inAPPROPRIATion
by Harbeer Sandhu
art by Austin Smith
It started at Coachella, this noise. About four years ago at Coachella. It started with a bunch of pretty, rich white kids from Los Angeles prancing around a polo field in the Mojave rocking war bonnets and face paint.
So, let’s just go there. Let’s cut to the chase. Godwin’s Law states that any online discussion will eventually turn to Nazi comparisons, and since my topic this month — Cultural Appropriation — has been contended and contested in every internet forum for the past few years, let’s just start off with the Nazis.
Imagine that the Nazis had won. It’s 2025 and the Nazis won WWII. No, wait, let’s make this analogy as accurate as possible. Let’s get the time frame right.
The “American Indian Wars” allegedly ended in the 1890s, but Native American children continued to be taught that they were ugly stupid savage losers as part of official US policy into the 1990s. They were taken from their families and their communities and sent to American Indian boarding schools where they were beaten to submission and taught that they were ugly stupid savage losers. But enrollment in those institutions peaked in the 1970s, so let’s draw a line at 1975, with the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975. So…1975 to 2025…round that up to 40 years.
It has only been 40 years since the US government’s official policy was to tell Native Americans that they were ugly stupid savage losers.
So, the Nazis won and it’s 40 years after the end of the war. It’s Germany in 1985 and the Germans have a huge festival in the Alps featuring Kraftwerk and David Hasselhoff and Scorpions and all the hottest German bands of 1985. Let’s call it Smoachella. And dig this — at Smoachella, all the hippest, hottest German kids are rocking swastikas. No, sorry, not swastikas — the Nazis won, so swastikas are passé (that would be like hipsters rocking the Stars and Stripes). No, sorry, all the hippest, hottest kids at Smoachella are rocking the Star of David, the six-pointed star, the Jewish symbol. Because, you know, they’re like, pretty, and easy to draw, you know? I mean, it doesn’t have to be religious; they just like how they look, OK?
A white person rocking a plains Indian war bonnet in 2025 is equivalent to a Nazi wearing a Star of David in 1985 — if the Nazis had won.
