That 's why cultural appropriation is not the same as cultural exchange, when people share mutually with each other because cultural exchange lacks that systemic power dynamic. For many people, barriers like classism, racism, and xenophobia mean they don 't have the right look, language, or position of privilege to earn income with their culturally specific tools and yet oftentimes, white people can turn those same culturally specific tools into profit, thereby hurting the community they 're borrowing from. The system includes federal government policies that make it hard for Native people to start their own businesses, as well as a professional culture in which white women and middle class women can fit more easily than poor Native …show more content…
Residential schools, for example, forced indigenous children to speak English, adopt christianity, and were forced to wear European clothes and adopt a European culture. Furthermore, forced assimilation does not have to be as black and white as putting people into residential schools, but it can also be an epistemic and ideologically forced assimilation such as "business suits are a necessary uniform to gain access into the white collar workforce," therefore, in turn, what this also produces is the idea that the "native dress" of someone else 's culture is devalued and "uncivilized." Hipsters wearing headresses is cultural appropriation because it is a commodification of indigenous culture. It reiterates the very techniques of colonialism by objectifying someone else 's culture and turning that culture into something available for