Like every other minority, race, or ethnic group, the collective and individual descendant members of California's Native American tribes have had their heritage, tradition, and actual history perverted, twisted, and usurped by the romanticizing/nostalgic "enthusiasts".
I have seen murals and paintings by ignorant or misguided artists which depict California "Indians" in the beaded buckskins and feathered war bonnets of latter day Plains Sioux and trappings of Northeast Iroquois. Not even a smidgeon of accuracy in that.
The later photographic evidence shows that "mission Indians" hadn't dressed in their former pagan gear since coming to the mission. Neophytes at the mission were dressed appropriate to the Franciscan fathers' ideas of cleanliness and morality. In other words, they dressed them like Mexican peasants. Following secularization of the missions, the Native Americans dressed themselves like everyone else: shirts, pants, dresses, skirts. Work clothes, not ceremonial.
Romanticizing and appropriating other cultures' heritage to accommodate your own sense of "how things are/were/should be" is a curious kind of reverse "racism". Consider the young Caucasians who act and talk like Black rappers. Is it respectful or exploitative?
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The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?