To preface this, I'm going to say that not every avatar item based on a real-life culture is bad. Some of them are handled better than others, and some cultures and cultural elements are more open to outsiders than others.

So, after I commented on the WW mork thread, someone elsewhere told me about the "Pow Wow" avatar items, and... this isn't great.


As I'm not Native American myself, I looked through some sources to make sure I knew what I was talking about, and:
- It's considered disrespectful to use the powwow traditions of a tribe you don't belong to. This includes regalia. These are sacred, not just costumes.
- This isn't what actual powwow regalia looks like (two examples here, though each garment is unique to the person wearing it). It's an inaccurate portrayal of Native American culture.
- The term "powwow" shouldn't even have a space in it.

I think it's pretty safe to say that these firmly fall into the "disrespectful cultural appropriation" category. And unlike a theme name, it's not something where you can just swap out a word and everything's fine. I think a good course of action would be to remove the items and give the owners some kind of compensation for it, like an avi token for each. Or if you can't, maybe alter the art and change the name to something else?

To be clear, I don't think that this site or the admins are racist because of this. I don't doubt that they had good intentions when these items were created. But good intentions don't always translate into good results, and it's the result, not anyone's character, that is the issue here.

If anyone has noticed similar issues with other items, feel free to post about them here.

I don't think that is a good idea at all. If these had been based off of a tribes sacred regalia then it could be seen as disrespectful but you said that they don't look like proper regalia at all, meaning the only problem would be the name itself. Also, the player who submitted it could have been native american and by doing this you would be taking out the representation that they themselves added. And the set has been around since 2013, if a native american player really had an issue with it I am sure it would have been brought a long time ago. I am also sure that almost the entire Avatar wardrobe could fall under this "disrespectful cultural appropriation" if we all went through it, so if this continues no one will be able to enjoy anything from any other cultures and that is really bad on many levels. Most advancement of cultures throughout the millennia have happened through an exchange or appropriation of ideas and myths, so to put a heritage lock on everything will only hurt everyone.

Qitari are based off of the Kirin which come from another culture and are sacred. Should we then get rid of the whole species? Or what about the Foo Dog Traits on the Luffox? I really do not believe that starting or continuing down this road is a good idea at all. When you start trying to gate keep things it hurts way more than it helps.

Hi there! I am locking this thread as well, for reasonings please see this one!