Dear Urban Outfitters,

I thought I was going to have an average week, where I did not have to get agitated and write about a Native American issue. I thought it would be a good week. You kind of just killed that for me.

To be completely honest here, I actually liked some of your products and shopped at your store quite frequently until I saw that you like to appropriate Native American culture. While I am personally not Navajo, I am still offended by your appropriation of multiple Native American cultures and branding it with a very ignorant title of “Navajo style” or “tribal style”. I would like to inform you that you not only pissed off the Navajo nation, but pissed off a lot of other Native American people who will stand in solidarity.

I know you weren’t the first company, and probably wont be the last to appropriate Native American culture, but that does not mean you are not accountable for your actions. I realize you like to push your hipster agenda by selling controversial products. “Any publicity is good publicity”, right?

I realize it’s all a financial game for you and appropriation fuels your bank account. The fact you went to a federal court to decide whether or not what you did was wrong or right is just proof that you have no moral sense of what your actions do. I think that you should send some of your CEO’s and higher ups to any Native American reservation and learn you something about Native American culture. Maybe you will learn that our culture is not your meal ticket.

{Eighth Generation}

Native Americans have turned to selling their genuine arts and crafts to provide for themselves in a system that has routinely suppressed their culture. My people of the Akwesasne Mohawk reservation used to smuggle sweetgrass baskets across the US-Canada border to sell to outsiders, just to provide for their families when the government banned them from practicing their traditional activities. This is just one example of many nations whose artwork and culture was suppressed by the government. It wasn’t until the 1970’s that we were allowed to practice our traditional ways, including fashion, art, and music. Just when Native Americans are starting to finally be able to practice their traditions, outsiders like yourselves come in and start taking it over, and for what, money? For you to mass produce overpriced replicas of their work is not only immoral for the intellectual property theft, but is also cultural appropriation.

From the beginning of colonization, we, Native American people, have been trying to teach you that there is more to life than money. Since the Taino and Columbus, Mayans and Cortez, Pizzaro and the Inca, the Patuxet and the Pilgrims, John Cabot, Amerigo Vespucci, and the Vikings, we have tried to show you what greed can do.

{Virgil Ortiz}

I have no idea why the judge in this case did not recognize the Navajo people, claiming they were not “famous enough” to warrant a trademark on their traditional work. Sure, nowadays you can trademark your baby’s name, but you can't trademark a traditional style of work that’s existed for hundreds, maybe even thousands of years, because you aren’t famous enough. That’s America for you. Navajos were famous enough for you to brand your clothes with it’s name and make a profit off of it. Navajos were famous enough to save our asses in WWII and have the movie "Windtalkers," made about them. But hey, that’s the past right? Nobody really cares about the past. Oh wait, hipsters love vintage stuff. There’s nothing more vintage that reading up on the Navajos involvement in WWII, and nothing more true Americana than Native American history for the last hundreds of thousands of years.

{Alano Edzerza}

To other people reading this, there are lots of REAL Native American Artisans who will gladly sell you a genuine Native American product, not a mass produced one made in a factory in India. Check out Alano Edzerza, Virgil Ortiz, Bethany Yellowtail, Jared Yazzie, Patricia Michaels, or Tammy Beauvais, and stores like Eighth Generation and Beyond Buckskin, among many others for great work. I also hope that you truly want to respect and honor Native Americans, and will cease to wear Native American headdresses at music festivals. Being a racist is tacky.

{Bethany Yellowtail}

In closing, I would like to say that you really need to stop your appropriation of cultures that are not your own. It’s completely disrespectful and ignorant of you. Your consumer base should not be driving your company-- ethics should. Maybe you would consider selling Native American made products in your stores instead of appropriating them to make money. Maybe you will put tags on the clothes explaining cultural appropriation’s effects on Native American culture. After all, culture is more important than capital.

Sincerely,

Jersey