ice outrage

AP Photo/Ivan Sekretarev

It is not okay to misappropriate bits of a culture for your own ends - namely winning a ice skating competition. This really is a shocker - it is unacceptable.

From BBC

"Indigenous Australian leaders have expressed outrage at an "Aboriginal dance" routine by Russian ice dancers Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin.

The Russian world champions perform in dark-skin bodysuits adorned with leaves and white body paint markings.

Indigenous leader Bev Manton has decried the "ripping off" of Aboriginal culture as offensive and disrespectful.

"From an Aboriginal perspective, this performance is offensive," Mrs Manton writes in an editorial in the Sydney Morning Herald.

"Our dance, our ceremony, our image - and, importantly, how they are depicted - are sacred to Aboriginal Australians."

Mrs Manton, chairwoman of the New South Wales Aboriginal Land Council, has urged the three-time Russian national champions to rethink their routine before the Olympics in Vancouver.

"Interest must be expressed in a way that is respectful. The ripping off of our art and songs is not, and nor is this depiction of my culture," she wrote.

Respect - it is not that hard - first you need to think of indigenous people as actual people.

Hat tip - Buffalo Post