Post #762198 by EnchantedTikiGoth on Sat, Apr 9, 2016 11:00 PM

Tiki is, fundamentally, an expression of the American cultural experience. Specifically, America's encounter with the South Pacific. It does not represent Polynesian culture and was never intended to. The first Tiki bar - Don's Beachcomber Cafe - was simply filled with the bric-a-brac collected by Ernest Gantt during his own travels around the tropics.

That cultural experience necessarily overlaps with the cultural experiences of Polynesians themselves, which is where it can get ambiguous. Cultural objects and images from Polynesia become the backdrop of this encounter. The framework of "cultural appropriation," however, is fraught with its own problems... It's not an effective concept for understanding how actual people in actual cultures act and interact. There certainly may be some instances of (largely unintended) disrespect, plagiarism, etc., but not nearly enough to indict the Tiki subculture.