you don't have to turn Native Americans into megafauna to make them disappear

[edenfalling]

I was reading a fanfiction story* a couple days ago. I enjoyed it; it's well-written and atmospheric, with some intriguing world-building, fun character interaction, and a conclusion that wraps up the immediate plot arc while leaving space for potential further adventures. But an issue that has bugged me off and on about alternate histories (and specifically magical/paranormal alternate histories) for a while now finally jumped up and refused to be dismissed anymore.

Namely, America.

If you are changing history such that magic or psychic powers or other forms of the supernatural have always existed, then why does European conquest and colonization of the Americas still happen so often? Yes, you can handwave that the Europeans still develop technology and particular forms of social organization that give them a leg up on the rest of the world, but if there is magic, that will tend to change and even the playing field. And therefore, why does North America still end up with the same ethnic mixture it has in our world? Why is such a massive demographic and cultural change taken as a given?

What is wrong with writing about Native Americans in America?

I think the issue jumped out at me from this particular story more strongly than usual because it posited a world that mirrored ours until the mid-1500s -- whereupon there was a massive paranormal incursion and things went semi-apocalyptically sideways. So Spanish and Portuguese colonization was already ongoing, but northern European colonization of North America hadn't started. Yet somehow the story still had North America inhabited by English-speaking white people with a few black people. There were obvious equivalents to several cities in the United States, with clearly European-derived names. No explanation given. And considering the way this particular alternate history went sideways, I think the last thing anyone would have had time for was trans-oceanic colonization.

The only way I can make sense of the writer's world-building is to suppose that the inborn magical protections some people developed against the paranormal intrusion were limited to (or at least concentrated in) the locations nearest that intrusion (which apparently happened in England). That would mean that people in, say, China and Mexico were just shit out of luck and died in droves. Instant genocide. Then a bunch of English people (plus some French people and some people of African descent) went off and settled the emptied continents in an effort to get away from the presumably ruined lands near the source of the paranormal catastrophe.

That is not a pretty explanation. It is also not given in the story. As I repeat, there is no explanation in the story. Just an Anglicized North America with a hint of French influence near New Orleans, presumably because that's the way North America is (or is perceived to be) in our world and the world of the canon source of which this story is an AU.

...

This issue is, unfortunately, not restricted to any one story, nor to fanfiction AUs. It shows up in lots of professional original fiction too. For example, why are the vampires in the Anita Blake series overwhelmingly of European descent? Where are the ancient American vampires, aside from the one we meet in Obsidian Butterfly? For that matter, why are the werewolves organized around European mythology? I can see why were-hyenas wouldn't use Native American terminology -- hyenas not being native to the Americas -- but wolves have been in North America for ever and ever, and I highly doubt that any European werewolves crossed the ocean until steamships were invented, since you can't exactly hide changing into a giant wolf on a small wooden ship on a months-long voyage. Even if European colonists were infected with lycanthropy, they should have been absorbed into Native American packs. So where are the American myths?

For another example, look at Nalini Singh's angel series. She postulates that there have always been immortal winged beings who A) create vampires and B) rule humanity. Fair enough. So again, given that there's an apparently Asian angel ruling China, and, IIRC, an African angel and an Indian angel in charge of sub-Saharan Africa and the Indian subcontinent, respectively, why is the angel in charge of North America shown as white? Why is the population of North America majority white as well?

Or even take JK Rowling -- why are her sketch descriptions of the Americas based on the muggle populations of those countries? Wouldn't wizards and witches have been less likely to emigrate from Europe? Therefore, wouldn't most ethnic-European witches and wizards have been Muggle-born, and trained (if at all) by Native American witches? (Presumably Native American wizards would be able to use their spells to survive where their Muggle brethren didn't -- even if the separation of the magical and the mundane is more a European Christian-influenced idea than an American one, and if Native American witches were part of the Muggle community, the entire history of North America ought to have gone noticeably differently from our world...) In any case, where are the Native American wizards? All we hear about are a few people of clearly European background who A) invent Quodpot, and B) run the Salem Institute.

