 debate about the UK leaving the European Union – now known as Brexit – before and since the successful vote for it on June 23 has carried a couple key narratives.

One has been the pitch for a separate trade deal between Canada and the UK, instead of the newly signed one between Canada and the EU as a whole. But secondly, when the referendum decided in favour of leaving the EU, those who favoured remain in the UK began talking, even if only jokingly, about moving to Canada instead.

There was a move, if only in the narrative beyond practical applications, for one group to emigrate to Canada while the other group bid for commercial deals to sell to and obtain resources from Canada. But the association with Canada and comfort or liveability is based on statistics and quality of life for the majority, not those of Indigenous peoples.

“Is the Doctrine of Discovery still informing a lot of the policy decisions? Yes, absolutely,” said Ms Vowel. “I always talk about this, I say, ‘When did colonisation stop? Give me a date. Tell me when it actually stopped being a thing.’ And nobody can because it hasn’t stopped. It’s just transformed and sometimes it hasn’t even been transformed, it’s just been given a new name.

[Tweet “”When did colonisation stop? Give me a date. Tell me when it actually stopped being a thing””]

“I find the Scots and the Quebecois, they understand colonialism, they understand being under a regime of colonialism, but they can’t take it that further step and see how they themselves are complicit in it and continue to be by furthering these narratives of either they had better relationships or they were great explorers.

“Again, this is one of those situations where I sort of wish people would just be straight out, ‘Yeah, we conquered you and we took over and we won and you lost’ rather than, ‘Oh but we’re kinder and friendlier’ and deny colonialism in that way.

“If we want to get to a point where the Doctrine of Discovery isn’t at play, then we have to recognise that internally colonised or not, whether you were the British or the Irish or the Scottish or the Quebecois, everybody that has settled on these lands has had a part in colonisation and continues to colonise these lands.”

She continued: “We haven’t got to the acknowledgement of that continuing to happen, and we can’t move forward until we do. It’s going to take more nuance than just the ‘brave explorers’.

“Does it ever discuss the current impacts? You let a couple hundred years go by and you can acknowledge some of these wrongs but it’s much harder to then link what happened to how conditions are today. I think that that’s the missing link for a lot of people.

“Even if in the UK there was an acknowledgement of how outright theft of land and resources from the Americas enriched the Empire, if you get to that point, that’s a good starting point.

“What is completely different now from prior to colonisation because of that theft of land? Making those linkages is very difficult because it’s such a span of time and it’s not so clear cut.”

Of all the issues facing Indigenous peoples in North America, why does appropriation matter? Can it be separated from other challenges? Do past wrongs, represented in contemporary advertising and products, make a difference?

“I think racism is such a deeply embedded element of Canadian, North American life, and right now it seems to be that you can live in a city and people are educated in such a way that they don’t have to be friendly to you but they have to abide by society’s rules of how to get along,” said Shelley Niro.

“But at the same time, it’s obvious to me that there is a lot of deep seated racist feelings out there and it’s just beyond the Truth and Reconciliation [Commission] – that’s sort of a layer on top that they’re peeling back and saying let’s really look at these things. Because coming down to the economics of reservations, why are people on reserves so poor? And why is the education so limited? And it’s because Canada is in such a way that it’s okay. Yeah you have your reserves and you have all these other things that you’re supposed to have, but you’ll never really be part of Canadian culture and I think it’s pretty deeply embedded.

“Even those little tipis and I forget what else is on that wallpaper, I think it’s almost like scientifically placed in front of your eyes that these are just images of a nation conquered and we can do whatever we want with it.”

Is the image of nations conquered limited to schools and education in the UK? How else has the image of free, but conquered, peoples been used beyond advertising? And how has a film narrative become part of political propaganda?

PART 5: Filming freedom and fear

This investigation contains words, images and videos which may be offensive to some readers

Filming freedom and fear

Film4 in the UK, the television sister of a film production company,¹ airs classic Western films regularly.

Dumped in the mid-afternoon as opposed to prime time, the films make use of every stereotype created by Hollywood over several decades, particularly of the white woman needing rescued and frequently with white actors playing Indigenous roles. Drums Along the Mohawk (1939), aired earlier this year for example, shows the women defending their fort from attack, gleefully pouring boiling water over the invading “savages”.

Film4 told Tomorrow: “Westerns are happily a consistent part of our weekday afternoon schedule, with titles from the 1930s to the 1960s.

