Choosing a culturally appropriate Halloween Costume

Kimimila Waste Win: Butterfly Woman (Kee-mee-mee-la)

Butterflies represent freedom and transformation with the seasons change this coming fall our Indigenous Goddess Team would like to remind our allies to be diligently aware of the costumes you may choose for Halloween this year. Halloween is an opportunity for us to creatively express ourselves. We do not need to appropriate others cultures to do so. 

With that said, how does one express the Indigenous Goddess inside by representing our cultures respectfully and appropriately? 

As I sat with this question I realized as a young Indigenous woman there wasn’t much Indigenous heros, characters, or icons to choose from. So I decided to create looks based off my Lakota language or folklore stories.

Last year I created the “Star Woman” look using Urban Decay’s “Electric” palette. I shared a brief story about the Lakota Star Knowledge and how my Mother always taught her children that we are sacred spirits from the sky. She would say, “When our bodies return to Mother Earth, our spirits will make the journey up the trail of spirits, (The Milky Way” to meet our ancestors and loved ones who have passed on before us. 

Have fun and be safe this year. And remember, there’s nothing cute about that “Pocahottie” or “Noble Savage” costumes selling in the Halloween stores! If you are caught in one of these embarrassing costumes, remember you are only adding to the fetishization of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women. 

Just like the butterfly, I too will awaken in my own time     

Deborah Chaskin