Why your white holidays are an affront to the indigenous movement

Thanksgiving, Christmas, Halloween, Valentines, you know them all – and most likely celebrate them too. Fine. It’s what everybody does now right? It’s not fine. Unless you come from a long line of people who celebrated these traditions and UNDERSTAND, where they come from and WHY people do it. You think you know about your yearly tradition? Its not the basic watered down story you hear and tell. Your welcome to do some research on those practices but without a word of a lie NONE of them are indigenous.

This isn't about the very obvious cultural appropriation, that's been covered a lot, everywhere. So if your'e not sure what that means I definitely recommend taking a look, it's important. It's also not about holidays that were created in your culture, by your people. Dia de los muertos for instance, comes from Mexico - so that belongs to them and anyone who comes from there. I'm also pretty sure they hate what the rest of the world has done with their celebration. I'm not going to go into the details of each celebration because they all deserve their own time and space for discussion. This right here, is about the hypocrisy of white holidays being celebrated by culturally, religiously and institutionally oppressed indigenous people.

Apologies to my Hawaiian readers, this picture is just to prove my point really. Commercialism, meets oppressed culture which equals capitalist gain at the hands of colonial ideals. Its insane how far and how deep colonization has stuck its dirty toe into our indigenous wholesomeness. What should be a revered, respected, indigenous cultural practice has once again been turned into a source of tourist exoticism. They turn our sacred ancestral customs and turn them into jokes, and proceed to force theirs onto us upon generations!

These last 10 years have seen some of the biggest indigenous movements in history. Namely Mauna Kea! As indigenous people we want the world to know that whenua (land) does not belong to us, but we to the land. Ihumātao! As indigenous people we want the world to know that we have been stripped time and time again from our rights as first nations people, as land lords, as protectors, as humans. Standing Rock! As indigenous people we want the world to THINK before pillaging resources in ways that are detrimental to the ecology of our planet!

Yet! You know all of these things, and still. After everything our ancestors have been through you – dying, being tortured, punished, having our children taken away by the thousands! Having white washed versions of history shoved down our throats for centuries! Having our cultures our languages made into criminal acts! Being told that our leaders and healers and teachers are nothing more than charlatans!

And YET!!! You spend your money by the hundreds to dress your children to their culture, to sing their songs, you make monuments to them in your homes with lights and trees and pumpkins and you laugh and sing through it all. Did you think for one moment our ancestors would recognise any of these customs? Or understand why you would go into debt doing it? Or that their descendants would be apart of some ridiculous rigmarole of parade – celebrating their loss. White holidays are a celebration of OUR loss.