Fuck Sham Braids and (All Their Loser Cousins)

Header credit: Creative BC

I live a 51 minute drive from the grounds of the Shambhala Music Festival, held at the Salmo River Ranch, a 500 acre privately owned property. The festival describes itself as "family-run" which I suppose is accurate in a sense. The ranch is owned by Rick and Sue Bundschuh and the festival is run by their children Jimmy, Corinne and Anna. Prior to the Bundschuh family, the 500 acre land was owned by the grandfather of a past mayor of Salmo, Ann Henderson. Remember this for later: all these people are white.

Photo Credit: The Tyee "Selkirk College president Angus Graeme with Anna Bundschuh, Jimmy Bundschuh and Corrine Zawaduk of Shambhala Music Festival."

So you have an idea of how big this festival is, I overheard the other day while in town that this years' festival is expecting 30,000 attendees. That is more than the total residents in all three main towns in the West Kootenays. (Trail 7920, Castlegar 8338, Nelson 11,106)

From the website:

Shambhala Music Festival is Canada’s premiere electronic music and arts festival. 200+ cutting-edge artists and 6 jaw-dropping stages come together in paradise to give life to this non-sponsored, family-run anomaly.

Having started in 1998, the festival has had to win over the residents of the area to some extent as generally, this is a region where people like nature, to be left alone, and to not interact with too many outsiders. In order to ingratiate itself into the local community, the Shambhala Music Festival has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to various charities and institutions: the Kootenay Lake Hospital Foundation, construction of a new skatepark, food banks and "soup kitchens", and Selkirk College, where it won naming rights to the school's theatre. Let's remember how important it is in upholding racial capitalism that people with power and privilege give to charity. It is a tool of those with money to be able to leverage their power to get what they want, especially when it isn't particularly ethical.

The festival employs about 40 people ongoing (again note the whiteness of their skin tones) and hires many more people seasonally. (At the time of writing in July 2026 there are seven job postings on Indeed).

Like many organizations in the West Kootenays, Shambhala has a land acknowledgement posted on its website, acknowledging the Ktunaxa, Sylix and Sinixt People. And, like many organizations, this land acknowledgement stops there. Particularly in this region, where there is a clear divide between people that support the Autonomous Sinixt (a truly radical and grassroots group, Matriarch led, and not connected to Indian Act First Nations) and people who don't choose a side, it is always a bit of joke to me when I see that a group has chosen to acknowledge more than just the Sinixt. The Autonomous Sinixt (and archeological evidence) maintain that this land was always and always has been Sinixt. However, since they were declared extinct by the colonial government in 1953, it has created a vacuum for other nations to claim this too is their territory. Anyone who posts this in their land acknowledgement is simply trying to cover all their bases and not get in the middle of things, when they should be aiming at minimum for Truth and Reconciliation (the name of the commission from which land acknowledgements originated). Land acknowledgements are mostly garbage anyway and are mostly used as a way for colonial institutions to do the bare minimum while actively supporting ongoing genocide and erasure.

Beyond that, Shambhala boasts surface level efforts of inclusion and diversity on its website, using terms like "BIPOC" (a term many people being referred to with it despise and find completely inaccurate). And while they show some photos of Black and racialized attendees, their employee page is glaringly white.

This is all just on first glance. Let's go deeper into the cultural appropriative foundations of Shambhala Music Festival.

Shambhala is "a staple event for the electronic dance music world". Who created electronic dance music or EDM? Black people.

But the Black folks who created EDM "weren’t just making beats; they were shaping a movement"..."their music imagined a future that didn’t exist for them yet." And the music "wasn’t just dance music; it was a sanctuary for Black, queer, and marginalized people to move freely, to feel something bigger than the outside world allowed".

