War-bonnets are just a salute to courage
THE problem that the ExChiefs4Change pressure group has is that it is annexing the cause of indigenous peoples without a detailed understanding of the history of cultural appropriation. It is why its rantings should be treated with great scepticism.
Cultural appropriation of one form or another has been going on since the earliest evidence of modern humans was found in Africa around 300,000 years ago. Since time immemorial human beings have copied forms of communication, construction, agriculture, hunting and fishing methods, and exchanged knowledge of all sorts, from mathematics and science to literature and religion – as well as borrowed or imitated clothing, and hairstyles.
This is what makes the thought police tactics and attempted cultural bullying by small groups like the ExChiefs zealots so myopic, with a complete failure to see anything beyond their own narrow corridor of moral rectitude.
Anyone who knows anything about the Westward Expansion in America in the 19th century, and the extreme brutality of that frontier, knows that appropriation and expropriation of people, land, property and resources by the immigrants from Europe was a central theme.
However, most of the Native American tribes of the Great Plains, like the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Comanches – who wore the war-bonnets at the centre of this Devon spat – were no strangers to retaliatory expropriation of their own in the form of capturing white settler children and women, often in order to stem the decline in their numbers from disease and warfare.
It is also widely acknowledged that in the conflicts over land and culture the Native Americans – who had been on the continent thousands of years longer, but were themselves immigrants from Siberia – were usually outgunned and outnumbered, and lost most of what they had.
However, in the inevitable contact between the cultures that took place amid the warring and occasional interludes of peace, everyone appropriated from everyone else. White fur traders wore the buckskin clothing of the Native Americans they traded with, who in turn adopted the top hats, widebrimmed cowboy hats, and coats of the immigrants.
As for the eagle feathers that adorned the war-bonnets, they were also used to decorate the fur caps or hats of trappers, or the plumes used by strippers in saloons.
There is both a lack of logic and a misunderstanding of history, and the conditions that prevailed, in the anti appropriation arguments that the ExChiefs4Change group puts forward.
The first thing that should be challenged is its claim to speak for the indigenous peoples of whom, to quote its statement, “the overwhelming majority have stated that branding like this (at Exeter Chiefs) is not an honour, is not respectful, and not welcome”.
There is then an extremely tenuous link in its argument claiming that studies – which it does not specify – have established that this type of branding damages mental health, wellbeing, and increases prejudice, suicide rates, and the numbers of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls. It should publish how big this “overwhelming majority” is, as well as the clear evidence of how branding like the chief ’s head on the club’s badge has been responsible for any of the deeply concerning issues listed.
We should also be told if the ExChiefs lobby has ever considered that the warrior culture of tribes like the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Comanche would have endorsed the elements of combat courage, strength, speed, skill, and guile present in Rugby Union, and seen the war-bonnets being worn by their supporters as a salute to the combatants? Would they have found disrespect in that?
Which brings us to the Basque beret. Will the ExChiefs go cross-Channel and castigate the French for borrowing the beret off the Basques, and then allowing it to go international by becoming headgear worn by people as varied as chic models, onion sellers, painters, and former All Black Murray Mexted?
Anyway, what on earth are Wasps doing getting involved in this Devon furore by referring the matter to the RFU? The club should tread carefully, or they could soon be harrangued for insect appropriation.
More seriously, the deepest concern about groups like ExChiefs4Change is how staggeringly anti-democratic they are. Their statement included the assertion that any “questioning of these claims, because we are not part of the indigenous community, is hugely disrespectful and discriminatory”.
Translated, this means they are happy to shut down debate and scrutiny – and the fundamental civil right to disagree with Native American pressure groups, or anybody else – in order to achieve their ends.
The concept of freedom of speech and opinion is clearly not high on their agenda, and the diktat ends with the authoritarian mantra, “you cannot out-vote harm and wrong-doing”.
The good news is that they are wrong again. Those Chiefs supporters who vote in the club’s AGM on November 24 can put the pressure group’s cocktail of virtue-signalling harm and wrong-doing in its place by choosing overwhelmingly to keep the Chiefs branding as it is, along with the right of its supporters to wear whatever they choose, whether it’s a war-bonnet – or a kilt.
“The concept of freedom of speech and opinion is clearly not high on their agenda”