Kenya Moore Apologizes After Wearing Native American Halloween Costume On 'RHOA'

Instagram | Kenya Moore

Kenya Moore has offered an apology after wearing a feathered headdress to her co-star's Halloween party during Sunday night's episode of "The Real Housewives of Atlanta."

After Native American activists slammed the costume as a “racist” example of “playing Indian,” Moore released a statement.

“I want to sincerely apologize for inappropriately wearing the Native American headdress as a costume,” she toldPage Sixon March 23. “I now realize that this was both disrespectful and insensitive and would never have done it if I had that knowledge and understanding beforehand. I regret it.  When you know better, you do better. I am genuinely sorry.”

Amid the backlash, Bravo also spoke out.

“We had hoped it would provide a teachable moment, however in retrospect it is clear that the network did not address this properly given the gravity of the situation,” they said in a statement of their own. “We apologize to both the Native American community and our audience as a whole.”

According to Page Six, an activist group known as IllumiNative took aim at Moore on Instagram after Sunday's episode, suggesting her costume mocked Native people.

“We are deeply disturbed by last night’s episode of ['The Real Housewives of Atlanta'] in which [Kenya Moore] wore a Native American ‘warrior princess’ costume,” the group said in a statement shared on their Instagram page earlier this week.

“Costumes that mock Native peoples, defame our traditions and cultures, and perpetuate negative stereotypes are racist. ‘Playing Indian’ is a form of mascotry that is not just offensive, it is part of a long history of how Native peoples have been dehumanized,” they added.

The group, which was created by Native Americans, went on to say that they are “incredibly concerned” with the fact that none of "The Real Housewives of Atlanta" producers, nor the  executives at Bravo, Comcast, or NBCUniversal, did anything to edit the footage before airing the episode.

Page Six also revealed that Moore first defended herself on Twitter in a since-deleted post that suggested Native Americans were “part of her heritage.”

“I guess she is uneducated in her own ethnicity, culture and stereotypes,” one social media user wrote in response to the post.

During Sunday's episode of "The Real Housewives of Atlanta," a couple of Moore's co-stars, including Drew Sidora and Porsha Williams, shared their thoughts on her offensive costume, with Sidora describing her headdress as "super problematic" in her cast confessional and Williams saying that she felt they were past behavior of culture appropriation.

“I thought we weren’t doing that no more,” she stated.

To see more of Moore and her cast mates, don't miss new episodes of "The Real Housewives of Atlanta" season 13, which air every Sunday night at 8/7c on Bravo.