H 5 ‘The Skin Off Our Backs’: Appropriation of Religion James O. Young and Conrad G. Brunk Introduction The appropriation of religious beliefs and practices, with the possible exception of the appropriation of human remains, is the most contested form of appropriation from Indigenous people. The book would be incom- plete without a chapter on the appropriation of religious beliefs. Our experience of participating in this project is confirmed by a review of the literature on the appropriation of religious belief. Christopher Ronwanièn: te Jocks is typically passionate when he writes that when outsiders ‘pretend to use . . . ceremonies away from their proper setting, it really is like steal- ing the “skin off our backs.” ’ (Jocks 1996: 420) Another writer has com- pared the appropriation of religious belief and ceremonies to sexualized violence: both result in particularly horrific violation. (Smith 2005) Any discussion of the ethics of the appropriation of religious belief must be particularly sensitive to the experience of Indigenous people. There are important reasons for this. One of the most obvious is that the colonization of Indigenous peoples around the world, and certainly in North America, has involved the massive appropriation of their land, art objects and cere- monial artifacts, and extinction or near extinction of their languages, prac- tices, the flora and fauna of their habitats, and, not least, of their spiritual beliefs and practices by the missionizing practices of the colonizing culture. All of this continues to constitute a massive erosion of Indigenous cultural identity, amounting to what could be termed near cultural extinction. The self-identity of many Indigenous peoples hangs on the fragments of their culture that survive this onslaught. Seen in this context, the appropriation of one more remaining fragment—spiritual and religious practice and ritual—has an impact that it would not have if the appropriation acted in c05.indd 93 11/21/2008 5:58:23 PM