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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   26220 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 22, 2024

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There was a recent change to the "Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act" which has led to several of the best natural history museum museums simply shutting down their Native American exhibits last week, rather than (what I would naively expect, based on the title) removing human remains from display or something. For instance, The Field Museum papered and curtained over their displays. The American Museum of Natural History is closing two exhibit halls.

This seems like the sort of rule that looks like it might make sense initially, of not grave digging and talking to descendants, until everyone is suddenly reminded that archeology largely is grave digging, and finding descendants is often fraught, with plenty of Tribal Council politics even if a museum can figure out the right authorities to talk to.

I can't tell if this was the intention of the President's Office when they passed the rule, and how much will be left after everything settles (or if it won't settle, and everything will just sit in storage awaiting a change of zeitgeist).

Admittedly, I already mostly go to the local natural history museum for the animatronic dinosaur, and my state has lots of Pueblo Ruins museums, but they're not very good, and run in partnership with the Native American communities. It isn't clear how this will affect locally interesting museums about communities not continuously inhabited since the most archeologically interesting period, such as the Dickson Mounds museum (I recommend stopping by if you're in the area!). Their most interesting parts for non-archeologists are landscape, reproductions and dioramas anyway, so perhaps not much. The Milwaukee Natural History Museum has an unusually enjoyable Native American section (very good in general, go if you're in the area!), but iirc it was also mostly reproductions and dioramas as well.

Ultimately, I suppose it will probably not deteriorate the experience all that much for non-archeologists once the dust settles, but will be one more step of history museums in general toward irrelevance.

I think this is a case of good intentions going horribly wrong because the people making the rules don’t understand the process and decided based on what sounds good rather than what work. A rule requiring getting permission when the owners of the material are clear, obvious and still around to ask is fair enough. But when coupled with the difficulty of finding the actual tribes (which may not exist anymore) and the definition of relics being fairly wide means that you essentially cannot dig or use any artifacts because you can’t get permission. This will definitely end up erasing a lot of Native American culture from our interpretation of history.

This will definitely end up erasing a lot of Native American culture from our interpretation of history.

You know, I've had the same thought about things like renaming sports teams. Not that the previous name of the Washington Commanders wasn't offensive, but that we've established a de facto rule that mentions of Native American culture or history are offensive, but also that nobody got fired for just completely ignoring the topic. It already feels like public awareness of real native traditions and people has dropped tangibly in the culture over the last few decades of my life because attempts to bring it up are soured by (IMO bad-faith, shallow) criticism that it's "problematic" or doesn't cast enough native actors. Not that there's nothing at all to those claims, but I think they end up being overall counterproductive, and in practice are just erasing it from the culture completely.

I think there's something to this.

There's some enthusiasm from my parents' generation for Tony Hillerman's novels, set in the Navajo Nation, especially because he was a careful observer and puts in a lot of interesting local details. There's a TV adaptation from a couple of years ago that, in general, looks rather good (I haven't watched it because cop shows aren't my thing), so the top hits on Google are things like this:

WINDOW ROCK-Despite fine acting, suspense and entertainment featured in the first episodes of the AMC mystery series “Dark Winds,” overall the show misses the mark when it comes to accurately portraying Navajo language and culture, say some Diné experts.

Navajo is one of the most difficult languages in the world for outsiders to learn. That's why it was used instead of code during WWII. Also, speakers like to teach it wrong so they can laugh about it (source: my mom was living on the Reservation for a while. She is not bitter about it, and figured they're entitled to their fun) The Navajo youth most interested in careers like acting are least likely to learn it, because that would require growing up with their grandparents, herding sheep or something. There is not a large pool of Navajo speakers who are also attractive actors. And yet:

One thing learned in the first episode is that if a non-Diné actor wants to depict a Navajo character, they need to have Navajo language lines down and support to do that. “C’mon Hollywood, do better,” said Clarissa Yazzie, who is also a popular social media influencer. In a TikTok critique, Yazzie spelled out how some of the actors’ mispronunciation of words changed their meaning to the point of distraction and shock.

Lol, "social media influencer" as representative of traditional culture. The lesson is mostly just not to try.

There's some enthusiasm from my parents' generation for Tony Hillerman's novels, set in the Navajo Nation

Ouch. :( Yeah, I was a huge Tony Hillerman fan, read all of his Leaphorn/Chee mysteries. (His daughter has continued the series, but unsurprisingly, it's a weaksauce imitation that spends lots of time on Chee's wife and her struggles being a woman and a Navajo cop.)

There's a TV adaptation from a couple of years ago that, in general, looks rather good (I haven't watched it because cop shows aren't my thing), so the top hits on Google are things like this:

There have been several film adaptations of Hillerman's novels. The Dark Wind starred Lou Diamond Phillips (who is Filipino), and the others were PBS Mystery specials. All of them were mediocre.

In another, similar vein, look at the show Kim's Convenience. I recall reading that the reason the show shut down was because they had someone on the crew (a camera guy, I believe) quit, and they couldn't find an Asian person to replace him. So rather than have non-Asians on the crew, they shut it down. But as a consequence there's one less depiction of Asians and their culture in the broader culture. The perfect was allowed to be the enemy of the good.

Also, real talk - the name Washington Redskins wasn't offensive, and they should've just kept it. People would've moved on to complaining about something else eventually.

The Redskins name got changed because the owner got caught pimping out the cheerleaders amd not sharing revenue with other NFL entities and he wanted a positive news cycle.

...but that we've established a de facto rule that mentions of Native American culture or history are offensive, but also that nobody got fired for just completely ignoring the topic.

This reminds me of when Land O Lakes kept the land, but removed the Indian.

I can certainly understand why people would object to insulting portrayals of their heritage, but I am genuinely baffled by people that are upset by positive portrayals that are merely inaccurate in the specifics. If someone takes a cool part of your culture, dresses it up to look even cooler in an inaccurate way, and then celebrates that aesthetic, this does not harm you! There were probably not a lot of Danes that strongly resembled the Minnesota Viking, and I would strongly wager that the Skol chant is not all that similar to real Viking traditions a thousand years ago, but it's all pretty fun and gives a generally positive impression of those Northmen.

but I am genuinely baffled by people that are upset by positive portrayals that are merely inaccurate in the specifics.

I can definitely understand why someone would dislike inaccurate portrayals of their culture. It doesn't seem like a big enough deal to pitch a fit about, and especially when that culture either A) hasn't existed for a thousand years or B) doesn't have a one to one correspondence with the real world, it seems kind of silly. But the concept of it being bothersome to see highly inaccurate portrayals of yourself and people like you in mass media is intuitively obvious.

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