A Mohawk Woman Confronted Someone Wearing A Pocahontas Costume At An Ottawa Mall
“My people aren’t a movie character.” Update: She and the store owner are now in touch and will work together to create understanding about cultural appropriation.
Waneek Horn-Miller is a Mohawk woman and Canadian Olympian who works with Manitoba Mukluks to raise awareness about Native beadwork and traditions. She was at an Ottawa mall Saturday when she saw a woman in a Pocahontas costume painting kids' faces.
Waneek Horn-Miller / Via facebook.com
"I walked up to the woman and all the parents waiting in line ... and I was like, 'What she is wearing is really offensive. I want you to know that as a Native person I take offense to that,'" Horn-Miller told BuzzFeed Canada.
Horn-Miller is a former member of the Canadian Olympic and Pan Am waterpolo teams, and recently served as assistant chef de mission at the Pan Am Games in Toronto. She also works as a motivational speaker.
She said people often apologize when she explains that her culture is not a costume to be worn at Halloween, or at a music festival or a hockey game. But this time the owner of the store and parents in line did not agree with her.
"The parents standing there were saying, 'If you don't like Halloween you should just go home,'" she said. "I was so surprised and to be honest my heart just dropped out."
Horn-Miller posted about the encounter on Facebook.
"It was their anger and sense of entitlement that let out deep seeded anger I feel every time I hear of the of missing indigenous women, women being forced to trade sex for special favours from the police, indigenous people left for dead in hospital emergency waiting rooms because they are assumed to be on drugs," she wrote.
Danielle Soucy is the owner of the store, Fêtes en Boîtes, that hired the face painter. She told BuzzFeed Canada that "it could have been any Disney character, any princess of any colour" doing the face-painting.
"It's Halloween today," she said. "Everybody can be anybody."
As for Horn-Miller's objections, Soucy said, "I think she went way too far."
Soucy eventually called mall security and Horn-Miller left the mall with her two children.
"If we didn't have Pocahontas I'd get complaints that 'You aren't representing other cultures,'" Soucy said. "If [the princesses] were all blonde and blue eyed, I would get complaints."