“Receiving stolen goods” doesn’t mean you’re directly a thief, but it rarely means you get to keep the stuff after discovery.
And if you don’t think the British hold up the combined wealth and holdings of the British Museum itself as a foundational example of what British culture is, you’re dreaming.
There’s lots of people who feel that one major part of “to be British” is to have museums with the best examples of other people’s stuff. It’s a collector culture, and that’s a type of cultural expression too.
This actually gets to the heart of what cultural appropriation means. It’s about power. When Hollywood made cowboy-and-indians stereotypes, they weren’t saying “Hollywood is Native American culture”; They were saying they were the one who gets to decide how the culture of another is used. When most hipster racists appropriate cultural symbols, they aren’t saying they are Native Americans; They’re saying they get to decide how Native American symbols are used.
If Native Americans didn’t have their power to decide appropriateness taken away routinely and systematically, then we probably wouldn’t have this thread at all. That’s the difference between this example of appropriated headdresses and all the other “whatabouts” that people are bringing up: The power imbalance that’s real and happening now.
