Not so. They look like fairly spectacular Danza Azteca regalia. I don’t know much about the cultural origins, but it’s a common part of community parades & celebrations in Minneapolis, and participants are usually from Mexicana/o backgrounds. There’s also some overlap with Native American dance groups.

Here’s a couple of photos of dancers:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/davepolaschek/142315958
http://blogs.wyomingnews.com/blogs/shutterspeed/2011/06/05/indigenous-dance-at-cheyenne-hispanic-festival/

http://www.google.com/search?q=danza+azteca

Remember, “L’Officiel Paris chose the [Beyonce] to don different colorful garbs and
headpieces in a nod to Nigerian musician and human rights activist Fela
Kuti in an “African Queen”-themed 90th anniversary issue.”

Fela would not be proud either.

That said, I simply don’t know of any less problematic alternatives, or any terms that do the discursive work of the necessary confrontation. In the context of this post, at this time, I would still find POC a better choice in that it is at least positive (as in positing something) and does not, on a linguistic level, reinforce the centrality of whiteness we see in these photos. (I realize that I am going with the commonly accepted understanding of “POC” here, the boundaries of which you are interrogating.)

I am with you on the need for better, perhaps more nuanced terms, and I think we’re bumping up against tension between race-as-construct and race-as-lived-experience (i.e. why we are compelled participate in a discourse that demands all-encompassing terms).

But truthfully, so many people claim that pieces like this or other works lack creativity. Could you do a photoshoot of this quality? Better. Could you post the models, do the makeup, get the lighting correct, come up with an idea and implement it? I might not personally like the result, but I can tell you hands down, I’m not the guy that could compete with it.

We now live in an age where it doesn’t take studios of people to produce works of art or advertising. Doesn’t take tens of thousands of dollars or hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment. With a few simple pieces of equipment, any of us that actually have talent can compete and create works that aren’t “lacking in creativity”. 

So how come we’re not? I’m not cause I don’t have the d’mned talent. And I’d wager most of the people like you that insist this piece lacks creativity, haven’t actually been through the process it takes to create something like this. I can dislike a piece and still see the creative energy it took to create. When more of the folks that are claiming pieces like this are crap, actually get off their duff and do something to produce real things, then I might start taking them a tad bit more seriously.

Ahhh, but that’s the trick now, isn’t it. The exotic is of the exterior; exo, outer, outside, that which is not of the interior, inside, us.

Yeah cause when I said exotic I meant interior right? Are you aware of the history of the Keltoi, Teutons, Nords? Skin painted blue, fighting nude, dancing and drumming nude, wearing animal skins, feathers, headdresses, having shamans, shouting, Ristrad, animal and plant healing, shape shifting, swords singing victories…. You know, exteriro things….

And when the great ‘they’ (singular) are savage it is because they are primitive, so much closer to nature and, therefore, more sexual (which makes ‘them’ perfect for photo spreads like this).

Yeah, you mean just like the ancient Keltoi, Teutons, Nords, and others of Europe? Because those very things were said about us. Indeed for the Gael, those things were said up until about the 1930s. And still were said by Anglos. 

For this reason the White can never be exotic because they (plural) have moved beyond the condition of nature, have domesticated themselves and become ‘civilized’

Gosh golly gee, I love being told things about myself that just aren’t true. 

(which also speaks to the reason why so many ‘traditional’ cultural aspects become appropriated into ‘spiritual healing’ practices as a way of “getting in touch with our true nature”; how many drum circles and sweat lodges are being marketed to White, middle class urbanites?).

Yeah cause Europeans didn’t do drum circles or sweat lodges and they weren’t into nature. They weren’t mystics and we don’t have examples of Monks and Nuns and Priests communing with the animals, and even preaching to the bushes. We don’t have hundreds, HUNDREDS of examples of spirtual healing practices, shamanism, spiritual healers, plant and animal healing, concourse with plants and animals, conversations, shape shifting and joining them in their societies for sometimes hundreds of years or them shape shifting into human form, marrying us, raising families and entire tribes with us. Nooo. Any time we do anything “nature spiritual” it must only be that we’re somehow appropriating from other cultures because we don’t have, and haven’t had these traditions in our own culture for the better part of THOUSANDS of years…

Odin’s nut sack the ridiculous claims made about the purported lack of European spirituality modern and ancient could fill an ocean. 

And if a White should be seen as savage, the charge is easily answered with “survival of the fittest.”

Yeah cause whites aren’t seen as savage.

And I personally care less about national identifies or race or color as identifiers. Identify how you will and I will address you appropriately. It’s a real challenge for me because I grew up in the south so everything was sir, maam, Mr. Jim, Mz. Jan (yes MZ…). Then I came to yankee territory (though I was born here) and years later people are having to remind me “it’s Just Jim…just Jim”. I’ve only run into two other people who speak like me up here.