Stuff white people like

I don't know. What do I think about this? As a part of tonight's "Long Night of Museums" the Hamburg Museum of Ethnology featured a couple of activities dealing with Native American culture. At 9 pm Stormy Red Door, a Montana-born Dakota/Assiniboin now living in Northern Germany, performed the ceremonial act of lighting the fire. The crowd watched attentively, bison bratwurst in one hand, Beck's beer in the other while Stormy Red Door was waving his feathers in all four directions. After the ceremony he asked the audience in a very low voice to "please respect the spirits" or - as the museum staff put it –"Well guys, don't throw your cigarette butts into the fire". Now I ask myself: Can a performance like that ever be more than entertainment?  The museum itself says "We, as a Museum of Ethnology, try to contribute to a better cross-cultural understanding by encouraging other cultures to play an active role within our Museum." But: Can this "active role" ever be more than a role in a staged spectacle? 

Next item on the agenda: music and dances of the Plains Indians with the "Elk Singers" and the "Northern Dogs". No doubt - a great show, but hey... what's wrong with white people? Why is it always easier to identify with a foreign culture or religion? Because we don't have anything in our own culture and heritage that we relate to and dare to identify with? Why do so many people who set out to find themselves look in the most distant places? Why don't they just ring their own door bells? Maybe they're at home already! Is that it? Do we forget that we are at home already? That we have been all the time? That there is no way we can get lost, because there is no other place than here and now? I don't know. I truly don't know.