Waneek Horn-Miller is a Mohawk woman and Canadian Olympian who works with Manitoba Mukluks to raise awareness about Native beadwork and traditions. She was at an Ottawa mall Saturday when she saw a woman in a Pocahontas costume painting kids' faces.
"I walked up to the woman and all the parents waiting in line ... and I was like, 'What she is wearing is really offensive. I want you to know that as a Native person I take offense to that,'" Horn-Miller told BuzzFeed Canada.
Horn-Miller is a former member of the Canadian Olympic and Pan Am waterpolo teams, and recently served as assistant chef de mission at the Pan Am Games in Toronto. She also works as a motivational speaker.
She said people often apologize when she explains that her culture is not a costume to be worn at Halloween, or at a music festival or a hockey game. But this time the owner of the store and parents in line did not agree with her.
"The parents standing there were saying, 'If you don't like Halloween you should just go home,'" she said. "I was so surprised and to be honest my heart just dropped out."
Horn-Miller posted about the encounter on Facebook.
"It was their anger and sense of entitlement that let out deep seeded anger I feel every time I hear of the of missing indigenous women, women being forced to trade sex for special favours from the police, indigenous people left for dead in hospital emergency waiting rooms because they are assumed to be on drugs," she wrote.
Danielle Soucy is the owner of the store, Fêtes en Boîtes, that hired the face painter. She told BuzzFeed Canada that "it could have been any Disney character, any princess of any colour" doing the face-painting.
"It's Halloween today," she said. "Everybody can be anybody."
As for Horn-Miller's objections, Soucy said, "I think she went way too far."
Soucy eventually called mall security and Horn-Miller left the mall with her two children.
"If we didn't have Pocahontas I'd get complaints that 'You aren't representing other cultures,'" Soucy said. "If [the princesses] were all blonde and blue eyed, I would get complaints."
Horn-Miller said the fact that Pocahontas is a Disney character doesn't make cultural appropriation acceptable. "My people aren't a movie character."
"It's so devastating at a personal level to see what's been done [to Aboriginal people] and to have this dominant culture say, 'I can still use your culture, it's my right,'" she said. "... It's hard to get someone who is dressed up as Pocahontas to see the link to the big picture, but it very much so does have a link."
Horn-Miller says her work as a motivational speaker focuses on the progress being made in society, but the encounter left her angry and frustrated.
"I was not very happy with how I got angry," she said. "I look all the time to find the good in people and the good in this country."
"I feel as a Native woman and as an Olympic athlete I should be saying something about this," Horn-Miller said. "At a very basic level as a parent or an adult, this is a choice you can make."
She said the encounter convinced her of the importance of having non-Natives speak out about cultural appropriation.
"I can instill in other people a love of my culture so that they don't just see it as costume," she said, "but I need other voices, other people — regular Canadians — to go into a Halloween store and say 'That's really inappropriate.'"
UPDATE: A day after the encounter, Horn-Miller received an email from Soucy, the store owner, "with a lot of compassion and interest In learning more about how she can be an ally to raising awareness" about the issue of cultural appropriation.
They are now in touch and plan to work together.
"It was so amazing to get this message so quickly," Horn-Miller wrote, "though it all started from a place of anger and confrontation, we seem to be finding some common ground to move forward."
She continued:
This is reconciliation in a daily and real world way..it will take finding our common humanity, courage, compassion and the ability listen.
Thank you Danielle and I look forward to creating a great partnership.