I try to be a good citizen of the writing community. I’ve
received help and encouragement from other authors, and I try to pass it on
myself, teaching, mentoring, blurbing, reviewing, answering questions about
writing and publishing, and generally trying to help boost other writers.
Sometimes, though, I have to pull back from that stance when asked for help.
I’m a Cherokee poet and novelist who writes about a Cherokee
protagonist and also reviews books, so people send me just about every novel
written that has a major Indigenous character in it. A terrifying number of
them are romances with generic spray-tanned hunks on the cover, love interests
who are half-Cherokee, half-Navajo, half-Sioux, or just plain half-Indian
(these authors don’t seem to know any other of the 500 tribes exist) and
written without the least tiny bit of knowledge of any of these different
cultures. Recently, I received a non-romance novel written by a non-Native
author with a Cherokee female protagonist. The blurbs made me hopeful, but once
I started reading, it became apparent that the writer had done a little
haphazard research online about the Cherokee to give “flavor” to her work. She
got many of the most basic things wrong, but oddly enough had a few unusual things
right. I don’t suppose I have to state that I won’t be reading any more of her
books.
I also get contacted repeatedly by people who want me to
give them a crash course in being Cherokee (or even just Native) because
they’ve decided to make the protagonists of their books, or even a whole
series, Cherokee (or just Native). These are people who know nothing about the
Cherokee, not even the most basic information, and apparently have no Cherokee
friends or acquaintances. My attitude toward them, I’m afraid, is not much more
sympathetic than toward the authors wanting reviews for their books with
“Native” characters. Basically, these folks are saying to me, “I want an ‘exotic
Indian’ protagonist and the Cherokee are the most famous tribe, so I’ll choose them,
but I have no real interest in the culture or knowing anyone in it. I’m too
lazy to do any research on the most documented tribe in American history (the Cherokee were over 90% literate in
their own written language and had a bilingual newspaper long before the
Removal in the 1830s), so please do my research for me—and maybe I’ll use
it or maybe I’ll just do what I want to do, whether it’s true to the culture or
not, while putting your name down as the ‘expert’ I consulted. Because I
clearly don’t give a real damn.”
Indigenous cultures have been misrepresented by Anglo
anthropologists and folklore collectors for centuries. An awful lot of books,
especially novels, written by outsiders to a culture end up written from the
viewpoint of caricatures rather than real people, and the culture is presented
as a collection of stereotypes of that culture (often derived from those
misrepresenting researchers). These books almost always, in one way or another,
diminish or denigrate those cultures. This totally hilarious and tragically
true poem by Sherman Alexie, "How To Write the Great American Indian Novel," speaks to that experience. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/237270
Tony Hillerman is usually brought up by these people as an
example of what they want to do. Hillerman wrote his novels the way a writer
should write about another culture—with respect, extensive research, and the
input of members of that culture. In fact, the Diné officially declared
Hillerman a Special Friend of the Navajo Nation for his knowledgeable and
sympathetic presentation of their culture and people in his books. But
Hillerman grew up in Oklahoma and actually attended an Indian school, although
he was white. He spent decades in New Mexico before he started his novels, studying
the Diné because he admired their worldview and way of life and had friends
among them. He didn’t just decide to write about them because he’d read a book
or seen a movie and found them exotic. He knew the Diné and had friends among
them long before he decided to write about them—and then he learned more.
I question whether someone who expects a stranger to offer
an entrée into an entire culture will do the same. This is not the same as
asking a police officer questions about police procedure. A culture is much
more than a mere profession. And certain cultures in the United States, such as
mine, have been relentlessly exploited, twisted, and even made illegal through
the centuries by the mainstream European-American culture, which tried to wipe us
out altogether not too long ago. Why should anyone from that culture expect
that we would welcome their desire to exploit us one more time?
Do I not think that an Anglo writer can write a character or
even protagonist from another culture, especially one of the Indigenous
nations? No, I think s/he can and should, but if such a writer wants to write
such a character, it should not be because they just want to make their
character “something exotic.” If all of these writers who say they want to do
what Hillerman did would actually do it the way Hillerman did, I would have no
problem with that. But that seems to be too much work—and too much investment
in actually getting to know Native people and learn about their cultures
without having an ulterior, selfish motive. Too many writers today who write
about other cultures in their novels are appropriating those cultures
and propagating stereotypes. If your interests truly lie with other cultures,
don’t be like those authors.
