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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.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-10-24 02:57 am (UTC)As for cats, really? It's true that native American felines are all larger and wilder than domestic cats, but I seem to recall that terriers are bred to hunt rats and mice, among other vermin, and there were definitely dogs in the Americas. (I confess that I am ignorant of specific dog breeds, however.) Also, in an alternate history context, assuming the existence of magic, there is no reason we can't postulate magical constructs to hunt vermin or spells to otherwise keep them out of storage sheds. :-)
Furthermore, even if winter is a time of hardship for agricultural societies, there are places in the Americas that are warm year-round. (Many are even in North America -- it's a big continent, and it does include more than the northern US and Canada!) So it's possible that, if a few points in history had tipped slightly differently, some Central American societies could have developed more advanced technology and then spread those advances north and south, finding ways to combat winter storage losses as they went. Perhaps not likely, but possible.
(Also, I would not lump all North American peoples together as hunter-gatherers. There was a lot of hunting, sure, and sometimes seasonal shifts to secondary villages for fishing runs and so on, but many groups did a lot of farming too -- there is, after all, a reason American mythos emphasizes that the Pilgrims were starving until they learned how to deal with New England soils from the people they were dispossessing... the Wampanoag, I think? Anyway, people who have the patience to genetically engineer maize and then spread its cultivation over a continent are clearly not just "gathering" what happens to grow in the area.)
(no subject)
Date: 2010-10-24 03:54 am (UTC)As for the rest of the argument, about non-hunter-gatherer societies in North America being impossible: Cahokia Mounds, Illinois, across from St. Louis, was an agricultural city, with satellite maize-farming villages, and trade networks ranging from Minnesota to the Gulf Coast. In 1250, it was larger than London, England. Archeologists estimate it was the largest city in the USA region until Philadelphia in 1800. I don't think anyone can argue that St. Louis doesn't get winter.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-10-24 11:03 am (UTC)I don't know much about the mound-builder civilisation but my impression is that it died out when the Lesser Climatic Optimum was replaced by the Little Ice Age. I would guess that it was viable when the growing season was longer but failed when the growing season shortened. Maybe if they'd had cats they might have managed to cope with the climate change - or maybe not.