Genocide by removal from land

[aquaeri]

One of the points I've now seen raised once too often in the Thirteenth Child MammothFail is that you can't call it genocide to prevent Native Americans' ancestors even arriving in the Americas in the first place. The people are still alive, just somewhere else! They haven't been killed

Comments

[joycemocha]

Over on my LJ I've been putting forth pieces of an argument based on an Ecocritism literary perspective, which is that Thirteenth Child cannot be considered an Americana/pioneer/frontier fantasy because it fails to establish the sense of place which marks works of that type. It fits a "Lost Continent" model instead, and even then, it's European in style and approach

[aquaeri]

Absolutely. I've also tried to figure out what North America might remotely have been in 1491 without humans and I can't. I agree, it wouldn't be remotely like what it was, and I don't think there's any real way it could be anything like what it is now. 500 years is just not enough to "compensate" for the differences.

It's not so much that trying to imagine it makes my brain hurt, it's the fact that there are so many white people who clearly don't think it would be a big deal that it can support entire books like Thirteenth Child.

[heleninwales]

it fails to establish the sense of place which marks works of that type.

That was one of my gripes with the book. It's a pity that Patricia didn't go the whole hog and opt for a real Lost Continent -- an Atlantis that never sank or something -- because I don't feel that the ecology is convincing at all. By removing the native people, the land lost all its flavour and the incomers are Generic European, which in real life just doesn't exist. They would have come with their own cultural baggage from whatever country they'd emigrated from.

[aquaeri]

I haven't read it, but my feeling was that Pat Wrede needed to file a lot more of the "North America settled by white pioneers" serial numbers off her story. That sounds similar to what you're describing here.

[joycemocha]

It doesn't even reach the level of "North America settled by white pioneers" serial numbers. Really. It just reads like a differently shaped Europe to me.

Look, I live in the USA's Pacific Northwest and we are literally raised on this stuff, especially if you have any pioneer ancestry, as I do (as I've stated elsewhere, my family distinguished itself by promptly running for the stockade when things got tough. No Indian fighters here. Probably more the Peace Chief types). It doesn't read right to me. It reads more like a conflict of magics/coming of age story that could be set anywhere. If it wasn't for the marketing, and the earlier statements, I wouldn't even know it was supposed to be a frontier fantasy.

From an Ecocritical perspective, it isn't a North American story. Period. There is nothing of North America about it. It could be set on that world that Lazarus Long settled in Time Enough for Love which was vaguely Western (with talking mules and all).

[aquaeri]

I'll take your word for it, since I have no interest in the book itself. But the impression I got on rasfc was that the Little House angle was a big part of the attraction of writing the story. (And of course the mammoths)

[joycemocha]

Maybe Little House from the angle of someone who watched the TV series, not read the book. To be honest, I got the sense that Alvin Maker was a stronger influence--and I haven't read Alvin Maker for some time.

[joycemocha]

The Lost Continent would have been enthralling. But you're right, the ecology isn't convincing. In any case, even the Lost Continent stories have natives. A land without some sort of sentient natives just doesn't feel right. It doesn't have a life.

Unfortunately, what we have feels sadly like Extruded Fantasy Product. Sigh.

I do think to make it work one has to avoid the lure of the megafauna. If you want to think about an alternative North American settlement story, with or without magic, I think you have to postulate a.) disease resistance among the Native population and b.) a means of equivalent technology, whether it be magical or otherwise.

[cakmpls]

A land without some sort of sentient natives just doesn't feel right.

Yet at one time, every land except a small part of Africa was without some sort of sentient natives.

[joycemocha]

Yes. But it's been quite a while since that was legitimately the case. And, as far as we know, there weren't any high-technology wielding sentients from outside who came in and started manipulating the environment out of the blue.

[cakmpls]

Unless, of course, one is a believer in "human culture came from aliens who landed here"...