There's an RPS article linked in there, and I read the comments and just wanted to copy/paste this as I thought it was well written:

I think people often forget that cultural “appropriation” is the primary means by which culture is transmitted across boundaries. Look at the history of Japanese cinema (many of which are an appropriation of the tropes of American films), or jazz, or rock and roll, etc. etc. etc.

Like language, a healthy culture mutates as it is interpreted by foreigners in strange new ways. It shouldn't be a dusty old museum where we’re not allowed to touch anything.

And followup:

[...]obviously the historical treatment of native cultures should not be forgotten in this discussion. However–to take the heartless long view for a minute–I would argue that appropriation almost never occurs between two cultures in balance. Appropriation is a by-product of assimilation, from Greek statuary/religion/literature (purloined by the Romans) to folk music, the blues, and hip-hop. It’s a brutal process, and yet paradoxically it seems the best way to preserve and transmit the assimilated culture for posterity.

The desire to protect one’s own “authentic” culture from appropriation–as a valuable economic resource, as you point out–can also condemn it to irrelevance, although one can and should empathize with the underlying sentiment.

And then:

Having been involved in a couple of projects that deal with similar issues (not involving indigenous cultures), I should point out that it often IS quite hard to do intercultural works and feel that you’ve done so with respect. You’re rarely dealing with a monoculture, so there are usually competing voices within a community that want to speak with authority, plus members of a diaspora who feel emotionally connected to a cultural legacy but are in fact generations removed from any real contact. You try to work with as much integrity as possible, but in the end—if the work is interesting—someone’s probably going to be upset.

Your point about spreading the wealth within the community to some extent is a good strategy, if possible—but who exactly should reap the benefits? This is a thorny question. (Did you have experience with this?)

At this point, some people would just say, “so don’t do it.” But—at the risk of sounding cold-hearted—I think that reasoning would eliminate a lot of vital work that may have been done without any sense of deference. (As well as a lot of awful crap, admittedly, but time tends to sort these things out.)