OutKast is outcast from Native community

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THE URBANE INDIAN

The wagons are circled and the Natives are restless for sure. E-mails and condemnations are flying across North America quicker than broken treaty promises. For the second time in as many months, a major American television musical spectacle, this time the Grammys instead of the Super Bowl halftime show, has provoked an outcry. Only this time, Janet Jackson's breast was nowhere in sight. Instead, it is a performance by rap artists OutKast that has the Native community on the war path.

Near the end of the show on Feb. 8, the band took to the stage, emerging from a fake bright green tipi, and proceeded to bump and grind with their back-up dancers, barely scantily clad in feathered psuedo headressess, fringed skirts and hotpants, and braided wigs. The University of Southern California band later joined OutKast onstage also wearing war paint and feathered headdressess that many Aboriginal viewers called totally inappropriate and insulting.

"It was the most disgusting set of racial stereotypes aimed at American Indians that I have ever seen on TV," said Sean Freitas, a board member of the Native American Cultural Center, located in San Fransisco. "It was on par with white people dancing sexually in black face."

As a result, the centre is calling on CBS to issue a formal apology to the viewing nation. And it's not just American Indians that have found fault with the Grammy telecast. Ojibway poet Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm found that the performance was "staged and choreographed in a way that was perhaps the most tiresome, vacuuous, and most disrespectful exploitation of Native American culture seen in years. It's time for the appropriation, exploitation and desecration of Aboriginal culture to stop. This is not just an American Indian issue, but should be of concern to all thoughtful, caring, honest people."

Penny Gummerson, the Native Canadian author of the play Wawatay, said in an e-mail that the musical number was "a rather tasteless performance... their use of Native American props and clothing was rather appalling." She added her name to the growing list of people calling on an international boycott of CBS, OutKast's label Arista Records, and the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences that sponsored the awards.

"Native people have long been forced to accept our subservient role in Canadian/American society. This has to stop. We can no longer accept false and offensive behavior such as this," Gummerson added.

Elaine Bomberry, well known Native arts co-ordinator and producer of the popular Toronto Real Rez Bluez concert series, was in the audience Grammy night.

"Watching OutKast's performance was a truly painful experience that cut very deep... after all these years we're still presented in a such a stereotypical, horrific way. What was even sadder was that everyone was on their feet cheering, screaming, completely oblivious to the racial spectacle they just witnessed. It went right over their heads. We were surrounded."

Andrew Brother Elk, chairman of the Native American Cultural Center, has also lodged a complaint with the American Federal Communications Commission, saying he found the performance racist.

"If people wearing yarmulkes and the Hasidic dress were bumping and grinding, we would see that as ridiculous, but for some reason we don't see what OutKast did as ridiculous."

What particularly irked many Native viewers was the rampant disrespect of traditional Native symbols and items. Andrew Brother Elk cited the use of feathers, sacred symbols of Native Americans, as a particular abuse. "My understanding is they also used a ceremonial "Beauty Way" song without permission from the Navajo Nation and in an utterly inappropriate way," observed Akiwenzie-Damm.

The Native American Cultural Center's call for a boycott has resulted in a flood of more than 1,000 e-mails in support from across the United States and Canada. Radio stations from Alaska to Floridapicked up on the story and are talking about racism in the media. Indigenous communities across North America have joined the center in strongly protesting the circumstances surrounding the OutKast Grammy appearance.

CBS, in response to the growing outcry, is reported to have offered apologies "if anyone was offended" by the CBS broadcast.

Not good enough, said Brother Elk. "There has been no formal response from CBS. It was just a comment reported in a paper. Second, an actual apology when it comes should be from Les Moonvies, head of CBS, and specifically address the outrageous racism CBS broadcast into millions of homes ... [They] need to explain to the country how this could have gotten on the air in the first place without someone saying 'Gee, this is offensive racism. It is not entertainment.'

Brother Elk said in a press release that even with an apology, the Native American Cultural Center would continue to press for an FCC investigation of the TV incident, and if it appears that the offending parties knowingly broadcast racism, the center would demand penalties.

"So much work behind the scenes by Indigenous people all over Turtle Island over many years has gone on to ensure that racial stereotypes about Indigenous peoples are not reinforced," said Bomberry, "then one production number on the Grammys throws us back many years. Together we can demand a public apology."

If anybody cares, OutKast won three Grammys that night, including Album of the Year for Speakerboxx/The Love Below. The duo is up for six awards at next month's 35th Annual NAACP Image Awards, though the Native American Cultural Center is calling on the NAACP, in support, to reconsider the band's nominations. It will be interesting to see their response.