domingo, 26 de septiembre de 2010

Join my Tribe!

Is it any wonder that when a person starts talking with another about his/her "native" heritage, they coalesce into a culture club, then start calling themselves a "tribe", when it's been done that way in New Orleans for over a century? Now even the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) is promoting its own version of ground-up tribal creation :
Three things i've learned from CBS's latest promotion:
  1. corporations have learned from the late-20th-century fad of culture-club-creation that the idea of a real tribe can be made into a fun game of fake tribes that can be capitalized.
  2. creating and joining a tribe is money-making "entertainment", not culture. "Entertainment clubs" should be the new descriptive term for these groups that start up in the 21st century, take a "desire to return to the Old Ways of Our Ancestors," steal an old local Native American Indian tribal name, and squat on it to 'assume' its cultural identity.
  3. the bigger and more-recognized an "entertainment club" is at the county (1, 2, 3) and regional pow-wow levels, the better they'll do in the far more difficult challenges to get to state and federal levels where the really big buck are.
That's how entertainment works/makes money, for the creators -- the entertainment clubs, and the vendors -- the powwow sellers, "heritage parks", and casinos waiting in the wings.