An open letter to my colleagues in the creative industry (including fashion, graphic design,

illustration, textiles, et al),

We make things because we want the world to be a better, more beautiful place. We believe
that all people, regardless of their nationality or income, should be able to find beauty in the
world around them, joy in the things they see or touch or wear. And we want to be a part of that.
And we could be, but for one thing. We suffer from addiction. There is no drug, no liquor that
we, collectively, cannot resist. No, we are kleptomaniacs. We steal things. We cant help it. We
see something and we want it, so we take it. The things weve been taking, the things we are
taking, are expensive. Culture. Identity. History. We are taking sovereignty. Let me stop dancing
around with words. Let me get at the heart of what Im trying to say - What we are taking is the
blood that keeps many hearts beating. Cultural blood. Ancestral blood. And in that blood is
energy - an energy that has kept pulsing through colonization, genocide, Residential School
systems, segregation, poverty, mass-kidnapping, forced relocation, and countless other crimes.
What Im talking about is American Indian; Native Indian; Native American Indian;
Amerindian; Native American; Native Canadian; Indigenous; Indgenas; First Nations culture.

The cultural resistance and fortitude of the worlds indigenous cultures is something that was not
broken by disease, invasion, colonization, forced sterilization, forced assimilation, forced
relocation, mass disenfranchisement, genocide and attempted genocide or centuries of
unadulterated racism.

In the first one hundred years after contact (which, as youll soon learn, is a word that would be
better replaced by invasion), nine out of every ten indigenous peoples in the Americas
perished due to disease and violence. To make absolutely clear the scope of the death toll, I
should tell you that that is the lowest estimate. Ninety percent of all human life on two continents
perished because of a European desire for new land. This isnt our fault, as designers and
creators, but it is our legacy and anything we do to exacerbate the suffering of indigenous
peoples, with even a basic knowledge of colonial relations with indigenous peoples, absolutely
is.

Think about where you live, about your family, your friends, your extended network of
acquaintances that probably stretches across your country, maybe across the continent you live
on. Now imagine, for a moment, that a group of countries, lets say they call themselves PINTO,
decide that they want more oil, or wood, or water - it could be anything - and they all vote
unanimously to invade, with far more advanced technology and firepower than your country has.
They dont care about human rights and the people back in their own country are encouraging
them to kill as many people as possible, as well as take prisoners back home as slaves. For
every ten people you know, nine are gone within the first year (if were condensing the past 500
years into one life-span, this is about accurate). You survive, however, by clinging to your
identity and connect with others who have survived, primarily through your cultures. Your
culture, and the cultures of the other survivors, quickly become monuments of resistance and
allow you to get up in the morning and see that you have survived. A couple of years later,
everywhere you look are symbols of your culture, but used widely out of context - it becomes
clear that even that isnt private to you anymore. You, and everyone you know, has been
exploited - sexually, physically, mentally, economically - if theyve survived the initial killing and
kidnapping. Now, theyre taking the only thing you really had left - one of the only things that
connects you to the people youve lost, the life youve lost, the world youve lost, and to the
people who have also survived.
This is an extremely simplified version of what has happened to the indigenous and indgenas
peoples of the Americas, and Africa, and Australia, and Siberia and all over the world. Do you


really want to play a role in this? Culture is what keeps the memories of those who are killed
alive. Taking that culture, when our ancestors have already taken lives, is tantamount to being
an accessory to murder. If someone kills a man and burns all the items he ever owned, all the
photos of him, everything his family might have to remember him by, has he not murdered him
twice?

We go into this industry because we want to create things, not take them. We want to make the
world beautiful for everyone, not just for a few. We want to make a living creating things that are
original, that we have created ourselves, not to make things easier on ourselves by taking things
others have already created and tweaking them slightly before re-packaging them and selling
them as our own.

We should create a world of beauty that we are proud of. We should make things that belong
only to us, that people can see and recognize as ours. We should contribute to the world,
instead of taking away from it. And, above all, we should stop victimizing those who have
already gone through so much.

I call on my colleagues, as designers and artists and craftspersons, to stop making things that
are Native American inspired or Amerindian or Apache pattern inspired or Tribal. Start
creating things that are you, that are inspired by the world around you, not by a world that is not
yours and that you dont understand.