As an aspiring writer I understand that writing about things and cultures that are unfamiliar to me is exciting. As a writer I get the urge to take an idea belonging to someone else and utilize it while telling my own stories. As a writer its my duty to be as truthful and nondiscrimination when writing about a culture that is not my own. As a writer I understand why J.K.Rowling took Native American culture and let her imagination run away with it but as a human it disgusts me. Recently my writing has taken a very psychological turn. I thoroughly enjoy creating characters with unique mentalities and exploring what life could be like in a story if a character was bipolar or schizophrenic. I also do a tremendous amount of research on mental disorders and read every case study that I can find. Research is an important factor when you make the conscious choice to write about something that is unfamiliar to you.
As I was exploring Pottermore and excitedly sorting myself into my Ilvermorny house (Pukwudgie if you were interested) I realized just how messed up the whole concept of Ilvermorny actually is. Before delving into the sphere of cultural appropriation the idea that the United States would only have one wizarding school is absolutely ridiculous. Yes, Native Americans were here first. Yes, there would probably be a Native American wizarding school. But if you think for one moment white settlers in the 1600's would allow their children to go to school with Native Americans you are drop dead wrong. Continuing this thought there would probably be a traditionally black wizarding school. As well as two schools for the North and the South that would have been established before or during the Civil War. This isn't even getting to the logistics of the facts that North America is so much bigger than Europe so theoretically a bigger country would result in a bigger wizarding population and the possibility of at least two more schools on the East and West Coasts. This brings my projected total of schools in the U.S. alone to be about six. Six at the least. The concept of there only being one school for the whole of the United States is simply naive and shows a laziness when it comes to research.
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I'm sure I would also get things like this wrong had I been writing a story set in England. It's not J.K.'s fault that she didn't grow up living and breathing in the racially divided historical relevance that is present day America. But not only was J.K. writing about a country whose history she didn't pay that much attention to but she was writing about a culture she never experienced first hand. Using someone's culture and past for your own creative devices is never EVER okay. The four houses are not just nonsensical words like the Hogwarts houses, they're creatures from Native American myth that have been twisted into magical houses. As someone who is not Native American I hesitate to use my own words to go into detail about this. However, there is an article circulating the internet that puts the conundrum that J.K. put us all in to a 'T'. I highly suggest that you read THIS article to hear more on the subject. Fun fact if you read the entirety of the backstory on Ilvermorny you'll find that the founded of the school was Irish not Native American. Cool, huh.
I get that using actual cultures is exciting. It probably feels like you're creating your own history from actual history. However, the reason that Hogwarts drew in so many people and excited imaginations young and old was because it was new. There wasn't a real history or group of people attached to it. It's a castle on a lake with a spooky forest on the grounds that students occasionally die in. Unlike Ilvermorny Hogwarts does not offend a specific group of people. There's a lot that J.K. could have done with the American wizarding school (made multiple ones for instance) but she chose to drop overtly creative thought and allow someone else's culture to do the creating for her.
I'm not saying that I'm going to boycott going to Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. But I'm not overly thrilled about it's subject matter knowing that Ilvermory is going to be mentions and maybe visited in the movie. Like all Potterheads I was thrilled when new information about the wizarding world I grew up loving and wanting to be apart of. But this Potterhead here was left wanting. To read more about Ilvermorny click HERE.
