CULTURAL APPROPRIATION: YOGA & FOOD

CULTURAL APPROPRIATION:  YOGA & FOOD

Is it time to close the schools and send the students to the countryside to harvest rice?  Even Chairman Mao had a few good ideas. 

University closes down Yoga classes.  "Yoga has been under a lot of controversy lately due to how it is being practiced," and which cultures those practices "are being taken from."  The centre official argues since many of those cultures "have experienced oppression, cultural genocide and diasporas due to colonialism and western supremacy ... we need to be mindful of this and how we express ourselves while practising yoga."  The concept of cultural appropriation is normally applied when a dominant culture borrows symbols of a marginalized culture for dubious reasons -- such as the fad of hipsters donning indigenous headdresses as a fashion statement, without any regard to cultural significance or stereotype.

Acting student federation president Romeo Ahimakin denied the decision resulted from a complaint.  Ahimakin said the student federation put the yoga session on hiatus while they consult with students "to make it better, more accessible and more inclusive to certain groups of people that feel left out in yoga-like spaces. ... We are trying to have those sessions done in a way in which students are aware of where the spiritual and cultural aspects come from, so that these sessions are done in a respectful manner."

Food:  Several universities cancel ‘Taco Night’ and other ethnic food serving.  Claim  “food is appropriated when people from the dominant culture – in the case of the US, white folks – start to fetishize or commercialize it, and when they hoard access to that particular food.  When a dominant culture reduces another community to it’s cuisine, subsumes histories and stories into menu items – when people think culture can seemingly be understood with a bite of food, that’s where it gets problematic.

Colonization and gentrification are directly related to the appropriation of food. We also need to begin educating ourselves on issues and event that impact the communities that we’re drawing our meals from.

Close the schools!