Is using a Talking Circle appropriation?

Depends on how it's used. The Talking Circle has been pan-Indigenous-taught to non-Indigenous practitioners in restorative-justice contexts for decades. Many of the established restorative-justice training programs in North America are explicitly led by Indigenous facilitators precisely so the practice can be carried into other settings with proper grounding.

Three patterns reliably signal it has tipped into appropriation: representing the practice as your own tradition, replicating ceremonial elements that aren't yours to perform, or commercializing the practice without crediting and routing benefit back to source communities. The Talking Circle, used as a discipline-of-listening tool in your workplace, family, or community group, generally clears all three. Sweat lodges, sun dances, and other specific ceremonial practices generally don't.

Three working tests, drawn from Susan Scafidi's framework in Who Owns Culture?: Appropriation and Authenticity in American Law (Rutgers University Press, 2005):

1. Attribution. Are you crediting the source tradition when you describe the practice? "We're going to run a Talking Circle, a practice with roots in Indigenous North American traditions" attributes. "Let's pass this stick around" doesn't.
2. Commercial use. Are you profiting from the practice in a way that doesn't route benefit back to source communities? Books and training programs that frame the practice respectfully are not inherently problematic; selling "Indigenous wisdom courses" without any Indigenous involvement is.
3. Sacred elements. Are you copying ritual specifics that only tradition-bearers should hold? The structural rules of circle practice (talking object, one speaker, silence between speakers) are not sacred; specific ceremonial elements from particular nations may be.

The Talking Circle in its structural form clears these tests for typical non-Indigenous facilitation. Practices with sacred specificity often don't.

Yes. Many restorative-justice training programs are taught by Indigenous facilitators precisely so non-Indigenous practitioners can adopt the practice with proper grounding. Kay Pranis's The Little Book of Circle Processes (Good Books, 2005) is the standard non-Indigenous practitioner text and frames the practice with appropriate respect for its source traditions.

If you're new to facilitating, learning from a tradition-bearer-led training is the cleanest entry point. Penobscot lawyer and activist Sherri Mitchell's Sacred Instructions (North Atlantic Books, 2018) offers a contemporary Indigenous voice on knowledge transmission to non-Indigenous practitioners. When direct training isn't accessible, careful reading from established practitioner texts is a defensible second.

Related: How to run a Talking Circle — the guide's framing paragraph and "What to expect" section develop the operating principle in more detail.