Burning Man: “Going Native” and the (White) American Dream

Somehow – despite being one hell of an artsy-fartsy bastard – I’ve always harbored an aversion to Burning Man ranging from pie-easy indifference to deep-seated distrust.

I haven’t articulated it until now; I guess part of it is the whole “if you don’t think it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread you’re totally not hip and open-minded” attitude that permeates its promotion, and another part is the inability of its overwhelmingly white patrons to understand that dressing up in costumes and burning large icons at night may not be number one on list of fun weekend activities for people of color?

Incredibly, I’m not the only uppity individual pursuing this line of thinking…

From Samhita at Feministing:

So what do they mean when they say Burning Man is a place of freedom? You don’t need money once you get there sure. However, you DO need money to get there. A lot of it. Tickets go for 2-300 dollars not to mention the thousands of dollars spent on gas money and equipment to survive in a climate that is not inhabitable. They might as well have said, “we are having a party on the moon, hope to see you there!” The free, liberatory space the BM claims to be, can only be so, if you have the resources you need to get there. When I wake up dreaming of freedom, I am not thinking there is a massive door charge.

So after assessing in my head the bogus hypocrisy of all the rhetoric and politics of BM, I also had no choice but to take to task the dramatic underrepresentation of people of color in music, attendees and art. There isn’t much to be said because so few people of color in attendance kind of says it all. Beyond the expense of the trip, they don’ do much to make it appealing to people of color. It is not the kind of space where we are made to feel welcome, it is not our space and it was not meant to be. Given that Burning Man must make at least 10 million dollars on the door fee alone, you would think some of that money would go to outreach or funding artists and musicians of color, but it didn’t appear to be that way.

…Now this total lack of people of color wouldn’t be as startling if there wasn’t an over representation of all things people of color. White people on the playa felt very comfortable donning “ethnic” cultural artifacts, styles of dress, architectural and artistic styles. The influences were profound. I saw at least 5 white men wearing full Native American headresses and tribal face paint. This is made worse because Nevada is home to some of the poorest reservations in the country, so not only was this insensitive but it is blatantly offensive (even if it is done in the guise of their version of the “American Dream”). Similarly, I saw many folks wearing traditional Arab dress and wrapping kafiyah’s around their heads. In one instance a young man actually took his off when sitting next to us. I will never know if he did it because it was hot or because he couldn’t figure out if we were of Arab descent or not, but it occurred to me that he wouldn’t have even thought he might run into some folks that might be offended. We caught him in his free space.

The search for making a culture of their own, the majority white constituency of BM have created a culture of dramatic appropriation, elitism, consumption and lack of inclusion all within the guise of freedom. It is another American holiday like any other and honestly, it is fun. I suppose it doesn’t get more American Dream than that, now does it.

And then there are the white ladies who dress up as scantily-clad, mass-produced plastic dolls and then claim without a trace of their much-valued irony that this alter-ego “is someone without any borders, any rules, any shapes, any influences.”

LOL. Poor thing.

Also, this:

More than fifty Bay Area Native American rights activists converged on the historic East Oakland property at 9:30 p.m. to ensure the shutdown of popular Burning Man group Visionary Village’s “Go Native!” party. The fired-up Hopis, Kiowas and other tribal members spent more than four hours lecturing the handful of white, college-class Burners about cultural sensitivity until some of them simply broke down crying. The emotional crescendo capped a month-long saga that started with a tone-deaf dance party flyer, led to an Internet flame war and a public excoriation of Visionary Village’s young, neo-hippy leaders before real tribal elders in the East Bay demanded a cancellation of the event.

…Within the dark, labyrinthine walls of the 140-year-old former brothel, old Native Americans were lecturing young Burners on what it meant to be Indian. Lit by dim lamps under red glass lampshades, tribal elder Wounded Knee DeOcampo — wearing a black T-shirt that read “original landlord” — stood over performance artist “Cicada” in her sparkly, sheer scarf and layered hipster garb, lecturing her about his grandmother’s forcible kidnapping and rape at white hands.

“There’s a lot of pain,” he said. “I don’t want you to agree with me, I want you to understand!”

…But for every apology, the group often inserted a foot into its mouth. Some Burners said they’d been trained by shamans to build altars, others sang racist childhood songs, or noted the lack of Native Americans at Burning Man (which occurs on an Indian reservation). Others asked for Indian help with their Burning Man projects, prompting a Hopi woman to go off.

“I’m trying to articulate my feelings as best I can without completely losing it,” she said. “What we do is not an artistic expression. And you don’t have artistic license to take little pieces here and there and do what you want with it. That’s something you people don’t understand, probably never will understand.”