At 2015′s Glastonbury music festival you will likely not be able to purchase such incendiary devices as: cigarettes, flares and Native American headdresses.
Yup, the U.K. fest is just the latest in a growing number of organizations that are perking up their ears and taking note when Native people point out that something seemingly innocuous is actually offensive. You know, like putting on a sacred piece of ceremonial garb and twerking on a muddy field.
The restrictions on the sale of headdresses came about after U.K. citizen Daniel Round created a Change.org petition, according to The Guardian.
Related: Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Wear A Native American Headdress
“There has long been consensus among indigenous civil rights activists in North America about the wearing of headdresses by non-Natives — that it is an offensive and disrespectful form of cultural appropriation, that it homogenises diverse indigenous peoples, and that it perpetuates damaging, archaic and racist stereotypes,” Round wrote in the petition.
Only 65 people signed the digital document, but that was apparently enough to tip the fest organizers’ hands. There has been no public statement on the issue, however; headdresses have merely been added to the list of things you cannot sell at the fest “without prior authorisation or discussion with the markets’ management” — right after flags and before gazebos.
This isn’t the first time headdresses have been effectively banned from a fest. The Bass Coast Festival in Canada previously nixed war bonnets from their event partly because the festival takes place on indigenous land where aboriginal people such as the Coldwater Indian Band and the Lower Nicola Indian Band reside.
If you’re wondering why headdresses have become so unwelcome at music festivals, it’s because, over the years, celebrities — like Pharrell and Gwen Stefani — and music fans have devalued their cultural significance, according to Native peoples.
Simon Moya-Smith, citizen of the Oglala Lakota Nation and journalist, told MTV News, “The headdress is reserved for our revered elders who, through their selflessness and leadership, have earned the right to wear one… Wearing one, even an imitation headdress, belittles what our elders have spent a lifetime to earn.”
Image courtesy of Flickr, Michael Gallacher
Brenna Ehrlich
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