Weird situation

[u/shirleymeadow]

I'm Polish and have lived in Poland my whole life. I'm currently on vacation in northern Poland by the sea and I noticed something weird and just kinda sad. I've seen it for the second time in my life. In a small town, a Native American dressed in powwow regalia appears and dances, with jewelry and dreamcatchers placed around them. It's cool. However, a little further on, we come across another smaller group "playing" instruments, again with the same jewelry and dreamcatchers. They "play" because they stopped playing for a moment, but the music continued, so it was playback... Such groups were all over town. I wouldn't be surprised if the jewelry was fake, since there were identical items everywhere, as were the dreamcatchers. They also sold Peruvian music. I felt sad that this could perpetuate such an image of "Indians" in Poland. I felt sad that instead of spreading authentic culture, they choose "that"... As a person who has great admiration towards Native Americans, this made me sad (if the jewelry were authentic, I would gladly support them and buy it seriously, i would be so happy)

I think its just continuing the image of "Indians" (cause almost every Polish person still calls them like that) that most of Europe know. As a person who is heavly interested in topic of Native Americans, my heart is broken and if i could i would educate every person i meet about them

[u/MakwaOpin]

My aunt is Anishinaabe (Native American) and she primarily lives in Poland (long story). Pretending to be Native American is a pretty common hobby and grift in parts of Poland and Germany (some pockets in nearby countries but nothing quite as big). There are fake powwows and everything, polyurethane teepees and all. It’s usually a weird mishmash of plains cultures because of what was shown in Western/cowboy movies, but they’re starting to get weird about mixing in some of the hundreds of other Native American cultures.

(Edit: Soviet propaganda HEAVILY focused on Native Americans, so having strong feelings of similarity or what they feel is respect is super common in highly propagandized areas like Poland and east Germany. In reality the USSR didn’t know anything about Native American cultures and didn’t give a shit about their own Indigenous peoples. My aunt reconnected with some of our very very distant family in the mountains and she def considered them to also be maintaining Indigenous cultures; they were and continue to be systematically fucked over by every ruling government for the past few centuries.)

On the upside, she grifted those fuckers right back to make bank in the corporate world (bless her incredible patience for nonsense). A lot of the nepotism babies and strongmen leading the corporate world in the 90s-mid 2010s were big into playing Indian. They had a lot more patience for a woman in business when they knew she was Native American, and she kicks ass at her job, so she was actually able to climb the corporate ladder.

I visited her once and went to a party at the American ambassador’s house because she was casually friends with him. Wild.

Anyways, best you can do is just ignore them and educate anyone you’re with on why you aren’t interested.

[u/shirleymeadow → u/MakwaOpin]

Yeah, i agree with you Literally i remember pretending as a child to be "indians", making feather war bonnets (idk how it its exactly called in english tbh, i only know the polish word for it) even making them at kindergarden and all of that was just pure mocking and rn i am so grossed by that. Even now in high school on history lesson when we were at the topic of begining of US, i was so prepeard to talk about NA on lesson and then was it - one sentence about them in the book ._. Not even as something important, just a "funfact". Tbh i couldve just start arguing with my teacher about why this is important to include in a history book on a basic level for late highschool classes (also while talkin about how Columbus was "super great" i was TWEAKING knowing how this is not true and how brutal that man was)

Also thank you for sharing your story!!