Comments | little_details: Details of Iroquois traditions and life

draechaeli in little_details

Details of Iroquois traditions and life

Sep 12, 2011 20:09

The main character of my novel will be spending some time with an Iroquois Tribe from Ontario. There he will find a gay Japanese-Canadian (he is 16 at the current date in the story) is going to end up living with this particular Iroquois tribe. He met them a few times as a young child for single night events. He moved to stay with them permanently ( Read more... )

~religion: native american, ~native americans

Comments 17

triad_serpent September 13 2011, 01:27:01 UTC

While I can't give you any answers to the specific questions you asked, you might want to look into the writings of Lewis Henry Morgan, a Victorian anthropologist who was specifically interested in the Iroquois. Before he studied their culture, he was a lawyer dealing with Land Rights issues. The Iroquois, being matrilineal, posed a problem for the Patriarchal Victorian mindset, and piqued his interest. He's one of the first to people to do an ethnographic survey, in fact, because the concept of a matriarchal society so perplexed him.

That said, keep in mind that he was a Victorian white male and all that implies. By which I mean, expect racism, narrow-mindedness, sexism, and I warn you now--he is extremely verbose.

...in fact, it might just be easier to find a summary of his research, rather than trying to read the research itself... D:

draechaeli September 13 2011, 04:18:47 UTC

Thanks for the info. This seems to have a lot of what I'm looking for except the coming of age ceremony

I found the e-book first, so I'll deal with the victorian if you are interested you can get it for free from http://www.archive.org/details/hodenosaunee00morgrich

akiko September 13 2011, 01:42:29 UTC

I have a question unrelated to your questions. If this Iroquois tribe never encountered the diseases Europeans brought with them, how are their immune systems going to react to modern diseases? Sure, smallpox is gone, but there's still measles, mumps, rubella, chickenpox... Are they getting vaccines?

These are the things I notice in stories. I'm a bit of an armchair epidemiologist, after all.

thelilyqueen September 13 2011, 02:12:38 UTC

Seconded... if anything, they'd be even worse off than the real Native Americans were with the extra three centuries or so of isolation.

Of course, if this modern boy who's coming in has been fully vaccinated and is therefore less likely to be harboring those microbes in clinically significant levels, it might not be a huge deal. The bugs have to be there for him to pass them on. But, yeah, if he visited while his younger sibling had the measles... that could indeed be disastrous.

draechaeli September 13 2011, 04:33:15 UTC

I guess I worded that wrong to begin with. It is more that they were not exposed to people bent on taking their land, or converting them, etc. and when they did meet people in the new universe it was all on peaceful terms so if they did get diseases from these new people, the people would help.

It was like one day the tribe woke up in a new universe. Confused with the new place and no longer being in an area near a lake they migrate north until they come across a large lake. So instead of strangers coming to them and Surprise!disease appearing. They met the strangers and found a new home. The whole situation opened them up for the unexpected.

Also at the time of the story the tribe has been in the new universe for a few hundred years already, so they should have their own immunity. In their earlier history, disease may have been a problem, but unless I write a huge history lesson in the novel, or mention it in passing (which may happen, as I haven't written it yet) it will not come up.

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Completely and utterly off topic... el_esteleth September 13 2011, 04:53:31 UTC

...I just adore your user pic. Is it snaggable?

(I've nothing to add to the questions you posed, sorry about that.)

felis_ultharus September 13 2011, 16:09:27 UTC

I can answer one specific vector of this that you didn't ask, but since you mentioned your main character was gay ( ... )

draechaeli September 14 2011, 13:27:38 UTC

That is interesting. I have a friend who is part Canadian Iroquois who happen to also run the local PFlag metting etc. and she always talks about the Two-Spirit so I had just assumed ( ... )

chasecorbeau September 15 2011, 01:18:47 UTC

Hrmm... I thought the Japanese were especially accepting of homosexuality.

draechaeli September 15 2011, 02:48:16 UTC

That is what I thought too, which is part of the reason the character is Japanese. But then I took modern Japan in College and a friend of mine who studied more about Japan mentioned this homophobia I read some LGBT articles.

What I learned is that for centuries the japanese were cool with LGBT stuff anhd then the Europeans came and the Japanese wanted to be like them to an extent and took on their homophobia. And that kind of stuck around for a while. Homosexuallity kind of became this thing that no one talked about or wanted to admit to, but became really popular in media because no one wanted to talk about. Japan is cooler with it now to my understanding.

But my characters parents would have been raised with the veiled homophobia. and since the character would have know his grandparents (still in Japan) He would believe that his parents would be against him being openly gay possibly against being gay at all.

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