Seriously, what is going on here?

It is not a given that Europeans will colonize the Americas -- that African slaves will be shipped over -- that the native population will die from disease and starvation and war, and the survivors be displaced and dispossessed and disempowered -- that European colonies will reach the Pacific -- etcetera ad infinitum. It is not a given that an alternate history will produce the same patterns of human migration and cultural erasure that our world has experienced.

To assume that every world will look like ours, especially when the world-building renders a strict parallel history track damned unlikely, is, bluntly, racist. Maybe not intentionally -- actually, almost certainly not intentionally; one must be thinking of an issue at all to have intent -- but intent doesn't change the outcome.

The outcome is an erasure of Native Americans.

I think it's pretty fucking ugly.

(Even when I otherwise like the stories in question.)

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*I am not naming the story, the writer, or the fandom because I don't want this post interpreted as a personal attack (especially since I don't know the writer from Eve). It's just random luck that her story was the straw that tipped me from saying, "You know, that's kind of skeevy," and then shunting the issue aside, to saying, "Okay, this is just not on," and getting genuinely angry.

Comments

[vehrec.livejournal.com]

More advanced? Then were was their metal working, their gunpowder, their systems of writing? (The Incas never had anything more than a system of accounting.) These are also signs of advancement, and would probably correlate better with magic Why were their cities larger-was it because there were no diseases from domesticated animals, and therefore nothing to infect the arriving Europeans? By the time of Columbus, Europe had reclaimed all of Romes accomplishments save two-her armies and the size of her cities. Did their horticultural achievements do them any good when push came to shove? Was it genetic engineering or pure luck that lead them to improve corn enough to grow it in the Misissipian culture's gardens? What good is irrigation when your enemies invade and burn your crops and sink your 'floating gardens'? Even if magic was real, and you could cure say smallpox with it, why would they know how to cure smallpox with magic? They've never had smallpox before, and therefore would have no idea how to treat it!

And while Native may have been treated as independent nations, it was never anything more than an alliance of convenience, especially in the Spanish controlled areas of the Americas, where the entire Carib and Arawak tribes were worked to extinction in sugar fields. The British gave blankets from smallpox victims to these 'world players'. The French only dealt with them to extract furs from the interior and get enough land to support their Haitian holdings. How they were 'world powers' in any sense...maybe third or fourth world.

[hungrytiger11.livejournal.com]

I was referring specifically to argiculturual when I say more advanced, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't an accident that corn was engineered; it was engineered from something that was rather inedible before it was tinkered with. And I'm not saying that this particular advancement would save one from invasion or disease, only that in this respect the American cultures had technology and variety that Europe didn't. As for other things, such as writing or metal working- you have to begin to look at specific different cultures. Obviously they had metal working; they had a ton of gold and silver that Europeans wanted. They didn't make the same weapons and gun powder wasn't in the Americas. To be fair there though, the Europeans didn't invent gun powder. They traded for it from Asia. They did invent a great many weapons that use it quite effectively though, you are right! Their cities were larger because they had better urban planning, such as being able to keep water etc. clean. When it comes to writing, some of the cultures did have writing systems. Basically, what I'm trying to say, is, its not that the European culutres were not advanced. They were, especially in weaponry and in navigation. Its just that it the Native American cultures were arguably the ones who were ahead in certain aspects, such as agriculture. Heck, their cleanliness and large cities likely worked against them!


To me, if a country or group is treated as an independent nation, they are playing on the world stage. But, as I mentioned before it also depends on what groups of Native Americans you are discussing. Some, as you pointed out, were enslaved or exposed to disease very early. Others were groups being given treaties and alliances,and being recognized as independent nations. I don't think its fair to say third world/ first world in this context, and fourth world nation generally are not fighting with the nation and government they are within. However, you are right in that those allying with them had things they wanted themselves too.