via Native AppropriationsWhile reporting for a story in this week’s issue called “An Incomplete History of Hipster Headdresses,” I chatted with Adrienne Keene, a doctoral candidate at Harvard and author of the Native Appropriations blog, as well as Leonard Forsman, tribal chairman of the Suquamish Tribe, of which Chief Seattle was a leader. I asked them both if they thought that hipster headdresses were as culturally insensitive as blackface, as some folks contend. Forsman declined to comment, but Keene gave me the below response:”I definitely do. People will agree completely with everything I have to say … ‘except I don’t agree about the blackface part.’ Some people say blackface has a specific history in the United States, and it’s about stereotyping African Americans. But, there is that history with playing Indian, and dressing up as Native Americans as well. There is that history, and in all the early Westerns when they had non-Natives playing the stereotypical Native characters. I see complete similarities between the two.”