“A small number of the Westerns have had minor edits to make to them to make them suitable for slot.

“Films of the past are never taken for granted and always need to be reappraised. We’re conscious of the way that Indigenous people are treated in older Westerns made anything from 50 to 80 years ago and these films are constantly reviewed in the light of current sensitivities.

“However, film history is also important and the channel seeks to present films in as integral a form as possible, mindful that cultural norms may be shifting. The Western genre is well-known and understood, and viewers seem well able to understand the context and historical standing of these films. We have never had complaints about Westerns shown on the channel.

“To sum up, we are concerned about this issue and review the films accordingly.”

As well as brief, fleeting glimpses of Indigenous objects or culture across advertising, the UK is also exposed to lengthy narratives about conquered peoples. But they are not just passive depictions, and in places such as Germany, they have been used for much more political ends.

Propaganda wars

Dr Frank Usbeck is a post-doctoral research fellow based at TU Dresden with an interest in Indigenous culture and history, particularly how the “frontier” has been depicted and used over the last century.²

Frontier history and its imagery have been tied to cultural practices in Germany and even political ideologies, he explained, with a fascination with Indigenous peoples as information passed through the German centres for printing.

“As soon as Europeans knew that there were Indigenous peoples in the Americas, Germans talked about them,” said Dr Usbeck. “And Germans were fascinated about them and came up with pre-conceived notions about them.

“And also as soon as Germans talked about Indigenous peoples in the Americas, they were quarrelling among themselves who had the authority to make correct depictions of these people.

“The quest for talking about the ‘real Indian’ or the ‘authentic Indian’ as H Glenn Penny described it, has been going on ever since the so-called discovery.

“However, it became a big feature in the Germanies in the late 18th century or sometime around 1800 and that has to do with the emergence of German nationalism.

“From the beginning, talking about Native Americans in Germany is tied very closely to a quest for the self – discussing ‘who are Native Americans’ since about 1800 has been a large part of asking what makes Germans German, what is German?”

[Tweet “”‘Who are Native Americans’ has been a large part of asking what makes Germans German””]

The comparatively late development of a German national identity led people to seek similar traditions to their own “tribal” origins, said Dr Usbeck. They concluded they could relate to Indigenous peoples in North America because of their own experience with “having to fight back numerically and technologically superior invaders, people who come in and tell us our culture is primitive, our technology is primitive, we don’t have the right religious beliefs and we should change our ways”.

In their view of history, German tribes had to battle the Roman Empire, then the Roman Catholic Church, then France and by the time of the founding of the Kaiserreich in the 1870s, the narrative about a people battling for survival was well entrenched. And by World War I, American imperialism, British colonialism and French aggression were seen as direct parallels to what happened and continued in North America.

There evolved an “Indianthusiasm”, a term developed by Canadian studies scholar Harmut Lutz³ to describe the fascination for Indigenous peoples, something both constant through different political regimes and war propaganda, but also malleable to suit their needs.

It could appeal to Germans from different walks of life, social backgrounds, regions, during the Kaiserreich, the Weimar Republic, the Nazi era, and beyond into Communist East Germany, West Germany and even in the resurgence of far-right groups today.

Dr Usbeck described the theory as: “We and Native Americans have common enemies and on top of that as descendants of a tribal people we have similar group character traits that we share with Native Americans’ and supposedly only Germans can understand Native Americans very well.”

Novels featuring the character Winnetou by Karl May were published between 1875 and 1910 depicting a lone character always looking for “white people he can help” and who eventually converts to Christianity on his deathbed.

Dr Usbeck said: “The original novels, there is some element of longing for freedom at the frontier, going away from the constraints of German bourgeois society – while at the same time everything in those novels promoted values that represent a German bourgeois society.

“They were very simply and clearly about good versus evil in which evil is always punished and good always prevails, in which even Winnetou, the Native character, exudes those very, very German bourgeois ideals.”

When the novels received a cinematic adaptation in West Germany, they proved so popular that East German state-owned productions cashed in on Indigenous topics. They didn’t use Karl May, but portrayed Indigenous peoples as victims of American imperialism, where critics drew “clear parallels” to the Vietnam War.

“The East German government drew their own conclusions and used the imagery of good versus evil for their own political and ideological means,” explained Dr Usbeck. “As a Nazi you could use Indianthusiasm in very different ways as well – you could blame the Americans for their colonialism. And it was fairly easy for Germans to do so because Germany did not have colonies in the Americas, and they would just stay very quiet about German genocide, for instance, against the Herero [and Namaqua] in South West Africa, in the early 1900s.”

