But my Grandpa was 1/16th Cherokee!

In cartoons, cherokee, hipster headdress by Adrienne K.12 Comments

Happy Friday everyone! Thanks to my friend (and amazing internet browser) Scott for finding this one–perfectly sums it up, I think.

Are we finally witnessing the death of the hipster headdress?

Cartoon can be found on http://adverbemonade.tumblr.com, and check out how many people have re-blogged it!

Earlier: But Why Can’t I Wear a Hipster Headdress?

(Thanks Scott!)

Comments

  4. Reply
    bettyfokker

    Awesome! I, too, shall reblog it. Although if it had said “my great-grandmother was a Cherokee Princess” it would have been even funnier to me 🙂

  8. Reply
    michaelwatsonvt

    Wait, are people really doing this? (Wearing head dresses to parties?) I don’t even own one! (As we are not enrolled, we cannot possess raptor feathers. This is yet another conundrum as I strongly support protecting endangered species….)

  9. Reply
    KD12

    The 1/16 Cherokee confuses me now, after you wrote about your own ancestry… which given all the other European ancestry you have might not add up to much more than one 1/16… Where do you draw the line? And why focus SO strongly with one ancestry and identify SO strongly with that one?

    Having said all that: Of course I am against the hipster headdress…

  10. Reply
    Adrienne K.

    @KD12 It’s not about the blood quantum, it’s a reference to the fact that a lot of the hipster headdress offenders claim Native ancestry (specifically, often, Cherokee) as a way to defend their “right” to wear the headdress. The ironic (and therefore funny) part is that Cherokees don’t and never have worn headdresses, and if they had any cultural ties they would know that headdresses are sacred and not something you wear to get wasted at a party.

    As far as my own background, I write about my Native identity here, but I also am strongly tied to my other backgrounds as well. The difference is that Native identity is also about citizenship–being a citizen of a tribal nation is different than identifying as armenian/welsh/german/irish…I don’t have citizenship rights in any of those nations. It’s about sovereignty, nationhood, AND identity-for me anyway.

    Thanks for your questions!

  11. Reply
    030cbab6-73a2-11e0-a036-000f20980440

    Okay, so I’ve read a few posts on this blog (and others) about how it’s offensive to wear a headdress, and I now understand why. So first of all, thank you for that.

    So my question is, if you’re someone who isn’t of Native American descent, but you are interested in their culture and appreciate their history and traditions, how would you go about “celebrating” them without being offensive? In other words, how would you go about emulating something you find beautiful without it turning into mockery?

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