The Tibetan fox for me has a permanent ‘done with this shit’ look that I love.

  • inspxtr@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I think what and how it is used for or interpreted as should be a factor to determine whether it is appropriation of Native American culture.

    I’m not a native english speaker, and often times the term in my mind can mean zodiac animals. I’m not saying they are the same thing. English is a common language, and people from other cultures may interpret the word differently.

    Hence I sometimes wonder whether there are other cultures across the world that use similar terms (eg totem symbolism), or whether such term can mean different things to other cultures. A blanket ban of the specific combination of these two words in english based on one some cultures may seem unfair to others if this is true. If anyone knows or has issues with the logic, please correct me.

    EDIT: see the discussion in the comments https://lemm.ee/comment/1954510

    EDIT 2: per below comment, Native American shouldn’t be treated as 1 culture.

    • gowan@reddthat.com
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      1 year ago

      Native Americans are not one culture BTW. We treat them as one because the USA’s history towards non-northern protestant European people is pretty much always racist but they are no more similar cultures than the French and Slovenians are.

      • inspxtr@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Yeah, I agree, my bad, just edited it. Do you know whether the concept/word of spirit animal exists in only a small subsets of Native American cultures, or in all cultures related to Native Americans?

        • gowan@reddthat.com
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          1 year ago

          Honestly I don’t know. I suspect that different groups have it and others don’t but like most Americans my understanding of the cultures we killed off isn’t great and most of it is in context if our genocides against them.