(Quotes from Minimal Audio: Electronic Music is Black History)

Of course, this isn't something that only Shambhala Music Festival is extracting, but it's sure successful at it. Much like enslavers of Black people were successful at extracting the labour of enslaved people and building their fortunes on it. We built whole colonial nations on it and continue to. Any time we benefit from and enjoy the labour of Black people without acknowledging, paying reparations, and then burning down the system that continues to do this, is violence.

While Shambhala boasts being free of corporate sponsorship, it receives support from the Amplify BC Fund via the Live Music Program and on their website they list Creative BC and the Province of British Columbia (a colonial entity) as financial supporters. While also benefitting from the white settler owned land stolen from the Sinixt People now declared extinct (though they are not). While also benefitting from a music genre completely and utterly stolen from Black people.

What does "Shambhala" even mean?

The term Shambhala refers to is a mythical kingdom in Tibetan Buddhism and Hinduism. Which tracks because white people love to fetishize Asian spirituality, and Buddhism especially has been highly co-opted and colonized in western society. Fetishization glosses over things that should actually be critiqued as well, like the fact that the Buddha did not want women to be nuns, and when he did allow them, it was with caveats to appeal to "men's fragile masculinity and inability to take responsibility for their sexual urges." Hinduism is connected to the caste system in India, something that white people often won't discuss, not to mention Gandhi (one of the most famous Hindus) was an anti-Black racist. Buddhism's belief in karma and reincarnation is often used to justify enslavement, or experiences of marginalization in this life. This is related to spiritual bypassing, the love and light attitude, and general New Age violence that is so prevalent.

To use the term Shambhala as the name of a very profitable empire without addressing any of the above shit is cultural appropriation at its finest.

There is also an association with the word Shambhala to a specific form of Buddhism in the west. Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche came to North America in the 1970s and started Shambhala Buddhism which includes his vision for an enlightened society. He also was known for having sex with his students. In fact an article from 2021 says the organization of Shambhala Buddhism now "presents less like an “enlightened society” than it does a longitudinal study of intergenerational abuse and of how thin the line between religion and cult can be." Assault, rape and abuse are all named in public reports, which is not a surprise given how prevalent that is in Buddhist, New Age, religious and spiritual communities. Take Bikram Choudhury an example, or any others listed in this article "The Spiritual World Has a Sex Abuse Problem".

To use the term Shambhala as the name of a festival claiming to be a safe space, a sanctuary, and even has consent volunteers dressed in pink, while not being active in conversations about the above, is pretty much the definition of spiritual bypassing and toxic positivity.

None of this can be "reformed" with safe spaces.

All of it must be eradicated.

For the white and non Black people getting defensive, from a white yoga teacher who quit teaching yoga in 2018:

"What needs to be reconciled is our relationship as white people with our outsized racial entitlement. What needs to be transformed is our cultural and somatic bereftness...Because no matter how you spin it, there’s no liberation in cultural appropriation."

Fetishization of Asian culture and the Model Minority Myth: other names for Anti-Blackness

The Shambhala Music Festival is all about yoga, which is of course connected to Hinduism. For the most part, yoga in western society is completely divorced from its ancient and long history but again, so many aspects of this spiritual discipline have been used to justify oppression and dehumanization. The Yoga Sutra, written around 500 BCE, was made for and by the ruling elite. But again, fetishization also glosses over these truths, usually with white people in the west saying that that was how yoga was in ancient India but that isn't how it is now in North America, equating ancient India and other places in that region to be patriarchal while North America has transcended that.

And let us always remember, that when Asian culture is fetishized, it is being used to perpetuate the Model Minority Myth or the idea that Asian people are naturally more palatable, demure, and servile than...you guessed it, Black people. Therefore, Asians are being given access to humanhood, while Black people are not. Asians are redeemable because of their proximity to whiteness.

So we have a festival built on Black music, on stolen Indigenous land, fetishizing Asian culture while having no meaningful conversations about the above mentioned problems, run by white people and making no tangible actions towards liquidating their own assets built on systems of oppression.

But wait! There's more!

