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recommend the books of the following Native writers, as a start: Paula Gunn Allen, Betty Louise Bell, Beth Brant, Maria Campbell, Chrystos, Louis Eldrich, Janice Gould, Janet Campbell Hale, Joy Harjo, Linda Hogan, M. Annette Jaimes, Lee Maracle, Leslie Marmon Silko, Anna Lee Walters.]

"…for those of you who want to know what Aboriginal people are like, let us tell you, Participate in our writings, feel our visual art, move with our music, hear in your heart our stories."

[Joy Asham Federick, "Fencepost Sitting and How I Fell Off to One Side,"
in Give Back: First Nations Perspectives on Cultural Practice,
(North Vancouver, BC Canada),
Gallerie: Women Artists' Monographs, Issue 11, 1992, p. 42.]

Native people need allies. White people have a choice. We can pretend there is no problem. We can get stuck in grief or guilt about what has happened. Or we can use our privilege as White people as a resource for Native peoples' needs and concerns. Audre Lord, and African American poet and justice worker said, "Use what power you have to work for what you believe in." [Paraphrase from a lecture.] The process of learning and responding will in itself be a life-long spiritual journey.

Cultural sharing involves interaction with the whole of a person and community, reciprocal giving and receiving, sharing of struggle as well as joy, receiving what the community wants to give, not what we want to take. Cultural sharing begins in respect, with patience not to make assumptions but to risk stepping outside of our own frame of reference. On a fundamental level, cultural sharing will not be possible until we end racism. In the meantime, only when we wholeheartedly join the struggle to end racism, and all oppression, can we begin to experience cultural sharing.

Do Your Own Spiritual Work

The second part of what we can do is to do our own spiritual work. When we put Indians into the stereotype of spiritual gurus, or "utopic other", we use them like spiritual surrogates. When we use someone as a surrogate, we occupy them in a way which prevents them from hearing their own children. Native spiritualities have a purpose n the communities in which they originate. They are fundamental for the Native cultural struggles, use them, for example, for the empowerment of women, or an affirmation of male bonding. [Joanna Kadi describes how cultural appropriation treats objects as "ahistorical and culturally empty." See "Whose Culture Is It Anyway?" Sojourner Vol. 18 #2, October 1992, pp. 5-6.]

Since we have projected an image onto the Indian, one part of doing our own spiritual work is to bring back that image into ourselves. We can use the "Indian"




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