Cultural appropriation is when the people of one culture find some activity or artifact of another culture useful and adopts that activity or artifact into their own culture.
This may or may not be ethical. For example, the Hopi consider their religious ceremonies to be sacred, and would prefer that others not appropriate them. We "misappropriate"
when we take something that another people have stated is not available for appropriation, even if we do not hear their protests. Other Native American Nations believe that it is a good thing when European background Americans learn from Native peoples. But they do not want to see what is borrowed misused, or distorted.
I found this quote that may guide our appropriations:
Our first task in approaching another people,
another culture is to take off our shoes,
for the place we are approaching is holy.
Else we find our ourselves treading on another's dream.
More serious still, we may forget that God was there before our arrival.
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