Osheaga's headdress ban shows festival's zero tolerance for cultural appropriation
The Montreal music event’s decision to ‘respect and honour’ First Nations people was praised for taking an uncompromising stance toward the ubiquitous offence
On the website for Montreal’s Osheaga Music and Arts Festival, beneath the customary rules and regulations and frequently asked questions, there is a comprehensive list of items banned from the festival premises, including laser pointers, fireworks, drones and selfie sticks. This year the list boasts a surprising addition: traditional First Nations headdresses.
The rule is clear and ironclad. Any attendee who shows up wearing a headdress will have it confiscated upon entry or be asked to leave and return without it.
The First Nations headdress was much-discussed last week when a young white woman donned one at the Winnipeg Folk Festival. (She also sported a bit of vaguely aboriginal face paint, as if to double down on the offence.) A few surreptitious snapshots circulated on social media, arousing a maelstrom of outrage and indignation and within hours, the festival had issued a statement denouncing such gestures of cultural appropriation and insisting that the organisers consider banning headdresses from future events. They ultimately decided against an outright ban but said they would “certainly be asking patrons not to wear headdresses” in future.
The incident has effected more substantive change elsewhere, as music festivals across
Canada
continue to speak out against appropriation and impose hardline bans. The Edmonton Folk Festival revealed on Facebook earlier this week that at “this time of greater awareness” it would like its attendees “to respect First Nations cultures and to not wear any type of First Nations headdresses during the festival”, adding that these items would in fact “be confiscated by festival security” should anyone opt to bring one anyway. The Calgary Folk Festival, following Winnipeg’s precedent, has publicly implored its patrons to leave headdresses at home but won’t officially forbid them.
Osheaga, which attracts upwards of 40,000 people to its grounds each day, is the highest-profile music festival to ban headdresses in order to “respect and honour” the First Nations people. The Facebook announcement got more than 12,000 likes in only three days – and provoked serious conversation online and in the media about what can be done about cultural appropriation. The comments lurking under the post, of course, are rife with the expected discontent and hand-wringing about political correctness. But for the most part the reaction from indigenous people and non-indigenous people alike has been thankful, even celebratory.
Caroline Audet, manager of public relations at Evenko, Osheaga’s promoter, feels the response has been “very positive”. “Once people understand the meaning of it and the reasons,” she says, “they are very happy with the decision.” But no specific incident was the catalyst for the change in policy. “The First Nations headdresses have a spiritual and cultural meaning in the Native communities,” Audet explains. “We saw more and more fans wear these at other festivals and we just don’t want this to happen at our festival.” That A Tride Called Red, a First Nations electronic group from Ottawa, is set to perform this year made it “even more important to make this decision out of respect for them”.
A common refrain among those against the headdress ban is that it isn’t fair to stop a non-indigenous person from wearing something that an indigenous person could wear to a festival without complaint. But what those adopting this line of reasoning fail to understand is the context of the headdress in First Nations communities.
The headdress is not, contrary to its depictions in popular culture, a fashion accessory, or common component of a day-to-day indigenous ensemble.
Niigaanwewidam James Sinclair, head of the Department of Native Studies at the University of Manitoba, says the headdress is strictly ceremonial, so an indigenous person would never wear a headdress to a music festival in the first place.
“A headdress is bestowed to a person in a leadership position,” he explains. Its style is rich in meaning: “Each feather in the headdress represents a relationship that has been forged by that leader or a relationship that leader carries within the community and outside the community. A feather has thousands of little strands and they all represent different relationships. That’s what a leader carries: those relationships.”
Sinclair feels the ban is a long time coming because this sort of appropriation “happens all the time”. “People have been dressing up like Indians for 150 years,” he says. “It’s about celebrating the conquest of indigenous people. People don’t understand how degrading it is to have a sacred object within a culture stolen and appropriated and misused in an inappropriate setting.” Many indigenous people want to enjoy a music festival just like anybody else. “That’s impossible to do that when you have people celebrating genocide standing right beside you.”
But for Sinclair the proactive efforts of Osheaga and other festivals to address this offensive behaviour is a step in the right direction. “It takes a long time to educate people and this is one step in that re-education process,” he explains. “It’s only a matter of time now before people begin to understand that indigenous people will not tolerate the disrespect of their cultural objects.”
Cultural appropriation is doomed to go out of fashion, Sinclair believes. “Stupidity and ignorance never last in the face of reasoned arguments.”