Joseph Goebbels’ Nazi propaganda ministry in 1938, described Dr Usbeck, countered articles about German treatment of Jews, such as with Kristallnacht and the pogroms, and redirected attention to Americans and their Indigenous peoples.

Two weeks before Kristallnacht, the Chicago Daily Tribune published an article headlined: “Remember Fate of Indians, Nazis Tell Roosevelt”.⁴

And just days after Kristallnacht he directed reporters to go freely criticise US-Indian policy in response to outrage about the pogroms.

American journalist Fletcher Pratt, published a piece in the American Mercury referencing massacres of the American Indian, which was then promoted by Goebbels’ ministry.

It said: “A mirror was held up to the Americans, they were shown that the entirety of American history is paved with murder, arson, robbery, etc. It was an answer to the Americans from an American source, which preempted a necessity for our own answer [to US outcries over Kristallnacht].”⁵

And while militarism and race cards were both part of the propaganda, so too was the connection to the environment. It was argued National Socialism, as the application of natural law, left a duty to protect the environment as it was tied to “national character”.

Dr Usbeck continued: “And there have been instructions, for instance, where schools were given areas in the forest, and teachers were instructed to take the kids out for outdoor instructions, teach them about healing plants and animals, tell them ancient legends about German ancestors who used these plants and animals and in this instruction teach German children how to cherish their home environment and how that is supposed to build up their pride – their national pride and racial pride.

“Many educators also made the reference – and you see that in newspaper articles about Native Americans – where people explicitly make the parallel, saying, ‘The Indians protected nature, we protect nature because we know how to do it and we don’t trash our environment as the Americans are doing’.”

Dr Usbeck said the Nazis didn’t have to steer thinking too much. They merely took the interests of the populace and existing imagery and promoted them to fit their ideology, keeping quiet when there were contradictions.

And the same imagery is being used now by the Lega Nord in Italy, the FPO in Austria and others. The references to historic frontier massagers such as at Wounded Knee and Sand Creek were used by the Nazis after they declared war on the US and are still used by far-right groups and politicians citing variations of, “They [Native Americans] suffered immigration: Now they live in reserves”. ⁶

Dr Usbeck said similarities between anti-immigrant forces in the US, and German neo-Nazis demonstrated how nativism and xenophobia and racism used Indianthusiasm for “distinctly national problems”.

“Colonialism from a Native American perspective is used to denounce multiculturalism and immigration in clever ways: to infiltrate an Indigenous people and destroy its culture and society from within and eventually take that nation’s land base until the Indigenous group is pushed to the side and sits on small patches of land – reservations – where they are strangers in their own country and a minority.

“That is done very, very explicitly,” he said.

In modern Germany, this is a contrast between the mocked Indigenous figure and the supposedly more respectful but ultimately still stereotyped portrayal.

The German ad for Kytta-Salbe Indianer, which used Native American actor Sam Bearpaw, aimed at the idea of “fierce and stoic warrior – the notion that an Indian knows no pain or an Indian never cries”.⁷ It’s an image Germans could relate to and “makes total sense” in selling pain-killer medication.

“I would also think not many Germans would see that as a derogatory or a diminutive depictions of Native people,” commented Dr Usbeck.

On the other side are the periodic Bravo Otto awards, given out by Bravo magazine in Germany and other European nations, with their Golden Otto, a small caricature of an Indigenous boy. Past winners have included celebrities Olly Murs, Rihanna, Justin Bieber, Selena Gomez and Taylor Swift.⁸

Dr Usbeck noted one counter aspect of how Indigenous imagery and peoples were used in Germany: a welcome and a support for Indigenous peoples, for example with issues such as cultural appropriation.

He said: “That’s in the tradition of siding with Native Americans, in Germany, to begin with. So if you look at movies, most Germans watching a Western would root and would have historically rooted for the Indian characters.

“And it’s always interesting for me to read accounts of Native Americans and so on, how much of a revelation that is to Native people to come to a place where a you’re not the pariah automatically and where you don’t have to defend yourself but you are considered the pop star. Which has its own problems obviously, but it is a huge difference.”

