A dream. I was at a very lazy party, at a place like Lorna’s. I came across a book that had
belonged to me as a child – a book in English, but it was a children’s schoolbook from the
First Nations culture, called “Another day by the river of happiness”. It was an illustrated
guide to the gift-giving culture that was a feature of some of the First Nations. I’d put my
name on the book (the writing looked like I was about four or five) and on the back were the
words of Windsong Martin’s song, “Mother, I feel you”. My aunt, the “Holy Nun”, who had
been in California for the 60’s, and had a degree in psychology, and who sent me books, like
that one from the late 60’s until I was in my late twenties (when she was sending me the
Men’s Movement literature), was at the party. I said to her “No wonder I’m a hippie.” She
responded “And you’re trying so hard to be damaged”. My answer was telling of my belief
system – “No, I’m whole, happy and healthy in my human imperfection and striving.”
As I awoke, I was thinking about Tim Morrison and his travails with being accused of cultural
appropriation. All civilisations develop a culture, but we don’t own the culture we develop.
Our culture is our gift to the world and one we should be glad to share with others.
Admittedly, I come from a strong culture. It’s like the moss in our bogs. It gets stood on by
an allegedly dominant culture and then bounces back, absorbing into itself anything left
behind. But it’s not a static thing, trapped in its “cultural purity”. It can’t be that and stay
alive at the same time. It’s got to evolve. It’s by sharing with the “stranger” that we evolve
and that brings me back to the pot-latch cultures of the First Nations, where the expression
of power and status in that culture was in giving. Clearly, those cultures were strong.
There is a dominant culture in the world now, that of capitalism, which has, at its root, the
concept of ownership, a legal concept of a bundle of rights associated with the capacity to
own stuff. “I own this” means “you can’t have it”. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon put it beautifully
– “La propriete, c’est le vol” (property is theft). This idea runs so counter to so much of
traditional indidgenous culture that it is odd when it starts to feature in a traditional culture.
Say I don’t like the way you speak “my” language, or play “my” music, or use one of “my”
“sacred” “traditional” instruments and use the dominant western cultural expression of
ownership to try to prevent me from using it, maybe getting better at it, maybe influencing it
and helping it evolve in return….? This allegation of cultural appropriation gets levelled at
western Yogis, at innovative players of Irish music, etc, etc….. and comes from a ground of
fear, fear of the other, fear that the “pure” culture will be lost in a miasma of (up to now)
Western pop-culture. We have to remember that strength comes in giving, and receiving,
not in grabbing and dishonesty. I always translate aparigraha as “non-grasping”. Yoga is
one of India’s gifts to the world, not something to be owned, branded or patented.
