Cultural appropriation: Make it illegal worldwide, Indigenous advocates say
What they are proposing is making it illegal for anyone who isn’t a member of Tribe XYZ to sell *anything* associated with Tribe XYZ. That includes:
international law that would expand intellectual-property regulations to protect things like Indigenous designs, dances, words and traditional medicines
How the hell they’re going to protect *words* is anyones guess, especially given that states like Utah and Illinois are named after Indigenous Injuns. Are we going to have to change the names of states?
One of the advocates for this new governmental over-reach sez the law should:
“obligate states to create effective criminal and civil enforcement procedures to recognize and prevent the non-consensual taking and illegitimate possession, sale and export of traditional cultural expressions.”
“Illegitimate possession” of “cultural expressions.” Yeah. Good luck with *that.*
Now, some of this is actually pretty good. By keeping the dumbass white newagers from such things as “traditional medicines,” which pretty much invariably are useless or worse, people will have to fall back on western medicine… you know, the stuff that actually works. So that’s good. Additionally, by slashing the market for such things, even though the remaining market will be left solely in the hands of people of chosen ethnicities, the overall market will be so reduced that it may just kill the whole thing. “Traditional” medicine *might* get regulated right out of existence.
Additionally: if history has taught us anything about new laws, it is the near-universal appearance of “unintended consequences.” OK, so only a Navajo may sell something called “Navajo,” or that incorporates Navajo symbols or artistic styes. Great. So that means not only will most people simply to have no access to it, making the market for it dry up, government regulators will have a field day determining just who is Navajo enough to sell, say, a Navajo blanket. Imagine roaming government inspectors, traveling the byways of the South West, stopping at random roadside kiosks selling blankets and turquoise jewelry and other “native American” knickknacks, checking to see if the sellers papers are in order. They will doubtless have with them portable DNA testing equipment to see just how Navajo the seller is. “Sorry, but according to this it looks like one of your grandparents was Irish. You are not Navajo enough.” The process by which someone gets licensed to sell their own art will be made monumentally complex, filled with many pages of forms, innumerable lines one must stand in in government offices, wait times and registration fees powerful enough to crush dreams.
The result of this sort of thing will be that the “indigenous” people may have control over “their” culture, but it will be so much bother for everyone else that everyone else will simply put the indigenous cultures out of their minds. The same SJWs pushing this sort of law will be the ones complaining loudest – and listened to least – about “native peoples” being erased and forgotten. Because if I have to pay to remember them… guess what. Memory hole.
One has to wonder just how far they’ll try to go with this. If it’s worded broadly enough, then you’re going to have problems with only Italian people being allowed to sell Italian food. Only Scottish people will be able to make haggis (well, that one might not be much of a concern). Only people of western European descent will be able to engage in science or engineering. No more white Catholic priests… they’ll all have to be “Palestinian.” No more black Communists, only Germans. Even the Russians will have to give that up and go back to being serfs to the Tsar. Will there be an underground railroad to provide the consumers of the world with black market Lucky Charms?
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