And while there remains a large Native hobbyist movement, Indigenous peoples also made use of the German market for goods and traditions, for example with “Wild West” shows in the 1880s through to the 1930s. There has been, in turn, debate back in North America about whether ceremonies such as Sun Dances should be closed to German tourists. And there has been debate about how much “agency” the “performers” of the past had when using or being used by Germany.

“Some Germans would see that this is outright commercialism and we do not accept it,” said Dr Usbeck, “and on the other hand sometimes people don’t see it and let themselves be baited by the Native image dangling on front of them that they know, that they want to see and want to see confirmed.

“There are currently Native people who live in Germany who tour schools and zoos and tour local country festivals to perform, do dances, do whatever like knife throwing and archery workshops and stuff like that – who basically make a good living off of the ongoing fascination with Native American topics.

“We should talk about how ethnicity is being commercialised, and appropriated and exploited – yes. But at the same time selling ethnicity is very often the best way, sometimes the only way, for an ethnic minority to make a profit, or to promote their cultural and ethnic identity.

“Who does the selling? Who does the promoting? If Native people have control over that, be it travel tourism or be it Indian gaming, then those are immense economic opportunities for that group which can in turn be transformed into cultural opportunities to continue your cultural identity.”

Back in North America, Scott Frazier can’t help but laugh at those wanting to buy the Indigenous items.

“For me, if they’re buying those things they’re just in love with images that seduce them away from their money, again,” he laughed.

“The European loves the image of the free Indian because they’ve never been free. The European has always struggled with that understanding because there’s always somebody in the group that wants to be the leader and control everything, which defeats the purpose.

“So when they see that Indian and the image of the tipi and all of that, it’s an image of freedom that they just don’t understand that that freedom was strangled out of the Indian. We’re not free anymore.”

‘They don’t want our struggles’

Dating back hundreds of years, the Two Row Wampum belt was one of a number of similar defined relationships between Indigenous peoples in North America and the invaders, of two nations separate but equal.

That continued to be a general approach of trade and military relationships and underpinning treaties which applied to about half of Indigenous peoples. They pushed non-interference that lasted into the initial years of the “Indian Department” for British North America.

But the desire to settle the “free” land with settlers increasingly displaced old military alliances that were less crucial after the war of 1812. So British-born leaders began setting up a system to “civilise” Indigenous peoples to assimilate them into white, Christian society, ultimately taking their land and, in theory, eliminating the need for an Indian Department.

In a series of pieces of legislation before Canada formally came into being in 1867, the definition of who could and couldn’t be “Indian” began. Limits were placed on traditional government, with supervision from government and encouraging private land ownership.

The “warrior” image, still celebrated today in the use of headdresses and “freedom” depicted in German film and anti-immigrant propaganda, was replaced with a stated goal of no distinct identity at all – or rather, an imposed one.

In the preamble to the Act for the Gradual Civilisation of the Indian Tribes in Canada, 1857, it stated:

“Whereas it is desirable to encourage the progress of Civilization among the Indian Tribes in this Province, and the gradual removal of all legal distinctions between them and Her Majesty’s other Canadian Subjects, and to facilitate the acquisition of property and of the rights accompanying it, by such Individual Members of the said Tribes as shall be found to desire such encouragement and to have deserved it …”⁹

Legislation in 1869, after confederation, meant women who married non-Indigenous men were no longer “Indian”, nor were any children born to the union. The US similarly created confused legislative and judicial decisions on who was, or wasn’t, pure or “status”.

It was the Canadian 1876 Indian Act that pulled everything together and has continued to affect almost every aspect of Indigenous life since, from taking lands, to children from their homes in the “60s Scoop” and through the modern care system, to thousands who were abused and died in the residential schools system. Despite campaigns to scrap it entirely, successive governments have only tweaked the Indian Act, most recently with a promise to end the rules defining status by sex.¹⁰

David Laird, son of a Scot, pushed through the Act during the prime ministership of Alexander Mackenzie, born in Perthshire, Scotland. In 1884, Prime Minister and Superintendent of the Indian Department, John A Macdonald, born in Glasgow, pushed the banning of traditional ceremonies, such as the potlatch, and cultural items.

In Glasgow today, he is remembered with a plaque citing “under his administration large territories were added to Canada, a transcontinental railway built and settlement of the West encourage. At his death Canada’s autonomy, based on rapid economic development and a close British-Canadian relationship, was assured”.

Despite the treatment by the British Crown, there were communities which still maintained their alliance. When World War I broke out, a battalion from Six Nations of the Grand River answered the call, travelling to the UK and touring various centres where their different appearance was both celebrated and denigrated.

