First came the Deadmau5 shutdown of fellow EMD artist David Guetta and the Pacha nightclub where he has residency with his show Fuck Me I’m Famous for using live horses in his show – which for mega bonus points, also made use of dancers wearing Native American war bonnets. Then, not four days latter, there was a highly racist promotional video put out by the very same artist, promoting the very same residency, which went as far as to depict Native American cultural practices.
The video, which showed a woman carrying a totem pole on the beach as she enacts war cries while wearing face paint, seems to have miraculously since disappeared from the internet. Still, enough people saw it, went “what the actual fuck?” and decided to do something to combat this highly disrespectful and downright arrogant display of cultural insensitivity. Or perhaps we should just call it for what it is – racism.
Following these particularly impressive displays, a number of music festivals have decided to ban the wearing of Native American war bonnets at their events. Following the likes of Glastonbury and Bass Coast, three Montreal-based festivals (Osheaga, Ilesoniq and Heavy Montreal) have all issued statements explaining to punters that they will not be admitted into their event if they’re seen with Native American war bonnets in tow.
As we’ve probably all observed by now, this baffling trend of appropriating a symbol of significance for another culture in order to make some kind of fashion statement doesn’t seem to be anywhere near dead. Yet. However with some major players taking steps to combat this blatantly disrespectful behaviour (because let’s be real, by now everyone knows that it is disrespectful, people just chose to ignore it for the sake of festival fashion), hopefully it won’t be long before other events follow suit. And who knows, maybe next they’ll be banning other inappropriately appropriated “accessories” for fast festival fashion – like bindis.