In this article, I'd like to get into a more in-depth discussion of some
of the issues surrounding cultural borrowing. I'd like to express some
concerns I have about the ways in which people of European descent are
using religious practices from other cultures, using the example of songs
and chants. The vast majority of Pagans are white, and it is to those
Pagans that I am speaking.
My particular concern is that people in Pagan rituals and festivals often
use songs or chants which are loosely (and often incorrectly) attributed
to another culture, without knowing much about the cultural context the
song comes from. It often seems that associating the chant with another
culture is a way to make it seem more "exotic," more "authentic," more
"spiritual" than it would be if it were perceived as coming from European
American culture. Let me give several examples (trying not to include too
many specifics so as to protect identities - my point here is not to
demonize particular people or groups, but to highlight an ongoing
pattern).
- On the internet, I found a drum circle website (not technically Pagan,
but there's a lot of overlap and similarity between these subcultures)
which credited "Let there be peace on earth" as a Native American song.
I'm not making this up. ("Let there be peace on earth" was written in the
1950's by two white Americans, and it doesn't even SOUND vaguely Native
American.)
- I learned a song from a Pagan who said she had learned it from someone
in her hometown, who had told her it was a Native American chant. It
didn't sound too Native to me, but I'm not an expert or anything. It did
include some "hey heya hey"s and a non-English phrase which might have
been Native. The chant had a very catchy tune and I wanted to track down
the origin.
So I found a recording of it online by a Pagan group, where it was
credited
as "traditional". When I emailed the singers to ask them about it, they
said that it had been written by a coven they were in contact with. They
had been told by the other coven that the non-English words were "a
Goddess name," but they didn't know anything more than that. I have never
been able to find any information about a Goddess with a name sounding
like this particular phrase. (The Pagan recording group didn't explain to
me why they credited it as "traditional" when they knew who had written
it.)
- I was at a workshop at a Pagan festival for sharing songs and chants.
The workshop leader had created a small booklet of songs and chants, which
included a chant of African origin (the words were given, but no
translation), which was listed as a song from Senegal. During the
workshop, a participant corrected the leader, saying that the song was
actually from Ghana. A third person spoke up, saying that in fact they
knew the song to be from Guinea. Guinea was accepted as the correct
answer, with the second person acknowledging that perhaps he had
misunderstood "Guinea" as "Ghana." The leader continued teaching the
song, but did not share with us any information about how this song was
used or what it meant.
In thinking about these incidents, two questions emerge for me. The first
is this: If we don't know (1) the meaning of
the words of the song, (2) the function of the song (i.e. is it a greeting
song? a mourning song?), or (3) ANYTHING about the cultural context from
which the song emerged... Why would we use it in ritual?
The second is this: Why do we persist on claiming things are of Native
origin when they are not, or when their origin is in question?
Here's what I think, although it's not a very comfortable answer to these
question. I think we use these chants in ritual, and claim they are
Native even when they are probably not, because we have an
exoticized view of other (non-European) cultures. We look at Hinduism,
Santería, Native American religions, and we see them as exotic and
authentic. Our conditioning as white people has taught us that white
people are not "funky" or "wild," we don't have rhythm, we are primarily
intellectual (as opposed to physical or spiritual), and so on. Although
we have overcome this conditioning enough to find ourselves dancing wildly
in the fire circle to the pulsing beat of drums being played by other
white people, the conditioning still affects us. We find it easier to
perceive music from other cultures as being spiritual, ecstatic,
trance-inducing.
We don't usually see this exoticization as racism, because we perceive
this exotic quality as something special other cultures have, something
that we white people lack. We believe it's not racism because we feel we
are the ones losing out in this particular equation. It is true that one
of the costs of whiteness is being cut off from parts of ourselves. But
it's also important to remember that this alienation comes out of racism.
The flip side of our perceptions of other cultures as more exotic, wild,
and spiritual is that we have also historically seen them as savage,
untamed, and brutal. Again historically, this has tended to make people
from other cultures seem less "human" to us.
Our circle may be sacred, but that does not mean it exists outside of
cultural and political considerations. The entire history of white
brutality toward Native Americans is not erased by my personal goodwill or
the fact that I did not personally rob any Native Americans of land. And
in fact, when we act out our beliefs that people from other cultures are
more exotic or more "authentic," we continue to rob them of humanity and
to cut off a part of ourselves.
I do want to point out that this exoticization is certainly not specific
to Neo-Pagans. In fact, it is a hallmark of the wider mainstream white
culture's attitude toward other cultures. Interestingly, elements of
modern Pagan culture are sometimes mistaken by outsiders as Native
American, partly for the reasons I described in this essay (i.e. they
cannot imagine that authentic, ecstatic spirituality comes out of European
American culture). For example, I once saw a contribution by
Starhawk to a book of spiritual writing; the blurb by the book's editor
described her as a Native American writer. I also saw "We all come from
the Goddess on the drum circle site mentioned earlier, where it was listed
simply as "Traditional" (and given as "We all come from the mother"),
implying that it was Native American.
On a more positive note, I want to emphasize that white people CAN write
chants that are beautiful, wild, funky, ecstatic, and all those
characteristics we have been conditioned to see in people of other
cultures. If you need proof, just listen to some of the incredible Pagan
music which is already out there. We don't need to steal from other
cultures - we can create our own. One of the most powerful things about
Neo-Paganism is our spirit of creativity and invention. Let's put that
spirit to work in a way that is respectful, so that we can act as allies
to people from other races and cultures rather than dehumanizing them.
