Hey all, I’m working on an old western which has some native characters, predominantly of a fictional tribe. I’m wondering if you all think it would be understandable if people spoke (in dialogs only) as the times and used terms like “Indian” or, even worse, “Injun”, or should I stick with using tribe names and the word “native”? Or something different altogether?
Thanks!
Fair question! My girlfriend tends to be angry with the stumbling efforts of new media to adopt language that does not dehumanize or denigrate Native culture.
However, she would understand how a particular setting demands that the characters be mostly limited to the ideas to which they would be predisposed.
It could be helpful to include an author’s sidenote about your feelings and intentions when writing.
Personally, I think your racist characters can act racist without representing the artist. Censoring this (ugly) part of history affects the integrity of your setting, and the potential for conflict or character development.
Colonial attitudes towards “civilizing the uncivilized” were so pervasive that they still affect territorial politics to this day, among other things.
Thanks for the reply! I tend to agree with the philosophy that censoring the past isn’t always a good thing. In this case, though, my understanding is that it wasn’t only racists who used the term “Indian”, but everyone did because they as a whole hadn’t yet acknowledged that it was wrong or pejorative.
I think I’m going to leave it as “natives” or the specific tribe name unless the occasion really really calls for it and it would be nonsensical too not use it.
Thanks again!
FWIW, either approach sounds to me like it could work… But I’m not a sensitivity reader. Ultimately, getting one to put eyes on your manuscript is probably a good idea.
Basically this.
Although, given new writers are sometimes kinda caught in that they don’t have funds to pay one for their time, a work-around for me in the past was research by finding and following activists in the groups I’m trying to portray.
Usually they’ve spent years and years talking about the topic, so I figure if I find their stuff and I just read ALL of it and do as much research on it as I do for anything else (and by research, I really mean by spending months reading up on the topic from good sources), I’ll be closer to being in the right ballpark even if I’m not in a spot to pay a sensitivity reader b/c I’m dead broke myself.
That sounds like a good strategy resulting in you really understanding the “source material”… more so than just farming the responsibility out to a sensitivity reader. However, for those who are lazy and broke, another option is to do a beta swap with someone who’s in the group you want a sensitivity read from. Maybe you can’t be too lazy for this option though, because trading manuscript critiques is a fair amount of work. But it’s a different kind of work than doing a bunch of research, so it might appeal more to certain writers. Just thought I’d mention it.
