The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #166019   Message #3991359
Posted By: Stilly River Sage
07-May-19 - 07:57 PM
Thread Name: Should women sing chanties
Subject: RE: Should women sing chanties
It's putting one's desire to have a thing ahead of the desire of the previous owner's. I see no reason not to *consider* the "rights" of both parties.

Don't be intrigued - be respectful. The observer who has no rights to the songs should leave them alone. For example, if an outsider decides to offer their own version of the Nightway, without the Navajo permission and without the background, venue, time of year, blessing, etc., they are doing harm. Whether YOU believe it or not, the practitioners of those beliefs believe it. This is cultural appropriation and it is really offensive to native people and their supporters. The most offensive of those borrowing these songs and rituals and artifacts are the faux-shaman crowd who give themselves Indian-sounding names and set up teepees in their Palm Springs yards to chant with their crystals and feathers, or do sweat lodge ceremonies, etc. All of this is bunco, Euramericans getting rich promoting pan-Indian "culture" and "religion."

Case in point, there is a YouTube link (that I won't post) that has a recording of part of the Navajo Nightway (probably made unofficially or in a clandestine way) playing behind a slideshow of Indian-themed paintings and objects. At the end it thanks "Navajo" (?), a doctor (professor?), and who knows what the last bit is. And in the remarks below, from a woman with a traditional Navajo last name of "Tsosie," is this plea:

I like to say something about our traditional way about all these Navaho's song's that are in U tube and every thing like sand painting and what we use for our ceremony. We are not allowed to do that. Our old, old medicine man's told us not to ever do that. This is no, no. I do not like this. Even our prayer songs are in U tube. My goodness!! People. No wonder the ceremony are not working for us anymore. Alot of our people are sick now day's. They just go to the hospital all the time. Enough is enough. No more of this. Respect your ceremony. please!!?


Chanteys are wide-ranging and secular. It's an entirely different discussion. When you're a scholar interested in Other cultures, you have to be very careful in how you address it and what you say about it. Chanteys are out there and women singing are fine - men who are offended by it today are posers.


For further reading look to a specialist in American Indian works, librarian Lisa Mitten and her excellent essay "I" is not for Indian is a good starting point.