The Coachella kids think it’s hip, someone at Elle U.K. thought it was cool for Pharrell Williams to wear one, and the daughter of Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin posed in one on Instagram to promote her band Pink Pony. But let’s get this straight: appropriating native American culture by wearing a feather headdress is pretty much, almost never okay. Especially if you’re a white guy at a Giants game.
On Monday (6/23) night, which was The Giants’ "Native American Heritage Night,” two attendees were detained by San Francisco police following an alleged altercation with white, male fans wearing and sharing a headdress. It started when a woman, who has identified herself as April Negrette on a Facebook post, asked “a group of mostly white guys that were passing around a headdress” to stop wearing it.
“I started crying because I was so upset that people are idiots/the genocide of our people/cultures and the guy asks/yells at me because he’s getting embarrassed and flustered ‘what do you want from me?’ so I said ‘give me the headdress’ and he did,” Negrette wrote. Read her full account here.
Another spectator quickly jumped in to assist Negrette and the commotion led to the San Francisco police being called in. Read the other spectator's account here. The man later posted video footage on his Tumblr, which you can watch below.
SFPD spokesman Albie Esparza said that while both were detained at approximately 8:40 p.m., they were released by the end of the game and no one is pressing charges as a result of the incident.
