my classmates will never look me in the face. ever. again.

We were talking about globalization and cross cultural exchange

And people were like

“globalization is great! I love yoga! I love Tibetan prayer flags! We get all these great things from our contact with other cultures!”

And then someone was talking about dreamcatchers and that kind of shit

So I raised my hand and started talking about how being native isn’t a trend and you can’t just take a part of someone’s culture and assign your own meaning to it.

And then there was a thing where people pulled the whole “these cultures help us feel connected to something spiritual”

And I just started going off about fetishization and how people just take the parts of a culture they think are pretty and fuck over the actual people from whose culture they’re stealing.

And then residential schools

And genocide

And racism

And power

And imperialism/colonialism

…

And then I was shaking and almost tearing up and my professor was like

And everyone stared.

And then I said

“These things mean something. My existence means something. These are people’s lives. It’s easy to think of cross cultural contact as this great thing when you’re the one getting all the benefits but it’s more complicated than that. “

I was really mad at myself for getting all red-faced and tremble-y but I thought that closing was tumblr-worthy.

Even though I said it after class.

To one person.