Indigenous headdresses are now on the vendors’ list of “restricted items” for the 2015 Glastonbury Music Festival, after the efforts of Daniel Round, a former Carleton exchange student.
Round, 23, came to Carleton two years ago on exchange from Great Britain to study American and Canadian history. He said it was his first trip outside of Europe.
At Carleton he learned more about indigenous issues, culture, art, and history.
“I was pretty ignorant about Native American issues before I came here,” he said. “It definitely opened my eyes.”
When Round went back to Europe, he realized there was a disconnect when he saw people wearing ceremonial-style headdresses at the Glastonbury Music Festival.
“The headdress is the most obvious example of cultural appropriation where it’s just been stolen, taken, used in pop culture without any consideration for the people who created it and value it so much,” he said.
“In Europe, in Britain, there’s not really the same level of consciousness.”
Round said he emailed the Glastonbury Music Festival a couple of times about the sale of indigenous headdresses and didn’t hear anything back. After a couple of weeks, he decided to start a petition on change.org.
He contacted Canadian musicians and activists, including Ottawa group A Tribe Called Red, who supported the petition.
After receiving 65 signatures, the festival contacted Round and said they would place the headdresses on the “restricted items” list for vendors. This does not ban people from wearing the headdresses, but does prevent traders from selling them.
When Round got the idea to start a petition, he turned to Pitseolak Pfeifer, a second-year Canadian studies student of Inuk heritage, for help.
“It’s a great effort by Daniel and others in North America,” Pfeifer said.
“To take a moment and go, ‘Hold on, what am I buying? What am I holding onto? Where does it come from? What does it mean?’ Instead of just grabbing, possessing, owning, and claiming it as yours. We’re losing that connection and we’re losing the value and respect of other cultures,” he said.
Pfeifer added that, while these might be indigenous issues, Indigenous people shouldn’t be the only people trying to solve them.
“It’s knowing that non-Indigenous people, supporters of indigenous issues, see the opportunity to be a voice and take action, gives me a lot of hope,” he said.
Round faced some online criticism when he announced the news, getting comments that were hostile toward Indigenous people.
“That was disheartening and made me think that we’ve got a lot of work to do,” he said. “We live in this global world and it doesn’t matter if there’s one Native American in Britain or one thousand or one million. Racism is racism. Racism transcends borders.”
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