Black Masking Indians have a rich cultural history in New Orleans dating back to the 19th century. Cherice Harrison-Nelson goes all out when preparing the suit she’ll wear during Carnival season.
“I'm not gonna tell you how, but my suit will be lit. Lit, L -I -T,” said Harrison-Nelson, a queen in the Guardians of the Flame Maroon Society.
Mardi Gras Indians say the masking culture in New Orleans dates back to when enslaved Africans fled plantations and joined Native American tribes like the Natchez or Chitimacha people. This led to the mixing of Native American and African cultures. Suits that are worn are brightly colored, have delicate bead art that depicts images and feathers sticking out proudly like a peacock.
“When you step out, you declare you're pretty, you're beautiful. It is a self declaration as well as a community affirmation,” Harrison-Nelson said. “It is not based on standard charts or Vogue or Glamour magazine standards. It is community standards and self-standard.”
Harrison-Nelson said her uncle Joseph King started their family’s tradition of masking around the 1930s and her father Donald Harrison Sr. joined in 1949. He later founded the Guardians of the Flame in the 80s and after he died in 1998, her family kept the torch lit.
She’s concerned about how her culture continues to be commodified.
Harrison-Nelson said photographers from around the world come to New Orleans to take photos of Mardi Gras Indians and sell the images without giving them credit for their art. She said the experience is dehumanizing.
“There's a deceased photographer who sold my daddy's picture for $2,500 and would taunt my mother,” Nelson said.
She said she understands the importance of documenting history, but people have choices on how to teach history and how to collaborate with the group’s involved. Harrison-Nelson said there have been instances when photos of her and her family have been used without any credit to them.
“To me you have options. Of course you can come and shoot us like you go big game hunting, and hang us on the wall, [our] brown bodies, and sell us to buyers as you would in an auction market…but that is your choice and you can choose not to do that,” she said.
Angela Cruz is a professor in marketing at Monash University in Australia. She researches how culture is consumed by people and the difference between appreciation and appropriation.
“If you're using elements from cultures that have experienced oppression for decades, or historical marginalization, or don't have the power to perhaps monetize those elements themselves, there could be power imbalances there when you're monetizing,” Cruz said.
Her research focuses on the influence of Black American culture, including hairstyles, clothing and choreography.
She said Black American culture can be a source of cool for people around the world who do not have a history of marginalization and people use that cool without crediting the original sources. Cruz mentioned there are two ways that groups in power can atone for these instances of cultural appropriation.
“Number one, thinking about how you represent the culture respectfully so you can address the harm of distortion? And then how do you share profits or direct some of the benefits of cultural exchange back to the source communities so that you can address, you know, decades of dispossession,” she said.
Cruz said an example of this is the award winning video game Never Alone. The game is centered around Indigenous communities in Alaska. The creators of the game worked directly with the Cook Inlet Tribal Council.
After this year, Harrison-Nelson plans to retire from parading. She is 65 years old and a lifelong educator. She runs multiple programs and a museum that educates children in New Orleans and has taken kids around the world giving presentations about the culture of Black Masking. She said with more time on her hands, she can educate more children.
Nelson’s studio in New Orleans has hundreds of patches she’s made or were crafted by elders before her. The intricately beaded patches are sewn onto the suits Black Masking Indians wear.
She holds one up. It’s an eagle with a flame.
“It represents that our cultural traditions are fierce, strong, majestic and that the flame is in us and it will never die,” she said.