“The presence of the chiefs in their barbaric attire amidst the monuments of ancient feudal life in Scotland presented by the Castle and the Old Town, inevitably stirred the imagination.”¹¹

And when the members of the battalion returned to Canada, they were forced to choose between their Indian status and that of veterans: are you Indigenous or not?

In the decades that followed, communities have been forcibly moved, children ripped from their mothers’ arms, women have gone missing or been murdered with little interest or casual indifference by police and wider society, dozens of nations within Canadian borders don’t have clean drinking water, rates of incarceration are higher, rates of disease are higher, there is a suicide crisis in many small communities.  Each of the acts by the state and society have resulted in death.

Does Britain maintain any responsibility? The Canadian constitution was only repatriated to Canada from British soil in 1982 and even then, it was never signed by Indigenous peoples.

Shelley Niro said the British do have to educate themselves, and the Two Row Wampum mandates it.

“That would be a very nice thing if they could be educated into the thing because they’re the ones who are benefiting from all the ‘discoveries’ that happened,” she said. “And sometimes people come here and then all of a sudden they have ownership.

“My father always used to say ‘Why do people say “Our native people”? We’re not anybody’s Native people. We don’t belong to anybody’. A lot of other people say, ‘We have to take care of our Native people’ – well I don’t think we are your Native people.

“Education would be a great thing. My daughter, when she was in high school, she had a British teacher and the British teacher in history saying, ‘Oh the British are so famous for going around the world and discovering different lands and doing all this sort of thing’.

“And my daughter, who wasn’t politicised at the time, at all, she said, ‘How can you brag about going around the world’ and she went on and listed the diseases that were brought and all the hardship that was brought with coming to different continents.

“And the teacher was not too impressed and she said ‘sit down and be quiet’.”

Ms Niro continued: “I think it [Two Row Wampum] was designed that way. I think it was an agreement drawn up and people shook hands on it, saying, ‘This is how we’ll live in this land’.

“People who came here in the beginning they needed help, they needed to be shown how to live in the cold, harsh land. But then once they got their foot in the door and made their own little village, it changed. And it didn’t change for the best.”

[Tweet “”Once they got their foot in the door and made their own little village, it changed””]

Chelsea Vowel said she wanted people from any culture to think about their own symbols that they respect and value.

“The symbols themselves are not the thing,” she said. “The parchment is not the education that you got. The military medal is not what you did to earn it – it’s just a symbol representing an achievement.

“And for us too, we have these symbols that represent achievements and it’s deeply disrespectful to go and take those symbols and use them without permission. That’s it.

“And all we want people to understand is that we can’t force you. People from outside of our culture have a lot more power than we do, they can take them all they want.

“But don’t then turn around and pretend that it’s honouring us when we’re telling you it’s actively disrespectful. I would just like people to be a bit more honest about it and say, ‘You know what? We really don’t care about your feelings, we don’t actually care about you at all. We want this thing, we’re taking it’.

“I would prefer that than having all the people hand-wringing and saying, ‘But I just really love your culture and I just really want to honour you’.”

Scott Frazier said it was a good time to think about images and talk about the stereotyping.

“I don’t know if anybody can sit down and pinpoint the exact thing why it pisses you off. Maybe it’s because you’ve been mistreated for all this time and it just continues,” he concluded.

“But it’s a good discussion. And it’s good to have people that don’t hear those discussions to listen. Will it change? Maybe, eventually. They’re all starting points.”

***

The UK advertising spending was forecast to exceed £17 billion in 2016.¹². Hundreds of ads are produced and shown on TV and in cinemas. The examples in this investigation are a fraction of those.

But, they are consistent in direction at one race of people. And there is a necessary question to follow on from that: what other race gets that attention, where cultural or sacred items are donned by white actors to sell products and/or services? What other culture or race is advertised by white children for mass consumption and profit? And then, why?

Cultural appropriation alone didn’t prevent clean drinking water or effective sanitation on communities, or put Indigenous children into care or murder Indigenous women in North America. But those problems, said interviewees, stem from colonialism and they aren’t getting fixed because of a lack of education and willingness to learn.

RJ Jones concluded people wanted their symbols and culture, but without taking responsibility. And they want the public to educate themselves.

“I think they’re taking what they want to take and not actually putting effort into what is happening,” said RJ. “They want our culture but they don’t want our struggles.”