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edenfallingI 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.)
---------------
*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.
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.)
---------------
*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.
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(no subject)
Date: 2010-10-22 12:27 am (UTC)One of the most frustrating comics I read relating to this topic is Neil Gaiman's 1602 where he writes about all the Marvel characters (x-men, spiderman, ect.) in the year 1602 and so they're all European. Somehow, mutations have occurred earlier than usual. It's an interesting idea but
*spoiler*
Captain America is thrown back in time and that time fissure causes the mutations. In anycase, he's taken in by a group of Native Americans who treat him as one of their own. For most of the trade, Captain American is portrayed as Native American with the twist at the end that he's *gasp* Captain America. I don't necessarily think of that as "redface," if you well, because it would make sense for him to adapt the clothing and hairstyle of the people he'd been living with for 20 years or however long. *But* in the end, he talks about how he wants to protect *his* people. "Yay! He's going to protect the Native Americans who took him in and they'll have a fighting chance!" you think. No. He's talking about the WHITE EUROPEANS who eventually populate America who *haven't even arrived yet* because it's only 1602. Great, just great. And why are there no gene mutants among the Native Americans?
Also, the book "The Thirteenth Child" by Patricia C. Wrede is a book about going West and establishing the frontier, except with magic and dinosaurs roaming the land. And I don't remember her mentioning Native Americans or their magic at all, so if she did, it must have been a minor plot point. Again, the story concentrates on a White family and African magic.
And, like you said, often times the authors are great writers, but then there's this...total dismissal.
Another problem is that even when fantasy/sci-fi mentions Native American magic, it usually just eroticizes Native Americans or simplifies their stories. Erotic version: beautiful mystic Native American women with quaint, natural powers who helps the main character *or* old medicine man/woman who takes a moment to give sage advice and then vanishes into the background of the story. (See Cowboy Bebop for that second one. What's the deal with that random old man and kid sitting out in a tent in the middle of nowhere, anyway? Is that a new version of a reservation? Are they part of a movement? What's going on?)
If a Native American man appears, he's usually a "warrior!" who is angry at the white man and wants to take revenge. Certainly justifiable, but there is no depth to the story and he is always the bad guy. See: Buffy, Indian ghost warrior Thanksgiving episode and Supernatural, mystic Native American man curses land so that bugs attack suburbia episode.
At least in Star Trek Voyager, Chakotay is a main character with depth and a backstory, even if the writers generalize and romanticize the "Native American culture" into a monolithic culture, sprinkled with spiritual journeys.
And, hey, one thing Stephanie Meyer (what? what?!) got right: Native American werewolves as opposed to European werewolves! Of course, we can talk about Native American/POC men portrayed as controlled by rage and dominance, ect., ect., but how interesting that she, of all writers, brings up that possibility and contrast. Also, the Twilight movies are not *totally* whitewashed (*cough*Airbender*cough*) and have Native American actors portraying Native American characters.
Anyway, I'm glad to see your post on this. Science-fiction and fantasy, like many other genres, suffer from a dearth of developed, life-like POC characters. Hopefully, racial discourse will help writers to acknowledge other histories, cultures, and peoples as legitimate and consequential. You know, like white histories, cultures, and peoples.
Now I need to go re-read "City of the Beasts" by Isabel Allende. I was just going to give it as an example of an awesome book with native peoples (in South America) since I remember enjoying immensely at the time, but I realized that that was before I was more sensitive to issues of race. It was a long process (ongoing) to get to where I am. Now how much of it will I find is actually "white savior," "native princess love interest," or "cultural exploitation"? Let's see what happens.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-10-24 03:59 am (UTC)I was actually referencing the reaction to The Thirteenth Child and Wrede's associated comments in the title of my post -- IIRC, she invented a magical barrier between Asia and the Americas that prevented human settlement until the Europeans sailed there from the east. Which meant she was equating the danger of megafauna to the "danger" of, you know, human beings fighting to not get illegally thrown out of their own lands. She also completely failed to acknowledge that one reason European settlement of America went as smoothly as it did was that people already lived here and had found the good food sources, identified (and settled) the good locations, laid trails and created farmland, and so on and so forth.