Cultural Appropriation in Context symposium 22.5.

The Cultural Appropriation in Context: Histories, Encounters and Power symposium organized by the ApproFi project was held on May 22nd at the University of Turku and online. The symposium was opened by the project’s principal investigator Reetta Humalajoki (University of Turku) and senior lecturer Sonja Dobroski (University of Manchester).

The program consisted of eleven multi-faceted and enlightening presentations:

Dale Potts, South Dakota State University
Naturalists Olaus and Mardie Murie, Western Science, and the Acknowledgment of Indigenous Voices.

Henri Keskinen, University of Turku
Recoded Exotism and Luxury: How Tourism Was Used to Appropriate Indigenous Hawaiian Culture (1891–1894)

Anna Yanenko, Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra
Sacred Spaces Weaponized: Soviet Appropriation of Ukrainian Religious Heritage in Kyiv during the 1920s–1930s as Imperial Identity Construction

Tamás Scheibner, Eötvös Loránd University of Budapest
Appropriation under Constraint: Native American Imitation, Nonconformism, and Political Reframing in Hungary

Karl Wood, Kazimierz Wielki University in Bydgoszcz
Appropriation of Indigeneity in the Transnational Spa

Juliano Bentes, Federal University of Pará
From Aceita to Rejeita: Epistemic Extractivism, Cultural Appropriation, and Counter-Devices in the Amazonian LGBT Scene

Jimena Bigá, University of Helsinki
Inter-Nation Circulation, Not Appropriation: A Tuxá Decolonial View

Julia Siepak, Guglielmo Marconi University of Rome
Ethnic Frauds: Poetics and Politics of Claiming Indigeneity in Louise Erdrich’s The Sentence and katherina vermette’s Real Ones

Viliina Silvonen, University of Eastern Finland & Emmi Kuittinen, University of the Arts, Helsinki
Contested Karelian laments in Finland in the 2020s

Monia O’Brien Castro, Université de Tours
Beyond Cultural Appropriation: Kneecap and the Rearticulation of the Politics of Hip Hop in Post-Conflict Northern Ireland

Grace Myers, University of Rochester
Rethinking Agency and Appropriation in the Professionalization of Modern Lebanese Dabke

After the presentations, the concluding discussion was led by professor David Stirrup (University of York).

The day culminated in the open keynote lecture What are possible motives for cultural appropriation of Sámi yoiking in Finnish music? by Pirita Näkkäläjärvi, doctoral researcher at the Sibelius Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki and president of the Sámi Parlament in Finland, with professor Renae Watchman from McMaster University as the discussant. The keynote attracted a wide audience of symposium participants as well as others, both on-site and online.