Wanting To Be Indian: When Spiritual Searching Turns into Cultural Theft - By Myke Jo

[Diana]

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. I really feel like with the OP type of mentality you can literally take anything into a victim hood complex, you're saying that you're above it but then you're writing about an indigenous culture being diluted because people of non indigenous status have no right to do so and practice in the cultural tradition.

isn't that racist? it's like saying only asians can study kung fu, which i find really really really insulting. Instead of being more understanding of different cultures, you're trying to appropriate them all in the mindset of the westerner.

Everyone is a laid back and nice person when you get to know them, even the worlds controllers are nice, that doesn't make what they are doing right just because they are nice.

See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil, you energetically feed what you pay your mind to. It's only giving more energetic food to negative greetings and entities IMO.

I'm pretty sure that is racist bro, I've lived under the guise of racism my whole life, and a large amount of it comes from people trying to compare or judge a culture, not from that cultures standpoint but from your own. It's folly to do so and just ignorant.

I am in agreement with both Minyatur and Blatz. 

(Total aside here: I have never told you Blatz that I love your avatar and it makes me smile or downright laugh every time I see it.)

I do not see the efficacy of holding knowledge tightly within a culture, government, elite group, etc. It separates—puts some on this side of the in-the-know fence and the rest on that side of the in-the-know fence. Why not just share? It's up to whomever hears that information to discern for themselves. 

The bottom line is that no one can take away your integrity. Dilution happens all over this world today, because everybody is doing everything and the media is huge.

I honestly think that cultural separations are debilitating, even the fact that we speak different languages. It sets up a situation where we can't understand one another. Preserving cultural traditions for posterity is one thing, but clinging to them is another, and claiming them to be for an elite group only is selfish. I do not mean to belittle the devastation man has perpetrated upon indigenous cultures (I, myself, am 1/4 Iroquois).

The Jewish religion comes to mind. What is the efficacy of clinging to old testament so-called covenants and crazy outdated commands about how to prepare and eat food? In our world today, we have much bigger issues to deal with such as global starvation and warming. We need to stop factory farming animals for instance, not stay in the very narrow groove of worrying about what is unclean.

Also, you claim not to be liked here. Please don't be so sensitive. If I was worried about being liked here I would have left in 2011.  You are no more different than the other members who sometimes find it challenging to be here in this existence. Stand up for your ideas and theories and accept others' opinions—it opens up doors for all of us.