Apparently “Chanel needs to understand Indigenous anger” over boomerangs

“If you are an Aboriginal person the idea that someone would pay nearly $2,000 for a designer boomerang is absurd. To pay that much for a boomerang would have to make it something of worth. A boomerang of worth would have been made by someone who knows how to make them. They would have been lovingly crafted. They might have been used to hunt.”

Source: Chanel needs to understand Indigenous anger. There’s nothing ‘luxury’ about it | Nayuka Gorrie | Opinion | The Guardian

Here we go, almost as if on queue. So I suppose I have to take back having said this was an issue of North American college students.

Ms. Gorrie’s article presents one ridiculous argument after the other. “If you are an Aboriginal person the idea that someone would pay nearly $2,000 for a designer boomerang is absurd.” Really? That’s the case if you’re Aboriginal? Does Aboriginal identity really factor into arriving at that conclusion? I’m pretty sure there are people worldwide, and of various income levels, who find the notion of a 2k Chanel boomerang absurd.

No doubt people associate boomerangs with Australia and Aboriginal people. That doesn’t however give Aboriginals some sort of trademark over the thing. Ancient boomerang-like weapons have been found in Egypt, Europe and even the Americas. That’s not to say Aboriginals aren’t entitled to a whole range of complaints; over discrimination, colonisation, marginalisation and so on and so forth- the thing is, resorting to this currently fashionable notion of “appropriation” advances none of those needed discussions. And starting a debate on which of our ancestors was the first to throw a stick in the air is hardly going to forward the cause of any disadvantaged minority.