By Sarstoon Temash Institute for Indigenous Management: The Deer Dance on the Miss Universe stage opened the door to an important conversation about how to protect Maya cultural values and heritage.
The Deer Dance is a religious ceremony of Maya communities. While its origins are a mystery, it is a tradition that enacts the Maya view of what is sacred. No Maya person brought up in their culture would ever put on a Deer Dance mask or clothing outside of the rituals. To do otherwise is sacrilegious and invites misfortune.
The Deer Dance is never performed. It is not theatrical. It is always undertaken by a community, not an individual. It is a true embodiment of the community spirit that is so critical to Maya cultures.
The Mopan and Q’eqchi Maya words unok/nok’ refer to ceremonial clothes that are spiritually imbued with the sacred as a prayer. These are not trendy, decorative costumes. Deer Dance unok/nok’ (masks and clothes) become alive in an elaborate 13-cycle sequence that requires initiation of fasting, prayers and offerings. In 2021, when the Deer Dance was part of the Installation ceremony of Belize’s first Maya Governor General, it began and ended in a village. Only one part of a multi-day ritual was seen at the installation. Afterward, it was fully danced as a complete ceremony by initiated dancers.
This sacred, ritualized clothing should never be a vehicle for something else, however well-intentioned. In this case, the Deer Dance was descrecrated for a beauty pageant. Claimed to be an ‘exact replica, the unok/nok’ was defaced with a political message. The revealing bustier also offends Maya women’s conservative values against public displays. The ritualized dance cannot be ‘cut and pasted’ from youtube videos for a few steps on stage. To mimic the dance is to mock the sacred values of an entire culture – like ‘performing’ the transformation of the host into the body of Christ and handing it to the judges or like doing dugu outside the family.
The question is whether it was necessary to be sacrilegious to shine a light on Belize’s culture?
The Sarstoon Temash Institute for Indigenous Management developed Xe’il: True to Our Roots as a cultural platform with Maya people as its driving force and beneficiaries. Maya women themselves choose what to share from their culture. They don’t expect others to decide for them. ‘Inspiration’ is not an excuse for exploitation.
As rights holders, the Maya people need to protect our culture. It is our responsibility to inform others when they are doing us harm. Moving beyond this ill-informed, preventable incident, we need to be at the table to create a cultural policy and legislation that will properly protect and promote our culture.
–Sarstoon Temash Institute for Indigenous Management