Exactly...I mean, might as well stop reading Orson Scott Card or teaching T.S. Elliot. And while you're at it, stop reading Dr. Seuss and Roald Dahl to your kids, too.
The Tungusic peoples and their culture. You admit as much when you fished for this question.
That is a political manifest, not a work of fiction.
That is an exaggeration. In some of the stories racist assumptions are part of the premise in some they appear tangentially and in some they do not feature at all.
Why you assume that this examination has not happened or is not happening? Lovecraft being a horrible racist and this being reflected his stories is not exactly news. It was so apparent that people commented on when he was still alive.
Yes, his bust as an award is another matter. But his work has merit despite him being personally horrible. A lot of great artists throughout the human history have been pretty horrible people and doubly so if we start to apply modern standards to them (granted, Lovecraft was racist even by standards of his time.) Purging our media from products of people with questionable morals would leave very little. It simply is not a sensible or a feasible standard. Sure, applying pressure to hateful people who are still alive, but the dead are beyond our reach. We can (and should) remember that they were terrible people and still find merit in their art.
It comes from a Tungus verb, not a cultural title. Big difference. Nor is the word shaman, by anyone's definition, limited to the Tungis culture. Nor has it ever been. The project has always been one of comparison.
FYI, it’s fairly common for verbs to become nouns. Saying that the word comes from a verb is kinda meaningless. If we take ‘shaman’ to mean “one who knows” then we are likely dealing with a verbal noun or an etymological root. The word that is the focus of my dissertation (Hebrew rûāh.): wind, breath, spirit, temperament) is believed to trace its origin to the verb RWH. (to be spacious, wide) and yet we would still recognize rûāh. as a noun. From what I can tell in my searches so far, the spiritual leaders of the Evenks are referred to as “shamans”. Do you have a source for their actual cultural title?
You mean since Euro-American scholars took the term and applied it to other cultures? Okay. So how is appropriating another cultural term divorced from its original context not cultural appropriation again?
You keep saying a term was appropriated. It wasnt. Obviously the Tungus peoples had a title for their religious intermediaries. Using that word would be appropriation. I dont see any serious argument where using a verb that means one who knows is somehow culturally specific though.
What is or was that word then?
Why do you keep dismissing its nominal status by acting like a verbal noun or a participle (noun) can't act as a noun? Your approach is linguistically unsound.
Seems like you are clearly constructing a false dilemma here between using this word to describe other cultures or not being able to study other cultures at all.