Last year, Shambhala hosted the dubstep duo Riot, who are proud Israelis and had posted many times about their support for the IOF (Israeli Occupying Force). A couple of weeks before the festival, a petition circulated to cancel Riot's performance at Shambhala and it got a lot of traction, with the support of a fairly active group Nelson4Palestine. The petition was taken down by Change.org, and Shambhala kept Riot on. Big surprise. It seems from this Reddit thread that Riot also has been known to sexually assault people and that there have been several instances of Shambhala protecting artists who sexually prey on people. Which again, tracks!

When an organization or group is already capitalizing on stolen land, stolen labour, stolen lives, it stands that they also would protect artists who can bring them in money, prestige and power. We should not be surprised that this is the stance of Shambhala or any other organization like them.

And finally...what are Sham Braids? (and all their loser cousins)

As a new resident to the West Kootenays I had the delight (sarcasm) of discovering what Sham Braids are. They are hairstyles done on people attending Shambhala that are appropriated from sacred Black/African hairstyles. Styles like Cornrows, Box braids, Fulani braids, and Bantu knots not only have cultural significance but also are used to discriminate against Black people. When Black people wear their hair with these styles, it is considered unprofessional, dirty, or unkempt. But when white or non Black people wear their hair this way, it is edgy and cool. They have no reverence or understanding that:

"During the transatlantic slave trade, Fulani braids and other forms of braids were instrumental in communication networks among women".

Quote from "‘Crowns of Africa’ Explores the Untold History and Cultural Roots of Fulani Braids"

Enslaved people would "style their Cornrows, in different patterns as a means of communicating in code written messages."

Quote from "Black History Month 2022: the History Behind Cornrows"

Not only are non Black people wearing their hair this way at Shambhala, there are non Black people who build a month of business off of doing people's hair this way for the festival.

All the loser cousins of Sham Braids would be everything else: the bindis, the flower crowns, the vague tribal prints, the henna. Then there's the companies run by white men that slap dream catchers, crystals, and yin yang symbols on everything.

The costs of attending Shambhala

I was curious to see the cost to attend Shambhala, and while I am sure people are volunteering (apparently you pay a deposit which you get back when you're done) or sharing an RV or tent with a bunch of other people, it's still a hefty price to attend. You also have to factor in the cost of getting there, food, and any additional goodies.

RV sites are up to $3100

Riverside yurt $3700

Glamping in a canvas tent up to $2400

The cheapest available lodging in $759 for a 10x10 foot site where you bring your own tent

General Admission $620

Shuttles one way to and from Vancouver or Calgary $189

Shuttles one way to and from Kelowna or Spokane $114

So at minimum, if someone lives in the area and attends, they are paying $1379 to attend. But realistically at minimum people are spending about $2000 minimum to attend Shambhala.

Conclusions???

I have no expectations for change to come out of this piece. I doubt anyone actually will read this. I wrote it because I felt like I had to put my anger somewhere. If people find it useful to solidify the vague feeling they had about Shambhala being awful, or to convince one person who was curious about going not to go, then great.

But until we are willing to boycott, divest from, and ultimately topple Shambhala (and all things like it) we won't get collective liberation. This is the point: if we aren't willing to look at the things we are benefitting from and look at how they are actually harmful, we won't get change.

Shambhala sells community, transformation, escape, magic, and joy at the expense of oppressed people. But those things exist outside of the colonial oppressive framework. Until privileged people are willing to sacrifice what is benefitting them in this reality and turn it in for what could eventually be real connection to Land and the People, they will continue with this shallow mirage. And they have to realize, it won't feel good right away. Generations of reparations must be paid and assets liquidated. Only then can we build the new world that Shambhala Music Festival sells for a minimum of $1379 per person.

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Email: slowmotionradical@proton.me

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Kara Bullock lives on the Unceded Territory of the Sinixt People. Learn about how the colonial government has declared the Sinixt Extinct and support the Autonomous Sinixt here.