Harry Potter and the Pointless Outrage: J.K. Rowling Accused of Appropriating Native American Culture
10th March 2016
This story might make you want to point a wand at your computer screen and shout Avada Kedavra: Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling has come under fire for appropriating Native American culture in recently released stories that build on the mythology she created.
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Is something wrong with this? No. There is an entire genre of fiction, in fact, built around “secret histories,” where authors use real historical events or legends but retell them with revisionist or fantastical elements.
But Rowling has run afoul of the people who shout “cultural appropriation” whenever someone borrows from an ethnic tradition to which they do not belong. As was the case with Renee Bierbaum—the yoga instructor who was shut down by the county government after a Native American activist accused her of culture theft—a militant defender of Native traditions is asserting that Rowling is taking “a living tradition of a marginalized people.”
“That’s straight up colonialism/appropriation,” wrote Dr. Adrienne Keene, an academic and member of the Cherokee Nation, on Twitter.
Somebody needs to tell these people to get over themselves.