Just yesterday, J.K. Rowling released the first in her new four-part series, The History of Magic in North America, which you can find on Pottermore. Obviously we are ALWAYS excited for new work from the Harry Potter author, but this time, she’s seeing quite a bit of backlash, as the trailer suggests that Rowling may have appropriated aspects of the series from Native American culture.
The trailer introduces magical beings with the ability to shape shift, known in English as “skin-walkers,” but known by the Navajo as “yee naaldloohsii.” Skin-walkers are featured in various stories across many Native American cultures. Deeply embedded in the history of Native peoples, it is not surprising that Rowling chose to incorporate skin-walkers in telling the history of magic in the pre-colonial era of North America.
However, combining an important aspect of Native American culture in a story of magic and mythology perpetuates the notion that Native American folklore is, like Harry Potter, fictional. As Brown University scholar Dr. Adrienna Keene of the Cherokee Nation stated in an open letter to Rowling, the use of Native American culture to further Rowling’s story of witchcraft and wizardy supports the stereotype that Native Americans “talk to animals, conjure spirits, perform magic, heal with ‘medicine’ and destroy with ‘curses.’”
“But we’re not magical creatures,” Keene contends. “We’re contemporary peoples who are still here, and still practice our spiritual traditions… traditions that are not akin to a completely imaginary wizarding world (as badass as that wizarding world is).”
Some may argue that the Harry Potter saga is based on European mythology of wizardry, so similarly utilizing aspects of Native American culture should not be seen as an issue. However, this is a case of cultural appropriation particularly because Rowling, as a white British woman, belongs to a culture that has largely benefited from the colonization and decimation of the Native population of North America, resulting in the destruction of Native culture. Thus, for her to then take aspects of this marginalized culture and incorporate it into her work, with little regard for its traditional significance, is ultimately insensitive.
Surely Rowling did not intend the use of skin-walkers in her work to be culturally insensitive. Nonetheless, its implications are harmful to Native Americans, who struggle to maintain a culture that has been exploited time and time again by mainstream media, thereby stripping their traditions of authenticity.