{"id":12577,"date":"2009-11-29T18:53:20","date_gmt":"2009-11-30T02:53:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/jed\/2009\/11\/29\/12577.html"},"modified":"2009-11-29T18:53:20","modified_gmt":"2009-11-30T02:53:20","slug":"paleface-anthropology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/2009\/11\/29\/paleface-anthropology\/","title":{"rendered":"Paleface anthropology"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I'm reading William Tenn's 1958 story \"Eastward Ho!\" (as reprinted in the 60th-anniversary volume The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction<\/a><\/cite>). It takes place in a post-Collapse future in which American Indians (who are redeveloping science and technology) control most of the former US. I was rolling my eyes a bit at some Indian stereotypes transplanted into the future (though I figured, hey, 1958, I can cut the story some slack), but then I got to this bit:<\/p>\n

\n

Makes Much Radiation [the chief's son] shifted his shoulders back and forth and flexed his arm muscles. \"All this talk,\" he growled. \"Paleface talk. Makes me tired.\"<\/p>\n

[....]<\/p>\n

One of the other, older warriors near the chief spoke up. \"In the old days, in the days of the heroes, a boy of Makes Much Radiation's age would not dare raise his voice in council before his father. Certainly not to say the things he just has. I cite as reference, for those interested, Robert Lowie's definitive volume, The Crow Indians<\/cite>, and Lesser's fine piece of anthropological insight, Three Types of Siouan Kinship<\/cite>. Now, whereas we have not yet been able to reconstruct a Siouan kinship pattern on the classic model described by Lesser, we have developed a working arrangement that—\"<\/p>\n

\"The trouble with you, Bright Book Jacket,\" the warrior on his left broke in, \"is that you're too much of a classicist.\"<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And the scene goes on from there. A delightful moment, and it took me completely by surprise; I laughed a lot.<\/p>\n

Sadly, the rest of the story isn't as much fun—the plot is okay (but it's not really a plot story), but I don't like its handling of gender, and a lot of the story's undermining of stereotypes of Indians consists of just applying them to white people; that kind of reversal approach always strikes me as a little simplistic. Still, the political stuff is not bad for 1958.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m reading William Tenn’s 1958 story “Eastward Ho!” (as reprinted in the 60th-anniversary volume The Very Best of Fantasy &…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,18,28,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commonplace-book","category-humor","category-short-stories","category-speculative-fiction"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12577\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}