I think this speaks to a larger problem at Disney right now. You can make this comment about a LOT of recent offerings at the parks. I think they have forgotten that Disney "storytelling" doesn't have to LITERALLY be telling a long, drawnout , complicated made-up story. I'm becoming increasingly concerned that the people that understood what park storytelling actually should be are long gone (or will be gone shortly when imagineering moves to Lake Nona, Florida).
I want lore, not r@cist BS. it's beyond the cultural appropriation umbrella, this is straight up invoking the stuff from the 1920s and 30s. In the worst way possible.No kidding! It's a day spa. Make it look nice and match the hotel. Outfit it luxuriously and train the staff to be experts at their craft. Don't try and make it some fake, fabricated backstory about a sacred space that you obviously know nothing about.
The land this day spa is on was the Kanga Section of the old Disneyland Parking Lot. Hey TDA, how about you use that as a theme instead of insulting and appropriating the indigenous peoples that live 300 miles to the north?
Kanga's Knot Spot? Kanga's Care Corral? They pay people to come up with crap like that.
Did I already say "No Kidding!"??? Because... no kidding. This is what you get when you employ people who are too focused on creating fabricated backstories that might impress someone on Twitter or Instagram for about 4 seconds so long as they don't do some research. Instead, these people need to be focused on just creating a great experience for the customers. without layering on fakery and cringey virtue signaling.
I want to feel sorry for them. But this latest chapter is just so stupid, that I can't.
The backstory/storytelling mess really has gotten out of hand. And now look.
Rides like Pirates and Haunted Mansion dont tell a story at all and just have you going past unrelated scenes. These are classic rides that have been loved for 50 years. Why does Disney not use this approach anymore?
They did not in any way, shape, or form try to integrate any degree of Indigenousness into the story of the spa. If they had even remotely "tried," they would have not made up hokey rac!st "lore" about an actual religion. Also, there have been some sources that have talked about a real possibility of a legal problems (which I honestly hope is pursued) related to the American Indian Religious Freedom Act and the Indian Arts and Crafts Act, not just related to them removing stuff from a national park. They were not even remotely trying to be sensitive. They played up and relied on ugly old stereotypes, pretended to find a Native person who gave them a "free pass," and ran with it thinking they could get away with is and not going to be caught. Nothing about this is even remotely sensitive, nor inclusive.
I'm cool with there being fun details in the spa, but honestly, the attempts at trying to come up with plots for every single thing in the parks, including shops, personally annoy me. I miss when things existed just because they fit the theme of the land they were placed in. If Frontierland was built today, we'd have a store that was established by Davy Crockett himself, full of the knick-knacks and trinkets he picked up on the route to see a medicine man named Eustace, right before making a visit to see a Quaker named Bill. And then we'd get backstory on both Eustace and Bill to make the story really come alive.
All I am saying is that we keep asking for an update to Tomorrow Land, and they give us stuff like THIS, which NOBODY ASKED FOOORRRRRR
I think this bothered me the most about this whole story because it really shows that the higher ups at Disney believe the "native Americans are one monolithic group" trope/stereotype. It is 2022, ffs. They should absolutely know better than this.
Thank you for saying this. I think it gets lost sometimes that religious ceremonies are involved (even if incorrectly reproduced). Religion should be off-limits. Think about what would happen if Disney tried to theme the spa to some aspect of Christianity, Judaism, or Islam. OMG people would lose their damned minds.
You're misunderstanding @Dear Prudence's point (please correct me Prudence if I'm wrong!). The resulting "attempt" to understand the Native culture is so laughably bad that it's reasonable to question whether they tried at all. The way I'm unpacking it, it's readily apparent they didn't do their due diligence and made it up as they went along.
Here is what I believe you are not understanding: we are not a monolith. There over 500 federally recognized domestic dependent sovereign nations in the US, and this does not count those who are recognized in Canada, nor bands in both the US and Canada that are not recognized (or in Central and South America, for that matter). A Saginaw Chippewa tribal member would know this. This person is a 'cultural consultant' for the company, when the Anishinaabeg have absolutely nothing to do culturally with the Miwuk people. "It had to be authentic," when in no way, shape, or form was it. A member from a federally recognized tribe would know that there are aspects of Ceremony that cannot be trivialized, let alone spoke of outside of certain sacred circles. The Ahwahnechee peoples of Yosemite Valley are not a conglomerate transformer of broadly California Indians. There is no confusion about the legitimacy of the sources they used, because there is no legitimacy-- the tribal nations have repeatedly stated that they were never consulted. It is squarely rooted in the broadly homogenous "Native thinking" Colors of the Wind stereotypes, and they are unfortunately using other Native people as their human shields against criticism. The Miwuk people have very, very stringent cultural rules about what they do or do not share to others. At both Yosemite and Point Reyes, recreated villages on former locations which have existed for thousands of years are still used for Ceremony, and certain structures, such as the sweat lodges and ceremonial roundhouses, are completely off limits to non Miwuk people. Native people are very private about their religions--for many, many reasons (Google is your friend
). This is hokey stone clearly fake mumbo jumbo. The fact that the Disney press releases were using the "o" spelling and not the currently, preferred, and culturally accepted spelling is your first dead give away.
It's pretty spectacular, NGL. I almost feel like it's intentional at this point--sort of like in the musical The Producers or something like that.
