Noun. Cultural appropriation, a form of artistic plagiarism, is a show of unoriginality in which artists steal from the spiritual ownership of entire populations. The traditional forms of art, worship, design, and style of indigenous cultures have individual histories that constitute their collective history and culture. Through appropriation, however, creators with bigger platforms are able to sell off unoriginal content as their own, erasing the rich cultural history that underlies such content that the appropriators have not and could not fully understand.

Examples

“Cultural appropriation occurs when game designers decontextualize cultural history, expressions or artifacts that belong to a culture that is not their own, in turn recontextualizing them into game structures.”

Vasalou